Cup of Coffee: May 17, 2024
Juan Soto is open-minded, relief pitcher crushes, throwback football uniforms, a podcast, tacos are sandwiches, the reclassification of weed, and Detroit's growth
Good morning!
Before we get going: I am aware of yet another newsletter delivery problem. Apparently people who have Comcast email addresses have not received the newsletter over the past couple of days. This appears to be a situation in which Comcast is, for some reason, refusing to deliver the newsletter to subscribers because its filters are finding something suspicious with Beehiiv’s code. I am sorry this is happening and I have alerted Beehiiv to the problem. My hope is that, if it has not been resolved already, it will be resolved soon.
Craig takes deep breaths, counts to ten and tries not to murder anyone
Anyway.
We roll into the weekend with stuff about Juan Soto’s willingness to talk, our youthful relief pitcher crushes, weird throwback football uniforms, and a podcast featuring some Friends of the Newsletter. In Other Stuff we discuss how tacos are, as a matter of law, sandwiches, the feds downgrading the classification of marijuana, and some thoughts on the city of Detroit.
And That Happened
Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:
Yankees 5, Twins 0: Clark Schmidt tossed eight shutout innings, allowing just three hits and striking out eight and a three-run first featuring an Anthony Volpe homer set the offensive pace as New York completed a three-game sweep of Minnesota. The Twins only scored one in the whole damn series. It’s mind-boggling how securely the Yankees have the Twins’ number.
Not that it was a bad day for everyone in the Twin Cities:
If you can’t watch a win at least you can pursue you bliss.
Mets 6, Phillies 5: Edwin Díaz blew yet another save — his second conseuctive one and his third in his last four chances — but J.D. Martinez hit a go-ahead single, knocking in the Manfred Man, in the 11th, after which Harrison Bader doubled, sending Martinez to third. He’d later reach home on a wild pitch to conclude the game’s scoring. Pete Alonso homered earlier in the proceedings. The Mets avoid a sweep.
Rays 7, Red Sox 5: It was tied entering the ninth when Isaac Paredes hit a tie-breaking RBI single and Richie Palacios added a sacrifice fly to give us the final score. The Rays needed two pitchers to lock it down in the bottom half, but it wasn’t because Rays skipper Kevin Cash wanted to yank the first one. He was forced to yank one because he lost track of the mound visits, sending his pitching coach out to talk to Jason Adam after the catcher had already gone to the mound to talk to him. Erasmo Ramírez came in due to the blunder and ended the game with a groundout. Admirably, Cash fell on his sword after the game saying he just lost track of the mound visits and it was all on him.
Pirates 5, Cubs 4: Edward Olivares and Nick Gonzales homered and Olivares also doubled and scored. Jared Jones struck out seven in six solid innings. It feels like these two teams have been playing each other for a week solid, but I looked and realized that, no, they had a series last weekend in Pittsburgh and now they’re just starting a four-game series in Chicago. This happens to me every season. Some matchup feels like it’s always going on. Usually it’s a west coast thing like Angels-Mariners but I guess right now it’s a Central thing.
Astros 8, Athletics 1: Cristian Javier pitched six scoreless innings. Yainer Diaz hit a three-run double and Joey Loperfido hit a two-run shot in a six-run third inning that sealed the sweep and Houston’s fifth win in a row and their seventh in their last eight games. Alex Bregman, when asked what’s changed with the Astros: “The biggest thing is just everybody is executing better. We’re playing better as a team now.” Great, so we have “execution” creep in baseball.
Reds 7, Dodgers 2: Elly De La Cruz went 4-for-4, scored three times and, most notably of all, stole four bases. That brings his season total to 30, which puts him on a pace for 110 steals. No, I don’t think he’ll get there, and yes, even if he does we all have to acknowledge that base stealing has been made easier by recent rules changes, but it’s still a hell of a thing. In other news, there were 53,527 fans on hand in Dodger Stadium last night, which is the largest crowd for any MLB game this year and is the largest crowd in Dodger Stadium since September 2019. Why yes, it was Shohei Ohtani Bobblehead Night last night. Why do you ask?
The Daily Briefing
Juan Soto is willing to talk
Yankees outfielder Juan Soto is in his walk year, and it has been a fantastic walk year so far. He’s also a Scott Boras client and Scott Boras clients almost never enter into extension talks, preferring instead to hit the free market. Hal Steinbrenner and the Yankees, likewise, tend not to talk about contract extensions in the middle of the year. All of these facts taken together are a drag for Yankees fans who are enjoying the living hell out of a fully armed and operational Juan Soto in pinstripes and would like to see him stay in the Bronx for a very long time.
But, per the AP, everyone involved seems willing to make an exception:
Soto said Thursday that he would give his blessing to contract talks during the season if the Yankees want to approach his agent, Scott Boras, about a long-term contract.
Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner told the team's YES Network he'd consider such a tactic for the three-time All-Star and four-time Silver Slugger who's still just 25 years old.
"We'd like to see him here for the rest of his career. I don't think there's any doubt in that. His agent, Scott, doesn't tend to do deals in the middle of the season. Neither do I. I think it can be a distraction," Steinbrenner said in the interview. "But as I said in spring training ... this is a unique situation and a very unique player, so I wouldn't be shocked if there was a conversation or two had possibly during the course of a season. I think it's worth doing at some point."
I’m the last guy who will root for the Yankees to sign big free agents, but this is a case in which it makes all the sense in the cosmos for a deal to be done. The Yankees need his bat. Soto seems to be taking well to pinstripes. The fans love him. It seems as natural as hell and I actually hope they make it happen.
A prompt
Saw this yesterday:
My answer to that question popped into my mind the millisecond I read it: Aurelio López, who played for the Tigers from 1979 through 1985. There is no question that Señor Smoke and I had a connection, even though López was not aware of it and even though we never even met. Like, I’ve had dreams in which López appears.
With the caveat that this prompt is in no way whatsoever limited to boys, who is your childhood obscure reliever?
It’s fine but
The New York Football Giants revealed an alternate/throwback uniform yesterday:
Honestly speaking: I think it looks pretty neat and it’s certainly different for football. It’s not different for all sports in that looks like a Montreal Canadiens sweater, but it’s different for the NFL.
That said, I can’t look at this without thinking that it was a sweater the player’s grandma knitted and that his mom is making him wear it while she’s visiting. Mom said he could take it off as soon as grandma leaves, though.
When subscribers meet subscribers
I’ve plugged subscriber/movie critic Noah Gittel’s book Baseball: The Movie a few times here. I’ve also, in the past, linked to subscriber and Friend of the Newsletter Neate Sager’s podcast, “SportsLit” in which he and his podcast partner Neil Acharya talk to athletes and sports book authors. Well, earlier this week Gittel appeared on Sager’s podcast, so how could I not link that too?
Here’s the iTunes link. And here is how you can listen to it on Spotify.
Give our friends a listen, won’t you?
Other Stuff
Tacos are sandwiches. As a matter of law.
Long has the debate raged: are tacos sandwiches? The answer, at least according to a judge in Indiana, is yes.
The upshot: a zoning ordinance around a strip mall in Fort Wayne sought to keep fast food hamburger places out, so it limited food sales to “sandwich bar-style restaurant[s] whose primary business is to sell ‘made-to-order’ or ‘subway-style’ sandwiches.” A taco/burrito joint called The Famous Taco opened a store there and local residents challenged it. From the judge’s ruling:
“The proposed Famous Taco restaurant falls within the scope of the general use approved in the original Written Commitment. The proposed Famous Taco restaurant would serve made-to-order tacos, burritos, and other Mexican-style food, and would not have outdoor seating, drive through service, or serve alcohol. The Court agrees with Quintana that tacos and burritos are Mexican style sandwiches, and the original Written Commitment does not restrict potential restaurants to only American cuisine-style sandwiches.”
Now all we need is a court to take on a case which seeks to establish that cereal is soup. Which it obviously is.
Biden moves to reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule III drug
Yesterday President Biden announced that the Justice Department has formally proposed reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug, moving it from a Schedule I to a Schedule III drug under the federal Controlled Substance Act.
While there are obvious political considerations to this based on the country’s fairly remarkable about-face on marijuana over the last decade or so, the medical legalization of the drug in 38 states, and the recreational legalization in 24 states and the District of Columbia, the stated impetus for this is different. Specifically: it’s based on a 2023 determination from the FDA that marijuana has a legitimate medical use. Schedule I drugs are determined to have no such use. Schedule III drugs do. Schedule III drugs are also deemed to have a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence. That puts weed on the same level as ketamine and acetaminophen with codeine, to name a couple.
The practical, day-to-day effects may not be as notable as the press around this may have you believe. Specifically, changing marijuana to Schedule III means that it can legally be prescribed, but only in states that have legalized medical cannabis. Which . . . are states in which it has been legal for physicians to prescribe it anyway. Though I’ll note that, at least in Ohio, no one is actually going to their family doctor anyway. There are practices that only give out medical weed cards. It’s all done over the phone or the internet in like 37 seconds and, folks, they believe whatever you tell them. Please do not ask me how I know this.
Anyway, all this means is that it’ll no longer be a federal crime for a doctor to prescribe someone marijuana. But since the feds have consciously and openly chosen not to pursue prosecutions along these lines for many, many years given which way the winds have been blowing, it practically means little. It may, however, make a difference for people who exclusively get medical treatment from the VA. But again, veterans can use the phone doctors too, though it costs a little money to go outside the VA system.
This may actually have the biggest effect on people other than marijuana users:
- It’ll impact your local medical dispensary, as it will allow them to take federal business tax credits that every other store around can take advantage of but they can’t because, at present, they sell Schedule I drugs; and
- Second, and probably most importantly, it’ll open up research on medical marijuana which has been prohibited by FDA and DEA regulations which severely restrict Schedule I controlled substance research. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that cannabis has beneficial health effects. It’d be nice if that moved out of the world of anecdote and into the world of usable medical science.
Of course, this would be bad for one class of people. People like that guy you know for whom marijuana and marijuana culture is his entire personality. You know who I’m talking about. The guy who talks a lot about how the Founding Farmers grew hemp and how the government knows that weed can cure everything but they won’t let us have it because of Big Pharma. That guy isn’t always wrong, of course, but Jesus Christ he’s exhausting.
Detroit’s population grew for the first time in 67 years
I’ve never lived in Detroit, but it is the closest thing to an ancestral home that I have. My maternal great-great grandparents — yes, those great-great grandparents — moved there from Canada in 1901. All four of my paternal great grandparents moved there from the places they lived at almost exactly the same time. Virtually everyone I am related to was in or around Detroit until we moved away in late 1984. I still have various aunts and uncles and cousins and stuff there. The last two generations of my wife’s family are from the area and Allison was born there as well.
The “in and around” and “the area” is pretty key, however.
My dad and his parents moved to the then-racially segregated city of Dearborn in the late 1940s. While my mom was born and raised in Detroit and lived there until she married my dad in 1967, her parents left for Redford in the early 70s. Those various aunts, uncles and cousins made their way to suburbs like Oak Park, Livonia, or places out in Oakland County around then too. There were various stated reasons for each move, some of them idiosyncratic or job-related or what have you, but as anyone familiar with Detroit history knows, white flight has been the major factor impacting the city’s demographics for a very long time and, whatever the immediate cause for their moving, my family was part of that white flight.
Though my childhood featured frequent trips to visit family and less-frequent trips to Tiger Stadium, I didn’t have much reason to go to Detroit in the 1990s or early 2000s, but since I’ve been with Allison we go there several times a year. Ballgames and concerts mostly. I’ve made some good friends there over the past 12 years. My genealogy kick of the past few years was largely inspired by my reacquaintance with Detroit, my curiosity about my family’s history there in the 20th century, and the circumstances which caused them to move there — and away from there — in the first place.
Against that backdrop, I share with you something remarkable that the U.S. Census Bureau and the City of Detroit announced yesterday:
The city of Detroit has gained population for the first time in more than six decades, according to new population estimates released today by the US Census Bureau.
According to the estimate, Detroit gained 1,852 residents between July 1, 2022 and July 1, 2023, marking the first time since 1957 Detroit has not lost population in the eyes of the Census Bureau . . . The City of Detroit also led the state of Michigan in total population growth in 2023.
This information comes on the heels of a transformation of Downtown Detroit that has been fascinating to observe. For someone like me, who was in the city a lot in the 1970s and 1980s, it’s almost disorienting to see what has happened to the place. Buildings that were abandoned have been renovated. Fancy hotels, bars and restaurants exist in places where they hadn’t since the 1960s or early 70s. Apartments and condos have popped up all over the place. There’s even a damn Whole Foods and a Gucci store within walking distance of Comerica Park. A lot of people unfamiliar with Detroit probably imagine it to be some post-apocalyptic hellscape — so many of them spent years viewing the city through the prism of Detroit Ruin Porn — but they couldn’t be more wrong.
It’s worth noting, however, that that population growth and that urban renaissance is of a very particular kind. The growth, building, and renovation has been almost exclusively in Midtown, downtown, Corktown, Brush Park, the Cass Corridor and the riverfront, which are areas where young, largely well-off or even wealthy white professionals play and, increasingly, reside. It’s almost certain that the aforementioned population growth and its attendant job growth has been almost exclusively in the white population, while the Black population, which has long been the dominant economic and cultural force in the city, no doubt continues to be pushed into less prosperous areas or has continued to leave town altogether. With the choices largely consisting of the gentrified urban core or the blighted neighborhoods far afield from Woodward or Michigan Avenues, the middle class, be they Black or white, really has no good place to be.
Detroit’s white flight/gentrification two-step described above is not fundamentally different from what has happened in a lot of other cities. But due to the extremity of its decline in the mid-to-late 20th century, and the way in which it has been held up by some as a singularly dysfunctional place, the way in which it is reported on and the way it is discussed has been fundamentally different. Detroit’s bad news has always been portrayed in far more dire terms than bad news elsewhere, yes, but the more recent good news has probably been overstated and misleadingly stated as well.
To be sure, after 67 years of decline, any population growth is certainly worth cheering. Likewise, it’s understandable that, after decades of decay, the gleaming new buildings and businesses in and around downtown have been widely lauded. But I feel like the meaning and effect of the sort of growth Detroit has experienced is not discussed in the sort of critical terms it probably should be.
Yesterday, however, Steve Neavling of the Detroit Metro Times wrote about that population report. It’s worth reading if one wants to understand what all of this means and does not mean. It’s also worth remembering that there are a lot of people like him in the actual city who are intimately familiar with its dynamics and who should be listened to whenever one encounters a “Detroit is back, baby!” or a “Detroit is reeling!” narrative. Same goes for any other city. As I learned when I lived in West Virginia, always beware of the national journalists who parachute in for a quick story that was probably based on a preconceived notion.
For my part, I continue to be fascinated by the place where my parents and my grandparents were born. A place that, even if I’ve never lived there, has probably shaped my life’s trajectory more than I probably appreciate. That all makes me a fan of Detroit and makes me root for it. As I do so, however, I want to be careful that I know and understand exactly what it is I am rooting for.
WKBD channel 50 kids know what I’m talkin’ about.
Have a great weekend everyone.
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