Earlier this week, Canadian baseball player Joey Votto did something very unusual – he posted a three-page handwritten letter on Twitter/X to apologize for disparaging remarks he made six years about Canadian baseball. While the contents of the letter were interesting, I was struck by the fact that Votto went to the trouble of writing the letter in longhand using cursive handwriting. When was the last time you wrote a three-page letter using a pen and paper?

My immediate thought when I saw the letter: We need to reach out to Hetty! That’s Hetty Roessingh, a professor at the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary. Hetty has written several articles for us about the need for educators to reintroduce cursive writing in elementary school curriculums. Hetty quickly produced a new story for us that explained why Votto’s apology seems more authentic because he used cursive handwriting. (We’re publishing another story by Hetty tomorrow that explains why good handwriting improves literacy in young children.)

The Conversation doesn’t cover sports in a traditional way. Instead, we explain the background of an event, or provide a deeper dive into an issue that you won’t find on a typical sports page in a newspaper. And this is a big time of year for sports: baseball is starting and the U.S. college basketball tournaments – “March Madness” – is under way (and attracts a lot of attention in Canada).

These days, any discussion about sports needs to include a discussion about sports gambling. Millions of dollars will be bet during March Madness. And this comes as one of baseball’s biggest stars, Shohei Ohtani, has been caught up in a gambling scandal.

For your weekend reading, I’ve assembled some recent and archived stories that look at Joey Votto’s handwriting, sports gambling and the cultural phenomenon known as March Madness. Even if you’re not a sports fan, I think these articles will both entertain and inform you.

And on a more serious note, please take the time to listen to our latest episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient, which takes a deep dive into the growing problem of starvation in Gaza.

Have a good weekend. We’ll be back in your Inbox on Monday.