🪖 Is MLB’s Biggest Failed Experiment Making a Comeback?

In partnership with

Mastercard’s Newsroom recently interviewed me about my journey to becoming a creator, and it spawned a memory I haven’t had in a while.

I’ll share more about it at the end (plus a few details that didn’t make it into the article).

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: How One Article Could Ruin the Brown’s New $2.4B Dome

📉 Biggest Loser: Is MLB’s Biggest Failed Experiment Making a Comeback?

🏆 Winner’s Circle: Meet the NFL QB Who Invented the Most Valuable Football on the Market

The Daily Newsletter for Intellectually Curious Readers

Join over 4 million Americans who start their day with 1440 – your daily digest for unbiased, fact-centric news. From politics to sports, we cover it all by analyzing over 100 sources. Our concise, 5-minute read lands in your inbox each morning at no cost. Experience news without the noise; let 1440 help you make up your own mind. Sign up now and invite your friends and family to be part of the informed.

Join for free today!

🗞 The Big Story

What the hell is going on with the Cleveland Browns?

Background: Seven months after the team announced it was building a $2.4 billion dome 15 miles outside of the city, one article might have derailed that whole plan.

Let’s break it down.

From the moment the Haslams announced that they’d be building a new stadium, retail, and entertainment district in the Brook Park suburb last October, fans assumed that the move was a done deal.

Now, that doesn’t mean they were happy about it, especially given the fact that the Haslams, who have a net worth of over $8 billion, are requesting $1.2 billion in public funding from state and county taxpayers to build this new domed stadium.

Exclusive Leak: Still, fans assumed there wasn’t a viable Plan B to keep the stadium on downtown Cleveland's Lakefront. However, that all changed on May 7th when the Cleveland Scene published this exclusive leak showing a renovated Huntington Bank Field that was apparently under consideration the whole time.

Now, the Haslams haven’t been shy about sharing the renderings for their new Brook Park dome for the last few months, but this is the first time the public has seen what a potential renovated lakefront stadium could look like, which includes approximately $1 billion in upgrades:

• Glass walls to the stadium’s exterior

• Two new large public gathering areas

• Widening interior walkways

• Mixed-use development on the western side

Cleveland’s mayor and the county executive say they've seen even more renderings of this alternative plan that are intentionally being kept from the public, even though the public will be paying for half of the new stadium.

To be fair, the Haslam Sports Group says that these three-year-old renderings didn’t have viable funding from the county or city; however, government officials claim that they had secured at least $280 million to help pay for this version of the project.

Headed to the Suburbs: Instead, the Haslams rejected that plan and opted to buy 176 acres in the suburbs where they’ll not only earn revenue on a new stadium, but through real estate and entertainment investments.

Now, there is still hope for a lakefront stadium since there’s about a month before the governor has to sign or veto the budget that would fund either stadium, so I guess we’ll have to just wait to see if these leaks are enough to make him reconsider.

📉 Biggest Loser

This is one of MLB’s biggest failed experiments, so why is it suddenly making a comeback?

Pitcher Safety: Every year, there are an estimated 700,000 pitches thrown in Major League Baseball, with only about 0.004% of them resulting in a batted ball making contact with a pitcher's head.

While that averages out to just two instances per year, the fact that these balls are usually traveling at well over 100 miles per hour means that any one pitch could be deadly from just 60 feet away.

That’s why, after five different pitchers were hit in the head with line drives during the 2015 MLB season, you saw a rise in various protective headgear across the league.

Admittedly, most of these early designs looked ridiculous, leading most pitchers to avoid using them entirely, but then in 2016, MLB rolled out a brand new design that promised to be “comfortable, light, and attractive so that pitchers would voluntarily choose to wear them.”

But let’s just say, things didn’t work out that way.

Half Caps: In collaboration with Boombang and New Era, MLB sent 20 pitchers these “Half Caps” to test out during Spring Training:

• Made with a carbon fiber shell

• Lined with an energy-absorbing foam

• Meant to be worn with a skull cap 

All while claiming to be “barely larger than a normal baseball cap” and weighing just under a pound.

Never Caught On: However, once players started testing them out in bullpen sessions, they started making fun of the design, saying it lacked “an intimidation factor.”

And as far as I can tell, these Half Caps never made it out of Spring Training in 2016, effectively ending Boombang’s new product line before it even began.

However, that all changed this year, after a team doctor offered Dodgers’ pitcher Bobby Miller the product after getting struck in the head with a line drive during Spring Training.

Miller had no interest in wearing the helmet-hat, but his teammate Kiké Hernández didn’t mind the way it looked to the point that when the position player took the mound in April for his 6th career pitching appearance, he decided to wear it.

Unfortunately for the Half Cap, even though it finally made its regular-season debut almost 10 years after its launch, other Dodgers pitchers appear to have no interest in wearing one themselves.

And honestly, I can’t blame them…

🏆 Winner’s Circle

This is the most valuable football ever created, but not for the reason you might think.

Background: When Kurt Benkert retired from the NFL in 2023, he had kids all over his neighborhood asking to play catch. However, that’s when he noticed a massive problem:

Not only were the balls these kids were using the wrong size for their hands, but the laces and leather felt cheap and were extremely hard to grip.

Now, at the professional level, footballs undergo hours of prep before every practice and game to make them easier to throw and catch, with teams often going through 30 to 50 balls in a given day to ensure they’re perfect every time.

Kurt quickly realized that nothing like that existed for a regular person… until now.

Finding a Solution: In July 2024, Kurt started developing a new type of ball that would be ready to use right out of the box. This means better grip without any preparation, raised laces, and proper sizing to make it easier to throw in any condition, including when the ball gets wet.

During the first 6 months, The Dime Lab was just a side project for Kurt and his co-founder, Matt, but after Kurt started posting himself talking about the first version of this new ball to his more than 1 million combined followers, sales exploded.

As of May 2025, The Dime Lab has sold around 5,400 of the original khaki balls for a total of $325,000 in gross sales, but that’s not even the craziest part. Because this one football only makes up about 32% of the company’s overall sales since its launch.

Kurt’s Success: In less than 12 months, Kurt has sold over 17,000 total products, which include four other balls that vary in color and size, as well as a hardcover book that teaches aspiring athletes how to train like an NFL QB, and has already done $120,000 in sales since launching this year.

Since launching less than a year ago, The Dime Lab has already reached over $1M in gross sales, and with his products seemingly going viral every week, I don’t see things slowing down anytime soon.

⏱️ In Other News

• A Rockies fan is suing the team for being bad.

• The WNBA has a new, most-valuable team.

• The PWHL is thriving, but it’s about to take a huge leap.

🎁 Share the Bottom of the Ninth

When you refer new readers to the Bottom of the Ninth, you win exclusive prizes.

➡️ Here is your unique link to share: https://bottom-of-the-ninth.beehiiv.com/subscribe?ref=PLACEHOLDER

You’re currently at 0. That’s only 1 away from receiving a Bottom of the Ninth Sticker!

*Please do not use fake email addresses — they will not qualify as referrals. Thank you!

👋🏻 Happy Friday!

During my conversation with Sophie Hares for the Mastercard piece, I was reminded of what I can only now categorize as one of the most important meetings of my life:

I’m part of the last generation that didn’t fully grow up with smartphones. I remember getting the iPhone 4S (the first iPhone with Siri) for my 14th birthday. However, it wasn’t until I entered high school later that year that I was finally allowed to get social media.

I remember first signing up for Facebook, then Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram.

Now, even today, when you create a new account on one of these platforms, you’re asked to select some of your interests, which results in a suggested list of accounts to follow.

Naturally, as a 14-year-old boy growing up in Green Bay, WI, I selected football as my top interest.

This prompted Twitter to suggest I follow an account called ‘I Live For Football’—seemingly made for (and by) someone just like me.

As it turns out, it was… in more ways than one.

At the time, ILFF had around 10,000 followers and was the brainchild of another 14-year-old in Green Bay, Frank Kugel. As soon as I realized this account was run by someone in my hometown, I knew I had to learn more.

So I DM’d Frank and offered my help in any way he needed. He said he was looking for someone to help him post on the account. I had just downloaded Twitter; I didn’t know anything about it, much less how to run an account with 10,000+ followers.

But I assured him I’d be a great fit.

He agreed to meet with me at a Starbucks to discuss some details, but I was still only 15 years old, so my mom had to drop me off.

I don’t remember what I said in that meeting to convince Frank to let me work with him, but if it wasn’t for that moment, I don’t know if I’d be writing to you all today.