Luck, Foresight and Science: How an Unheralded Team Developed a COVID-19 Vaccine in Record Time
Credit for the COVID-19 vaccine “belongs to a series of uncelebrated discoveries dating back at least 15 years – and a constellation of unsung scientists.”
The Designers and the Don
How two interior decorators took the fall for the Cali Cartel.
Cuban Baseball Agents: Risks and Lies
The complicated business of helping Cuban baseball talent find their way to the U.S., and eventually the Major League:
“At some point — either before leaving Cuba or postdefection — every player needs a baseball agent. The seedier practitioners of this trade are often called buscónes, or searchers. Sometimes they bully clients into paying. ‘I’ve heard of agents who hold players at gunpoint,’ says Gus Dominguez, a Cuban-American from Los Angeles who has negotiated contracts for major-league Cuban exiles such as Rey Ordóñez and Yuniesky Betancourt. ‘I’ve heard of agents who threaten to break their clients’ legs or arms.’
“Dominguez should know about the dark seams of the business. In 2006, he was indicted for smuggling ballplayers through Key West. The feds built their case on the word of a convicted drug trafficker who claimed Dominguez had paid him $225,000 — borrowed from major-league catcher Henry Blanco — for the work.”
Scott Storch Raked in Hip-Hop Millions and Then Snorted His Way to Ruin
(AltWeekly Award Winner, 2011) When Scott Storch was 8 years old, he was dizzied by a soccer cleat to the head. His mom did not take such injuries in stride. She had been apoplectic when Scott lost his baby teeth in a living-room dive five years earlier, leaving him with a Leon Spinks grin. “I was an overly worrisome mother,” admits Joyce Yolanda Storch, who goes mainly by her middle name. “I was overbearing to a fault.”
