Cup of Coffee: April 19, 2024

Good morning!

Happy Friday folks. Unless you’re a Red Sox fan, that is, in which case you’re likely not happy due to a couple of injuries. But you can cheer up some by hearing about Aroldis Chapman getting suspended, listening to a relief pitcher offer some surprisingly uplifting frank talk, and learning about how, amazingly, sports teams get by just fine when public subsidies for stadiums are not an option.

In Other Stuff: I by no means wish to offer a take on Gregg Doyel’s idiocy with respect to Caitlin Clark because the last thing you need here is another middle aged white man talking about all that, but I do provide some 15 year-old flavor which is I find rather amusing. I also talk about how Russia is coopting the Republican Party, write some serious words about the stakes of the 2024 election, and then write some less serious words about how billionaires travel. And then I talk about how, even if I was a billionaire, I’d have a difficult time doing what they do. And no, it’s not because I’m a Philosophically Pure Class Warrior. It’s because I’m a Midwesterner and we’re weird like that.

Let’s roll on into the weekend, shall we?

And That Happened 

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Giants 5, Diamondbacks 0: Three Giants pitchers combined on a three-hit shutout with Logan Webb handling seven of those innings and allowing two of those hits, at one point retiring 19 straight Dbacks hitters. It was a tight one most of the way, however, but San Francisco put up a four-spot in the eighth via Wilmer Flores’ pinch-hit two-run double and Mike Yastrzemski’s two-run single. LaMonte Wade Jr. hit a sac fly in the third.

Guardians 5, Red Sox 4: The Red Sox definitely fielded a getaway day kind of lineup. Indeed, per the Boston radio broadcast, the combined total salary of yesterday’s starting lineup, including the pitcher, was $8.8 million. That’s some early-March split squad vs. a junior college shit, though, to be fair, they’re dealing with some injuries, as I discuss down in the Daily Briefing. Anyway: Andrés Giménez knocked in two, Ramón Laureano, Josh Naylor and José Ramírez each drove in a run, and Carlos Carrasco allowed two runs on four hits while working into the sixth. It’s the first win for Carrasco in a Cleveland uniform since September 2020.

Rangers 9, Tigers 7: Texas went up 4-0 and Detroit tied it in the second. Then they went up 7-4 and Detroit tied it in the fourth. Then they picked up one in the eighth and one in the ninth for which the Tigers had no answer. To the extent the game had a hero it was Leody Taveras, who doubled, advanced to third and then scored the go-ahead run on a Corey Seager fielder’s choice in the eighth and then knocked in that run in the ninth with a single. Texas took three of four.

Rays 2, Angels 1: The Rays scored two in the first thanks to Amed Rosario’s RBI triple and a Harold Ramírez sacrifice fly which plated Rosario. After that Ryan Pepiot allowed one run and three hits in six innings. Which, in non-Tampa Bay Rays innings, translates to a complete game.

Marlins vs. Cubs — POSTPONED:

🎶 Heard the singers playing, how we cheered for more
The crowd had rushed together, trying to keep warm
Still the rain kept pouring, falling on my ears
And I wonder, still I wonder
Who'll stop the rain 🎶

The Daily Briefing

Rafael Devers has a bone bruise, Tyler O’Neill to the IL

Red Sox third baseman Rafael Devers and outfielder Tyler O'Neill collided while going after a fly ball in Monday’s game. Now Devers has been diagnosed with a bone bruise on his left knee and O’Neill is going on the seven-day concussion injury list, retroactive to Tuesday.

Devers played on Tuesday but left the game with knee discomfort. He served as the designated hitter on Wednesday — and did terribly — and sat out again yesterday afternoon. He had an MRI yesterday which revealed the bone bruise. He won’t go on the IL, the Sox said, but he’s obviously not doing great. O’Neill has been out of action since the collision and, as is the case with any concussion, there’s no telling when he’ll be 100%. The Sox activated outfielder Rob Refsnyder from the injured list to take O'Neill's roster spot.

Devers has started slowly but is obviously critical to Boston’s chances this year. O’Neill has been the team’s best hitter this year, with seven jacks and a 1.209 OPS in 15 games. So yeah, the sooner they get back the better.

Aroldis Chapman suspended 

Pirates reliever Aroldis Chapman was handed a two-game suspension and was fined an undisclosed amount of money yesterday for what the MLB press release called "inappropriate actions" during Monday's game against the Mets.

There wasn’t much to go on here. All we know for sure is that Chapman got run after saying something to home plate umpire Edwin Moscoso after Harrison Bader hit a double off of him. Chapman held his glove up to his mouth to say what he had to say, so presumably they involved some magic words he preferred not to have lip-read by fans.

Quote of the Day: Pete Fairbanks

Rays reliever Pete Fairbanks had a bad game against the Angels on Wednesday. He came into the ninth with Tampa Bay up 4-3. He then gave up two hits, two walks, and two runs, blowing the save and allowing the Angels to escape with a 5-4 victory.

After the game, he was about as frank as frank could be. When asked if the problem was command, location, or something else, Fairbanks said “no, I thought I generally sucked. I didn’t think it was a specific suck, I thought it was like an all-encompassing type of suck.”

After that a reporter asked him where he goes from here and he said “you tell me. If you’ve got an answer I’d love to hear it.” Again, it wasn’t said in any sort of obvious anger. It was just matter-of-fact. He then said he wasn’t going to beat himself up, observing “I’ll maybe give it ‘till ten. It’s [looks at clock] 9:44 right now . . . we’ll give it 16 minutes of sulk and then we’ll get back on the bump and figure it out.”

That, folks, is how to deal with adversity in a healthy fashion.

How stadium stuff works in Canada 

One of my north-of-the-border subscribers hipped me to an article from the Globe and Mail in which Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro talks about the ongoing $400 million renovation of Rogers Centre. The framing of the article is about how, at a time when multiple U.S.-based sports teams are either getting or trying to get public money for renovations or entirely new stadiums — and when they are routinely threatening to move if they don’t get what they want — the company that owns the Blue Jays is paying for its stadium renovations itself.

In the article Shaprio just lays it all out matter-of-factly. It’s completely unrealistic to expect the Toronto or Ontario government to pay for such things, he notes, so Rogers Communications is simply doing math: a new stadium would cost $X, renovations would cost .3 to .5 of $X, expected revenue from improvements will bring in $Y, paying for themselves over Z years. Expected life of stadium renovations is Z + A years, etc. etc.

Given how long he’s been on the scene, I know a lot about how Mark Shapiro rolls. Based on that I am 100% certain that if he were with a U.S.-based team he'd be saying very different things. That said, he's nothing if not a hard-headed realist, particularly when it comes to numbers, both baseball and financial-related, and it's quite illuminating to see how a realist behaves with respect to stadium investments when public subsidies are not an option.

I’m pretty sure that this is how almost every U.S. based owner and executive would behave if they did not think they had a chance to sucker local politicians into underwriting them. They'd look at the costs, the revenues, and treat it like any other business treats its physical plant. Like big hotels and resorts handle renovations. How cruise lines decide when to renovate or when to sell for scrap and commission a new ship. The only reason we have this move-threatening and hostage-taking stuff here is because state and local politicians indulge it and almost always give the owners what they want in the end.

Other Stuff

Gregg Doyel

You’e no doubt heard about the flap from the other day involving Indianapolis Star columnist Gregg Doyel being really frickin’ weird at Catilin Clark’s introductory press conference with the Indiana Fever. Short version: he acted really creepy in ways that, even in these supposedly more enlightened times, way too many men do with way too many women. Soon after he wrote a short tweet apologizing and then, because we live in a click-based, attention-based world, he wrote a column trying to explain himself.

The column was, predictably, bad and self-centered and Doyel would’ve been better off simply shutting up and sitting out for a few plays. As a matter of tone it was rather eye-rolly as well, with Doyel lamenting that he’s just weird and awkward and oops, sometimes you guys, he just doesn’t know how to be! It had the tone of one of those cliche “adulting is hard!” posts.

I, however, found that tone amusing in ways I’m guessing a lot of people may not have. This is because I remember back, years ago, when Doyel was not just a local Indianapolis Star columnist. For a good while he was a national writer, with columns and posts appearing at CBS Sports among other places. This was back in the Golden Age of Blogging when I cut my teeth and when I, quite often, would get into arguments and feuds with national columnist types. And yeah, I got into more than my fair share of dustups with Doyel.

The substance of our disagreements was not particularly important. Like a lot of national writers at the time he had some very old school ideas about baseball about which I and others in my clique often wrote takedowns. He skewed pretty moralistic about players using PEDs while I was often cast as an apologist for steroids users. Those of you old enough and online enough to remember that stuff probably have a good idea about the battle lines of the time.

Thing about it, though, was that Doyel was not particularly egregious on the substance. We disagreed on a lot but he wasn’t an idiot. Indeed, I thought he was fairly bright and, sometimes we even found common ground on things in ways I never did with the Bill Maddens or Mike Lupicas of the world. Yet Doyel still drove me crazy because the tone and persona he adopted when he was writing nationally was simply obnoxious. It was some sort of faux Norman Mailer tough guy intellectual thing in which he would assume the voice of a wise, edgy, unfiltered truth-teller who KNEW things, man, and if you took issue with him, he’d fight you . . . if you were man enough.

There were lots of examples of this stuff, most of which have been scrubbed from Internet history, but I found an example of one from back in the summer of 2009 when I was writing for The Hardball Times. Doyel’s original column, which was apparently about PED users, is lost, but I block-quoted it in my post an goofed on this part:

This will never be over. Ever. And the truth is, baseball couldn’t handle the truth. Neither could the average baseball fan. You don’t want to know how many players were on the juice before those 2003 tests made a dent in things. You don’t. Trust me.

For some reason, and there’s a point to this, radio shows like to call me for my opinion. Well, I know the reason. You see the way I write, right? Imagine me on radio. No delete key. No editor reading over my shoulder. It’s me, unfiltered.

At the time my joke was that this sounded like Pee Wee Herman’s “I’m a loner and a rebel, Dottie” speech. With 15 years of distance, however, I realize I could’ve turned it into the Roy Batty death speech from “Blade Runner.” There are so many options when you encounter this level of self-seriousness and self-aggrandizement.

All I know for sure is that Doyel is an absolute drama queen. Like pathologically so. Fifteen years ago it was Mr. Tough Guy. Now it’s creepy, solipsistic weirdo. Either way, that guy seems to have some problems, man.

Tell us something we don’t know

The Washington Post reports on a secret Russian memo obtained by European intelligence services which pretty much confirms what has been obvious as hell since at least 2016: that Russia has been waging propaganda campaigns within the United States in an effort to promote isolationist and extremist policies an in effort to undermine the country and its NATO allies:

Russia is seeking to subvert Western support for Ukraine and disrupt the domestic politics of the United States and European countries, through propaganda campaigns supporting isolationist and extremist policies, according to Kremlin documents previously reported on by The Post. It is also seeking to refashion geopolitics, drawing closer to China, Iran and North Korea in an attempt to shift the current balance of power . . . “For Putin, it is absolutely natural that he should try to create the maximum number of problems for the U.S.,” he said. “The task is to take the U.S. out of the game, and then destroy NATO. This doesn’t mean dissolving it, but to create the feeling among people that NATO isn’t defending them.”

These efforts have been highly successful, as all manner of pro-Putin positions are, essentially, Republican Party and conservative media policy.

Republicans themselves are increasingly acknowledging this, with the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Texas Republican Michael McCaul, saying in an interview last week that Russian propaganda has “infected a good chunk of my party’s base” and suggested that conservative media is to blame. Earlier this week Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), who chairs the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said that it was “absolutely true” that Republican members of Congress were repeating Russian propaganda about the invasion of Ukraine instigated by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Some, like Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, aren’t trying to hide it. They’re coming right out and saying that we should enter into a “peace treaty” with Putin in which Russia is simply gifted a big chunk of Ukraine. There have been reports that Trump, if elected, will pursue exactly that policy. Meanwhile, the man currently considered to be the leading contender to be Trump’s vice presidential candidate, J.D. Vance, is openly advancing Putin’s agenda in so brazen and obvious a fashion that he’s parroting the dictator’s exact words.

We’re several years removed from the days in which we talked a lot about how Russia has compromising intelligence on Trump and is thereby forcing him to do their bidding or the idea that Russian bot farms have infected wide swaths of social media in an effort to spread propaganda or to alter the outcome of U.S. elections. But it’s pretty clear that that did indeed happen and that now there are literally sitting Members of Congress who are, formally or informally, Russian assets. And the man who could be our next president is one as well.

This is pretty much all that matters 

John Harwod is veteran political journalist, having worked at the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, NBC, and CNN. He is now flying solo, with a newsletter he just launched yesterday called “The Stakes.” The name is taken from the frequent and necessary reminder from NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen to the media that it’s “not the odds, but the stakes” which matter. Meaning: stop talking about polls and the horse race stuff and focus on the issues and the repercussions of elections and policy debate.

In Harwood’s first entry he lays out the stakes of the 2024 election pretty clearly:

Incumbent Joe Biden fits squarely within our familiar presidential paradigm. 

Ideologically center-left and temperamentally moderate, he governs in service of the entire country however anyone judges his policy choices. He works with political adversaries as well as allies to seek consensus on shared priorities.

His opponent promises the opposite. Donald Trump embraces the Jan. 6 insurrection and vows to pardon “hostages” now behind bars for crimes committed that day. He openly defies a judicial system that seeks to hold him accountable, including the New York state court where he’s now on trial. He holds our system of elections and the rule of law itself in contempt. 

Trump makes authoritarian leaders his role models. He aims to turn the federal government into his personal instrument for rewarding loyalists and punishing adversaries. He speaks the language of violence, stoking hate, fear, and prejudice among his supporters.

No one can argue with that. What’s more, I believe that anyone who does not frame the 2024 election in these terms is both missing the damn point of it all and is ignoring the clear and present threat to the continued existence of the United States as we know it if Donald Trump were to win.

I understand that Biden does not excite a lot of people. And I in no way endorse everything he does. To the contrary, there are a great many things he has done and that he stands for, most of which longtime readers can probably guess, of which I am not a fan at all. But it’s an undeniable fact that Trump would reverse or destroy anything Biden has done or will do on issues he is, generally, getting right and he’d be far, far worse than Biden to the point of disastrous on any of the things I think Biden is handling poorly.

I understand that there is a sentiment held by some of my friends on the left that this “he’s not great but Trump is worse” framing is a non-starter. I understand that regardless of what Trump might do, there are those who believe that Biden and the Democrats have not earned anyone’s continued support. I appreciate that on an intellectual, philosophical, and even an emotional level. Indeed, in the past I have advocated for punishing the candidate or party witch which one, in the normal course, may tend to be better-aligned for exactly that reason.

But while that may have made at least a little sense several years ago, it only remained a legitimate, responsible position to take when the alternative candidate merely promised to advance different policies. Today, however, punishing Biden for straying from whatever it is we consider to be the light means electing someone who promises to turn America into a white supremacist authoritarian state in which policy differences won’t matter because he seeks to end democracy as we know it. That’s not hyperbole. That’s literally what Donald Trump has promised to do and what his previous four years in office have manifestly demonstrated what he will do if given the chance. And that’s before we talk about Trump, basically, being a Russian asset as discussed in the previous item.

There is a view held by some that maybe we need everything to come crashing down in order to, eventually, achieve real progress. That the Democratic Party — which, contrary to Harwood’s words above, is really a center-right party with liberal social tendencies — cannot be reformed or coaxed into taking a more progressive path so only through some Great Reckoning or even via its destruction will we truly have a chance to improve the conditions of existence. I understand that sentiment and, as someone with a degree in political philosophy, I understand its theoretical and historical basis. Yet as a matter of American politics in the year 2024, I reject it as an utter fantasy held only by those who either (a) do not understand political realities and how our system would actually react to such a thing; (b) do not understand history; or (c) would not be the ones who truly suffered if such a thing came to pass and thus desire such an outcome from a place of profound privilege, whether or not they consciously appreciate it.

If Trump wins, the Democratic Party is not gonna see the democratic-socialist light, reject the things we want them to reject, and reform as some sort of progressive vanguard. It’s going to do what parties pushed to the brink of destruction have always done: rebrand and continue doing most of what it has always done but doing its best to co-opt the most popular ideas of the party which destroyed it. In our “Punish Biden” hypothetical, in 21st century America as it actually exists, a reformed-via-electoral-apocalypse Democratic Party would move further to the right and would abandon its most contentious positions and convictions which, by modern political definition, are those positions and convictions which are best-calculated to help or protect the most vulnerable among us. The only lesson our society would realistically choose to learn from Trump prevailing over a humbled and punished Biden is “we need to move to the right and stop supporting things which upset the people who put Trump in office.”

None of this is meant to tell you how to vote. All of us have a bright line issue or two on which we cannot and will not compromise and if Biden has crossed some line in that regard which makes it philosophically or morally untenable for you to support him, I respect that. But if that is the case, or if you are simply displeased with Biden and have notions of lodging a protest vote or not voting at all, I feel it is incumbent on you to explain, with at least a little actual detail, how the consequences of him losing in November are preferable to the alternative. How his losing would make any single thing better either in the short or long term and how it would not make things worse.

If you can’t or won’t do that, you’re engaging in philosophy, not reality. And for as much as I enjoy discussing philosophy, I have to live in reality. As do we all.

What it’s like to plan a vacation for billionaires

A fun thing about me: while I spend a lot of time bashing billionaires, I am simultaneously fascinated by how billionaires live. Which causes me to read articles/interviews like this one in The Cut about a woman who runs a travel agency which caters exclusively to the ultra-wealthy:

Who do you call when you want to shut down Versailles for an intimate candlelit dinner? If you’re a billionaire, it’s Jaclyn Sienna India, who founded her members-only travel agency Sienna Charles 16 years ago to serve the whims of ultrawealthy clients. Since then, she has organized multiple parties at the pyramids in Egypt, a private breakfast on the top of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and countless million-dollar trips for the world’s Über-rich.

India says that many of her clients don’t even really “live” anywhere — the concept is passé. “Our clients don’t take vacations. Travel is their lifestyle,” she says. Most of them have limitless funds, a desire to spend them, and a vague idea of what they want — but would prefer to outsource the heavy lifting of actually getting it. That’s where she comes in. “We never really have to say no,” India says. “It’s just about how much it costs, and whether you’re willing to pay for it.” Here, she talks about why she’s over hotels (yachts are where it’s at), why her clients always ship their luggage (“Don’t touch your giant Rimowa”), and where the world’s billionaires are going this summer.

That’s the intro. The interview portion of it involves India explaining, in pretty clear, illuminating, and matter-of-fact terms, how the the top 1% of the top 1% travel. It’s wild, man.

I think about that whole billionaire fascination thing I have from time to time and ask myself how much of it is envy. I also ask myself whether, or how much, that informs my billionaire bashing and generally anti-rich people stances. While I can say with total confidence that my lefty convictions are genuine and that I legitimately believe that great wealth and conspicuous consumption are bad for humanity, I’d be lying if I said there was no envy there. I have lottery fantasies like anyone else.

Those fantasies tend to involve travel and experiences far, far more than they involve material goods like cars, clothes, big houses, jewelry or what have you, as I was never super interested in those things and have become less interested in them as I’ve gotten older. And the sort of social status that can come with wealth holds no appeal to me at all because I am at heart a hermit and probably would remain one even if I was loaded, so forget moving into some exclusive community where the well-to-do dine, party, and carve up the world. But yeah, if I had real money I’d definitely be doing some fun traveling. I’d spend my remaining years as a nomad who doesn’t have to worry about the costs associated with what would no doubt be an extremely comfortable nomadic lifestyle.

That being said, I don’t think I’d ever have use for this kind of travel agency. And that’s not because of my committed lefty principles or my belief that those who have private breakfasts on the top of the Arc de Triomphe deserve the guillotine (even if they do). It’s because I’m a Midwesterner who really, really hates asking people for things.

I feel weird and self-conscious when someone goes out of their way to do things for me or to make a fuss, even if I’m just imagining that it’s a fuss. When I did my Amtrak residency in 2015 the sleeping cars had a steward whose job it was to get you things if you needed them. This being Amtrak, it wasn’t like those things involved bottles of fine champagne or fancy turn-down service. The guy would, like, get you a cup of coffee if you wanted one or, if you didn’t want to go to the dining car, he’d have your questionable chicken sandwich delivered to you. Despite his existence I, probably rudely and certainly awkwardly, would walk to the little refreshment station at the end of the car and get my own coffee, much to the steward’s chagrin. A year or two later Allison sprung for a VIP table at a Las Vegas club that, while certainly nice, wasn’t exclusive or fancy. Indeed, anyone could get if they just dropped a little money, and given that it was a weeknight it wasn’t that much money. I certainly had fun, but I spent far more time thinking about how weird the experience was than I did simply enjoying the moment.

Which is to say: I’d be absolutely mortified if someone closed down a prominent landmark for me to have lunch, found me a private beach, or flew a private chef along with me as I took an impulsive trip somewhere. Hell, I’d be at least a little embarrassed to ask for, as India’s clients expect, a particular type of coffee or bottled water or bedding or something at a rental house. Class is a social construct and the people who do enjoy those kinds of experiences are not, fundamentally, different or better than me. But they are, I suspect, far less Midwestern than me and you’re just never gonna keep a Midwestern guy from going out at 7am to get an egg sandwich, even if someone is willing to make me a black truffle lobster frittata back at the villa.

Have a great weekend everyone.

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