Cup of Coffee: July 8, 2021

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Today we recap 17 games, which is a lot of dang games, see the Dodgers, finally, sorta, begin to contend with the pariah that is Trevor Bauer, talk about an injury and an “injury,” look at the Home Run Derby field, catch a big mood from Lance Lynn, and learn the one weird trick sports team owners use to avoid taxes.

In Other Stuff we learn that not wanting to date conservatives is, apparently, some horrible violation of their civil rights, see what happens when your mom gets too pushy with the school administrators, and take a look back — and perhaps forward — at the Federal Writer’s Project.

Let’s get at ‘er.

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Rays 8, Cleveland 1; Rays 4, Indians 0: In the first game Kevin Kiermaier homered and drove in five runs while Michael Wacha allowed one over six. In the second game five Tampa Bay pitchers combined for seven hitless innings which does not count as a no-hitter if even one pitcher does it because MLB has decided that only nine-inning no-nos are no hitters. Even if it did count officially, though, I’d have to ask whether five pitchers combining to do it over seven innings was particularly impressive. And that’s before you get into the fact that there was a hit that was later changed to an error due to the play involving two fielders running into one another. Which I’ve actually seen called a hit way more often than I’ve seen it called an error. Including when it happened with Cleveland in the field in this very same game.

Angels 5, Red Sox 4: Shohei Ohtani homered again. It was his 32nd, which sets a new record for homers in a season from a Japanese-born player. The previous record belonged to Hideki Matsui. Jared Walsh homered twice, bringing his career total to 32, further extending the all-time record for career homers from someone named Walsh. Second place belongs to Jimmy Walsh, who has 25. Jimmy is unlikely to catch Jared as he died in 1947.

White Sox 6, Twins 1: Lance Lynn allowed one run over six innings, Tim Anderson had four hits, and Leury García hit a go-ahead, two-run homer in the second inning and added a run-scoring triple and a single later in the game. Lynn also offered a rather dreary and depressing bit of truth before the game, but to find out what that was you’ll have to scroll down to The Daily Briefing.

Tigers 5, Rangers 3: Joey Gallo hit two more homers and drew a bases-loaded walk — dude has been hot — but that’s all the offense the Rangers got on this day. The game was tied 2-2 in the seventh thanks to those Gallo bombs when Miguel Cabrera came up to pinch hit with the bases loaded. Cabrera hit one on the ground and, given that he runs so slow these days he has to speed up to stop, it should’ve been a threat-ending and inning-ending double play. Fortunately for Detroit the ball deflected off the pitcher, Cabrera ran like Flint Fireforge chasing Berem Everman through Godshome and somehow made it to first base without keeling over and ending up under a tree in the afterlife, somewhere near Reorx's forge. That put Detroit ahead after which Jonathan Schoop singled in a run after which Robbie Grossman drew a bases-loaded walk and all that was left after that was the continued administration of oxygen to Cabrera.

Atlanta 14, Pirates 3: The Pirates actually led in this game from the bottom of the first until the top of the sixth. That’s when Abraham Almonte hit a go-ahead, two-run single, Austin Riley drew a bases-loaded walk, and Orlando Arcia hit a two-run single of his own. From that point the rout was on. Almonte would add a two-run homer. Ronald Acuña Jr. hit one out in this game as well. Freddie Freeman, Dansby Swanson, Ehire Adrianza and Riley each had two hits apiece.

Reds 5, Royals 2: Kansas City took a 2-0 lead into the seventh when Cincy rallied for three via an RBI single by Michael Freeman and a two-run double from Jonathan India. They’d add one in the eighth and one in the ninth to win it going away. Sonny Gray allowed only the two over seven.

Mets 4, Brewers 3; Brewers 5, Mets 0: Jacob deGrom was strong in the first one, allowing two runs over seven and striking out 10. Of course, when you’ve been pitching like deGrom has this year, even a strong outing causes your ERA to spike, going from 0.95 to 1.08. Someone really needs to ask Jacob what’s wrong with him and how he plans to get out of this terrible slump. deGrom did not get the win, however, as the Mets were down 2-1 when he stopped pitching. José Peraza tied things up and forced extras with a homer in the bottom of the seventh and Jeff McNeil’s RBI single capped a rally and walked it off for New York in the eighth.

In the nightcap it was all Milwaukee, with Brett Anderson and three relievers combining to three-hit the Mets while Manny Piña and Luis Urías each hitting two-run homers and Willy Adames hitting a solo shot.

Marlins 9, Dodgers 6: L.A. held a 5-2 lead thanks to a five-run third inning, lost that lead by the eighth, tied it back up in the top of the ninth, but then Miami won it in walkoff fashion thanks to Jesús Aguilar’s three-run homer in the ninth. Earlier Garrett Cooper hit two homers, both solo shots. That’s three straight for the Marlins over the Dodgers. They finish out their series this afternoon.

Blue Jays 10, Orioles 2: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had three singles and drove in two, Bo Bichette homered, Teoscar Hernández had three hits and Cavan Biggio knocked in two as the birds cruised over the birds. Guerrero’s big day put him back in the lead for the AL batting title and his RBI extended his lead in the RBI race. He’s four homers back of Ohtani, but the Triple Crown is certainly a plausibility.

Cubs 8, Phillies 3: Chicago finally ends their losing streak. Anthony Rizzo, Joc Pederson and Nico Hoerner each had two hits and an RBI as Chicago built a 5-0 lead after two and posted a three-run sixth inning for good measure. It wasn’t all good news, of course, as Kris Bryant, left in the fourth with right hamstring tightness. It can never be all good news for the Cubs lately.

Astros 4, Athletics 3: José Altuve hit a two-run homer to give Houston a lead in the third, they lost that lead thanks to an Elvis Andrus homer and a run-scoring wild pitch in the sixth which tied things up, but Kyle Tucker’s solo shot in the seventh put ‘em over. That solo shot may not have been enough if it were not for Michael Brantley ending that sixth inning rally by catching a fly ball and then nailing Ramón Laureano at home to complete the rally-ending double ply.

Diamondbacks 6, Rockies 4: The Diamondbacks jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the bottom of the second inning on RBI singles by Nick Ahmed and Daulton Varsho but it remained close until the seventh when Eduardo Escobar, who had three hits on the night, smacked a three-run homer. Arizona wins consecutive games for the first time since May 10-11. Huzzah.

Giants 5, Cardinals 2: Alex Wood allowed one run over seven and Darin Ruf’s two-run homer in the eighth made a close game less-than-close. Mike Yastrzemski and Donovan Solano each doubled in runs. The Giants avoid a three-game sweep.

Yankees 5, Mariners 4: New York scored five runs in the first two innings and then withstood a three-run rally by the M’s in the sixth to win their third game in a row. Aaron Judge homered. The Yankees had to improvise on the mound, as Domingo Germán, the scheduled starter, was scratched due to needing an emergency root canal. Nick Nelson (no, I don’t know either) started but failed to make it out of the first inning. Luis Cessa came in and settled things down. Germán, somehow, was still available out of the bullpen and threw three innings in relief, though he did give up a three-run homer. Feel like I’d just take the day off, but whatever.

Nationals 15, Padres 5: The Nats beat the crap out of Chris Paddack, who surrendered nine runs — eight earned — on nine hits in two innings. Juan Soto hit a three-run shot in the first to kick things off. It’d be the only Nationals homer all night, actually. They rattled off 17 hits, though. Tonight it’s Max Scherzer vs. Yu Darvish. Take a nap today so you can stay up late for that one.

The Daily Briefing

The Ruth Kapelus guest post is now unlocked

In Tuesday’s newsletter letter subscriber Ruth Kapelus wrote a guest post about Trevor Bauer, the way the media had pumped him up for a long time before it all hit the fan last week, and the consequences of their doing that. The post struck a nerve with many people and for good reason. It was powerful stuff from a perspective that neither I nor most people in sports media (CIS white men, mostly) are capable of providing or, in many cases, even appreciating or acknowledging.

By popular demand I have unlocked Tuesday’s newsletter so everyone can read it. Which, if you have not, I highly encourage you to do.

Dodgers cancel Trevor Bauer bobblehead night, take his merch out of the store

The Los Angeles Times reports that The Dodgers have taken Trevor Bauer bobblehead night off their promotional schedule this season. It had been set for August 19. The OC Register reports that Bauer merchandise has been taken out of the team store as well.

Presumably their hands weren’t tied here, like the club initially said in the wake of the allegations against Bauer, and the team made the decision on their own, realizing how bad the optics are to be in the business of selling Trevor Bauer as a star of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Which suggests that they’re slowly making steps toward an epiphany about the nature of associating oneself with someone horrible. Let’s watch and see if they continue to learn!

Clayton Kershaw placed on the injured list

The Dodgers are down another pitcher now: Clayton Kershaw has been placed on the 10-day injured list because of left forearm inflammation. Which given that he pitches with his left arm is kind of a problem.

Kershaw is 9-7 with a 3.39 ERA in 106 innings this season. In his previous start, he allowed three runs in four innings at Washington on July 3, throwing 54 pitches in a rain-shortened game. There was no sense that he was hurt. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition, etc.

Jake Arrieta is “injured” too

The Chicago Cubs have placed Jake Arrieta on the 10-day injured list with right hamstring tightness. Or, shall I say, “hamstring tightness.”

Arrieta lasted just 1.2 innings for the second consecutive outing in Chicago's 15-10 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies on Tuesday. He has pitched like a hot mess for a month and a half now, really. And because he can’t pitch more without causing horrible damage, the Cubs and he have decided to pretend he’s injured.

Like, that’s really what has happened here, no matter what they say publicly.

White Sox designate Adam Eaton for assignment

Last winter the White Sox signed outfielder Adam Eaton to a one-year, $7 million contract with an $8.5 million club option or a $1 million buyout in 2022. They got 219 plate appearances from him to the tune of .201/.298/.344. Yesterday the White Sox decided that they’ve seen all they need to see and designated him for assignment.

It’s a hell of a thing to be an outfielder on a team in which every other outfielder fell to injuries at one point or another and to have the team still tell you take a hike, but them’s the breaks if you’re not pulling your weight.

Besides, the injury issues — which included Eaton himself until recently — are slowly beginning to subside. Adam Engel was reinstated in a corresponding move with Eaton’s DFA. Rookies Gavin Sheets and Andrew Vaughn are playing well.

The Home Run Derby Field is set

For all my “meh” about the All-Star Game itself the Home Run Derby is kind of fun. Especially since the tweaks they’ve made to it in recent years. It also helps that Chris Berman doesn’t announce it anymore. It’s the little things.

As of yesterday afternoon the field for the Derby is set: it’ll be Shohei Ohtani, Joey Gallo, Trey Mancini, Pete Alonso, Matt Olson, Trevor Story, Juan Soto, and Sal Pérez. It’s done bracket-style, and here are the matchups:

A few monster rakers. A few great stories. A hometown Story. A couple of guys who are fun to do just about anything. Should be pretty entertaining actually.

Big Mood

Say what you want about the tenets of masochism, but at least it’s an ethos.

One Weird Trick to keep sports team owners from paying taxes

Did you know that a professional sports team can make $656 million in a year while its owner plays taxes at a lower rate than one of his concession workers selling sodas up in the cheap seats. How? The answer is provided in an eye-opening story at ProPublica this morning which explains how great a racket owning a professional sports team truly is.

The short answer is that a massive tax break pegged to depreciating the assets which exist at the time the owner purchases the team allows the owner to report huge losses to the IRS over a series of years, even if their team is profitable. That depreciating asset tax break makes sense if you’re buying a factory — buildings and equipment do depreciate — but the major assets of a sports team such as broadcast rights and intellectual property actually tend to renew themselves and appreciate. The losses reported by the owner, then, are basically imaginary.

As the story explains, legendary baseball owner Bill Veeck is credited with bringing this tax avoidance strategy to baseball. It was probably characterized most famously by Paul Beeston, then president of the Toronto Blue Jays, who famously said “Under generally accepted accounting principles, I could turn a $4 million profit into a $2 million loss and I could get every national accounting firm to agree with me.”

Steve Ballmer, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Clippers is the case study which leads off the ProPublica story, but there are many others presented in the detailed report. And their responses to all of this, both in the story and elsewhere whenever they’ve been forced to go on the record about it, are pretty telling:

No one said they were breaking the law. But boy howdy does this show just how obviously geared toward the ultra-wealthy the laws are.

One of baseball’s first super agents dies

Tom Reich, who became one of a small handful of super powerful agents in the days just before and just following the advent of free agency in the 1970s has died. He was 82.

Reich began in Pittsburgh, representing a number of Pirates players — particularly Black and Latino players — back in the early 70s when salaries were low and player movement was totally at the will of the clubs. He represented Dock Ellis, Dave Parker, John Candelaria and Manny Sanguillen and later represented Joe Morgan and George Foster among many others. In hockey he represented Mario Lemieux.

Beyond his work for some high-profile athletes he worked closely with the MLBPA, serving as informal counsel for Don Fehr during the 1994-95 players strike. He also trained some agents who would go on to influential careers such as Adam Katz, Craig Landis and Rick Shapiro. Shapiro would later became one of the top executives in the MLBPA.

A big figure in sports business. RIP.

Other Stuff

Plug

It’s been a minute since I plugged this, but for those who are new or who don’t know, I sell Cup of Coffee coffee mugs. And, in addition to being cool and helping keep the lights on around here, if you buy one and send me a photo of you with it, you are entitled to a guest post on any topic of your choosing.

As long-timers can attest, the guest posts are some of the best things that have shown up on this rag, so that’s something you want to be a part of, I reckon.

Great Moments in Admitting You’re a Pathetic Loser

There was National Review article which came out a week or two ago in which, I shit you not, argues that Ivy League women's unwillingness date Trump supporters stands as evidence of a rising tide of left wing authoritarianism:

Huh. Being a member of a racist death cult is bad for your sex life. Who knew?!

Now that conservative dickweeds have packed the courts with judges who will strike down any and all regulations of business and who will do anything and everything to advance the cause of right wing religious nuts, the next step, I presume, will be to appoint judges who will recognize a Constitutional right for our nation’s failsons to go out with whoever they want.

Thanks Mom!

Columbus Academy is an exclusive private school here in my town. I don’t know all that much about it but my understanding is that it’s a very strong school with a good reputation. Of course, like a lot of prep schools, it’s basically for rich kids whose parents want to be DAMN SURE their kids maintain or enhance their standing in the ruling class going forward.

It’s probably super hard to deal with the parents of the sorts of kids who go to Columbus Academy, but at least when you’re a private school, and the parents become too much of a pain in the ass, you can just kick them the hell out without a lot of paperwork:

The school made it pretty clear in a letter to the parents why the kids were being kicked out too:

A little Googling about these women reveal that they’ve been leveling a pretty sustained and apparently well-funded campaign in an effort to get Columbus Academy to stop doing things like, you know, teaching history and acknowledging that things like systemic racism exist. Personally I’d think that a thorough and well-rounded education like that is what you pay the gobs of money it costs to send your kid to Columbus Academy, but what do I know?

Either way, this all goes to show that sitting around and getting brainwashed by Fox News all day has a cost. Who could’ve known?

In other news, a bit more private eyeing all of this reveals that one of the mothers lives in a house worth about two and a half million bucks — which is MASSIVELY expensive for this area — in a gated community that is literally on a corner of Les Wexner’s New Albany, Ohio estate. She is an attorney who does not appear to have practiced law for many years, if she ever practiced at all, so she likely inherited or married into a lot of money.

But sure, teaching kids that some people have gotten a leg up in this world and others have not and that there are real consequences to all of that is a horrible, horrible thing.

Republic of Detours

A week or two ago a friend sent me a copy of a book he knew would be right up my alley: “Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America.” It’s a history of the Federal Writer’s Project, which I’ve gone on about here from time to time. Because of a book backlog I’m just getting to it now, but about 40 pages in it’s exactly what I hoped it’d be.

For those of you who are thinking about reading it or who, short of that, are at least interested in the topic, the book’s author, Scott Borchert, has written an guest op-ed in the New York Times about efforts, which I’ve written about here before, to revive the Federal Writer’s Project for the 21st century:

Borchert goes on to note that, like the original FWP, a new FWP would simultaneously serve as a rescue plan for an entire sector of the economy which has taken it on the chin and hard. With an emphasis not on fancy, self-sustaining writers like me or overpaid windbags like Mitch Albom or David Brooks, but people in media-adjacent fields such as librarians, publicists, fact-checkers, office assistants, beat reporters, aspiring novelists, junior editors and the like. These were people given a chance and given a leg-up by the original FWP and could be again now under a reimagined version of the program.

But it’d be more than a relief program for these people. It would, like the original FWP, serve a vital national purpose. It would tell our nation about itself in clear terms. Which, given the amount of misinformation, propaganda, self-delusion, tribalism and general bullshit, is a much-needed thing. As is the need to decentralize writing away from the coasts. As is the need to democratize writing and to lessen the hard turn it has taken into being a profession for white, well-to-do people who can afford to take low-paying jobs because they’re supported by family money and other forms of privilege. Under a well-run FWP, the endeavor could and should be a national one, not a New York/Washington/L.A./San Francisco one, and it could be used to elevate voices which are routinely marginalized.

Go read the op-ed. And if you like what you’ve heard me or others say about the Federal Writer’s Project, give the book a look. So far it seems pretty damn good.

Have a great day, everyone.