With just about a week to go before the trade deadline, Matthew and Toby catch up on what’s been going on—and throw the ball around the horn on Bryce Harper in the home run *darby*, the Clevelands having one of the best left sides of an infield in baseball history, Supreme Court nominee’s Brett Kavanaugh’s suspicious Nats tickets debt, and Larry Doby making it on to a U.S. coin.

Matthew sits down (or, precisely, sat down last winter) with Democratic communications guru Stephanie Cutter about her lifelong Red Sox fanhood in the illustrious return of a Half-Hearted Attempt at Empathy.