Cup of Coffee: September 25, 2020

Happy Free Friday, everyone! Welcome, current non-subscribers!

I say “current” because I’m gonna get ya. I just know it. To that end, I’m running a Postseason Special.

Starting right now, and continuing through the weekend, I’m offering 20% off monthly and annual subscriptions for one year. You know, in case you needed a little nudge:

If you can’t swing that, hey, I get it. It’s tough out there. I’m happy just to see you on Fridays. But if you can swing it, now’s a great time.

Partially because it’s cheaper than usual. Mostly, though, because the postseason is about to begin and I’m going to be writing about it like crazy, and you’ll want to read that on more than just Fridays. Partially because the hot stove season is going to get going the moment after the World Series is over — heck, sometimes it gets started when the World Series is still going on — and serious fans know that there is no offseason for baseball news.

So, consider a discounted subscription and see how you like it. And tell your friends about it too. Sign up before Monday morning and you’re getting yourself a bargain.

And now, on with the show.

And That Happened

The Blue Jays have clinched. As soon as the Astros do, the whole American League will be set.

Chaos continues to reign for eight teams — eight! — fighting for four spots in the National League. They’ll sort that all out this weekend. We’ll sort it out on Monday morning.

For now, here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Pirates 7, Cubs 0: Chad Kuhl shut down the Cubs bats for seven shutout innings *someone speaks into my earpiece.* Wait, I am now being told that the Cubs bats were already shut down. We regret the error. Meanwhile, Colin Moran, Bryan Reynolds, Adam Frazier, and Josh Bell had home runs for the Buccos. Rob Manfred is worried about long postseason games? Teddy, I give you the 2020 Chicago Cubs who will not waste time when it’s their half of the inning. They’ll get right back on defense and keep things moving.

Rockies 5, Giants 4: The Giants had an early 3-0 lead, lost it, and then fell behind 4-3. Brandon Belt’s eighth inning homer tied it up and forced extras but the Rockies’ Raimel Tapia hit a go-ahead sacrifice fly in the 11th to win it. The Giants fall behind idle Cincinnati for the first NL wild card. The Reds visit Minnesota over the final weekend. The Padres come to San Francisco. 

Speaking of the Padres, I know they did not play last night, but we had a lot of San Diego discussion in the comments yesterday and things got mildly testy at times — talk of gentrification, homelessness, and real estate development policy will do that — so I wanted to share some San Diego goodwill and happiness:

Isn’t that more chill?

Mets 3, Nationals 2: Robinson Chirinos homered and drove in three while rookie David Peterson went seven innings and allowed only four hits and one run. The Mets are two and a half behind Miami for the automatic playoff spot given to the second place finisher. The Phillies are in between them and Miami. It’d take a couple of minor miracles for New York to come out of that alive — and good luck is not exactly a thing the Mets get much of, like, ever — but they’re still technically contending.

Cleveland 5, White Sox 4: If his big walkoff homer in the other night’s postseason clincher didn’t seal José Ramírez the MVP award, his a go-ahead, two-run double in the final game of a four-game sweep of the White Sox did. Cleveland has won five straight, has pulled to within a game of Chicago for second place, and has the Sox a game behind the Twins for the division that, just a few days ago, they lead. Chicago has lost five in a row overall. Lucky for them that momentum doesn’t really matter heading into the postseason.

Blue Jays 4, Yankees 1: Hyun-Jin Ryu tossed seven shutout innings, Vlad Guerrero Jr. homered, Bo Bichette doubled in a run and North America’s favorite new Large Adult Son, Alejandro Kirk, doubled in two as the Toronto-Buffalo Blue Jays clinched their first postseason spot in four years. The very streaky Yankees lost for the fourth time in five games. Lucky for them too that momentum doesn’t really matter heading into the postseason.

Marlins 4, Atlanta 2: Pablo López tossed five shutout innings and five relievers protected that lead well enough to snap Miami’s four-game losing streak and keep the fish swimming toward October baseball. Jon Berti had three hits, including a two-run double and Jesús Aquilar hit a homer. Atlanta rookie starter Ian Anderson threw five scoreless innings before giving up three unearned runs in the sixth. His defense committed four errors. I got a new Atlanta cap in the mail yesterday but I’ll wait for them to not stink up the joint one night before I wear it.

Note: I get a lot of crap because my profile pic on Twitter and various places shows me in a Dodgers cap, even though I’m historically an Atlanta fan. As some of you know, however, I have caps from lots and lots of teams and wear them more like fashion statements/personal safety devices — I’m a bald guy, skin cancer sucks and I don’t want it — than I do fan loyalty statements. My favorite color is blue too, so I tend to lean that way.

As such: my rotation always includes an Atlanta cap (road, all navy, not the red bill if possible), a Dodgers cap (I just think they’re the best looking cap, plus I’ve always had an arm’s length affinity for the Dodgers and I have something of a Los Angeles fetish), and a Tigers cap (childhood rooting interest, frequent place I visit, and Detroit is the city where my family’s roots are).

Also right now I have an all-green A’s cap, an old Padres mustard and yellow number (pre-return of the brown) and, somewhere, I have a navy Cardinals cap I bought in a when-in-Rome moment in St. Louis two years ago. I’ll never own a Chief Wahoo Indians cap, any Atlanta item with a tomahawk and, for stubborn anti-rooting interests, I never wear Yankees, Mets, Phillies, or Red Sox gear. Other than that, it’s mostly fair game.

Orioles 13, Red Sox 1: José Iglesias, Pat Valaika and Austin Hays homered and the O’s rattled off 18 hits in all in this rout. The titanic battle for last place in the AL East goes down to the final weekend with the Orioles “leading” Boston by two games for that esteemed honor.

Royals 8, Tigers 7: That same battle is going on in the AL Central too. Here the Tigers moved into the lead in that race, losing to the Royals thanks to Salvador Peréz hitting a three-run home run and Maikel Franco hitting a go-ahead homer in the sixth. Adalberto Mondesí had four hits and drove in two.

Astros 12, Rangers 4: The Rangers, meanwhile, are making a more important late season surge: with this loss — their fourth straight — and the Pirates win, they are now only one game behind Pittsburgh for the worst record in baseball and the first pick in the 2021 draft. Kumar Rocker watches with, well, I’d say anticipation, but waiting to find out of you’re gonna be a Pirate or a Ranger is one of those death-by-snu-snu situations.

Cardinals 4, Brewers 2: Dylan Carlson homered, doubled and drove in three, and Yadier Molina picked up his 2,000th career hit as the Cardinals kept their slim lead over the Reds for second place in the NL Central. They now have four more games against the Brewers in the next three days to help sort out this postseason mess for everyone.

Dodgers 5, Athletics 1: Walker Buehler came back for the first time in more than two weeks, looked sharper than an obsidian knife blade. Which is good — that stuff is sharp — but as everyone knows obsidian can break pretty easily, so you still gotta be careful with him.

What? You all aren’t up on obsidian knives? Take a refresher course. Figure it out.

Anyway, Buehler tossed four one-hit innings in a pre-postseason tuneup, Corey Seager homered and L.A. put up a three-run sixth as the Dodgers keep loose while waiting for the playoffs to start. This was their 40th win too. The Rays can max out at 40 wins if they sweep the Phillies this weekend, but no one else can touch that this year.

The Daily Briefing

Alex Gordon to retire

Royals outfielder Alex Gordon announced that he will retire after the season.

Gordon was the second overall pick in the 2005 draft and made his big league debut after jumping from Double-A to Kansas City two years later. After some growing pains with the Royals that saw him on the shuttle back and forth to Omaha, he was moved from third base to the outfield and stuck for good in 2011.

Gordon played his entire 14-year career in Kansas City and finds himself in the top five or ten in most offensive categories for the club. He’s also one of the club’s strongest defensive players of all-time, having won seven Gold Gloves. Not bad for a converted infielder. He was obviously a key contributor, both on the field and in the clubhouse, for the 2014 pennant-winning and 2015 World Series-winning Royals.

The Royals gave him this online tribute after his announcement:

Figure that, eventually, when fans are allowed back at Kauffman Stadium, they’ll have an Alex Gordon Night too. And even if he’s not Cooperstown bound, he’ll likely have a place in the Royals Hall of Fame.

Mets to hire Sandy Alderson as president of baseball operations

The Mets’ future owner, Steve Cohen, announced yesterday that once he’s approved to take over the team he plans to hire the Mets former general manager, Sandy Alderson, as team president. Cohen’s statement:

Alderson, 72, was the Mets’ GM from 2010 until 2018, when he stepped down due to health problems. Before that he worked for Bud Selig at the league office and, before that, he was the general manager of the Oakland Athletics from 1983 through 1997.

While Billy Beane got a book and a movie made about him, he learned much of what he knows about the “Moneyball” approach from Alderson, who was the first front office executive to embrace modern analytics of the Bill James/sabermetric variety (Branch Rickey was doing analytical things half a century before that, but that’s another story). It was generally understood that, while with the Mets, he was often forced to work around financial constraints imposed by the Wilpon family, who themselves became strapped for cash in the wake of the Bernie Madoff scandal. Despite those constraints, however, he did manager to build the team that won the 2015 National League pennant.

The other day, when Alderson’s name first came up in connection to Cohen, it was also reported that former Mets Vice President, former Dodgers GM, and one-time Billy Beane disciple Paul DePodesta might be lured back to baseball to join Alderson. No word on that yet, but not many teams rely on one top guy in the front office anymore, so it might make sense for him, or at least someone like him, to join Alderson as part of the new Mets braintrust.

Meanwhile, the team’s current general manager, Brodie VanWagenen, is still in the job, so all of this has to be awkward for him. Jon Heyman spoke to him yesterday afternoon, and here’s what he said:

That’s about as good as you can do in that situation, I suppose. I feel like it’s probably different than his inner monologue, which likely contains a fair amount of profanity, but kudos to him for keeping it inner.

Turner backs up the money truck for MLB

MLB and Turner Sports announced an extension of Turner’s broadcasting rights through the 2028 season yesterday. It’s a seven-year deal that will take effect in 2022 and will introduce a Tuesday night game for TBS as well as additional postseason games which will almost certainly be a part of the next Collective Bargaining Agreement. It also includes expanded digital rights for Bleacher Report and other platforms. People still read Bleacher Report? Who knew?

The deal is worth $3.745 billion, which means it will pay MLB $535 million per year, which breaks down to $17.8 million per team per year. That's a 65% increase over what Turner has been paying to date. And that’s likely the lowest of the three national deals MLB has, with Fox — renewed through 2028 recently — and ESPN — currently in negotiations for an extension — paying far more. And of course that’s on top of what the teams are making from local broadcast rights.

In related news, the Cubs laid off 25% of their business staff yesterday. Most other teams have laid off a big chunk of their employees in recent months too, most of whom were making five figures a year. This because the league has had one bad year in the middle of a massive, three-decades-and-counting expansion of MLB revenues.

MLB names more “Partner Leagues.”

Yesterday I wrote about how Major League Baseball had named the Atlantic League a “Partner League.” Which means, practically, that MLB is going to help it with marketing and other forms of support while it uses it to continue to test new rules and equipment and, more significantly in my view, use it to replace minor league teams in areas where MLB is withdrawing affiliations from established minor league teams.

The “efficiency” of that arrangement, if you will, is that MLB will have more control and a greater interest over the bush league teams in those areas without having to supply them with players and pay salaries and stuff like they do with the current minor league teams. A neat trick. Not unlike firing your employees and hiring a bunch of contract workers.

A few hours after I wrote about that another press release crossed my desk:

These leagues, like the Atlantic League, are independent leagues. Or, as of yesterday, “independent” leagues.

The American Association has 12 teams, the most famous of which is the St. Paul Saints. Their other clubs are in Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas and Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The Frontier League is made up of 14 teams. Two are in Quebec and the others are in Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois. The Frontier League merged with the Can-Am League last year. 2020 was supposed to be the first season of the merged league but that obviously isn’t happening.

Remember this week, folks. It’s the week when MLB’s plan to basically take over all of professional baseball — and to do it on far better terms than it had before — was truly put into motion.

Max Fried good to go for the playoffs

Atlanta ace Max Fried left Wednesday night’s start with an ankle injury but the club said yesterday that he’s expected to be ready for Game 1 of the playoffs. Specifically, manager Brian Snitker said Fried is sore but that additional tests on the ankle came back negative.

Fried finished the regular season 7-0 with a 2.25 ERA. Atlanta has struggled mightily to find consistent starting pitching all season, with Fried’s spot in the rotation being the exception. Him being healthy starting next week is essential if the club hopes to advance in October.

Gardenhire is happy in retirement

Tigers manager Ron Gardenhire abruptly retired last week citing health reasons. If you’re concerned about him, don’t be, because based on this story from Jason Beck of MLB.com, Gardenhire sounds relieved. At east. He’s back home in Minnesota after he and his wife took a leisurely drive up through Michigan’s upper peninsula and it sounds like a great weight was taken off his shoulders. Know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em.

The story does contain a pet peeve of mine. See if you can spot it:

“Mr. Ilitch” is Chris Ilitch, the 55 year-old Tigers owner. Gardenhire is almost eight years his senior. This “Mr. [Owner]” crap got really popular when the 1990s Yankees teams all started calling George Steinbrenner “Mr. Steinbrenner” and it’s spread like wildfire across baseball ever since. I hate it on a visceral level.

Maybe it’d be different if it went in both directions, as a matter of formality, but it doesn’t go that way. In light of that it comes off as some master-and-servant garbage if you ask me. It’s extra stinky garbage when applied to a guy who owns the team because he inherited it from his dad.

There was a time not too long ago when someone in Chris Ilitch’s position would slap someone like Gardenhire on the back and say “don’t call me Mr. Ilitch, that was my father!” Now he gets this unearned treatment from a guy who was making his bones in baseball when Ilitch was a freshman at a Bloomfield Hills prep school. Barf.

Other Stuff

“Coup Threatened (story on page D-48)”

The other night the president was asked, “win, lose or draw in this election, will you commit here today for a peaceful transferal of power after the election?" Trump said, “We're going to have to see what happens” and then made some reference to “getting rid of the ballots.” We're already in what is basically a cold civil war in this country, and now it appears we need to worry about a coup.

One would think that would be massive, headline news yesterday, but it wasn’t. The story was buried in almost all major newspapers, to the extent it was covered at all. Call me crazy, but I feel like if you run a newspaper, and if the president says what Trump said on Wednesday night and you don't have a banner headline the next morning to the effect of "PRESIDENT REFUSES TO COMMIT TO PEACEFUL TRANSITION OF POWER" you picked the wrong business to be in.

For the New York Times’ part, political reporter Peter Baker took to Twitter yesterday, claiming that Trump’s comments came after the deadline for print, so that’s why it was a tiny little blurb in the print edition. I saw his comments and was tweeting about the news at 7:30 on Wednesday night. I know I don’t work in the newspaper business, but I feel like there’s time to include a major story if it happens before “Jeopardy!” is over. If this was 2016 and Hillary Clinton farted off-key they’d have a V-E Day-size headline over a story talking about how the fart “raises questions” about her gastrointestinal health. They’d probably even have an extra edition with old-timey newsboys shouting about it on every street corner.

In light of all of that, I want to share an article that Anne Applebaum wrote for The Atlantic back in July. It’s about how people come to collaborate with corrupt leaders. How people committed to democracy come to side with tyrants. How the invaded come to side with their invaders. How people with principles diametrically opposed to those of a leader come to support and, in some cases, vehemently defend that leader. It also talks a great deal about how other people — usually far fewer — come to be dissidents or critics when bad people come to power rather than fall-in with everyone else.

It’s a very long article and some of the case studies Applebaum offers are questionable (note: you cannot you cannot cite Lindsey Graham's embrace of the Tea Party in 2010, as Applebaum does, and then act shocked, as Applebaum does, that he didn't oppose Trump from 2016-on). And, like a lot of her work, Applebaum is far too reverent of the military as an institution and paints a far-too-rosy picture of what pre-Trump Republicans were really like in the interests of comparing Trump to them unfavorably. It’s kind of a thing she does.

That stuff aside, however, it’s a fascinating article. In a time when our president violates laws and norms at will because of (a) unfailing support from bootlicking and/or fearful members of his party; and (b) the normalization and rationalization of his actions by the media, it is most instructive indeed.

If Trump does manage to attempt the coup he winked at the other night, it’ll be one of many articles to cite when someone, like the New York Times, claims that they had no idea he’d do such a thing. Alternatively, if Trump loses and goes away quietly, it’ll be a good article to have handy when all of the people who have supported and enabled Trump these past four years pretend as if they, actually, did not support him.

Of course, if the coup or the concession happens on Election Night after, oh, 7PM, you apparently won’t be able to read about it in the New York Times until Thursday. They have an early deadline, you know.

World Gone Wrong

The next episode of the Bob Dylan podcast I do with Mike Ferrin and Steve Goldman, “Everything is Broken,” covers the 1993 album “World Gone Wrong.” It’ll likely be dropping on Saturday and I’ll likely be linking it here on Monday.

To prepare for it I listened to my digital version of it a bunch but I also dug out the CD copy of it because I remembered that it had some detailed liner notes about the songs on it. I probably haven't read those liner notes since I bought the CD in 1993, so I was certainly due for a refresh.

I opened it up and started reading them and realized that, rather than detailed information about the songs, it's all very Dylanesque nonsense about DARK DAYS COMING and COUNTERFEIT LOYALTY and references to “Moby Dick” and the Old Testament and things.

Based on my memory of reading it originally, I quite clearly took it all very seriously and thought it was insightful. Now, with all apologies to Bob, it reads like a bad college paper from a sophomore who has read more than he has understood. Dylan does that sometimes. When he hits he hits, but there’s a lot of noise to that signal.

Anyway, I offer that in case you wanted an idea of how a person matures over the course of 27 years and how it’s OK to call bullshit on those you love. I will report, however, that the most important component of that album has aged wonderfully: the songs on “World Gone Wrong” still absolutely slap.

Claptrap

I was a big MAD Magazine reader as a kid. I went from that to Monty Python to the NBC version of Letterman, in case you want to know about my humor education.

One of the things I liked a great deal about MAD were the movie and TV parodies they did. The ones written by Dick Debartolo, Stan Hart, and Larry Seigel (and a bunch of other people), and drawn by Mort Drucker and Angelo Torres. Ones that come to mind immediately are “Star Blecch III: The Search For Plot” and “Stuporman ZZZ.” I think 1983 was my most MAD year. In the 70s they did one called “Clod-umbo” but that was before my time. If anyone has that one, please scan and email it to me immediately.

MAD is still carrying on, but they are no longer doing the TV and movie parodies. However, longtime MAD Magazine parody creators Desmond Devlin and Tom Richmond want to keep the genre alive, so they’ve started an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds to continue to do them. If it they reach their fundraising goal, it’ll be in the form of a book called “Claptrap.”

The first edition will contain ten new movie and TV parodies. The first of which will be of “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.” Which will be one of many cases, I suspect, of the parody being far better than the movie. Because, dudes, that movie sucked.

Check it out.

Gen-Xers are old

Remember when Seattle was cool? Remember when SubPop — the label that originally signed Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Mudhoney — was cool?

Welp, life comes at you fast:

I’m not gonna claim I’m cooler than anyone here, because I’m not. Not at all. I own an Eddie Bauer windbreaker and I wear Eddie Bauer long sleeve thermal shirts from October through March, almost every single day. I do that because I’m a 47-year-old dad, Eddie Bauer’s thermal shirts are warm, they are durable, and they are almost always on sale, and, dammit, comfort, durability, and budget matters. In making the decision to be thrifty and comfortable, I am and always have been 100% clear on the notion that Eddie Bauer is arguably the least cool place for anyone to shop. I don’t care. I just want to be warm and comfortable.

But something about the least cool store hooking up with a label that once passed as a signifier for cool — and that label hooking up with the ur-Dad store, Eddie Bauer — just sits with me wrong. Be cool if you want to be or be lame if you don’t care about being lame, but man, don’t mix the cool and the lame like that because it neither serves the interests of coolness nor the necessary acceptance one must have when one embraces lameness. It lands in the uncanny valley of fashion and image and it, frankly, weirds me out.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go pitch Matador Records-logo sneakers to the New Balance people.

While we were getting high

Speaking of 90s music, as a lot of you know I’m a big Britpop fan. That’s the scene/genre of Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Suede, Elastica, The Verve, and a bunch of other 90s British acts. When it comes to that stuff I . . . . . I can’t get enough.

To that end, a new book is coming out from legendary photographer Kevin Cummins called “While We Were Getting High.” It’s described as “A photographic portrait of Britpop, featuring the most iconic bands of the genre, with many never-before-seen images.” There are also interviews and things. You can order it now. Allison — a way bigger BritPop fan than me and a photographer and fan of Cummins’ work — already has.

Oh, and you can follow Cummins on Instagram here.

Murdered by clerks

Some of you liked that reference to the Medieval Death Bot Twitter account I inserted in the Cubs-Pirates recap yesterday. For those who aren’t aware of it, it’s an account that tweets out actual Medieval coroner records, setting forth the causes of death by people from back then. It really is a great account. Who knew clerks could be so violent?

Yesterday the account tweeted one of my favorites yet:

Exactly how my uncle died. What are the odds?

Behind the Scenes

Allison and I Gchat all day while she’s at work. Some of our conversations are more revealing than others. Like this one, from yesterday morning:

Being honest with yourself is important, folks.

Boy, we went long today. But that’s OK. Maybe it gave you extra time to consider a subscription? C’mon, like I said before, it’s on sale!

Have a great weekend, everyone. Next time we talk, it’ll be time for postseason baseball.