Cup of Coffee: July 16, 2024

Good morning!

Today we have some retro recaps, we talk about the Home Run Derby, the All-Star lineups, and a couple of writers who decided to fluff Marcell Ozuna for some reason. In Other Stuff I explain why no one should be laying off Trump, a lawless judge, and J.D. frickin' Vance.

And That Happened 

Due to the All-Star break, we now bring you a special “Classic” version of “And That Happened.” The following originally ran on the Cup of Coffee pamphlet, which was mailed to subscribers for the low monthly price of $0.19, following the games of July 16, 1949.

Indians 7, Athletics 1: Jim Hegan homered and Satchel Paige picked up something called a “save.” I’m not sure what a “save” is but I heard some young progressive scribe speaking of it in the press box so who knows? Changing the subject: A lot of people have written in to tell me that I should not write out the name of this team. That it’s in poor taste and even un-American to mention it. Well, I don’t care. The name “Athletics” was on a baseball team long before the Soviets began to claim that their superiority at sports was proof of the superiority of communism, so I won’t change it. Indeed, just as sure as this august club will forever call Philadelphia home, I will call them the Athletics. See if I don’t!

Reds 7, Dodgers 6: Reds catcher Walker Cooper hit a two-run homer in the top of the tenth inning to give Cincinnati the lead and the Dodgers could only plate one in the bottom half. That one came via a solo home run from Jackie Robinson who, earlier in the game, stole home to give Brooklyn a 1-0 lead. If only he had some help in the tenth. If only — and I know I’m being ridiculous here — Commissioner Chandler could’ve magically mandated that a runner already be on base when Robinson batted in the tenth. We could call him the “Happy Man.” It’d be a hoot!

Pirates 9, Giants 0; Pirates 7, Giants 6: In the first game Wally Westlake went 4-for-4 with two homers and four RBI while Ed FitzGerald, Dino Restelli, Bob Chesnes, and Ralph Kiner all went deep as well. Poor Clint Hartung gave up most of those dingers. I haven’t seen anyone obliterated like that since they sent that rhesus monkey into space on that V-2 rocket last month and didn’t bother working out how they’d get him to land safely. His counterpart, Bob Chesnes, tossed a six-hit shutout. Keep your eye on him, kiddos, because I predict he’ll be one of the more dominant hurlers of the 1950s!

In the second game Pittsburgh blew a 6-0 lead and was forced to go to extra innings to pull it out. And pull it out they did, with Westlake hitting another homer and Tiny Bonham stealing home in the process. Really, there is far too much stealing of home these days. If Commissioner Chandler doesn’t do anything about it all games will be decided by steals of home one day soon. The national pastime will be rendered unrecognizable.

Braves 9, Cubs 1: They say every team has a chance to win every game, but with the way the Braves were swinging the bat and the way Johnny Sain (9 IP, 6 H, 1 ER) was pitching, the Cubs stood just as much a chance of seeing victory as that Mao Zedong character has of ruling China one day. As if some upstart Asian commie stands a chance against a force backed by western powers! Ha!

White Sox 5, Nationals 1: Cass Michaels doubled in two in the third and singled in two in the seventh to pace the Pale Hose. Sadly, as soon as the game was over he was named, alongside Helen Keller, Dorothy Parker, Danny Kaye, Fredric March, John Garfield, Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson, in an FBI report identifying Communist Party members, so he’ll not likely be able to help Chicago in their upcoming 21-game road trip which begins at the end of this month. Such trips are soon to be a thing of the past, by the way. I just read that the Brits have perfected the world’s first jet-powered airliner. They’re caling it the de Havilland Comet. Pretty soon ballplayers will be “cometing” all over the world for quick three and four-game trips, that I can tell you!

Phillies 4, Cardinals 2: Phillies third baseman Willie Jones hit a home run and the other three Philly runs scored on errors and groundouts and so forth. Joe Garagiola doubled in a run for the Cards. Based on what I’ve seen of that fella he’s gonna, without question, go down in history as the best catcher to ever come out of the city of St. Louis.

Browns 4, Yankees 2: A two-run single from Roy Sievers, a sacrifice fly from Jack Graham, and a Phil Rizzuto throwing error gave the Brownies all of their runs in the first inning. The rains later shortened this one quicker than Truman cut short James Forrestal’s tenure as the Secretary of Defense. Here’s hoping the loss doesn’t cause the Yankees to follow Forrestal’s lead and plummet to the cellar as well.

[Editor: Forrestal actually landed on a third floor overhang. He never got as far as the basement. Also: too soon].

Red Sox 11, Tigers 1: Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Al Zarilla, and Birdie Tebbetts all hit home runs while Mel Parnell went the distance and allowed just one run on four hits. I just read this new book which, while it will almost certainly uninteresting to most readers and fall out of print in short order, did have a passage which I’m going to steal to describe games like this going forward: If you want a picture the future of pitchers who face Boston’s impressive lineup, imagine a player in Red Sox spikes stamping on a human face— forever.

The Daily Briefing

The Home Run Derby

Will it sure began with a bang. Or, should I say, a bomb:

I can only hope this was viral marketing for Southwest’s revival of its “wanna get away?” campaign.

As for the Derby itself: Teoscar Hernández won, edging out Bobby Witt Jr. in the final. The guy I woulda guessed would win it — Pete Alonso — had the second to worst performance and didn’t make it out of the first round. I ended up tuning out not long after that first round, actually, and watching the TNG episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” A certified banger, that one. It’s what taught me the trolley problem when I was 16 back when it first aired.

Whatever. It’s a me thing. I just can’t get into the Home Run Derby, and that’s before you accept that ESPN’s production of the event seems calculated to confuse and disorient. And before you realize that, at nearly three hours, it’s longer than an actual game in the pitch clock era.

Everyone’s mileage varies, of course, but if they said the Derby was over with and they were gonna do something else from now on, I’d be fine with it. And seriously: watch “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” Change your life, dude.

The All-Star lineups

They released ‘em yesterday. Here they are:

National League

Ketel Marte 2B
Shohei Ohtani DH
Trea Turner SS
Bryce Harper 1B
William Contreras C
Christian Yelich RF
Alec Bohm 3B
Teoscar Hernández CF
Jurickson Profar LF

Starting pitcher: Paul Skenes

American League

Steven Kwan LF
Gunnar Henderson SS
Juan Soto RF
Aaron Judge CF
Yordan Alvarez DH
José Ramírez 3B
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. 1B
Adley Rutschman C
Marcus Semien 2B

Starting Pitcher: Corbin Burnes

Obviously this will all begin to change after the first inning when a parade of one-inning pitchers comes in and most of the position players get subbed out. Indeed, it’s almost always the case that the All-Star Game is decided by bench players and bullpen arms.

Still: given that we already know that Skenes is only going to pitch one inning I’d like to see one of the top-three AL hitters reach base so we can watch a Skenes-Aaron Judge battle.

Why are we fluffing Marcell Ozuna?

Yesterday Bob Nightengale of USA Today wrote a column about how “Marcell Ozuna, nearly run out of Atlanta a year ago, is now loved and MVP of their team after spectacular first half.” Also yesterday Justin Toscano of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution wrote a story about how “In the clubhouse, you always hear about Marcell Ozuna being a great teammate. So for All-Star week, I went around and got different Ozuna stories that show why his teammates love him so much.”

I appreciate that Marcell Ozuna is having a good season but it’s also the case that he’s a domestic abuser. And while a baseball reporter cannot, while covering a baseball game, fail to note if Marcell Ozuna hits a home run or an RBI double, he or she can and should decline to write a fluff piece which makes a violent domestic abuser out to be a great guy and a great teammate.

Doing that is a choice and it’s a poor choice which helps to whitewash domestic violence. Shame on Nightengale, Toscano, and anyone else who does this.

Other Stuff

This is no time to stop going after Donald Trump

Yesterday, in the wake of Saturday’s shooting, the New York Times’ editorial page editor ⁦Kathleen Kingsbury⁩ apologized for the paper’s editorial in the Sunday print edition declaring Donald Trump unfit for office. She said that it would not have run it if they had not pre-printed it and that they would not run it in the digital section in any case because they did not want to be seen as “politicizing” the shooting.

Also yesterday MSNBC pulled its “Morning Joe” show off the air because it was “reportedly worried the Morning Joe crew might say something 'inappropriate' about the Trump assassination attempt.” There have been numerous other examples of Democratic figures or mainstream media outlets advocating for a defacto suspension of campaigning or criticism of Trump, again, because they do not want to be seen as “politicizing” things.

All of this comes as Republicans cynically claim that a registered Republican voter, armed with a gun that Republicans fucking love and that they have gone out of their way to shield from regulation, shooting a Republican politician is the fault of “Democratic rhetoric.” It comes as right wingers are selling t-shirts with images from Saturday on them and doing giveaways of AR-15s at the RNC. It comes as they are both centering the shooting in the campaign and are profiting off of it. And make no mistake: if the reverse happened had happened and someone had taken a shot at Biden, Trump would have put out an ad saying the shooter should've had better aim and Fox News would've run segments about how wider gun ownership makes people better shots. You know it’s true because they have all made light of political violence in the past when the victims of it were not Republicans.

As I wrote yesterday, what happened Saturday is unacceptable. All political violence is unacceptable and it should never happen. But it isn't "politicizing" the tragedy to point out that Donald Trump is unfit for office. It isn’t “politicizing” things to point out that no politician has done more to glorify political violence in recent American history than Donald Trump. And sure as hell isn’t somehow out-of-bounds to continue to campaign against Donald Trump. A man who is every bit as unfit for office today as he was on Saturday morning.

No one is above the law except Donald Trump

Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the Mar-A-Lago documents case against Donald Trump yesterday. Her cited reason: her finding that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment violated the Constitution. It is a plainly erroneous ruling employed because Judge Cannon is a hardcore Republican partisan who has been looking for any excuse to get rid of the case.

Really, it’s comically wrong. The determination that Smith was unlawfully appointed is based on a legal theory which has been tested by the targets of special counsel investigations multiple times in previous cases and has never been endorsed by any court whatsoever. The sole basis for Cannon’s ruling was a side comment from Clarence Thomas’ concurrence in the likewise erroneous presidential immunity case. All of which is just window dressing, of course. Today’s brand of “conservative” judges don’t give a damn about law or precedent or a coherent jurisprudence. Their rulings are dictated by their current political goals, full stop. Any rule or law that threatens Republican power is ignored.

The only good news to this is that by issuing an outright dismissal, the special counsel can now appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Before now Cannon had issued multiple orders hamstringing the case against Trump but none of which were appealable. She will almost certainly be overturned. Of course, that won’t happen for months and months, meaning that Trump will not face any consequences before the election and, if he is elected, he can simply pardon himself and make it all go away.

Despite the fact that he was caught red-handed, with photographic evidence, establishing that he stole top secret U.S. documents and compromised national security by having them, Donald Trump will face no legal consequences whatsoever because he has Republican judges eager to do his bidding.

No one is above the law in this country. Except Donald Trump. He’s above the law. He has never suffered a single legal consequence despite committing all manner of crimes. And he never will.

J.D. Vance: Vice Presidential nominee

Yesterday Donald Trump selected Hillbilly Elegy author, Ohio Senator, and my personal nemesis, J.D. Vance as his vice presidential nominee. While I have predicted for some time now that Trump would select Vance, the news that he actually did it still caused me to sigh heavily.

For those who are unfamiliar, I have had Vance pegged as a phony since the moment I read his book back in 2016. While everyone — especially coastal liberal elites — were sucking up what he was spewing with gusto, his phoniness was manifest as far as I was concerned. And not just the superficial stuff about how a guy from Middletown, Ohio could plausibly claim to be a “hillbilly.” Rather, Vance’s inherent phoniness was plain as day upon first reading. It was clear that his “aw shucks” personal narrative was being employed to advance the conservative agenda.

I don’t want to spend thousands of words rehashing all of that because my longtime readers are probably sick of hearing about it, but the short version is this: rather than there being straightforward and understandable political and economic reasons for the decline of the working class and middle America, Vance’s belief is that it’s all a function of moral failure. Of some ill-explained and spontaneous decision of poor and working people to suddenly become shiftless and lazy. It’s a view that, by shocking coincidence, absolves the sorts of investment banks, private equity firms, law firms, and conservative think tanks for which J.D. Vance had been working for several years. “It’s not your fault, rich Americans, American corporations, and American politician and policymakers,” Vance was saying. “It’s the poors. They’re just dumb and gullible and weak and have lost their way for reasons I can’t really explain, but which has NOTHING to do with actual material conditions in the world. I know this, because I was once one of them, so you can trust me on that. You’re all good.” It was a kinder, gentler means of deploying Reagan’s “welfare queens”/blame the poor world view that has been every bit as mendacious as it has been destructive.

In short: fuck that guy.

My personal issues with Vance and his world view notwithstanding, on the merits it seems like making him the V.P. candidate is a pretty stupid choice. Off the top of my head:

• Vance is not needed to carry Ohio, which Trump easily carried in 2016 and 2020 and would carry again in 2024 even if his VP nominee was the reanimated corpse of Bo Schembechler. Trump might actually help himself more if he picked someone from Virginia or Wisconsin or Arizona;
• While Vance won his Senate race in 2022, he actually underperformed statewide Republicans by a significant margin. Ohio’s governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Treasurer, and Auditor — Republicans all — were at or near 60% of the vote in that election while Vance got 53% against a pretty uninspiring Democratic opponent;
• Vance, in fact, almost didn’t get the GOP nominee for Senate. He trailed a pretty terrible candidate named Josh Mandel for most of the primary season. Mandel had lost multiple previous campaigns and has been involved in all kinds of personal scandals. The only thing that pushed Vance over the top was Donald Trump swooping in and endorsing him. If not for that, he would’ve been dead meat;
• A big reason why Vance underperformed other Republicans in Ohio is that he is incredibly unlikable. That’s not just my bias talking. He was a pretty poor campaigner in 2022 — which is the only race he’s ever run — and came off as unctuous and smug. Which makes sense given that he’s a Yale-educated lawyer with deep dies to the tech/private equity sector who has spent years cosplaying as a hillbilly, which he is not in any way, shape or form;
• He’s also a phony in other respects. He’s on record talking shit about Trump, saying in a 2016 interview, “I’m a Never Trump guy. I never liked him.” That year he also posted a tweet saying, “My god what an idiot,” referring to Trump. He also calling Trump “noxious” and “reprehensible,” a “cynical asshole,” and “America’s Hitler,” and openly considered supporting Hillary Clinton that year;
• Vance changed his tune once he got political aspirations of his own and has spent the last several years kissing Trump’s ass on the daily, explaining just how wrong he was. It was because of how dedicated he has been to that ass-kissing that Trump — who LOVES it when people kiss his ass — came around on him. He gets off on that kind of debasement and Vance is so lacking in personal integrity, shame, and self-esteem that he loves to help Trump get off. All of which explains why Trump loves him. Once he knows he can dominate someone he ALWAYS wants them around. But he seems like a pretty poor choice for just about every other reason.

Of course, maybe it doesn’t matter. Vice presidents tend not to move the needle too much anymore and, even if they did, Trump is a cult leader, not a politician who seeks to persuade anyone, and he’s had many years now to build his cult. Either way, it speaks to just how unconcerned Trump is with the usual things the democratic process supports and encourages.

Ultimately, there is one thing and one thing only that Trump cares about in a Vice President: will he, if asked to do something illegal and anti-democratic in order to enhance or preserve Trump’s power, do it with no questions asked, and with no hesitation. Vance is the epitome of a selfish, power-hungry politician who lied about his own family, friends, and neighbors to jumpstart his political career. If he can do that he will 100% tear up the Constitution into little bits in order to advance Trump’s interests and, ultimately, his own.

That’s why he’s getting the job.

Have a great day everyone.

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