Cup of Coffee: February 15, 2024

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

Let’s jump on in, shall we?

 The Daily Briefing

Justin Verlander is already behind schedule 

Astros starter Justin Verlander said yesterday that he had a “hiccup” in the offseason during which time his shoulder “didn’t feel so great,” which delayed his offseason throwing schedule. He said he is “a couple weeks behind” as a result. Verlander said it’s too early to tell if he’ll miss Opening Day.

I know that Verlander is something of a physical freak, as one does not accomplish what he has accomplished this late in his career otherwise. But 40 is real, man, even for super humans, so you have to figure that the Astros will bring him along fairly deliberately. Better to miss a couple weeks worth of starts in March and April than to not be available in September and October.

And Justin, just as an FYI: it doesn’t get better. At 45-50 you’re gonna be taking antacids before bed even if you eat a grilled chicken breast for dinner. Buckle up, dude. It’s rough up here.

The A’s are negotiating to play in the Coliseum until a new Vegas stadium is built

Reports emerged on Tuesday that the Oakland A’s and Bay Area officials are meeting this week to negotiate an extension of the team’s lease for the Oakland Coliseum which would give the club a a place to play until their stadium in Las Vegas is ready. As we’ve noted previously, The team’s lease to play at the Coliseum ends after this season and, barring an extension, it’s not clear where the A’s would play between now and 2028.

If this were a romcom, the lease extension negotiations would serve as a cute reunion between past loves during which they set their differences aside and commit to each other anew. Life, however, is not a romcom, so the A’s are still most likely to go to Las Vegas where they will not be loved by anyone.

“We will continue to be in conversation with the Royals . . .“

When you release stadium renderings without first consulting the businesses and institutions which currently exist on the site of said rendering, you tend to get responses like these:

Oh well, I’m sure they’ll figure it all out. And if indeed the Royals build where they say they’re going to build, I have full confidence that the Kansas City Church of the Resurrection will . . . rise again elsewhere.

Pitchers and Catchers Deep Thoughts

Pitchers and catchers reported for most teams yesterday. It’s a fun and exciting time of year for baseball fans. I totally get that. I think it’s fun too. But there is one thing about it that years of covering baseball has caused me to roll my eyes at: the “things are different this year” story.

This is not to be confused with my old hobby horse, “Best Shape of My Life.” I’m not talking here about a player who had a bad year and who, citing some new workout regimen or body transformation, assures everyone he’ll be back to his old self again in the coming season. Here I’m talking about the broader, team-wide stories. Stuff with quotes like, “we’re taking a different approach this year than last” or “yeah, last year was tough, but we learned a lot and, while it was hard, it was necessary for us to take a step forward.” Here’s an example of that from the White Sox yesterday. About half the teams will have stories like that spin out of the early days of spring training, I guarantee it.

I totally understand why these stories exist and, honestly, what else would you expect athletes to say following a bad season? Hope springs eternal, especially in the Cactus and Grapefruit Leagues. That February and March optimism goes hand in hand with pitcher fielding practice and veterans leaving games during the fifth inning to go play nine holes someplace.

But when you follow baseball as closely as I have for the past several decades, you figure out that, while there are always one or two teams who take big steps forward each year, often unexpectedly, most teams do about as well this year as they did last year. In this it’s like the weather report. If you guess that tomorrow will be very much like today you’ll be proven a fool on the rare occasions when that warm or cold front blows through, but you’re usually gonna be right.

Part of me truly does love those optimistic, “people are going to be surprised” stories. But every time I read one I think of a different quote: “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” I feel like that one describes the true nature of each new baseball season. There’s no hiding behind a comforting narrative once the real games start.

Don Gullett: 1951-2023

Don Gullett, the lefty who pitched for both the Big Red Machine and the Bronx is Burning Yankees died yesterday at the age of 73. I was unable to find any source noting his cause of death, but he had cardiac issues going back into his mid-30s, so it was likely natural causes.

Gullett made 266 appearances at the big-league level, debuting as a 19 year old with the pennant-winning 1970 Reds and serving as a pitching staff mainstay with for Cincinnati through 1977. He later finished his career with 30 appearances across the 1977 and 1978 seasons with the New York Yankees. He was a key part of the Reds pennant-winning clubs in 1970 and 1972 and World Series championship teams in 1975 and 1976. He also pitched for the World Series champion Yankees in the 1977 postseason. He was on the 1978 Yankees postseason roster but did pitch that postseason, but he did collect his fourth straight World Series ring that October. Basically, if Don Gullet was on your staff in the 1970s, you were going places.

Overall, Gullet went 109-50 with a 3.11 ERA (113 ERA+) over nine seasons. Randomly, he gave up both Hank Aaron’s and Willie Mays’ 660th home runs. In Mays’ case it was his last one. Sadly, Gullet experienced extensive shoulder and rotator cuff problems, which meant that he was only 27 when he threw his last big league pitch. Had he stayed healthy he would’ve no doubt lasted well into the 1980s and would be talked about as one of the better pitchers of his era. Not that he didn’t accomplish a lot in the short amount of time he did have in the bigs.

Rest in peace Don Gullett.

Other Stuff

America

“Mass shooting at the Super Bowl Parade” is the sort of dumb, obvious, and overly broad idea someone hellbent on stereotyping America’s worst excesses might come up with. Yet here we are living down to it.

It’s been years since I ran out of words to describe and cope with our country’s sickness with guns and gun violence. Now all I and almost everyone else can do is to be sick about it. Because no one who could do anything about it is willing to do a damn thing. So we live in this hell, constantly. And pretend that it’s somehow natural when it really isn’t.

We’re not gonna make it, are we? People, I mean.

According to a Monmouth University poll, a little under 1 in 5 Americans — 18% — believe Taylor Swift is part of a covert effort to help President Joe Biden win the 2024 election.

Seventy-one percent of those who believe that identify with or lean toward the Republican Party. Eighty-three percent of that 18% indicate they are voting for Donald Trump in the fall. Just under three-quarters of the crowd which believes the Swift conspiracy also believes that the 2020 election outcome was fraudulent.

To be clear, the top-line results don’t surprise me. If anything it’s encouraging that only 18% of Americans believe that, because after the last decade or so I was convinced that a solid quarter to a third of Americans were completely unhinged loons. Eighteen percent on the Taylor Swift conspiracy theory seems like progress, actually.

Still, I’m struggling to understand how 29% of those who believe that can tell pollsters with a straight face that they’re not Republicans. I mean, yes, I know there’s this weird fetish on behalf of the most insane conservative types to claim they are “independents” when, in reality, they support Republicans 100% of the time, but 29% seems high. And the party ID thing doesn’t account for the fact that 17% of the people who believe the Swift thing do not plan on voting for Donald Trump. Though I suppose they could be RFK Jr. or Jill Stein people. Those people don’t scare me as much as Trump people scare me but they unsettle me more if that makes any sense.

The Fantastic Four

Marvel has announced the cast for a new Fantastic Four movie: Pedro Pascal will be Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby will be Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman, Joseph Quinn will be Johnny Storm/The Human Torch, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach will be Ben Grimm/The Thing. The movie is set to be released on July 25, 2025.

As far as the actors go, it’s a pretty dang good crew. Everyone knows who Pascal is. Kirby is pretty well-known too, having starred in “Mission: Impossible” movies and Netflix’s “The Crown.” Quinn is probably best known by American audiences from his turn as Eddie in the most recent season of “Stranger Things.” Moss-Bachrach is Richie from “The Bear.”

Cast isn’t everything, of course. As the more recent entries in the MCU have shown, a good cast can’t fix a bad script, ill-advised story, or too much reliance on third acts which feature nothing but CGI battles against some malevolent glowing orb in the sky. Which is not to say that earlier, more successful MCU entries eschewed CGI battles against malevolent glowing orbs, it’s just that they did a better job of telling human stories first.

Honestly, I have no idea what to think about this. The previous attempts at Fantastic Four movies were terrible. I have no idea whether that was because of execution or because the Fantastic Four, as characters, work better in serialized comics form as opposed to movies. Either way, the MCU imprimatur is no longer some sort of assurance of quality. And, of course, it’s possible that the age of comic book movies has simply passed and it all needs to take a break for a while before something good can spin out of it.

That being said, the “Deadpool/Wolverine” teaser trailer looked great, so it’s not like I’m gonna quit being suckered into this stuff. I may be more skeptical of this business than I was even a year or two ago, but I am pretty much still The World’s Biggest Marvel Mark.™

Cybertrucks are already corroding 

The Tesla Cybertruck just came out and, despite Elon Musk’s claims that its steel exterior was so cool and futuristic that it would never corrode or wear, well, things are happening:

Saying, publicly, that you “kinda like the corrosion and hopefully the associated patina” of your brand new $80,000 douche canoe is the sort of thing which should immediately have you placed on a 72-hour mental health hold, but that kind of common sense policy has been killed by woke.

I dunno. We live in a very forgiving society, but there are some things that are simply not tolerated in certain circumstances. Like, if you’ve ever applied for life insurance, you know that there is a huge up-charge, or even complete ineligibility, for applicants who are private aviators. It may seem harsh, but the insurance companies have copious data about how dangerous that activity is, and thus are justifiably prejudiced when it comes to issuing policies for private pilots.

Along those same lines, I propose that we do something similar for men — and you know it’s all men — who buy a Cybertruck. Except instead of refusing them insurance, we mandate immediate sterilization. It’s for the good of the human race.

Have a great day everyone.