Cup of Coffee: September 26, 2024

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

And away we go.

And That Happened 

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Mets vs. Atlanta — POSTPONED: Not just last night’s game but tonight’s as well. Now the two games are set for a doubleheader on Monday, which I’m sure all the players involved absolutely love.

As I noted in yesterday’s newsletter, this weather issue was completely and utterly predictable and Major League Baseball should have made some sort of contingency plan before 5PM yesterday. That they didn’t is either (a) absolute incompetence; or (b) an extreme amount of shade being thrown at the fading Arizona Diamondbacks, who at this point may be the odd team out rather than either New York or Atlanta. For what it’s worth I think it’s the former, even if the latter is funnier.

And yes, that incompetence extends even if, as I saw reported yesterday, the games were not moved to a drier location because Atlanta didn’t want to give up home games and the big haul of cash that’d entail. Yes, that’s stupid, selfish, and shitty on Atlanta’s part, but guess what: that’s why you have a Commissioner armed with a Best Interests of Baseball clause. But I suppose Rob Manfred has spent so much time doing the owners’ bidding and making sure none of them lose a penny over the years that he forgot that he actually has the power to do literally anything else. The Best Interests clause isn’t self-activating. It requires the application of backbone, so you knew it’d never happen on Rob Manfred’s watch.

On the bright side, this whole affair could be useful, inasmuch as Rob Manfred pretending that he had no idea a hurricane was coming and having no contingency plans for this series is a good preview of what will happen if Trump wins and he abolishes the National Weather Service.

Royals 3, Nationals 0: Six Royals pitchers were deployed to complete a two-hitter while Robbie Grossman singled in two of Kansas City’s three runs. Like the Tigers, the Royals maintain their Wild Card position and keep the Twins and Mariners two and a half games back.

Tigers 7, Rays 1: Like Kansas City the Tigers send out a squadron of six pitchers to keep the opposition’s bats quiet. The last one was top prospect Jackson Jobe making his big league debut. He allowed a hit but worked around it to end the game. Parker Meadows homered and Spencer Torkelson hit a two-run homer and hit an RBI double. Detroit has won eight of nine. The Wild Card magic number is 3.

Phillies 9, Cubs 6: Nick Castellanos, Trea Turner and Kody Clemens homered, Bryson Stott had three hits, and Brandon Marsh drove in three. With the win Philly clinches a first round bye and with the Brewers’ loss they clinch home field in the NLDS.

Mariners 8, Astros 1: Happy Hangover Game for Houston! I didn’t see this one but Cup of Coffee’s Scotland/Houston Correspondent David Fitzpatrck emailed me when it was over and noted that Shay Whitcomb went 0-for-4 and committed four errors, so it’s not unreasonable to think he had a nice Tuesday evening. The Astros committed five in all. George Kirby picked up his 14th win, allowing one run over six. Julio Rodríguez and Mitch Garver hit homers. The Mariners have won five of seven as they try to snag the AL Wild Card. Not that they have full say in said snagging, given that Detroit and Kansas City are ahead of ‘em. They need help.

Guardians 5, Reds 2: An assemblage of Guardians pitchers took a perfect game into the seventh, but it was broken up by a bunt single from TJ Friedl. I imagine someone, somewhere believes it’s bush league to do that on a bunt but it’s not like a parade of one-inning relievers blanking the opposition is some august accomplishment worthy of reverence either. Anyway, José Ramírez hit a three-run homer, doubled, tripled and scored twice. He’s good.

Pirates 2, Brewers 1: Luis Ortiz allowed one run on four hits over seven and Buccos shortstop Liover Peguero hit a two-run double which proved to be enough.

Blue Jays 6, Red Sox 1: Kevin Gausman (6 IP, 4 H, 1 ER) and three relievers scattered seven hits. Alejandro Kirk went 3-for-4 and knocked in three runs and Jonathan Clase hit a two-run homer.

Orioles 9, Yankees 7: From the AP gamer: “Baltimore enjoyed a booze-filled bash in the visitors' clubhouse afterward, but it was the Yankees who appeared a little hungover Wednesday.” Heh. As discussed in greater detail down in The Daily Briefing, Nestor Cortes got scratched and Marcus Stroman got the start. That didn’t work too well, as the Orioles racked up six runs on ten hits off of him in three and a third innings. They’d extend that lead to 8-1 by the fifth inning and home runs from Juan Soto and Aaron Judge — a ninth inning three-run shut; his fourth in as many days — weren’t enough to overcome it. So the Yankees now wait yet another day for a chance to clinch the AL East.

White Sox 4, Angels 3: Andrew Benintendi singled in the Manfred Man in the tenth to for the walkoff win. The White Sox continue to not go gentle into that goodnight.

Twins 8, Marlins 3: A five-run seventh inning, Carlos Santana’s three-run double, and six unearned runs thanks to four Miami errors helped the Twins snap their three-game losing skid and hand the Marlins their 100th loss on the season. But since Detroit and Kansas City won, Minnesota makes up no ground.

Cardinals 5, Rockies 2: Erick Fedde struck out 10 in seven innings of one-run work, Iván Herrera had two hits and two runs scored, Masyn Winn tripled and doubled, and Pedro Pagés had two RBI singles to give the Cards their fourth straight win.

Diamondbacks 8, Giants 2: Zac Gallen struck out 11 over six innings and Pavin Smith hit a pinch-hit three-run homer to help the Dbacks get back on the winning track, to move into a virtual tie with the Mets and to extend their lead over rained-out Atlanta for the final Wild Card to a full game, though they are tied in the loss column. Thanks to the whole rainout mess they may not know if they’re going home or heading out for a Wild Card game until Monday no, of course. At least if none of the three teams crater this weekend.

Rangers 5, Athletics 1: Wyatt Langford and Adolis García homered to send the A’s to a loss in their penultimate game in Oakland. This all sucks of course, but it’s always a good day if you get a chance to use the word “penultimate.”

In other news:

Today is gonna be crazy, man. I know some subscribers are gonna be at the game, so if anyone has any requests for any souvenirs — a foul pole, the pitching rubber, Mark Kotsay’s socks — put ‘em in the comments so they can see it.

Dodgers 4, Padres 3: Shohei Ohtani doubled in a run in the fourth and singled in the go-ahead run and stole his 56th base of the season in the fifth inning. He also scored the first run of the game in the first inning on a Teoscar Hernández single. The Dodgers got four innings of scoreless relief and extended their division lead over the Padres to three games. They can clinch the division tonight.

Sounds like it’ll be lit in Los Angeles too.

The Daily Briefing

Nestor Cortes placed on IL, could be done for the year 

Yankees starter Nestor Cortes was supposed to start last night but he was scratched and placed on the 15-day injured list with a left elbow flexor strain.

Cortes told the press that his UCL "looks good," but (a) his MRI results are going to be sent to Dr. Neal ElAttrache, which, ugh; and (b) he will not throw for the next seven to 10 days. He expects to receive a PRP injection as an attempt to accelerate healing, but honestly, it seems super unlikely that he’ll be able to pitch in the postseason, even if things break right on that Dr. Neal ElAttrache business.

Marcus Stroman had been demoted the pen and got last night’s start — and THAT sure went well, eh? — but who knows if the Yankees will trust him in October. The club called up Cody Poteet from Triple-A to fill the roster spot.

The A’s are about to close the book on Oakland but the future is by no means clear

This week has been and will continue to be filled with stories about the Athletics’ final games in Oakland and remembrances of the franchise’s 57-season history there. It’s worth remembering, however, that while the A’s are about to close the book on Oakland the future is by no means clear. From Tim Keown at ESPN:

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: I will not believe that the A’s will ever play a single game in Las Vegas until there are support beams rising from the Tropicana Casino site. And if that stadium project goes sideways I predict that Major League Baseball will force the sale of the A’s to someone who can actually execute a plan.

Diamond Baseball Holdings snaps up another minor league team

Earlier this week the Omaha Stormchasers become the latest team purchased by Diamond Baseball Holdings, the sports management group which is itself owned by Endeavor and the private equity firm Silver Lake. Diamond Baseball Holdings, which has only existed for a couple of years, now owns 36 of the 120 affiliated minor league baseball teams.

I’ve said words to this effect before, but this is one of those deals where I cannot put my finger on exactly why this is bad but it feels bad anyway.

To be sure, everyone involved in these deals seems to love them. DBH is not gutting teams or stripping them for parts. It’s not moving them out of communities where they have long existed. It actually seems to be putting money and resources into them, actually, improving the stadiums, in-game entertainment, and whatnot. And it’s not like the old minor league owners were magnanimous grandparent-like figures or anything. A lot of them were cheap bastards running operations on a thread. Some of them weren’t more than a half-step up from carnival barkers.

But as you all know well, I'm inherently skeptical of private equity, accumulated power, and sports ownership — especially when the group involved is so friendly with Rob Manfred and Major League Baseball — and I cannot for the life of me imagine what the angle here is if not to somehow exploit minor league baseball and/or its fans in a way that sucks for everyone but them. I fully realize that says more about me and my prejudices than it says about anything DBH has done to date, but [gestures broadly] look at the damn world, man.

This is one of those deals where I am fully prepared to look like a crank or a crackpot or a cynic. Like those “what have the Romans ever done for us?!” guys in “Life of Brian” or whatever. But given how thoroughly nearly everything I love has been enshittified over the past few decades, I feel like my skepticism is justified. Or is, at the very least, understandable.

[Editor: How big of you to acknowledge your biases here, Craig. I’s personal growth]

I know. It’s terrible, ain’t it? But I’m still gonna play the long game here and say I told you so if and when the other shoe drops.

Other Stuff

Programming Note

I got a notification from Beehiiv yesterday saying that, as of now, users can create login/password access for the newsletter. This is in addition to the system by which logging in to get access on the web requires the sending out of a verification email. Which is stupid in a number of ways, not least of which because most people who are logging in to read online are doing so because Beehiiv emails aren’t coming through which almost always means the verification email gets bounced too. I’d love to meet the genius who approved that plan.

I was not told how this works, exactly, because like most Beehiiv things it came in a marketing-style email touting the new function with big glitzy graphics but without actually providing details. From what I can tell, however, it involves either hitting the “read online” button in the top upper-right corner of the email — or navigating to the Cup of Coffee site itself — clicking your user ID in the upper right, and choosing the “manage subscription” option. My presumption is that that will get you to a login creation page but since I’m an admin it doesn’t give that to me. If any of you want to check to see if that works and report back to me, I’d appreciate it.

Thanks!

The Electoral College is Slavery-Era Horseshit

The New York Times ran an interesting election story yesterday about the Electoral College.

As you probably know, the Electoral College has tended to significantly favor Republicans over the past couple of decades, allowing them to win two elections — in 2000 and 2016 — despite their candidate losing the popular vote. It also made Donald Trump far more competitive in 2020 than a candidate who lost the popular vote by over 7 million has ever been.

What the New York Times story says, however, is that the Republican advantage in the EC this year is not as big as it has been in the past. That’s because Trump’s popular vote support this year has been spread out some, to where he’s getting a lot more support in states he really has no chance of winning, like New York, than in previous elections where his support was more concentrated in battleground states. This does not mean that he doesn’t still have an advantage, of course. Per the New York Times’ latest projections he can still lose the popular vote and win, but he can’t lose it by as much as he did in the last two elections. Harris still has no path to lose the popular vote and win the EC.

That’s all interesting, but it’s still enraging to have to deal with the inherently antidemocratic horseshit that is the Electoral College every four years. And yes, I would still believe it is horseshit if a Democrat won the presidency with a minority of the popular vote. I realize that my political leanings are obvious and so it may be reasonable not to believe me when I say that, but it’s true. It's stupid in principle. It's stupid in practice. And because I’m sufficiently worked up about it, I’m gonna put my professor hat on and lecture about it some. I know many of you know this stuff already but feel free to copy and paste however much of it you want for your Facebook page or to forward it on to someone you know who doesn’t know it and could use it.

The Electoral College exists because of slavery. There is no way to get around that. To understand why this is so, you must understand the Three-Fifths Compromise. 

As you may remember from school, there was a big problem trying to figure out how to structure Congress at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The big idea – giving states equal representation in one house, the Senate, while giving larger states more sway in the House of Representatives – was eventually agreed upon. The small states, however, were still sort of freaked out about it because the big states like Pennsylvania and New York were SO MUCH BIGGER than the small states, almost all of which were down south in slave territory. So they proposed doing something they’d never do in the normal course: they suggested counting their slaves as people. 

The northern delegates were NOT having that. Partially, I assume, because even most of them didn’t consider slaves to be human beings, but mostly because doing so would give a ton of power to the south. So a compromise was reached: “we’ll count your slaves to determine your number of congressmen, but not on a one-to-one basis. How about each slave counts as 60% of a person?” The deal was done and the Three-Fifths Compromise was enshrined in the Constitution. 

Most history and civics classes end this here, with Congress, and handle the method of electing the president as a totally separate subject. But they’re not separate at all. The ugly struggle for power and attendant racism which allowed for the Three-Fifths Compromise was just as responsible for the adoption of the Electoral College. Indeed, the existence of the Three-Fifths Compromise made its adoption possible. 

When it came to the business of electing the president, some delegates, including James Wilson of Pennsylvania, who was a primary author of the Three-Fifths compromise, proposed a direct national election of the president with the winner of the popular vote prevailing. The popular conception about this is that the idea was rejected because the population was considered to be too ignorant or too widely dispersed to handle the task. This may have been a sentiment held by some, but it was not the sentiment which ultimately put the kibosh on direct elections. Rather, it was the same concern which caused the Three-Fifths Compromise to come into being. James Madison, a slave owner from Virginia, knew what was up. He said this on the matter of a direct presidential election at the Convention:

The solution: the Electoral College, which ties the election of the president to the number of representatives each state has in Congress, which was itself set by the Three-Fifths Compromise to deal with the problem of those pesky Negroes. Without it, the Electoral College would’ve been a nonsensical non-starter. The same slavery-inspired, dehumanizing solution for Congressional matters was the primary selling point for the Electoral College. The Three-Fifths Compromise is now a repealed and notorious bit of darkness in our nation’s history. Yet one of its most significant products – the Electoral College – remains as fruit of that poisonous tree.

The Electoral College’s existence is not illegal, obviously, and disposing of slavery as we did in the wake of the Civil War did not, technically speaking, require us to dispose of all of its remnants. But do we not have a moral obligation to dispose with as many of those remnants as we can? Do we not owe it to our national conscience to erase as much of that legacy as we possibly can? And to put past wrongs right as much as we possibly can? The intention behind the Electoral College was indisputably bound up in our nation’s most egregious collective sin — it literally would not have existed without it — and, on that basis alone, it is odious.

Of course, even if you do not find the Electoral College’s origin and history odious – even if you believe that what has gone on in the past is over and should not be dwelled on in the present – it is hard to dispute the inherent inequality the Electoral College system continues to foster. Indeed, it’s obvious for the reasons I alluded to above. To get more specific with that, and to dispose of some other common defenses of the Electoral College:

• Under the Electoral College, even the smallest states are guaranteed three Electoral College votes. As a result, roughly four percent of the country’s population in the smallest states end up being allotted around 8 percent of Electoral College votes. That’s horseshit in and of itself but it’s worse horseshit given the putative field-leveling purpose of the Electoral College;

• While we’ve had multiple elections in which a candidate who received the minority of the popular vote with the Electoral College, we still have not seen the most extreme potential examples of that. Indeed, if you play around with the Electoral College map you can devise a way in which one can win the presidency by carrying 37 states which possess only 45% of the nation’s voters. That’s even worse than Trump in 2016;

• Many defend the Electoral College by saying that it ensures that rural areas aren’t placed at a disadvantage to urban areas in elections. This is dumb because people vote, not topographical or demographic areas. But even if it did put rural areas at a disadvantage, why would that be a bad thing? Sixty-three percent of the our nation’s population lives in cities. And that percentage is growing. The people who make policy should be selected with that in mind;

• Inherent in Electoral College defense is this implied notion — sometimes made quite explicit, actually — that people who live in rural, heartland areas are somehow “real Americans” while city dwellers are not. Which is demographically inaccurate, insulting, and condescending. Any defense of rural areas over urban areas in this context is either (a) an exercise in elevating acreage over people in terms of importance; or (b) elevating a particular sort of person over another in terms of Americanness or importance. In a democracy, no person’s vote should count more than any other person’s. The Electoral College, however, ensures this to be the case.

   

• There’s also this idea that under a popular vote system candidates would only go to the Big States during their campaigns. I doubt that — and we’re well past the era of the whistle stop anyway — but again, why is that any worse than the system we have now, in which only eight states matter at all? I don’t have the 2020 figures, but in 2016 Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton concentrated something like 94 percent of their campaign events in the then-12 swing states and all but ignored campaigning in states which hold 70% of the population. There are even fewer swing states now, making the concentration problem even worse. Anyone who makes the argument that a popular vote would silo-off campaigns to a few small areas is ignoring the reality that the Electoral College system already does this far, far more effectively;

• Electoral College defenders have also pretended to be concerned about candidates under a popular vote system not getting 50% of the popular vote, thereby sowing chaos, even if they seem to be just fine with that already when a Republican wins that way. But if this is a concern, we could easily implement an instant runoff voting system or some other measure. We elect candidates by popular vote in literally every other office in the country, so I’m pretty sure we can do it with the the presidency.

I could go on for another few thousand words but I won’t. Mostly because, realistically, there’s no getting out of this any time soon. The only surefire way to get rid of the Electoral College is to amend the Constitution, and given how polarized this country is we’re unlikely to see another Constitutional Amendment in our lifetimes. Especially one which will be perceived to put one political party at a disadvantage. These days it’s Republicans who would burn down the country before losing the Electoral College, but I have no doubt, however, that if the shoe was on the other foot — as it has been at various points in the past — Democrats would fight its abolition every bit as hard.

The only other possible way to bypass the inherent inequality and idiocy of the Electoral College is via something called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. I’ve gone on for a long time already so you can just follow that link to get the upshot of what that is. It’s clever, I’ll give it that, but (a) there are several plausible arguments against it being Constitutional; and (b) even if those are weak arguments, I would bet the lives of everyone that I love that the U.S. Supreme Court as currently constructed — constructed largely by Republican presidents who won despite losing the popular vote! — would strike it down regardless. The current Supreme Court is a right wing political body which exists to advance Republican interests, full stop, and we can expect nothing less than that for the foreseeable future.

If we were drawing up the system today, there is no way on Earth we would ever implement the Electoral College. It is nonsensical and exists out of nothing but corrupt, racist, historical inertia. We should abolish it as quickly as possible. It’s total horseshit.

Sorry, but I’m gonna do this a little bit

As anyone who has been reading this newsletter since before, oh, July of this year knows, my wife Allison and I are big fans of the band James. You’ll also know that when they tour we tend to see them multiple times, such as the two shows of theirs we saw in the UK back in June, the four shows of theirs we saw in the U.S. back in 2019, and the three shows of theirs we saw of theirs in the UK back in 2018.

Well, they’re back touring the U.S. again right now, opening for Johnny Marr in various theater-sized venues. We’re going to see them three times on this go-around: October 6 in Washington, D.C., October 15 in Detroit, and October 17 in Chicago. We almost bought tickets for October 18 in Minneapolis but even weirdos like us have limits on travel and schedule disruption so we decided to skip that one.

As that show gets closer I’ll probably share some random James stuff in this space, like this Spin interview with frontman Tim Booth which came out on Tuesday.

There’s a lot of good stuff in there about the band’s early connection to The Smiths and how Booth was once good friends with Morrissey, but Morrissey got weird and that they’re not friends anymore, even if he remains good friends with Johnny Marr because he’s “grounded.” Which is to say: extremely relatable content for anyone familiar with Morrissey and Johnny Marr. There’s also a lot about how it’s easier for a band full of older people to get along than it is for a band full of 20 and 30-somethings to get along. While I’m not in a band, the “things just seem to easier when you’re older” stuff is likewise relatable.

I’m guessing like six of you care about any of that. And that few if any of you care about my Intro To James Spotify Playlist which I share with folks like some weirdo James evangelist from time to time. But we all crawl up our own asses on occasion and it’s my newsletter and I can do what I want with it.

Have a great day everyone.