Last night, the World Series started, with Clay Kershaw on the mound for the Dodgers. He and the Dodgers lost the game. It will be small consolation for him that he appears in my Impromptus today. (That was supposed to be funny but did not really come off that way, is my impression.)

I had brought up Kershaw on a podcast. And a reader informed me that the pitcher’s late dad, Chris, was a musician in Dallas. The reader, in fact, sings in a chorus that has performed at least one of Chris Kershaw’s arrangements.

You can find Chris Kershaw’s obituary here. “Chris was born in Manhattan, New York on May 24, 1949 to Reverend George Clayton Kershaw and Alice Irene ‘Peggy’ Evans Kershaw. He enjoyed a sweet friendship with his only sibling and older sister . . . From a very early age, Chris had a love and giftedness for music.” And so on.

I thought this was interesting: “In lieu of flowers, the Kershaw family requests that donations be made in Chris’ honor to Big Thought (www.BigThought.org), an organization that runs a music program, donating instruments to underprivileged children.” That is a fine idea: instrument donation.

Impromptus today includes a slew of other items, beginning with Julian Assange, who is proving a difficult houseguest for the Ecuadoreans, as you might guess. I also touch on John Bolton, Emmanuel Macron, George Soros, WFB, et al.

My latest Jaywalking podcast is here. It features a burst of Taylor Swift (shakin’ it off). Mona Charen and I recorded a Need to Know yesterday, here. End of linkage.

P.S. “Linkage” was a term in the Cold War, meaning that you linked certain concessions to the Soviets — wheat sales, for example — to how they were behaving (which was usually badly).