USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.
Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.
I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."
"They just come with the table, man."
They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.
This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.
I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.
"Did we��?"
"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."
Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.
My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."
Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.
I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.
Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.
I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.
Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.
@scottcoleman55 It almost makes me long for the dark days of the rebuild. The team sucked, but the community on this website was pretty fun. It's easy to see why some of the old pillars of the community left as things like these reactions started becoming the norm. I miss a lot of those folks
@scottcoleman55 This is the kind of lineup you hope to look back at the way you do the Kevan Smith ones from 2021 and not the Alex Verdugo lineups from 2025
@b_outliers I think your only alternative is trying Dom Smith out in left again. It'll be ugly, but maybe if the bat stays hot enough and you've got a quick hook if they get a lead... but most likely I think you're right
@BravesStats Dude I'm envious of that collection. I wish I had one from each of the years that I filled them out. There's a pic of me as a teenager holding a stack of like 100 of them punching them out en masse at the Ted
@MattPowers31 Dude this is incredible work. Thanks for sharing. I'm very excited to see how things unfold and expect I'll be referring to your writings a lot in the coming months, as I seem to every year
@JessicaDBrand@notgaetti 1. That is super cool and unsurprising that you get to find this stuff as a job
2. Do you happen to know if this fact includes switch hitters, or if there is a way to check for that? As in, a lineup that goes L-R-S-R-L-R-L-R-L could count (imo), but maybe not show up initially