Cup of Coffee: December 1, 2022

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

Today we have news of the Yankees making Aaron Judge a big offer, news of a signing of a much less-significant player, and news of a change in legal strategy for Yasiel Puig.

All of which is fine and good, but none of that has captured my fascination like “Cocaine Bear” has. Once I recovered from that, though, I was able to put together items about “Avatar,” the political right’s victim complex, something happening in San Francisco that seems like a really, really bad idea, how this year’s Spotify Wrapped hit me in the feels, and the passing of the great Christine McVie.

The Daily Briefing

The Yankees have made Aaron Judge an offer

Jeff Passan reports that the New York Yankees have offered Aaron Judge a contract “in the neighborhood of eight years and $300 million.” He says that they could increase their offer, depending on whether the Giants, who Judge has already spoken to and who are at least reported to have serious interest in him, match it.

That offer represents an average annual value of $37.5 million, which would make Judge the highest paid position player in the game, just above Mike Trout’s $37.116 million annual average. It’s not a ton lower than Bryce Harper’s record overall free agent — as opposed to extension — contract of $330 million. Harper, of course, was much younger than Judge is now when he signed it.

Given that the Yankees’ last offer to Judge, before the 2022 season, was $213.5 million, that’s certainly a step up. Still, even if it’s gonna take that much or more to land Judge, his value is hard to gauge given that he’s going to turn 31 early next season, that particularly tall position players don’t have a great history as far as aging curves go, and that it’s pretty safe to say that we’ve already seen his best season. But hey, it ain’t my money. Or yours. So while it’ll be interesting to see if whoever signs Judge gets value for their money, you do not need to play the “oh man, that’s a bad deal for [Team]” game with any degree of actual concern. Hal Steinbrenner, Charles Johnson, and all the other owners can afford it.

Anyway, Judge is expected to make his decision by the time the Winter Meetings end next week. Hold on to your butts, folks.

Mariners sign Trevor Gott

From news about the biggest free agent on the market to news about one of the more minor free agents on the market: The Seattle Mariners signed righty reliever Trevor Gott to a one-year, $1.2 million contract.

Gott, 30, was non-tendered by the Brewers earlier this month after posting a 4.14 ERA and 44/12 K/BB ratio across 45.2 innings in 45 appearances in 2022. Seattle's already got a lot of bullpen depth next season and now Gott is part of it.

Yasiel Puig withdraws from agreement to plead guilty to lying to federal agents

In mid-November the DOJ announced that Yasiel Puig had agreed to plead guilty to making false statements to federal agents in connection with an investigation into an illegal gambling ring run by former A’s minor league player Wayne Nix. When investigators looked into the operation they called Puig in for questioning and he allegedly lied to them, claiming that he had not discussed placing bets with Nix despite the fact that the DOJ had evidence that he spoke with Nix and his associates many, many times about gambling.

The day after that announcement Puig’s agent, Lisette Carnet of Leona Sports Agency, issued a statement trying to explain away Puig’s alleged lies. It was not a legal denial or legal statement of any kind, really. More of a P.R.-based excuse about the circumstances of Puig’s alleged lies, such as that he did not have a criminal attorney present (though he did, apparently, have an attorney present) and the fact that Puig did not have an interpreter present either. These are, certainly, potential basis for fighting charges arising out of this kind of thing, but given that Puig was apparently not fighting — indeed, he had just agreed to plead guilty — the statements were kind of pointless at the time.

In the past couple of weeks someone close to Puig has apparently taken better control of the situation, because late yesterday Puig himself, Carnet, and his legal team, which now includes noted civil rights attorney Lawrence Middleton, all came out in tandem announcing that Puig was backing out of the agreement to plead guilty. Now he’s pleading not guilty and plans fight the false statements charge.

Puig, who also took to Twitter to defend himself, issued the following statement:

Puig’s attorney, Keri Axel:

My speculation: given that the case against Puig would only deal with whether what he told agents was false or true, and given that the bulk of the case against the gambling ring is over, with the ring and the feds presumably agreeing on all the facts, the “significant new evidence” Axel mentions probably pertains to the circumstances of the questioning of Puig himself, as his agent talked about back in November, and possibly evidence about the behavior of the investigators. A civil rights/due process sort of case as opposed to one dealing with the specific facts of Puig’s gambling.

Which, yeah, why not?

The news that Puig was going to plead guilty did not surprise me initially. I figured it was one of those dead-to-rights cases where a plea was made with the hope of a light sentencing. The next day, however, when his agent raised the idea of Puig being taken advantage of during questioning, I wondered why, if there was hay to be made with that, he was agreeing to plead guilty at all. To be sure, for the reasons I wrote back on November 17 I wasn’t overly impressed with those defenses on the merits, but if you’ve got a story to tell about that, have a lawyer, not an agent, tell it and fight, right?

Now that it’s all on a more sensible footing, I suppose we just sit back and watch what happens.

Other Stuff

“Cocaine Bear”

Henceforth my life will consist of (a) the things that happened to me before I saw the trailer for the upcoming “Cocaine Bear” movie; and (b) the things that happened to me after I saw the trailer for the upcoming “Cocaine Bear” movie. I say this because to compare those two eras of my existence makes no sense now that my brain, world view, and state of sanity have been so thoroughly and permanently altered but this video clip as to render it less an apples-oranges comparison than an apples-Socotra dragon blood tree comparison:

If you don’t want to click on that video that’s OK. Just know that your reaction would probably be something along the lines of “I don’t know what I expected.” A movie trailer for a movie called “Cocaine Bear” is not gonna hold much in the way of surprises even if it still manages to stun you in other ways.

All of that said, it’s quite the all-star cast for a movie of this nature. Including Ray Liotta, for whom this was his final performance. I’m still sad that he’s gone but I’m happy to see he went out on top with this kind of quality.

What’s the deal with “Avatar?”

You’ve no doubt had a discussion with someone before about how, for a movie that set box office records, making over $2 billion, “Avatar” is . . . highly and quite weirdly forgettable.

Did we all hallucinate it? I mean, I know I saw it at the theater. I know it was a big deal in late 2009 and into 2010, but I honestly don’t remember a damn thing about it apart from the fact that (a) it was considered technologically advanced for the time; (b) its technological advances have since been surpassed; (c) the story was basically a warmed-over version of “Dances with Wolves,” with colonizer savior complex fully intact; and (d) Sigourney Weaver was in it. I went years without thinking about it even once and now I only think about it when I see previews for or media mentions of the long-delayed sequel that is about to come out. Hell, I think more about those Clint Eastwood movies with the orangutans in ‘em than I think about “Avatar.”

In the New York Times yesterday Jamie Lauren Keiles talks about that. About how quickly “Avatar” disappeared from the world’s consciousness and how, now that three more “Avatar” movies are on the way — and now that Disney has a whole “Avatar” world set up down at the Animal Kingdom theme park in Florida — it’s poised to reenter that consciousness. Maybe. If Disney and James Cameron and everyone are lucky.

The story isn’t just about “Avatar” though. It’s about the paradigm shift that happened in movies right around the time “Avatar” first came out. The MCU was just barely underway at the time and, as Keiles reminds us, there was no guarantee that its sort of franchise filmmaking would take over Hollywood the way in which it eventually did. Keiles does a great and insightful job explaining the economics and psychology of MCU-style (and Star Wars-style and Harry Potter-style and Lord of the Rings-style) franchise creation and how “Avatar,” which was not supposed to be that when it first came out, is now being transformed into a franchise of its own. Again, maybe.

You don’t have to care too much about “Avatar” to enjoy the story. I mean, I don’t. I doubt I’ll even go see the new one coming out unless it gets amazingly great reviews or something, which I doubt it will. But the story itself has all kinds of interesting insights about the modern movie and entertainment business. If you’re into that stuff it’s definitely worth your time.

Oh Christ

The last two items taken together now have me imagining a “Cocaine Bear Cinematic Universe” and I can’t decide if that’d be the most amazing or most horrifying thing ever.

How the right developed its victim complex

I’ve long been fascinated by the dissonance between how conservatives describe themselves and their movement and the way in which that movement actually manifests itself.

The descriptive rhetoric is all Ronald Reagan, cowboys, and tough guys marching boldly and triumphantly forward while laughing at all weak and scared pansy liberals who cower at the their own shadows. In practice, though, the conservative movement is overwhelmingly animated by grievance and fear.

Fear of hordes of immigrants pouring over the border. Fear of rampaging criminal racial and ethnic minorities in our cities. Fear of non-subservient women emasculating all the good, upstanding manly men. Fear of liberal commentators canceling entertainers. Fear of gay and trans people indoctrinating children. Fear of, well, someone, but they can’t quite say who, canceling Christmas and telling practitioners of the most well-represented and dominant religion in the country that they can’t worship how they want to. The entire conservative political and media apparatus is based on stoking those fears, resentments, and anxieties to maximal levels. It saturates conservative cable news, conservative websites and the speeches and platforms of conservative politicians.

Over at Talking Points Memo yesterday the political science professor Paul Elliott Johnson posted a lengthy essay which attempts to explain that dissonance. Or, more to the point, to track its development from the middle of the 20th century to today:

The essay does lean a tad academic, making it something less than a breezy read, but it is pretty comprehensive.

Its primary takeaway is not, contrary to what I tend to assume when idly considering the topic, that something major changed which caused conservatives to drop their maverick, individualistic world view in exchange for today’s cowardly and reactionary ethos. Rather, Johnson argues quite convincingly, the conservative movement has always been animated primarily by fear and insecurity with the tough guy business as a mere front. All of which makes sense once you think about it even a little bit.

Now I want him to do an essay on how liberals who portray themselves as compassionate and open-minded are, for the most part, amoral pragmatists whose principles guide their actions only up to the point where actively pursuing them creates a moment’s inconvenience at which point they pursue them no further.

Or, given that I bitch about that a lot, I suppose I could write that one.

This seems like a good idea

The city of San Francisco has declared that it will not — I repeat, will NOT — arm police robots with guns. Such a thing is preposterous, they have concluded.

They will, however, equip them with bombs:

I am begging — literally begging — the people in charge in San Francisco to watch a single, solitary movie. Like, any movie ever.

Wrapped

Everyone who is on Spotify got their annual “Spotify Wrapped” content served to them yesterday in which the app tells you what songs, artists, and genres you listened to the most, what percentile of the fandom you are of a given artist, and all manner of other data. As far as social media ego-stoking and over-sharing fodder goes it’s a pretty good annual feature I suppose.

Mine provided very few surprises. News flash: I listen to a lot of Depeche Mode, Kinks, Dylan, Joy Division, and James. I listen to “Rock,” “Indie Rock,” “Art Rock” and — because of Carlo using my phone to listen to a lot of weird things back in February when he was in the hospital and could not have his own phone — a genre called “glitchcore.” Which, when I told him about that, he claimed that that was not what he actually listened to and that Spotify had mischaracterized those artists. I don’t know. I also don’t really care. All I know is that Spotify JUST stopped trying to get me to listen to Bladee and Drain Gang like three weeks ago so I’m just happy that it’s out of my phone’s system.

One thing Spotify told me that, while also not surprising, but which did cause me to need a moment, was that my most listened-to song of the year was Depeche Mode’s “Precious.” 

I knew that’d be number one for some time because, when Carlo was not using my phone while he was in the hospital, I was listening to that song on constant repeat. Because of that I also know that there has to be some glitch in Spotify’s song-counter because I probably listened to that song 41 times in just the first week of February. The total for the whole year had to be many times that. I still spin it a couple of times a week.

As for why I listened to it so much when Carlo was in the hospital and the still sometimes harrowing months since? Welp, give it a spin yourself or go read the lyrics. Short version: it’s a song about parents feeling responsible for their children being peril and feeling generally hopeless about it. The song itself came from Martin Gore’s anxieties for his children when he and their mother divorced, but I can tell you that it emotionally applies just as well to what we’ve been going through around here for most of the past year.

It’s sort of embarrassing to admit that. “Precious” is so damn on the nose in that regard and I tend to not do on the nose if I can avoid it. But sometimes even the most jaded among us find our defenses lowered and something like that just creeps in and never leaves. Eventually you don’t really want it to because, even though it’s weird and damn nigh inexplicable, remembered and residual stress and misery serves as a strange sort of comfort. Sad songs make people feel good sometimes.

I’m pretty sure Spotify’s Wrapped feature is exclusively designed to serve that company’s broader goal of keeping people connected to its platform in whatever sticky way it can manage, but this year it managed to hit me in the feels in a way that I appreciated, however fraught the circumstances which led to it.

Christine McVie: 1943-2022

This one is a gut punch: Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac died yesterday. She was 79.

McVie joined Fleetwood Mac in 1970 and was thus, along with John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, among the longest-tenured members of a band with a seemingly constantly-changing lineup. Her songwriting kept Fleetwood Mac afloat during some of its most uncertain years and contributed mightily to its most successful years. If there is any doubt about that, Fleetwood Mac’s 1988 “Greatest Hits” album contains 16 tracks. Eight of the songs were written by Christine McVie. Not bad for someone who tends to be listed third among the principal songwriters of the band’s mid-70s-on incarnation.

It’s always a bit dicey to analyze such things from afar — not that it has ever stopped anyone in the case of Fleetwood Mac — but there has always been a sense that McVie helped keep a chaotic, drama-filled band together when its otherwise mercurial personalities might’ve torn it asunder. She was the adult in the room, it seemed. Maybe that’s true. Maybe that’s just the sort of lore which surrounds a lore-heavy group. Either way, her songs, her voice, and her musicianship were every bit as outstanding as they were essential to the success of one the most successful bands of the last half century.

Rest in Peace, Christine McVie.

Have a great day, everyone.