Cup of Coffee: February 14, 2024
A pioneering play-by-play announcer, ugly uniforms, Soler power, the police blotter, Royals renderings, baldness, Santos, Dystopia Watch, and loving football and Taylor Swift
Good morning!
Today we talk about a pioneering play-by-play announcer, ugly new uniforms, Soler power, Royals stadium renderings, an arrest in the Jackie Robinson statue theft, and a bald hero.
In Other Stuff, when you circle the drain you apparently pass through Ohio, we have the latest entry in our ongoing Dystopia Watch, and, shockingly, people like football and Taylor Swift. Weird!
The Daily Briefing
Jenny Cavnar becomes the first female primary play-by-play voice in Major League Baseball history.
Finally some good Oakland Athletics-related news: NBC Sports California announced yesterday that Jenny Cavnar will be the new play-by-play announcer for the A’s. While other women have called games or have otherwise been in the broadcast booth before, Canvar will be the first female primary play-by-play voice in Major League Baseball history. She’ll work alongside NBC Sports California color commentator Dallas Braden.
Cavnar previously worked as a Colorado Rockies reporter, backup play-by-play announcer and pregame and postgame host over the course of 12 seasons. She also calls men’s and women’s college basketball and has previously covered the NHL’s Anaheim Ducks and San Diego State University athletics.
Congratulations for Jenny Cavnar, perhaps the only reason to watch the Oakland A’s this year.
There are new Nike/Fanatics-designed jerseys. The players don’t like them.
I got a press release from MLB yesterday touting their new Nike-branded but Fanatics-manufactured jerseys. They’re calling them “Nike Vapor Premier” and it’s all so very technical:
Developed over multiple years, the Nike Vapor Premier jersey was engineered to improve mobility, moisture management and fit, while keeping sustainability in mind — bringing inspiration and innovation to athletes. Its breathable, lightweight, high-performance fabric was made from at least 90% recycled polyester yarns. It also provides 25% more stretch and allows the jersey to dry 28% faster, with moisture-wicking Dri-Fit ADV technology to help ensure athletes stay cool all game long. Using the latest in digital technology, Nike body-scanned more than 300 baseball players to dial in the ideal fit — more athletic and form-fitting than the previous chassis.
The press release also comes with player endorsements from Nolan Arenado, Adley Rutschman, and Ronald Acuña Jr., but those testimonials were all pretty clearly written by Nike, Fanatics, or MLB copyrighters. Genuine player sentiment, meanwhile, is less than glowing:
Hope no one else on the Cardinals tells Nolan Arenado!
For a more detailed criticism, someone who appears to be a random but knowledgable fan has gone off on the new designs in detail, explaining the cheapness and shoddiness of the new design compared to the old. I can’t say I ever personally get that worked up about such things but the points seem pretty legit.
We’ve talked recently about how Fanatics has enshittified basically everything it has touched. Merch for fans has gotten extremely generic and the quality is often shoddy. Now Major League Baseball is letting them handle on-field product as well. Seems like a bad idea and, not surprisingly, it seems like bad execution as well.
If only there was someone who has the authority to say “hey, I know you want to use ballplayers as your walking billboards and make more money on jersey sales by branding them as ‘technical wear’ while simultaneously jacking up the prices and cutting production costs, but our players liking them and being comfortable in them is non-negotiable.” Sadly, however, no such person exists.
As I said, sadly, however, no such person exists.
Giants sign Jorge Soler
This one happened in the wee hours of yesterday morning but I missed it before the bulldog went to press (well hooray for the bulldog). Either way: Jorge Soler and the Giants have come to terms on a three-year, $42 million deal.
Soler is a big power threat and he had a nice season last year, batting .250/.341/.512 (128 OPS+) with 36 homers for Miami. He’s fairly erratic, however, having alternated below average and above average offensive seasons over the past four years. Carrying any below average offense from Soler would be rough given that he has no defensive value and will likely DH most of the time for the Giants. Probably also worth mentioning that he’ll now be hitting in a pitcher-friendly park, though it’s not like Soler’s homers just barely scrape the wall.
The Giants needed offense, and they will likely get some from Soler, but he’s no sure thing or game-changer I don’t think.
The Royals stadium renderings are out
The Royals are trying to get a new downtown stadium and, as mentioned previously, there’s an election coming up soon aimed at getting them public funding for it. I would say “not surprisingly, they have released artist’s renderings of the proposed new place” but given how backwards and bollocksed up the Athletics have handled their thing, maybe it is surprising to see it actually done in logical order here.
Anyway, the pics:
Once again, I ask that people who are familiar with downtown Kansas City explain to the rest of us what here, if anything, seems off or seems like a particularly fantastical flight of artistic fancy. I mean, apart from the fact that it’s construction would destroy several city blocks.
My initial beef: how you not gonna do the Royals logo scoreboard? That’s classic stuff, man. Though I suppose the most logical answer is “because you need a horizontal 16×9 scoreboard, not a more vertical KC logo-shaped scoreboard in order to play video and maximize revenue and stuff.
An arrest has been made in the Jackie Robinson statue theft
You’ll recall that, three weeks ago, someone stole and then destroyed a statue of Jackie Robinson at a Little League field in Wichita, Kansas. An arrest has been made:
Ricky Alderete, 45, is charged with felony theft (value over $25,000), aggravated criminal damage to property, identity theft and making false information. The statue, which police said was valued at $75,000, was stolen from McAdams Park, the home of League 42, a youth baseball league for about 600 children that commissioned and erected the statue in 2021.
The police said that there are others suspected as well, so I assume there will be more arrests soon. They also said that there is no evidence that this was a hate-motivated crime. Rather, a police department spokesman said, "We believe this theft was motivated by the financial gain of scrapping common metal." Which is what I sorta figured when I first heard about this given that the statue was made, primarily, of copper.
In the end, this will not be of much consequence for people other than those who were arrested. Following the theft nearly $300,000 worth of Donations to replace the statue came in, which will more than cover the recasting of a new one from the preexisting molds. The folks in Wichita say a replacement statue should be up sometime this summer.
Not all heroes wear capes
As someone who started going bald in his mid-20s and who was fully chrome-domed by 30, I can assure you fellas, this is the way:
Don’t fight nature and genetics, man. They always win. Lean in to your baldness if The Fates have deemed baldness to be your destiny.
Other Stuff
Welcome to Ohio, George Santos
Yesterday there was a special election in New York to fill the congressional seat which was vacated when the House kicked out liar/fraudster/criminal George Santos. For the record, Democrat Thomas Suozzi won the seat. But just because someone is disgraced and displaced in one state does not mean he’s not welcomed with open arms in another:
I just love that the process of circling the drain causes one to pass through Ohio.
Dystopia Watch
A bunch of companies in the service industry sector such as Darden Restaurants, McDonald’s, CVS, and FedEx have started making job applicants take personality tests. Such a thing is not new, of course. Lots of companies have required applicants to do such things for years.
This, per 404 Media, is different, though, in that the digital questionnaire features blue humanoid aliens acting out the scenes to which applicants are supposed to respond. It poses over 80 questions, many of which seem more calculated to determine whether people will be pliant and controllable employees than good employees, and it all implies that the test is administered and assessed by AI when it very clearly isn’t.
The article’s author, Emmanuel Maiberg, decided to apply for a job washing dishes at an Olive Garden to see what the test is like. In short, it was kinda weird:
Some of the images, while crude, make sense in the hiring context. For example, An applicant responding “Me” to an image of Ash getting yelled at by what looks like a customer in what looks like an Olive Garden with the caption “Not Much Bothers Me” would be useful information to anyone hiring in the food or customer service industries:
My favorite image of the bunch is probably the one of Ash walking out of an open floor plan office. A clock above his head shows that it’s about 6 minutes after 5PM, and Ash is waving at some other sucker coworker who is staying late. “No Overtime,” is the caption. In theory this is for a personality quiz, but in reality I feel like there is not much subtext to this one!
All of this is in service of figuring out which of The Big Five personality traits applicants possess which is something for which employers have long tested despite the fact that there has been a lot of criticism of that sort of assessment. It also seems that they want to know if you’re a potential troublemaker. I suppose that’s where I’d fail.
[Editor: You’d not even make it to the test. You’d be too busy annoying the person administering it about how you feel it’s unnecessary]
Touché.
Anyway, if any of you were planning on working at McDonald’s or CVS or Olive Garden, enjoy the blue people in the AI test that is not even an AI thing but probably has that name because someone wanted to impress their boss by pretending to be on the cutting edge.
Oh, and a reminder: you can say that the person refusing to work overtime is “not me” and then totally be the person who refuses overtime later. Blue people personality non-AI tests are not legally binding.
Shockingly, people like football and Taylor Swift
I read yesterday that Super Bowl LVIII was the most-watched show in the history of television. Like, ALL Of television for all time, with 123.4 million average viewers during the game.
I guess the right wingers who keep pushing the whole “go woke, go broke” thing and it’s anti-Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce spinoff were, once again, talking out of their butts. Seems that people like the most popular sport in America and the most popular pop star on the planet and, despite all the chatter, don’t find it to be a problem that those two things crossed over a bit.
This happens a lot, of course. Conservative dickweeds love boycotting things and claiming that a brand or institution wearing even a fig leaf of progressivism for a fleeting moment risks financial ruin because some conservative silent majority finds it offensive. That threatened ruin almost never comes to pass, however.
They’ve repeatedly gone after the NFL and NBA for various imagined offenses against America and/or decency and those attacks have never done any damage. They’ve gone after Disney and Disney is doing just fine, thanks. They said Nike was gonna go under for associating with Colin Kaepernick and it’s not missed a beat. While they did, actually, harm Bud Light sales for a few months in the immediate wake of last year’s idiotic Dylan Mulvaney moral panic, AB-InBev stock is trading at about the same place it was before that business began and its revenue for the twelve months ending September 30, 2023 was up around 4% year-over-year. To the extent that boycott did more damage than others probably says more about how little difference there is between the various mass-produced domestic light beers, thereby making a boycott of one a pretty frictionless exercise, than it says about the will of the alleged silent majority.
It’s easy to forget if you’re online a lot, but most people in this country are not mainlining political and cultural grievances like the right wing carnival barkers believe and want you to believe. There’s a loud group of dipshits who like to think otherwise, and they somehow manage to get the attention of a lot of mainstream media types and fool them into thinking this crap matters, but it doesn’t. No raging political commentator or even a group of them working together is going to make a significant number of Americans change their consumer/entertainment habits that easily. If they could the advertising agencies would’ve hired them years ago.
Have a great day everyone.
Comments ()