Cup of Coffee: January 19, 2024

Good morning!

That’s from the comic artist Hugleikur Dagsson. He’s very funny, if dark. This one, though, could be The Official Comic of Cup of Coffee, right?

Today I talk about how the world of legitimate sports journalism is about to get even smaller than it is, the White Sox looking to build a new stadium in the South Loop, an old man looking to make a comeback, the wishful thinking of the offseason, Adam Wainwright’s new gig, and someone taking Jim Palmer for a ride.

In Other Stuff, I talk about why I’m still comfortable linking to Substack and subscribing to some Substack newsletters, how borked Google News is becoming, and how a UK weather report is right in the old Cup of Coffee wheelhouse.

 The Daily Briefing

Spring is coming

Hope springs eternal in New York:

Giancarlo Stanton is "in a really good place" between his diet and offseason conditioning, Brian Cashman said. "He's always been one of the most feared hitters in the game. He's looking forward to getting back to that."9:16 PM • Jan 18, 2024116 Likes   12 Retweets  19 Replies

There was one about Rodón too.

I don’t do Best Shape of His Life mockery anymore, mostly because reporters and players caught on to my schtick and stopped using that term. But stories about oft-injured players “feeling great!” complete with rebop about their diet and exercise is essentially BSOHL stuff.

And it will all be forgotten when, on April 16th, Stanton strains his calf or something and gets sidelined for six weeks. Look into your heart. You know it to be true.

Fernando Rodney is planning a comeback

Sam Blum of The Athletic reports that Fernando Rodney is attempting a comeback. Rodney turns 47 in a couple of months but he’s still hoping to return to the majors.

The last time Rodney was on a big league mound was in 2019 for the Nationals, but he’s pitched in the independent Mexican League for the past three seasons. That doesn’t make it likely that he can make it back, but if he does fall short, rust will not be the issue. It’ll just be a matter of time being undefeated.

Rodney pitched for 17 seasons in the bigs, debuting in 2002 and suiting up for 11 different clubs. He recorded 327 career saves and pitched in two World Series. That’s a fine damn career, so while a comeback would be amazing, it will be no shame whatsoever if he falls short.

The world of legitimate sports journalism is about to get even smaller

Here’s Dave Zirin at The Nation, writing about the ethical issues which have arisen as the NFL has gained increasing influence over ESPN and, now, stands ready to take an equity stake in the network itself:

Good journalism was already in danger at ESPN, but it is one thing to hide important reporting at the bottom of a website, and it is another thing to spike any efforts to investigate the NFL at all. If the NFL has decision-making power at ESPN, that is probably an inevitability. We have seen this with the NFL Network, which hired stellar reporters only, according to journalist and former employee Jim Trotter, to limit the extent to which they can ply their craft.

I reached out to Trotter, currently a national columnist at The Athletic, about his time at the NFL Network and he told me: “Van Natta [at ESPN] was allowed to write the story about what really went down when the Damar Hamlin game was canceled. I was investigating the same story at the same time. Brian McCarthy, one of the league’s chief PR people, wanted me to drop the story and threatened to call my boss if I did not drop it. I told him I was OK with him calling my boss. Not even 10 minutes later I received a text from Todd Sperry, the head of the newsroom, telling me to ‘stand down.’ I texted back and said, ‘I thought our job as journalists was to pursue the truth. Has that changed?’ He never responded to me.”

For those who forgot or who were unaware, Hamlin’s heart literally stopped following a hit. He could’ve easily died. His teammates, the opponents, and like 70,000 fans all watched as paramedics worked on him after which he was rushed to the hospital. Despite all of this, the NFL ordered the game to go on. Only when the players, their union, and the coaches on the field pushed back and told the league they weren’t gonna play did the NFL relent. Except the NFL lied about that, saying that they ALWAYS planned to postpone the game. They slapped Trotter for trying to report that. It took reporters like ESPN’s Don Van Natta to get the truth out.

Once the NFL takes a stake of ESPN, however, there will be more reporters the league can effectively smack and even fewer reporters who can report the actual news. The soft-to-moderate pressure to which sports journalists are already subject to to tell only good news stories that don’t reflect poorly on teams and leagues will transform into direct power and control, with those who don’t get behind the logos being silenced or possibly fired.

There are now reports out there that the NBA may also try to buy into ESPN. Don’t think for a second MLB hasn’t considered it. And, of course, all of the leagues have their own Pravda-like media arms already. I know a lot of people who work for MLB Network and MLB.com. Most of them are pretty good at what they do, but they also know exactly what they can and can’t say about league and club business. They are inherently compromised. And given how horrible the media job market is these days, most of them don’t really have the ability to push back. The leagues and clubs know that too.

Maybe most fans don’t care about any of this stuff. Maybe they just wanna watch the games and have little or no desire to think about the business of the game and the news which surrounds it and the major figures within it. I understand that — hell, I wrote a whole book about how you can be the fan you wanna be — but I can’t be that kind of fan. And I certainly can’t be the sort of commentator who sees the sort of pressure the leagues and clubs put on reporters to pull their punches and say nothing about it.

There are far, far fewer people who feel that way in sports media these days. Far fewer who aren’t captured or compromised in some way. And with the leagues now gobbling up sports media itself, there will be even fewer still. It’s a sad state of affairs.

The White Sox want a new stadium

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the White Sox have had “serious” discussions with a developer about building a new stadium in Chicago’s South Loop. No one is offering specific comment, though Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf and Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson issued a joint statement saying, “We met to discuss the historic partnership between the team and Chicago and the team’s ideas for remaining competitive in Chicago in perpetuity.” So yeah, they’re talking about a stadium.

The club’s current lease on Guaranteed Rate Field ends in 2029. Recently Reinsdorf tried to make people believe he was talking to people in Nashville about relocation but that was a pretty empty gambit. Reinsdorf wants a new ballpark, he wants Chicago to pay for all or most of it, and he’ll do what he needs to do to make that happen. I suppose talking directly to Chicago about it is better than mounting some performative tour cum extortion effort, but it’s still a billionaire wanting a handout.

If these talks do move forward and make progress, the idea is for the new stadium to be built on a 62-acre parcel just south of Downtown Chicago which is being turned into a new development called “The 78.” Specifically, the ballpark would be at Roosevelt Road and Clark Street. Wrigley Field is on Clark Street too, by the way, a little under six miles to the north. Maybe if they build this I’ll do one of those Chicago doubleheaders, walking from one park to the other between games. Could be cool?

A thing that would be even cooler would be using the old Armour Field designs that the Sox could’ve had for New Comiskey but stupidly ignored. And yes, I will link to that story every single time the White Sox and new ballparks come up. The White Sox suck eggs and their owner is a piece of crap, but if they build Armour Field I’ll buy season tickets, man.

Adam Wainwright joins the Fox Sports team

Recently-retired pitcher Adam Wainwright has joined Fox Sports on a permanent basis. He had joined the Fox broadcast for the 2020, 2021, and 2023 postseasons, but now it’s his full-time gig.

Fox says that Wainwright will call a "full slate" of regular season and postseason games and that he will be part of the team in the UK when the Phillies play the Mets in the London Series this June.

Now let us all cross our fingers and hope against hope that Wainwright will replace John Smoltz on the postseason broadcasts sooner rather than later. What I’ve heard from Wainwright has been pretty good. Smoltz is . . . not so good.

Jim Palmer claims he was defrauded to the tune of $1 million

Hall of Fame pitcher and longtime Orioles broadcaster Jim Plamer has filed a lawsuit in California, claiming that he and his wife were defrauded of $1 million by a man who claimed to be a prominent British hair stylist seeking to launch a “global beauty brand” featuring a haircare product called “Poo” and an eyeliner called “Bitch-Brow.” A tale as old as time, really.

OK, I lightly mock, but this dude, named Warren Michael Holmes, does sound like a piece of crap. Palmer claims Harris wormed his way into the family by befriending Palmer’s autistic stepson in order to gain everyone’s confidence. Palmer and his wife acknowledge that, in hindsight, they seem to have been very gullible in all of this.

And maybe they were. But the thing about fraud cases and cons is that, in the moment, when there are emotional and interpersonal dynamics involved, even some otherwise sensible folks can get hoodwinked. Con artists know this and the successful ones are pretty good at pushing people’s buttons. It’s complicated stuff.

Other Stuff

A word about my relationship with Substack

I don’t mean to keep looking backward rather than forward, but a couple of people reached out to me yesterday about my feelings toward Substack and the writers who remain on the platform which inspired me to devote a few words to it.

My first correspondent noted that I linked to a Substack newsletter yesterday and asked me if I felt weird about it or if I felt I was crossing some sort of line in doing so. My second correspondent, a Substack writer to whom I subscribe, offered to comp me a subscription to their newsletter so that I would not be sending my money to Substack, which they presumed represented an ethical conflict for me.

And yeah, I get why these folks reached out to me about that. I made no small amount of noise, couched in very moral terms, as I departed the old place, so it might be expected that I would strive to completely boycott Substack out of principle.

But no, it’s not like that. I have no love for Substack as a company and I do not like how they’re going about their business, but that is not going to stop me from supporting writers whose work I respect and enjoy. My move was about my desire to cease giving several thousand dollars a year to the company as a cut of my work and to cease having my good work and my good name serve, directly or indirectly, as an endorsement of what the company is doing. If I pay $6 or $7 to a good writer for a good newsletter and 60 or 70 cents of that goes to Substack, well, so be it. I think my leaving has done far more harm to the company than my handful of subscriptions and occasional links helps it, and I’d much rather support the writers even if it means I cannot fully spite the platform which publishes them.

Underscoring all of this is the fact that it’s really goddamn rough out there for writers these days. We’re all doing the best we can, it’s not easy to move platforms, and in light of that I’m not gonna subject writers I admire and whose work which enriches my life to some kind of purity test. I’m pretty fortunate that I was able to make a choice in moving. Not everyone has that kind of latitude and the last thing I’m gonna do is hold that against them.

Our Brave New World

From 404 media:

Google News is boosting sites that rip-off other outlets by using AI to rapidly churn out content, 404 Media has found. Google told 404 Media that although it tries to address spam on Google News, the company ultimately does not focus on whether a news article was written by an AI or a human, opening the way for more AI-generated content making its way onto Google News

That Google both (a) boosts stolen content; but (b) does not actively distinguish between human and AI-written content has a number of fun implications.

For one thing, if this stuff is getting boosted without any overt acts on Google’s part it means that Google’s algorithms can be easily manipulated by those who steal and try to pass the work off as their own. For another thing, it means that Google is complicit in the dissemination of plagiarized material and doesn’t seem to care too much about it.

I do not see why this would stop at AI plagiarism. It seems inevitable that this will lead to completely false stories being generated and ending up quite high on Google News. At which point it will be picked up by other outlets, legitimate or otherwise, resulting in an endless feedback loop of fake news, with millions of people simply assuming it’s truthful because that’s what the millions do.

God, the future sucks, doesn’t it?

UK weather report 

Seen on the Internets yesterday morning:

I was gonna put some sort of photo with this item. Perhaps someone with a beer in each hand maybe. But my friends, let me tell ya: you never, ever wanna do an image search for “double-fisting.” Let’s just leave it at that.

In related news, my dad worked for the National Weather Service and one time he told me that someone he worked with got on the weather radio — which is supposed to only broadcast weather forecasts, warnings, and other basic information in a no-nonsense fashion — and told a long, winding story about why we call the hot days in July and August “the dog days.” And it was probably full of bullshit folk etymology baloney too.

Anyway, there’s your dog-fisted weather update for the day. Never let anyone tell ya I don’t stay on-brand.

Have a great day everyone.

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