Cup of Coffee: July 19, 2024

Good morning!

Today we talk about the 2025 schedule dropping, note how MLB is disrespecting Sacramento, learn about Bauer in the time of cholera, remember what presidential campaigns are SUPPOSED to sound like, remind ourselves that America is full of ugliness, talk about vacations that are not vacations, and remember the great Bob Newhart.

Let’s get at ‘er.

And That Happened

Those fake retro recaps take a LONG time to write, and I just didn’t have time to write another one yesterday. But I’ve done a ton of them in the past and I’m guessing that a great many of you never saw some of old ones I did, so I think it’s OK to do a rerun.

So here’s one — originally published at NBC in 2017 — pretending to be from July 14, 1985. And, unlike the past couple of days, the conceit of which was that they were originally published in the “Cup of Coffee pamphlet,” I’m going to pretend this one was mailed to subscribers alongside eleven other stories for one cent. Anything beyond that cost readers $98 and required that they sign away a kidney.

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Angels 5, Blue Jays 3: California was down 3-2 in the bottom of the ninth when Reggie Jackson walked and was pinch-run for by Craig Gerber. Ruppert Jones bunted him over and Bobby Grich knocked him in with an RBI single to tie it. Next batter up was Brian Downing who hit a homer, winning the game for the Angels. As soon as he hit that home run the Blue Jays players simply walked off the field in dejection, not even waiting for Downing to round the bases. It was a striking sight, inspiring me to give these sorts of victories a special name. I shall call them: “wins which cause the other team to leave the field slowly.” I think it’ll catch on.

Reds 5, Expos 4: Montreal was leading 4-3 heading into the bottom of the ninth when Dave Concepcion singled in Gary Redus to tie things up. Then, in the tenth, Dave Parker came to bat with Pete Rose on first base and Cesar Cedeno on second. Parker hit a single driving in Cedeno to give Cincinnati the win. In other news, it’s 1985 and Dave Concepcion, Dave Parker, Pete Rose and Cedar Cedeno are still somehow relevant. Perhaps that seems normal to we grownups, for whom time moves quickly, but it has to be odd for, say, children turning 12-years-old on this very day who first came to know of these men via their older brother’s baseball cards and have it in their mind that they are nearly ancient warriors from the hazy years of their infancy.

White Sox 5, Orioles 3: Another ancient warrior, Tom Seaver, struck out 11 and allowed three runs over eight and two-thirds, scattering seven hits. Not bad for a 40-year-old. It’s still hard getting used to Seaver in a White Sox uniform, even in his second season in Chicago. But I suppose we’ll get used to it. Just like we’ve all gotten used to New Coke.

Braves 12, Phillies 3: Bob Horner hit two homers and drove in five and Glen Hubbard knocked in four. Horner’s homers caused the game to be delayed by 17 minutes due to him stopping between each base to take a knee and catch his breath. It happens. Mike Schmidt played third base. We all know him as a third baseman, of course, but he’s played more first base this season, making this is an odd situation, at least for this year. Not as odd as Phil Collins playing drums for Led Zeppelin in yesterday’s “Live Aid” concert back home in Philadelphia, but still somewhat unusual.

Cubs 10, Dodgers 4: The Cubs had a 5-0 lead after three innings and never looked back. The first run came on a Ryne Sandberg home run. Two of the other early runs came via the bat of pitcher Steve Trout, who hit a two-run single and helped a run to score when reaching on an error. It’s so unusual to see a pitcher hit well but it’s all relative. He may not do well for major league baseball players, but he is, in all likelihood, the best hitter by the name of Trout who will ever live.

Royals 9, Indians 5: The Royals took a lead, the Indians got close, the Royals extended their lead, the Indians got close and then the Royals added some at the end and won the game going away. Julio Franco hit a two-run home run in a losing effort. That’s nice to see, I suppose as, despite his promise, the young man has been a below average hitter thus far. If that were to continue his career will, regrettably, be a short one. If he turns it around there is no reason to think he couldn’t play into the mid-1990s. Crazy, I know, but something strikes me about this kid.

Giants 7, Pirates 3: Bill Lasky outpitched Rick Rhoden, allowing two runs in five and a third innings while David Green and Chili Davis went deep. The Pirates were forced to deal with a depleted lineup, as seventeen members of the roster, four coaches, two trainers, three concession workers, five security cards, two ticket takers one of the play-by-play announcers and the parrot mascot were all meeting with their attorneys in anticipation of this September’s cocaine trial. This is all difficult, of course, but Commissioner Ueberroth told reporters yesterday that, as a result of this trail and the corresponding investigation by Major League Baseball, the game will be free of drugs by 1987. That’s wonderful news. Thank you, Mr. Commissioner!

Mets 1, Astros 0: The Mets’ phenom, Dwight Gooden, tossed a five-hit shutout, striking out 11, after which he ran laps around the outfield and then gave high-speed interviews to multiple media outlets. It was as if he had some sort of unusual source of energy. As if he were able to access another level of sensory acuity. I can’t explain it, folks. It must just be his youthful vigor.

Yankees 7, Rangers 1: Ron Guidry allowed one run, struck out six and didn’t walk a batter in the course of tossing a complete game. Every Yankee player reached base at least once. Omar Moreno doubled and tripled and Dave Winfield hit a home run. Manager Yogi Berra was fired after the third inning, his replacement, Billy Martin, was fired after the sixth inning, his replacement, Clyde King, was fired after the eighth inning after which Martin was hired again to finish out the ninth.

Tigers 8, Twins 0: Walt Terrell and Willie Hernandez combined to pitch a shutout for the defending World Series champions. A juggernaut of a team last year, the Tigers aren’t doing quite as well now, trailing the Blue Jays and Yankees. Still, the team will be well-represented in Minneapolis for the All-Star Game this Tuesday evening. Lou Whitaker and Lance Parrish were voted on to the team, Jack Morris will be the starting pitcher, Hernandez and Dan Petry will be on the staff, Alan Trammell will be on the bench and, of course, Sparky Anderson will manage. I spoke with Sparky before the game and teased out the starting lineup for the Midsummer Classic as well:

1. Rickey Henderson, CF
2. Lou Whitaker, 2B
3. George Brett, 3B
4. Eddie Murray, 1B
5. Cal Ripken, Jr., SS
6. Dave Winfield, RF
7. Jim Rice, LF
8. Carlton Fisk, C (for the injured Parrish)
9. Jack Morris, P

I suppose that’s a fair lineup. There may even be a future Hall of Famer on there. Possibly even two.

Athletics 11, Brewers 2: Carney Lansford, Mike Davis and Bruce Bochte all hit homers as the A’s throttled the Brewers. In all there were 13 hits in this game. Here are ten of them:

1. A View to a Kill -- Duran Duran
2. Sussudio -- Phil Collins
3. Raspberry Beret -- Prince
4. The Search is Over -- Survivor
5. Would I Lie to You -- Eurythmics
6. Every Time You Go Away -- Paul Young
7. You Give Good Love -- Whitney Houston
8. Voices Carry -- Til Tuesday
9. Glory Days -- Bruce Springsteen
10. The Goonies R Good Enough -- Cyndi Lauper

Wait, I’m sorry, that’s the playlist from this week’s “America’s Top 10,” which I snagged off the radio. I was typing that out to insert into the case of the Memorex cassette onto which I recorded it. I’m the best at these tapes, by the way. I can hit “play” and “record” at the same time, the second when Casey Kasem gets done talking. You couldn’t do that back when all there were were records. God, can you believe people listen to records? Get with the times, man. Tapes are where it’s at.

Red Sox 6, Mariners 2: Wade Boggs went 3-for-3 with a homer, a walk and two RBI as the Red Sox take three of four from the Mariners. Boggs is an All-Star himself, so as soon as this game ended he needed to hop that long flight from Seattle to join his mates. I wonder what a ballplayer like Boggs does on a long flight to pass the time.

Cardinals 2, Padres 1: San Diego took a 1-0 lead but Terry Pendelton hit a home run off of Eric Show to tie things up in the seventh and Tito Landrum singled in Vince Coleman in the bottom of the eighth to put the Cards ahead for good. Tough break for Show, who otherwise pitched well, but if not getting run support is the worst thing that happens to that fine young man, he’ll be doing all right in life.

The Daily Briefing

The 2025 schedule is out

Major League Baseball dropped the 2025 schedule yesterday. Of note:

• March 18-19: The season will begin in Japan at the Tokyo Dome with the Dodgers and Cubs squaring off in the Tokyo Series for two games. This will be like this season and years past in which the international start will occur while spring training games are still going on and the participants will still play some games that don’t count after playing the two that do. Always weird, but the logistics are the logistics.
• March 27: Real Opening Day, with all 30 teams in action.
• May 16-18: “Rivalry Weekend,” in which traditional or geographic or totally contrived rivals will all play each other. Of note: unlike this year, in 2025 prime interleague rivals — Yankees-Mets, Dodgers-Angels, Rangers-Astros, etc. — will play six games against each other rather than four games against each other. We still have an overall balanced schedule in that every club now plays each of the other 29 clubs, but at least they’re trying to make more interesting matchups more common, if only by a couple of games.
• July 15: All-Star Game in Atlanta. This is to make up for the one they took away from Atlanta in 2022 in the wake of the State of Georgia enacting all sorts of voter suppression measures. No, Georgia did not repeal any of those voter suppression measures and, in fact, it has enacted more since. It’s just that the heat has died down and Major League Baseball doesn’t really give a shit about any of that stuff as long as it’s not catching heat.
• September 28: Last day of the season.

Otherwise: some games will be day games, most games will be night games, and sometimes it will rain. I will be reporting more on this as events warrant, probably on a near daily basis.

There is no Sacramento. Only “ATH”

In the 2025 schedule all but one of the teams are denoted by three-letter abbreviations which fully or partially reference the city, such as “LAD” for Dodgers or “DET” for the Tigers. Which is how it always has been. The Athletics’ games, however, do not have any reference to Sacramento, the city in which they’ll be playing in 2025. They are abbreviated by “ATH”:

For what it’s worth, my overall goodwill toward the game of baseball is enough to keep me from suing them over using an abbreviation I’ve been using for my recaps for over 16 years now. I’ll let you have that one, guys.

Anyway, there are many in Sacramento who want to use the A’s temporary tenancy in the city as proof-of-concept for a permanent big league team one day. Those folks are gonna be pretty disillusioned pretty soon given how hard Major League Baseball and the A's are going to work to erase the word “Sacramento” or even the idea of Sacramento from the club's existence. It won’t be on the jerseys. It will probably be minimized in all league communications, including MLB dot com editorial content. And now it’s not even appearing on the schedule.

I figure that relationship is gonna get old before next year’s All-Star break, at least as far as the people of Sacramento are concerned.

Is there anyone on deck in Oakland?

Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle did not like Rob Manfred’s “everything in Las Vegas is going great!” schtick during his All-Star Game press conference. And dropped this item to suggest it’s horseshit:

The Chronicle’s John Shea, who annually peppers the baseball commissioner with questions about the A’s and Oakland, asked Manfred on Tuesday if a mayoral change in Oakland would make a difference for the city’s hopes of keeping the A’s if the Las Vegas deal falls apart, or for future expansion to the city.

“Look,” Manfred said, “our Oakland decisions have been made. What happens in Oakland is between the citizens of Oakland and their elected officials.”

Oh? Why is it, then, that various Bay Area groups interested in buying the A’s and keeping them in Oakland, or bringing an expansion team to Oakland, have been warned to keep quiet about their interest or risk being crossed off the list of potential buyers?

That warning has come to prospective buyers from Oakland officials, who say they have tried to get MLB to lift that gag order so the world can know that there are folks with money who believe in Oakland as an MLB city.  

Could it be that MLB is worried that a local potential buyer who publicly expresses interest in such a project in Oakland would make Fisher and Manfred look foolish?

In situations where a professional sports team is leaving town it’s not uncommon for locals to claim that, actually, there is a means for the team to stay but The Man won’t let it happen or whatever. It’s often based on a thin gruel of facts that are pumped up to some degree because the anti-ownership mood of the city means that there’s little downside in casting the league and the departing team as the bad guys. So no, I have no idea if there really are people wanting to buy the A’s who are being told to shut up about it. Actually, I sort of doubt there are. Maybe some tire-kickers at best.

If the Vegas deal doesn’t come together soon, however, that could change. Certainly worth keeping an eye on.

No thanks

I’m generally not a fan of gimmick food at ballparks, but this one looks especially gimmicky and especially bad even by the standards of bad gimmick food:

I can only assume this is part of the Royals’ campaign to get out of their stadium and into a new one in Kansas. Like, if their food service management executives are under indictment for reckless homicide for feeding human beings shit like this, they can’t risk being found within Jackson County, Missouri.

SERIOUSLY no thanks

Some MLB news I never expected to break: A source in Trevor Bauer's camp told me last night that he's dealing with what the source believed was a case of cholera in Mexico.6:48 PM • Jul 18, 202414 Likes   4 Retweets  1 Reply

He says he wants to play in the U.S. again but he's apparently off fording rivers on the Oregon trail or whatever the hell. Head simply not in the game.

Other Stuff

This is what a presidential candidate is supposed to sound like

It sounds more and more like President Biden is laying the groundwork to bow out of the campaign. What’s more, it’s increasingly sounding like, if he doesn’t, more and more pressure will be placed upon him by elected Democrats who are quickly coalescing around the idea that he has to back out. You can’t put that kind of toothpaste back in the tube, I don’t think, and I suspect that it’s only a matter of time before Biden does, in fact, withdraw.

I’ve talked a lot about all of this in the past several days, of course. I think it sucks because, while I have my issues with Biden, I voted for him in 2020, I think that, with a few notable exceptions, he’s done good things as president, and I’d vote for him again this year if he were to still be on the ballot come November. In some ways this all broke for him unfairly, even if none of it has come from a place of malice. It’s, to quote Joe Girardi, not what you want.

But you know what? You don't have to be entrenched on one side of the should-Biden-quit-or-should-he-not debate to acknowledge that, in his condition, he simply cannot give a basic stump speech like the one Kamala Harris gave in North Carolina yesterday:

That’s not exactly a bring-the-house-down speech or anything. It’s fairly typical as far as these things go. But it’s leaps and bounds more than Biden is capable of doing now and, in all likelihood, for the rest of this campaign. Putting the message out there repeatedly, and with discipline, is basic, retail politics that wins elections.

I don’t think most of us have truly grasped how long the Biden campaign has been on autopilot, relying on surrogates and social media and stuff to date. That can’t continue. A real campaign with the nominee making a clear and cogent case about why America will be better off if they win and worse off if the other side wins is what is required.

Kamala Harris can do that. Joe Biden can’t. It may not be fair. It may not be what we wanted. But it’s a fact.

The Faces of Fascism

From the RNC on Wednesday night:

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about Biden, Harris, Trump, and Vance of late, but it’s worth noting something important here: American politics isn't really about Great Men or Great Women leading from the top down. What the people want still matter. And if we fail to acknowledge that a hell of a lot of people in this country want some truly odious things we’re missing a big part of the picture.

Trumpism and all of the extremism that goes with it is not salient because Trump articulated a fascist agenda for the first time and convinced people to help him advance it. He and those around him recognized that there are millions upon millions of people in this country who already liked and wanted that stuff but who had no one speaking to them about it and expressing their agreement with it so plainly. Trump has harnessed a longstanding ugliness in this country. He’s given voice to the desires of the tens of millions of people who want to round up, brutalize, and deport immigrants. He’s given voice to the tens of millions of people who want women to be, for all practical purposes, the property of men. He’s given voice to the tens of millions of people who are just fine with abolishing democracy and instituting an authoritarian regime because they believe that regime will favor them and will punish those who they hate and they want punished.

Trump, Vance and their ilk have not been successful because of their cunning. They have been successful because they tapped into something very real, very large, and very ugly in the American body politic. We spend all day talking tactics, candidates, and who has won the news cycle, but that basic fact has never changed.

In the course of all of the should-Biden-drop-out drama, people are already talking about the recriminations and cross-recriminations which will fly if Trump wins again in November. For me the larger, most disappointing thing -- win or lose -- will be the reminder that roughly 80 million voters WANT fascism. That they are OK with it. And that many of them will pursue violence if they don’t get it, even if it’s soundly defeated in an election.

That’s the problem America faces. And it’s bigger than all of the other problems we have.

Meanwhile in corporate America . . .

There’s a meme that circulates in various forms in which something quintessentially American is shown with the words “The European mind cannot comprehend this” over it. The way vacation works in this country is probably the single greatest example of that. From The Independent:

With more than 22 million US adults working remotely, according to the Pew Research Center, workers are taking advantage of not having to be in the office by enjoying so-called “quiet vacations.” The concept of quiet vacationing piggybacks off LinkedIn buzzwords like quiet quitting. But instead of gradually putting minimal effort into their jobs, quiet vacationers take mini-vacations while on the clock, making it seem like they’re working the entire time . . . The data reflects the reality that workers face, with many harboring anxiety over using their maximum vacation days and thinking that taking too much time off will signal laziness. Harris Poll’s chief strategy officer, Libby Rodney, explained to the Wall Street Journal that quiet vacationers are “going to work around it and not put themselves in a position of vulnerability.”

I remember when I started at my first law firm and I was told I had like six weeks of vacation time or something nuts like that. It was adorable of 25 year-old me to think that that meant I would ever get to take a vacation of even a few days without being severely judged for it and without being expected to be in constant contact with clients, partners, and everyone else the whole time too. And that’s before you realize that, even if I could get away for more than a long weekend, I’d never make my annual billable hour requirements if I did.

For a long time I just assumed that the phony vacation time from law firms was merely a function of the dysfunctional world of the private law practice, but nah, it’s everywhere these days.

Bob Newhart: 1929-2024

The great Bob Newhart has died at the age of 94.

There was no one who did more with a droll, deadpan delivery than Newhart did. It worked in the standup act that led to groundbreaking, platinum-selling albums which made his name. It worked in not just one but two smart, hilarious, hit TV comedies. It worked in countless guest appearances, both dramatic and as himself. It even worked for him in the few dramatic roles he took.

Newhart could deploy a stammer, flash a concerned, knowing, or slightly confused look, or exploit a moment of brief silence like no other. And he was positively inimitable. Anyone who even tried to do what he did was instantly identified as someone trying to be Bob Newhart. His thing worked for basically no one else. Indeed, there was a whole subplot in the first story of the TV show “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” in which hack, wannabe comedians try to steal Newhart’s signature bit — having a one-sided phone conversation in which the audience has to imagine what the other person was saying — but can’t do it because everyone knows that it was Newhart’s act.

Rest in Peace, Bob Newhart. The patron saint of balding, low-key normie Midwestern men who fancy themselves to have at least a little bit of a sense of humor.

It’s been a hell of a week, folks. One of the most nerve-wracking weeks in recent memory. But let’s all try to have a great weekend anyway.

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