Cup of Coffee: October 6, 2022

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

And welcome to the end of the 2022 regular season. I have some words about that at the outset of the recaps. A lot of you know those words, of course, as I offer their like at the end of most regular seasons, but we should say a few words over the bodies of departed loved ones whoever or whatever they may be.

The postseason starts on Friday, but baseball never stops. Not really. So let’s get at ‘er regular season-style today, one last time until spring.

And That Happened

This was my early evening yesterday. It was satisfying:

Last night put another baseball regular season is in the books. Another season of 8, 12, or (usually) 15-game days. Of flipping TV channels or radio stations or clicking between websites and between games. Games which, compared to the other 2,400 or so that happen during a baseball season, mean nothing but, also, mean everything. Games which can be enjoyed and savored for a bit if your team won and enjoyed and easily forgotten if your team lost. The easy listening soundtrack of the past six months now fades away and in its place comes a 30-day burst of hardcore intensity.

And it’ll be a lot of fun for what it is. Crowning a champion, we are told, is the point of it all. The older I get, however, I’m finding that less and less necessary for my enjoyment of the game. Indeed, I find it less enjoyable than the hundreds of days and nights which have come before and which are, by definition, mostly meaningless.

Days and nights like these. For which here are the scores and here are the highlights:

Mets 9, Nationals 2: Jeff McNeil sat out and, despite Freddie Freeman’s big final day, won the batting championship .326 to .325. This was the Mets 101st win yet some continue to say they choked down the stretch. The team that won the division — Atlanta — also won 101 games. In the past that would’ve given us a playoff to determine the true champ. Now we have a tiebreaker based on head-to-head records and Atlanta wins that. Whatever you think of that process and whatever you think of the Mets last month or two of the season, the fact remains that over the long haul of that season, against all competition, they were the same team, basically, as Atlanta. That’s the sort of accomplishment that gets lost when we adopt the playoffs-mean-everything-mindset and, while I don’t think that mindset is going to go away, I like to embrace the non-playoff accomplishments as much as I can.

Dodgers 6, Rockies 1: Freddie Freeman and Trea Turner each homered and each reached 100 RBI on the year. I know RBI is a flawed, team dependent stat but I still like round numbers and milestones that were drilled into my head over 40 years ago so it was kind of neat to see that. Cody Bellinger homered too. Clayton Kershaw picked up the win, striking out nine in five innings. L.A. finishes with 111 wins, which is the most for a National League team since the 1906 Cubs won 116. If you adjust for inflation, however, those 116 Cubs wins are the equivalent of roughly 3,500 wins now, so obviously the Cubs were the better team.

Twins 10, White Sox 1: Gary Sánchez and Jermaine Palacios homered during a six-run first inning that put this one away early. Luis Arráez hit a third-inning double and walked twice to win the AL batting title. At .316 it’s the lowest average for an AL batting champion since Carl Yastrzemski hit .301 in 1968, The Year of the Pitcher. That year’s low offensive totals led to lowering the mound. We’re getting a pitch clock, the loss of defensive shifts and, if recent history holds, some sort of juiced ball next year. We live in such a graceless age.

Orioles 5, Blue Jays 4; Blue Jays 5, Orioles 1: Playing two on Game 162 Day messed up the whole shotgun start/everyone playing at the same time thing MLB likes, but (a) even Rob Manfred can’t control the weather; and (b) there wasn’t much drama in this year’s Game 162 Day anyway so it probably didn’t matter. The Blue Jays having to play 18 innings two days before a postseason series started was suboptimal for them, of course, but you do what you gotta do. Terrin Vavra hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the eighth in the first game to help the O’s come from behind and win their 83rd game of the year. Otto Lopez hit a tie-breaking two-run single in the seventh to give Toronto the split.

Athletics 3, Angels 2: When Shohei Ohtani completed the first inning of this game he officially became a qualified starter on the year, having reached 162 innings. In this he became the first player in MLB history to qualify as both a pitcher and a hitter in the same season. Pretty neat. He ended up allowing one run over five but took the loss because the Angels couldn’t get any offense going. Stephen Vogt homered for the A’s in his last big league game. Mike Trout hit number 40 on the year late in this one. It traveled a mile: 490 feet officially. The fact that he was on the shelf for more than a quarter of the season and still got to 40 is quite the damn thing. Of course, he’s quite the damn player.

Pirates 5, Cardinals 3: Miguel Andújar had three hits, Diego Castillo had two, and Kevin Newman, Rodolfo Castro, and Ji Hwan Bae drove in runs for Pittsburgh. The Pirates finish the year with an aesthetically pleasing 62-100 record, even if the product was not at all aesthetically pleasing this season.

Rangers 4, Yankees 2: Charlie Culberson and Jonah Heim homered for the Rangers who then turned off the lights on their sixth consecutive losing season. Aaron Judge sat this one out and thus finished with a .311 batting average. That’s second in the AL behind the .316 of Luis Arráez, so no triple crown for him. He led the other Triple Crown categories with 62 homers and 131 RBI.

Astros 3, Phillies 2: Christian Vázquez homered. Everyone else on both teams just tried not to get too tired or to get injured before the playoffs started. Houston wins their 106th. That’s one short of what they did in 2019.

Diamondbacks 4, Brewers 2: Josh Rojas and Corbin Carroll hit back-to-back home runs in the ninth inning to come from behind for the win. Merrill Kelly struck out seven over six innings and went over 200 innings on the year in the process. Him and Zac Gallen are a pretty good 1-2 for the Snakes. They lost 88 this year but they’re not too far away from being pretty good.

Guardians 9, Royals 2: José Ramirez drove in two runs and had four hits, Aaron Civale pitched six solid innings, and not long after the game Mike Matheny and pitching coach Cal Eldred got canned. That was inevitable of course given the changes in the front office. The AL Central champion Guardians, meanwhile, won 24 of their last 30 and finish the regular season at 92-70, a 12-game improvement over last year.

Mariners 5, Tigers 4: Julio Rodríguez hit his 28th home run and Ty France hit a walkoff RBI single. For the first time in forever the Mariners season is not ending on the final day of the regular season. Crazy.

Giants 8, Padres 1: David Villar hit two home runs and Austin Slater also went deep for the Giants. They finish 81-81 and they thus become just the fifth team in major league history to win 100-plus games one year and finish at .500 or below the following year.

Marlins 12, Atlanta 9: Marlins rookie Peyton Burdick homered and drove in four to help send Don Mattingly out a winner. Not that he did too much managing here. As a lot of managers have done over the years, Mattingly allowed a veteran player — in this case catcher Jacob Stallings — to manage the team, with Mattingly standing by for advice. I’ve quit jobs too before and, yeah, I totally phoned it in the last day too, so I get it.

Red Sox 6, Rays 3: J.D. Martinez hit a pair of home runs to help send the Rays stumbling into the postseason, losers of five straight. Xander Bogaerts also had a pair of hits. He and Martinez are each eligible to become free agents. The Red Sox finished the season with their lowest non-pandemic season attendance in 22 years.

Cubs 15, Reds 2: David Bote drove in five to lead the rout and to send the Reds to their 100th loss on the season. It’s the first time they’ve lost 100 in 40 years. Four teams lost 100 this season, tying an MLB record. Four teams won 100 too, with the Yankees at 99. Baseball, like society, is pretty polarized these days.

The Daily Briefing

Here’s the Wild Card TV schedule

There is no baseball today, but if you were wanting to know when, where, and how to watch the Wild Card round over the weekend, we’ve got you covered:

Friday

• Game 1: Guardians vs. Rays, 12:07 p.m. ET (ESPN)

• Game 1: Cardinals vs. Phillies, 2:07 p.m. ET (ABC)

• Game 1: Blue Jays vs. Mariners, 4:07 p.m. ET (ESPN)

• Game 1: Mets vs. Padres, 8:07 p.m. ET (ESPN)

Saturday

• Game 2: Guardians vs. Rays, 12:07 p.m. ET (ESPN2)

• Game 2: Blue Jays vs. Mariners, 4:07 p.m. ET (ESPN)

• Game 2: Mets vs. Padres, 7:37 p.m. ET (ESPN)

• Game 2: Cardinals vs. Phillies, 8:37 p.m. ET (ESPN2)

Sunday (all games if necessary)

• Game 3: Blue Jays vs. Mariners, 2:07 p.m. ET (ABC)

• Game 3: Guardians vs. Rays, 4:07 p.m. ET (ESPN)

• Game 3: Mets vs. Padres, 7:37 p.m. ET (ESPN)

• Game 3: Cardinals vs. Phillies, 8:37 p.m. ET (ESPN2)

There are all kinds of caveats about what will be broadcast on Sunday and where depending on which if any of the four series are still going on, but it’s too complicated and boring to reproduce here. Just flip from ABC to ESPN to ESPN2 and you’ll find whatever games are left.

The Division Series, whoever matches up with whom, will begin on Tuesday.

Royals fire Matheny, pitching coach Cal Eldred

It’s not a shocker given Dayton Moore’s firing a couple of weeks ago, but the Kansas City Royals fired manager Mike Matheny and pitching coach Cal Eldred hours after yesterday’s game.

The club finished the season 65-97 and in last place in the AL Central. Matheny finishes his three-year stint as the Royals skipper with a record of 165-219 (.430). He’ll still get paid for next season, though, as the Royals exercised their option on his contract for the 2023 season during spring training, so at least he’s got a severance.

I don’t know Eldred’s contract situation but it was pretty clear he was going to be dismissed too given that the Royals had the worst pitching staff in the American League and finished dead last in the league in hits, runs, walks, and strikeouts. No, he didn’t have a ton of talent to work with but pitching coaches, even more so than managers, are hired to be fired.

And the very, very long rebuild continues.

Phil Nevin is coming back

The Angels announced yesterday that they have agreed to bring Phil Nevin back as manager on a one-year deal.

Nevin, of course, replaced Joe Maddon early in the season. Under Maddon the Angels went 27-29 (.482). Under Nevin they went 46-60 (.434). Nevin also got a ten-game suspension for setting off a big-ass brawl back in June. Neither of them really had any ability to make this team good given what they had to work with but, hey, at least Nevin was fun.

All of this seems like holding pattern stuff, as the Angels are reportedly being shopped for sale. In that situation you go with competent caretakers. You don’t rip out all the counters and cabinets and start remodeling.

Auction house offers $2 million for Aaron Judge’s home run ball

Remember that back-and-forth noise I was making a couple of weeks ago about what I might do if I caught a historic home run ball? Yeah, forget I said that. Because the dude who caught Aaron Judge’s 62nd homer on Tuesday is gonna make some serious bank off of it:

I cannot for the life of me understand the memorabilia market anymore, so I have no real comment on this beyond saying, from my gut, that I think it’s crazy. But I also know how capitalism works and, for all practical purposes, something is worth what someone will pay for it even if those of us on the outside weigh worth differently.

Upshot: if someone was willing to give me $2 million for a baseball with Rob Manfred’s name printed on it that I’ve only had for like 48 hours and if my handing it over will in no way deprive me of the experience of having caught it, I’m their huckleberry. At least the moment after the wire transfer came through.

Tommy Pham needs to chill the hell out

Back in May Tommy Pham, then with the Reds before being dealt to Boston, received a three-game suspension after slapping Giants outfielder Joc Pederson after a disagreement with Pederson over the rules of a fantasy football league they were a part of last season. It was not a Great Moment in Keeping Perspective, that’s for sure.

In June, weeks after the incident, Pham was not willing to let it go, telling Bob Nightengale of USA Today that “I've got no regrets. None at all. Joc deserved to be slapped.”

But get this: Pham is STILL mad about it. From an interview with The Boston Globe earlier this week:

Tommy Pham has had some nice seasons and stuff, but it’s not like he’s some indispensable player. If push comes to shove and you need a fourth outfielder or a DH, ask yourself: are you gonna sign one of the many fourth outfielder/DH types who float around each offseason, costing basically nothing, or are you gonna make a point to bring back Tommy Pham and *waves hand at all of that* into your clubhouse?

MLB Network needs a total overhaul

I rarely if ever watch MLB Network because it’s just . . . bad. It’s filled with empty yakking and shouting from a lot of ill-informed talking heads. It does very little to leverage the unthinkably huge amount of information, archives, and other resources available to Major League Baseball. It simply takes the laziest approach to programming, seemingly thinking “we’re the baseball channel so people will watch us whatever we throw up on the screen” when there is absolutely no reason for even the most ardent baseball fans to watch unless there is truly compelling programing.

I had no idea how bad it had gotten, though, until I saw this clip tweeted out yesterday:

This is not Kelly Nash’s fault, necessarily, as she’s just reading a prompter. Sure, in an ideal world the talent MLB Network and every other network hires would know when massive mistakes relating to the most well-known facts pertaining to the network’s subject matter were made, but I get how on-screen talent works and I’m willing to cut her slack.

I am not, however, willing to cut slack to the dozens if not scores of producers, writers, researchers, production assistants and other network personnel who let this get on the air. And if something as basic as not knowing when one of the most notable couple of home runs in baseball history were hit is going down, what else is being screwed up there?

It’s embarrassing. It’s the sort of thing that speaks to just how lazy and complacent Major League Baseball has become with respect to its product. It speaks to the dire need for MLB Network to get a total overhaul. One which results in programming that does not hold the game’s fans in such contempt.

Other Stuff

And now it’s time for one of my least popular takes

No, not the “the universal DH is good” take. I last wrote that one up in 2020 and thanks to progress, there’s no longer a need for it. (*blows a kiss at Old Gator*). No, this is a different unpopular take.

You probably saw the video of Bobby Wagner and Takkarist McKinley of the Los Angeles Rams completely leveling a protester who ran out onto the field in Santa Clara on Monday night. If not, here you go:

That guy, TMZ reported yesterday, has now filed a police report over the incident, claiming a “blatant assault.”

Look, I am not gonna defend the dipshit who ran on the field. I know that ever since Monica Seles got stabbed and ever since Royals coach Tom Gamboa got attacked in Chicago that athletes and other on-field personnel have had understandable anxiety about this kind of stuff. I am also about 99% certain that absolutely nothing is going to come of this guy’s police report. But at the same time I really don't care for the “all bets are off when it comes to subduing playing field trespassers” theory of punishment so many people seem to think is reasonable.

I get that it’s fun for a lot of people to see some guy get absolutely smashed by an NFL player for running around a field, but there is no small amount of law out there about what is and what is not a reasonable use of force for dealing with trespassers. That determination hinges on the level of threat the trespasser presents and the amount of force used. It’s also worth noting that the invocation I’ve seen people make about how one is within their rights to do anything they want to a trespasser is not what the law is, actually, and the most permissive of those sorts of laws are usually limited to a habitation, not a football stadium.

I am fully aware that this is one of my least popular takes, but I think that cops and security personnel — and in this case, a couple of players whose job it was not to eject a trespasser — have gotten way too heavy-handed dealing with streakers, drunks, and protesters and whoever else happens to run on a field at sporting events. I get how fun it is to share the viral videos of someone getting slammed into the turf, but in almost all instances such a thing is not necessary. And that’s the case even if people would love to see a video of a streaker getting run over by a Zamboni or security at a Texas Longhorns game letting Bevo trample a protestor.

The most common response I tend to get when I bring up this argument is “but Craig, we don’t know what the kid could have done! There was so much uncertainty!”  My response to that: every single encounter between law enforcement/security and the public brings uncertainty. But we don’t allow — or at least we shouldn’t allow — police officers or security guards to use force in every encounter a drunk or a trespasser. Why? Because such force is not always necessary to accomplish the goals of police work. Force is a last resort, only to be used in a manner commensurate with the threat presented and to overcome the obstacles which prevent the accomplishment of the security goal.  That’s the law. It also happens to be a pretty good idea. But it’s not what most people seem to want, at least when it involves a sporting event that Peyton Manning and half the world can clown on and turn into content.

All of this makes me wonder what would’ve happened to Morgana the Kissing Bandit if that mindset had existed back in the 70s.

I’ll shut up now. You can all dunk on me. I know most people disagree.

I believe the children are our future

Yesterday was, President Biden randomly told me, World Teachers' Day. Bless them, for they do a super important yet super difficult job in extremely difficult circumstances, they have come under attack by insane right-wingers all over the country and, on top of that, they make crap money. It’s no wonder that so many teachers have left the profession in recent years despite the fact that, for every teacher I’ve ever had the pleasure to know, the profession was or remains a true calling for them.

Some legislators in Ohio think they have a response to the exodus of qualified teachers. Hiring totally unqualified ones because, well, America:

At the outset let us note how big a fuck-you this is to current teachers, former teachers, students, their families and, ultimately, society. It’s pretty obvious that right-wingers are on a mission to destroy public education in favor of religious and for-profit private schools because their ideology demands such a horror, and proposing that people who are totally unqualified to teach are in classrooms attempting to do so is a GREAT way to accomplish that.

But let us, for a moment, pretend that Republicans don’t want to sabotage public schools. Let us pretend that they actually think that the best way to improve education is to hire veterans to do the job. If so, why stop there?

There’s a doctor shortage in this country right now. Why not hire un-trained veterans to perform surgery and treat serious illnesses? There is also, apparently, a shortage of scientists, engineers, architects, therapists and social workers. Why not hire former soldiers, sailors, and airmen to engage in untrained research into molecular biology? Why not hire the troops to design and build — again, without training — office buildings and apartment complexes? Why don’t we deploy ex-Marines to work as untrained drug counselors and untrained cognitive behavioral therapists? We have a LOT of veterans in this country! Why are we only asking them to fill one specialized profession despite a complete lack of training?

The answer, of course, is two-fold. First, these jackwagons really do want to scuttle public education in favor of religious indoctrination and money-making charter school schemes, so they don’t give a shit who is in the front of the classroom. Second, if there is one thing that right-wingers — and a lot of liberals too, I might add — love is to engage in the performative fetishization of the military and of veterans for political purposes.

Sometimes it’s all about patriotic grandstanding, with the military standing as a 1:1 proxy in these people’s minds for patriotism. Sometimes it’s about political triangulation. Like, maybe they don’t think, in their heart of hearts, that a guy six months removed from a four-year stint as a boatswain's mate on an Avenger-class minesweeper is the best guy to teach a pre-calculus class, but they know damn well that if someone criticizes them for the proposal that they can play the “wow, those liberals don’t Support The Troops™” card.

All I know for sure is that my brother is a veteran who works as a special education assistant for San Diego City Schools. He had to be trained for that, though, because everyone involved, himself included, knows that it would’ve been psychotic to have simply let him do this because he happened to be in the Navy 25 years ago. That it requires anyone to point this out to the malicious and mendacious shitheels who run my state’s government these days is appalling.

The “Nuggets” compilation turns 50

The Guardian has an article up commemorating the 50th anniversary of the great “Nuggets” compilation, the full name of which is “Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968.” The album was put together by Lenny Kaye, who would later become Patti Smith’s guitarist but who at the time was a music writer and clerk at a record store in New York and it’s absolutely indispensable.

“Nuggets” was conceived by Elektra Records owner Jac Holzman, but Kaye carried out all the research and curation and wrote the legendary liner notes which, among other things, featured one of the earliest uses of the term “punk rock.” Which makes a ton of sense because the songs on the album provided a huge part of the punk rock blueprint and proved to be wildly influential to both the first generation of punk artists and the generations which have followed since. The songs consisted of all manner of sounds and visions which would later be called proto-punk.

Things like lo-fi psychedelic and garage rock by all-but-forgotten bands, most of whom had regional-at-best followings such as the Seeds, the 13th Floor Elevators, the Chocolate Watchband, the Castaways and the Standells. It also had some abject weirdness, like a song called “Public Execution” by the band Mouse and the Traps which, if you didn’t know better, you’d think was “Highway 61”-era Bob Dylan. If you did know better you’d tip your cap at for being an uncanny imitation. Hell, I’d rather listen to “Public Execution” than a lot of actual Dylan songs, frankly.

A number of the songs on the album charted for a brief time in the mid-60s but, given how fast the industry moved back then and how disposable so many acts at the time were, most had fallen into obscurity by the early 70s. Kaye’s work preserved them and, eventually, allowed them to be found by others. If you are familiar with some of the songs on the double album it means either (a) you are in your 70s and you heard them in the 11 minutes they appeared on local radio in your town in the mid-60s; or (b) you heard them either directly or indirectly because Kaye plucked them for inclusion on “Nuggets.” Like, I know a lot of people who like the song “You’re Gonna Miss Me” by the 13th Floor Elevators. I can’t help but feel, however, that there is no way that lives on to be included in the movie “High Fidelity,” where most of us heard it for the first time, if “Nuggets” never existed. Indeed, I’m almost 100% sure of it.

I had a cassette version of “Nuggets” in the late 80s, which was given to me by a high school friend. He gave it to be because I had previously owned a cassette of some weird “Nuggets”-inspired ripoff compilation put together by a different record company later in the 70s which included a number of similar tracks. I think it was called “Electric”- er, something, but it did have Count Five’s “Psychotic Reaction” on it — also on “Nuggets” — which I played incessantly. My friend said “if you like that stuff you gotta hear this stuff.” I wore that cassette out. Several years ago, after vinyl began its resurgence, I bought the “Nuggets” LP and still listen to it a few times a year.

“Nuggets” is an unbeatable listening experience that, if you haven’t had the pleasure of knowing, I suggest you remedy directly.

Have a great day, everyone.