Cup of Coffee: March 5, 2024
An extension, a retirement a hammy, a putatively non-political point, the Rockies' vests, Coyote v. ACME, the Supreme Court, and modern grave robbing
Good morning!
Today we talk about the Phillies extending their ace, a former MVP calling it quits, a would-be ace tweaking his hammy, a manager making a point about the National Anthem, the Rockies getting rid of their most memorable jersey, and the passing of a catcher with a World Series ring.
In Other Stuff we have a plot summary for a movie that certain powerful people don’t want you to see, the Supreme Court has, once again, acted politically, my senator has, once again, said something dumb, I encountered some movie trivia that makes me feel old, and I write more about grave robbing than you probably expected to read today.
The Daily Briefing
Phillies, Zack Wheeler agree to an extension
The Philadelphia Phillies and ace Zack Wheeler have agreed to an extension. The terms: three years and $126 million. The deal makes him the fourth-highest paid starting pitcher by annual average salary ($42 million per) in baseball history. It is, likewise, the highest average annual salary for any contract extension ever, as opposed to the signing of a free agent.
The deal contains no opt-outs, though it’s hard to see why Wheeler would want one given how much he’s gettin’ paid. Moreover, at the end of the upcoming season Wheeler will obtain 10-5 rights and that gives him the ability to veto any trade in the final two years of the deal. Feel free to paint your apartment and fill your freezer up, Zack. You won’t be forced to move for few years.
Wheeler, 33, finished 13-6 with a 3.61 ERA (119 ERA+) last season. In his four seasons with the Phillies he’s gone 43-25 with a 3.06 ERA (137 ERA+) in 101 starts. He has also radically decreased his walk rate and increased his strikeout rate compared to his first five big league seasons when he pitched for the Mets. The same Mets who, I’m guessing anyway, probably wish they hadn’t let Wheeler walk in free agency after the 2019 campaign.
Josh Donaldson retires
Josh Donaldson, who won the American League MVP award in 2015 and enjoyed an excellent 13-year career, announced his retirement yesterday.
Donaldson finishes with a lifetime batting line of .261/.358/.489 (129 OPS+), 279 home runs, and 816 RBI. In addition to the 2015 MVP he won the Silver Slugger Award in 2015 and 2016 and was an All-Star in 2014, 2015, and 2016. He played four seasons for Oakland, four for the Blue Jays, two for the Twins, two for the Yankees, and then ended his career with stops in Cleveland, Atlanta, and Milwaukee.
Donaldson’s best season, the 2015 MVP campaign, saw him blast 41 homers and drive in a league-high 123 runs while scoring an MLB-high 122 runs and leading the AL in total bases and sac flies. Donaldson received 23 of 30 first-place votes for the MVP that year, besting Mike Trout for the award. He’d end up finishing in the Top 10 for his league's MVP award four times. All of that from a guy who was originally drafted as a catcher and who wasn’t an everyday player until his age-27 season.
Donaldson could be a polarizing figure. He got into a number of beefs with opposing players and, at times, was at odds with people in his own clubhouse. His most notorious run-in came while he was playing for the Yankees and he called White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson "Jackie" in reference to Jackie Robinson. Anderson and others took offense to the comment. Donaldson later apologized and was suspended for a game for “inappropriate comments.”
So yeah, a mixed bag as a human, but a pretty good ballplayer all the same.
Sonny Gray tweaks his hamstring
St. Louis Cardinals starter Sonny Gray left his start against the Washington Nationals during the second inning yesterday afternoon due to tightness in his right hamstring. Apart from word that he’d undergo an MRI, there was no update on his condition as of close of business last night (which for me is pretty damn early), but you usually get more comprehensive updates on such things when clubhouses open the next morning, so stay tuned.
Gray, 34, is entering his 12th season in the bigs. He came in second in Cy Young balloting while pitching for Minnesota last year, after which he signed a three-year $75 million deal with St. Louis.
Bob Melvin orders players to be on the field for the National Anthem
Per USA Today, we learn that Giants manager Bob Melvin will be requiring every person who is in the Giants dugout before games begin to stand on the field for the National Anthem.
This is a reversal from when Gabe Kapler managed the team. Kapler had stopped appearing on the field for the Anthem following the Uvalde, Texas mass shooting. He had likewise previously kneeled in protest for several games in 2020 following the police murder of George Floyd. Which, whatever you think of that, know that Tony La Russa disapproved, so Kapler was probably on the side of the angels.
Melvin claims this new policy has nothing to do with politics:
“Look, we’re a new team here, we got some good players here,’’ Melvin said Friday, “it’s more about letting the other side know that we’re ready to play. I want guys out here ready to go. There’s a personality to that.
“It has nothing to do with whatever happened in the past or whatever, it’s just something I embrace."
Not sure I believe ya, Bob, but it’s your team now so you can do what you want.
The Rockies have gotten rid of their black jerseys
SportsLogos Dot Net reports that The Colorado Rockies have eliminated their black jerseys. The sleeveless ones, which you are easily picturing now because, even if they’re not aesthetic masterpieces, that uniform is about the only truly distinctive thing related to the Colorado Rockies apart from the elevation at which they play.
I’ll admit, however, this surprised me:
So… what’s the surprise? Well, that the Rockies even still had this jersey in their rotation! What’s not so much of a surprise is that it’s being eliminated (the team has confirmed this to SportsLogos.Net), as the club hasn’t worn their sleeveless black tops in nearly three years. Yes, despite the fact that they hadn’t worn them since a 5-4 loss at Arizona on October 3, 2021, the black vests were still an option and available to be worn over the entirety of the 2022 and 2023 seasons — they just didn’t!
I’m not gonna lie to y’all and say that I intentionally watched much Rockies action last year. Indeed, I did not. I caught one game in which the Dodgers played them in Denver and part of a Dodgers-Atlanta game if I remember correctly, and each time they wore their home whites. But if you had put a gun to my head and made me answer I definitely would’ve said they’ve worn the black vests more recently than 2021. But nah.
So now it’s home whites, road grays, alternate purple jerseys, and their green City Connect numbers. Oh well.
Ed Ott: 1951-2024
I missed this before publishing yesterday’s newsletter, but former major league catcher Ed Ott passed away on Sunday. He was 72.
Ott, a Pennsylvania native, was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1970. He made his debut with the big club in 1974 but played sparingly, spending most of that season and the next at Triple-A. Following the 1976 season longtime Bucco’s backstop Manny Sanguillén was traded to Oakland, leaving Ott and Duffy Dyer to compete for the regular gig. Ott would get more of the playing time and would serve as the Pirates primary backstop through the 1980 season. He went 7-for-25 during the 1979 postseason, knocking in three runs during the World Series and scoring the game-winning run against Baltimore in Game 2, helping the Pirates win their most recent title.
Ott would be traded to California just as the 1981 season was about to begin. He’d underperform that season before undergoing shoulder surgery which cost him the entire 1982 campaign. Ott would spend the next two seasons in the Angels’ minor league system trying to come back from his injury but would end up retiring in 1984. Following his playing career he served as a minor league manager in the Pirates organization and a big league coach with the Astros and Tigers. In all, Ott hit .259/.311/.368 (86 OPS+) in eight seasons while playing for some pretty dang good Pirates clubs.
Rest in peace Ed Ott.
Other Stuff
The Coyote v. ACME plot
We talked some time ago about how Warner Brothers produced an entire Looney Tunes movie, the hybrid animation-live action “Coyote v. ACME,” and then simply refused to release it. Indeed, word is that not only are they never going to release it but that they are going to destroy it in its entirety so that it will never see the light of day. This is not because of its quality or anything but because the studio does not believe it’ll make money and would prefer to take a tax write off on it.
A lot of people are mad about this. Partially because the idea — the Coyote suing ACME because all of the products he purchased from them to catch the Roadrunner have been defective — is pretty funny. Partially because people tend to like anything Looney Tunes related. Partially because it shows just how messed up the incentives which drive Hollywood decision makers are, with the creative process being subordinated to cynical business considerations even more than we previously suspected. Which, yeah, I can see would be irksome for anyone who actually cares about the creative process.
The people mad about this decision are not going down without at least something of a fight. Or some amount of spite, anyway. The other day the movie’s human star, Will Forte, tweeted that he had actually seen the completed product and that it was great. Then, yesterday, someone leaked the movie’s entire plot synopsis, in detail, on the Internet. As of this writing it still exists here, though I suspect Warner Brothers will do what it can to have it taken down.
It sounds fine enough I guess. The plot sounds a bit overly complicated, but that may just be a function of the person who summarized it being too detailed about it. Either way, the success or failure of a movie like that would not be based on how ironclad the plot is. It’d be based on how good the jokes and gags and visuals were, and we don’t have any of that here.
Still, I’m always a fan of sticking it to The Man, and Warner Brothers is definitely The Man here. I hope they are dogged by this for ages.
The Trump ballot eligibility ruling
Yesterday the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Donald Trump should remain on the ballot in Colorado, reversing a state ruling that disqualified him from returning to office pursuant to the Insurrection Clause of the Constitution. This despite the fact that he absolutely, 100% launched an insurrection in an effort to take power despite the results of a democratic election.
The result itself is not super surprising, as I always figured that the Court would, one way or another, seek to do whatever it could to keep Trump from being removed from the ballot. However, the fact that the conservative majority of the Court specifically said that Congress must pass legislation to disqualify someone under the Insurrection Clause is nuts. I’d be curious to know what other, if any, Constitutional provisions the Court considers to be inert absent an act of Congress. And I’d love to know their opinion about what making Congress the arbiter of what in the Constitution is and is not effective means for the separation of powers and the very idea of a written Constitution to begin with.
I’m being facetious of course. I don’t really want to know this Court’s answers to those questions because I know that they don’t have any. That’s because this is yet another instance in which the conservative majority of the Court has engaged in an activist, legislative role, which it routinely does to advance its own political priorities. This despite the empty and disingenuous lip service it and other conservatives give to the Court merely “interpreting” the law or acting as the “umpire,” as John Roberts has put it, merely “calling balls and strikes.”
Whatever anyone thinks of that, we know this much: there is an outlaw running for president. An outlaw who has already done everything he can to subvert democracy and usher in an authoritarian dictatorship and who is openly vowing on the campaign trail to do even more. None of our institutions were designed for this, as the people who devised our institutions simply assumed that no such person would ever get close to power. They were wrong about that. And they never dreamed, I don’t suppose, that an entire branch of government would be captured by judges who think it’s their job to enable such a person. Our nation has been in a years-long crisis as a result of all of this and there’s absolutely no end in sight.
In related news . . .
My senator, folks:
If the people who decided who the president was Al Gore would’ve won in 2000, Hilary Clinton would’ve won in 2016, and no Republican would have any chance whatsoever to win unless or until that party dropped its extremism and actually stood for things that anything approaching a majority of Americans stood for. Instead we have the Electoral College which allows for and, increasingly, encourages minority rule on the notion that it’s better for empty land and acreage to decide who our president is than actual people.
It happened over the cuckoo’s nest
I watch a lot of TCM because I am pretty much 67 years old about almost everything. As a result of that I get a lot of TCM content pushed to me on social media. I like this because it reminds me when good stuff is gonna be on that I might wanna watch. Which is how this whole ad-based world is supposed to work, even if most of the time I’m pushed ads for t-shirts designed to hide beer bellies and videos of people cleaning inexplicably dirty rugs.
Anyway, last night TCM played the 1934 classic “It Happened One Night.” A Facebook promo for it earlier in the day read thusly:
The first film to win all of the "Big Five" Oscar categories, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT ('34) took home Best Actor, Actress, Picture, Director, and Screenplay.
It was the first-ever sweep of the awards, a feat that would not be repeated for another 40 years, until ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST ('75).
When she was informed that she'd won, Claudette Colbert was about to depart on a train and quickly dashed to the ceremony. After accepting the award in her traveling suit, she dashed back to the train, which had been held for her.
Two thoughts:
- The fact that a seemingly ancient, just-barely-in-the-talkie-era movie like “It Happened One Night” came out a decade closer in time to the release of the, in my mind, relatively modern “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” than “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is to today is sort of breaking my brain; and
- How mad where the people on that train, having to sit around waiting for Claudette Colbert to get back to Union Station from the damn Oscar ceremony?
Anyway, both of those are among the best flicks ever produced, so if you haven’t seen ‘em rectify that with as much haste as is reasonably possible.
“If you’re in the market for humans bones hit me up!”
Back in the middle age it was not terribly difficult for budding anatomists, doctors, scientists, or the simply curious to obtain dead bodies. Life was cheap back then and you couldn’t go a day without someone being hanged, dunked to death in a witch hunt, kicked by a mule, run through with a lance, or dying of plague, consumption, malnutrition, famine, sweating sickness, or the dancing mania of 1518.
By the 17th and 18th centuries, however, there was a problem: dead bodies were becoming harder and harder to come by. There were a number of reasons for this.
Life expectancies, while still short compared to today, were slowly increasing. Wars were becoming more professional affairs so there was less general pillage and plunder leading to fewer random, wartime deaths of blacksmiths, scullery wenches, and farmhands. The plague was mostly gone, at least by the end of that time frame. Some sanitation was present, at least in some parts of some major cities. Outside of the fun blip in Revolutionary France, executions were less common. At the same time, people took greater caution with the remains of their loved ones, putting them in locked crypts or employing clever grave robbing protections such as mortsafes, cutting the supply even further. It was a cadaver crisis!
Enter the resurrectionists. Professional grave robbers who, like any ambitious folks in a capitalist system, saw a chance to make some cash and got their hustle on. Resurrectionists were paid to dig up and deliver bodies to medical schools and whoever else paid them to do so. Resurrectionists would work in teams, targeting new graves because it was easier to dig up the unsettled earth than to get someone who’d been taking a longer dirt nap. To increase their efficiency in this regard, resurrectionists would send spies — usually women, dressed in mourning clothes — to funerals to scout for fresh graves. They were disrupters! They moved fast and broke things!
As we know, however, for every action there is a reaction. In this case the reaction was, in England anyway, the passage of The Anatomy Act in 1832, which made grave robbing a crime. Why they hadn’t thought to do that before 1832 is something of a mystery, but I suppose you have other things on your mind when you’re busy exploiting everyone and expropriating everything in the name of Empire. After that other countries, including the United States, passed various laws to combat grave robbery as well. Meanwhile, medical schools, hospitals, the clergy and every other stakeholder in The Death Industrial Complex began to standardize rules and systems for formalized body donation, greatly limiting the need for resurrectionists. Just another business sector destroyed by those in power, I guess.
I’d like to say that totally solved the grave robbing problem, but it has not. Body snatching still happens. Sure, it’s news when it happens now, but it still takes place.
For example, a case currently in the news broke when an artist who takes creepy old dolls and paints them up with horror makeup posted one of her latest creations on Facebook, showing it sitting alongside a skull. In the caption she wrote “the doll has been sold and yes that is a real human skull. If you’re in the market for humans bones hit me up!” Subtle! Turns out that she was just an enthusiastic customer, though, not a grave robber herself. The grave robber — or, to be technically correct — the slab robber — was a middle manager at the morgue where Harvard Medical School keeps the bodies which are donated it to it.
This certainly represents a bit of a twist to the good old days of the resurrectionists. Instead of stealing bodies to give to medical schools here bodies were stolen from medical schools. And instead of obtaining them for scientific study their purchasers here were using them make creepy horror doll art and, based on the specific body parts people were buying from this dude, much, much worse, if such a thing is possible. It’s a great read, at least if you have the stomach and nerve for it.
Anyway, memento mori, my friends. Always memento mori.
Have a great day everyone.
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