A Rob Deer Mystery, With Justin Halpern

It is the policy of Defector that co-owners who are on vacation should, when on vacation, try their best to be on vacation.

There are complicating factors to this simple-sounding rule—it is both easy and tempting to pop into Slack during lulls or just out of habit, and that is only made more so by the years of damage or just slippage related to the idea of what are and aren't working hours—but it is a good policy.

I say this as someone who wrote https://defector.com/dead-country-fair">a decently long story for the site during my recently concluded vacation, although I can at least partially credit some untenably disgusting weather along with the aforementioned bad habits for that one.

But some time away from work is an important and good thing no matter who you are, and I was glad to have it.

Which is why I feel compelled to explain why I took a few moments out of my vacation last week to send Drew some questions about the San Diego Padres for him to ask Justin Halpern.

Should I have done this?

By the policy described above, absolutely not.

But Justin Halpern appearances are very valuable to me, and if I was going to miss one I wanted to make sure that my questions about his aesthetically unpleasant, objectively mediocre, completely baffling baseball team of choice made it into the episode.

As it happened, Justin had to push his appearance back a week, which means I got to ask those questions myself.

And if it was not my best work to spend my precious and limited time in Maine thinking about how best to ask What Is Wrong With Manny Machado, it was gratifying—after Drew told a story about recognized at the beach due to his distinctive noises and Justin told a story about retiring Jose Canseco via groundout in a men's league game, to Ozzie Canseco's dismay—to get to hear Justin's answer.