With the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays battling in the World Series, Major League Baseball has something it rarely gets: a small-market Fall Classic. But with a potential December lockout on the horizon, this year’s World Series could affect the game’s future beyond the baseball diamond.

What did the commentators say?
This World Series is “equally intriguing for what it means on the field” as for “what it means off the field, as terms such as ‘market size,’ ‘payroll’ and ‘revenue sharing’ have become as big a part of baseball as hits, home runs and RBIs,” said NBC News. The small-spending Brewers and Rays beat out several big spenders to make it to the Fall Classic. Milwaukee “swept the Los Angeles Dodgers and their $412 million team in the NLCS,” while Tampa took down the New York Yankees’ $310 million-payroll club.

Whoever emerges victorious will be the first team to win the World Series in the bottom half of the league’s spending since the Kansas City Royals in 2015, a “rebuke of sorts to what MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred” said about the sport, said NBC. Manfred “set this winter up to be a big huffy showdown over runaway major market payrolls and the desperate need to install a salary cap,” said The Wall Street Journal. Then a “couple of crafty, thrifty, well-run teams with low payrolls but dynamo management knocked out the spenders to reach the big show.”

For team owners, it “plays right into the hands of their opponent in the labor dispute,” said the Journal. The MLB Players Association has long argued that a “cap isn’t necessary, because money isn’t what delivers championships.” The “truth is” that both matter. A baseball team “needs smart management,” and “money can make up for mistakes.”

What next?
Many players see the small-market World Series as a positive trend. It “kind of paints a different picture, right? You don’t really need all the money out there to win baseball games,” said Brewers closer Trevor Megill to USA Today. It “kind of just matters who’s in the clubhouse and what they are willing to do for each other.’’

Rising flight and hotel costs, combined with “stubbornly finite” annual leave, mean most vacationers can take “one or two big trips” per year, said Sarah Rappaport at Bloomberg. So a “growing cohort” of time-poor travelers is treating holidays as an “investment” in themselves. The desire to “come home with more than Instagram shots as souvenirs” has given rise to “purposeful travel” called the skillcation.

‘Satisfaction and accomplishment’
Tourists are seeking experiences that “create muscle memories,” said Natalia Lechmanova, a senior economist at Mastercard, in the company’s published research. From “winemaking and woodworking” to pottery and painting, consumers are “opening their wallets” for a taste of local culture and a “lesson that lasts long after they have arrived home.” Skill-based travel also “tends to draw people beyond the crowded hot spots” to smaller towns and lower seasons, reducing the impact of overtourism.

These trips tend to cost more than conventional holidays, but the pay-off is high. People often see “longer-lasting positive effects on psychological well-being” than from holidays focused on “sun, sea and partying,” said Andrew Stevenson, a psychology professor at the U.K.’s Manchester Metropolitan University, to Bloomberg. Learning a new skill adds a “feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment.”

‘Teach, reconnect and transform’
Over the years, “I have clumsily thrown myself into swing dancing lessons in Italy, free-diving sessions in French Polynesia, and Spanish intensives in Ecuador,” said Julia Eskins at Vogue. “I came home from each one feeling a little more capable than when I arrived.”

A trip like this has a “purpose,” said Alex Ledsom at Forbes. The traveler is looking for more than “just a break.” The goal is to fill time with experiences that “teach, reconnect and transform.” 

Travelers going on skillcations usually learn something unavailable at home, with tactile crafts like “Peruvian weaving or Japanese pottery-making” becoming increasingly popular activities, said Ledsom. They are more interested in “heritage, expertise, traditions and customs” than ever before.

That has led to one of the “fastest-growing segments” in the tourism industry, said Lindsay Cohn at W Magazine. Hotels everywhere are “ramping up” their activity programs to offer the chance to develop “new experiential abilities.” 

Lion cubs pile onto a bench in their enclosure at Germany’s Dortmund Zoo. Twelve were born to lionesses Saba and Zuri and male lion Boeti over four days at the end of July.
Ina Fassbender / AFP / Getty Images

Science fiction is a broad genre, and in one of its most beloved forms, it’s fused with the dynamics of a thriller. The best of these films are simultaneously suspenseful, thought-provoking and dazzling.

‘Aliens’ (1986)
Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the lone survivor of the slow-burn rampage in 1979’s “Alien,” reluctantly tags along with a squad of Marines to a colony menaced by the Xenomorphs. This “perfect sequel” is a “war movie fused inextricably with science fiction,” said Ian Nathan at Empire. (Netflix)

‘12 Monkeys’ (1995)
Convict James Cole (Bruce Willis) is sent back in time from 2035 to find the source of a manufactured virus that wipes out 99% of the global population. The film succeeds as a “vigorous work of dark surprise-filled science fiction,” said Janet Maslin at The New York Times. (Prime Video)

‘Children of Men’ (2006)
As a long fertility crisis threatens total societal collapse, Theo (Clive Owen) escorts a pregnant woman to safety through a bleak U.K. teeming with refugees and fear. This masterful parable is a “fast-paced, kinetically shot dystopia,” said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. (Prime Video)

‘Annihilation’ (2018)
Biologist Lena (Natalie Portman, pictured above) joins an expedition into a slowly expanding extraterrestrial bubble in which plant and animal life, as well as reality itself, are subject to bizarre mutations. Watching this “shimmering sci-fi art installation” is a “foreboding, unique and wholly challenging experience,” said David Crow at Den of Geek. (MGM+)