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Craig

The Yankees signed a free agent pitcher yesterday, Juan Soto set an arbitration record, and a bunch of other players avoided arbitration as well. Elsewhere, Ken Rosenthal writes a perplexing column, the Dodgers and Cubs made a trade, the Reds signed a reliever, and a Miracle Met has passed on to Baseball Valhalla.

In Other Stuff, there is some news about Cup of Coffee’s future, we revisit “Celebrity Bowling,” we meet a super-commuter, and I talk about the many, many speeding tickets I have gotten over the years.

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With a free newsletter there’s no need to tease what’s a-comin’, so let’s jump on in, then, shall we?

The Daily Briefing

Marcus Stroman to the Yankees? Why the hell not?

Yesterday the Yankees were reported to be the favorite to sign free agent starter Marcus Stroman. To be sure, that came from Jon Morosi of MLB Network and he has whiffed mightily this offseason, but we’ll leave that aside. The fact is that the Yankees need to bolster their rotation and Stroman doesn’t yet have a job, so why not?

Subscribers know that I don’t talk all that much about trade or free agent rumors in this space but I’m sort of taken with this one. Why? Because Stroman has talked shit about the Yankees before and the Yankees have said publicly that they’re not interested in Stroman, with Brian Cashman saying in 2019 that he wasn’t “a difference maker” and that he’d be a reliever in New York. Add in the fact that (a) Stroman is always good to say something provocative or stupid — or provocative and stupid —; and (b) the Yankees do NOT handle outspoken guys in their clubhouse very well and it seems like a recipe for chaos.

Where’s the popcorn?

Shota Imanaga’s deal is NOT $100 million

I wrote up yesterday’s item about Shota Imanaga signing with the Cubs before the financial details were reported. I likewise said, based on some earlier prognosticating from some various people, that the deal would be in excess of $100 million. Welp, I was wrong about that.

Jesse Rogers of ESPN reported yesterday that Imanaga will actually be guaranteed only $53 million over four years. After the second and third years, the team will have an option that could push the guarantee up to $80 million over five. If the club declines to do so, Imanaga can opt out and become a free agent.

The lesson: don’t write about numbers just before bed.

ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball schedule has dropped

At least for the first half of the season. You’ll not be shocked to see that there will be three Dodgers games in that seven-game set.

Which compels me to make a quick point: with the hopefully obvious proviso that I have no issue with the Dodgers spending a ton of money on marquee free agents in an effort to turn themselves into a dominant, alpha team, I will have absolutely zero patience for any the Dodgers player, coach, executive, or fan who complains about them having to play so many late getaway day games. You bought the ticket, you take the ride. If you wanna be done at 3:30pm on Sunday afternoons go be the White Sox.

Anyway, here’s the early season schedule, and no I do not know why they’re basically taking May off but I presume it has something to do with the NBA playoffs:

• March 31: St. Louis Cardinals vs. Los Angeles Dodgers

• April 7: Houston Astros vs. Texas Rangers

• April 14: San Diego Padres vs. Los Angeles Dodgers

• April 21: Texas Rangers vs. Atlanta Braves

• April 28: Chicago Cubs vs. Boston Red Sox

• May 26: Chicago Cubs vs. St. Louis Cardinals

• June 9: Los Angeles Dodgers vs. New York Yankees

• June 16: New York Yankees vs. Boston Red Sox

Beyond the Sunday night schedule, MLB released the game times of every other game in 2024. There are night games. There are day games. The former tend to start between 6 and 7:30 or so. The latter start in the 1PM range, with some variations. You know how it works. No one is reinventing the wheel here, man.

Other Stuff

Dangerous driving has surged. Why?

For a number of reasons, automobile fatalities had been in decline for the past several decades. A lot of this was due to safety devices such as airbags becoming standard. A huge part of it is because of seatbelt usage becoming the norm beginning in the 1980s and onward when it really wasn’t before. Cars have backup cameras and blind spot sensors now. And, of course, cars are simply better-built now, so when crashes do occur, they are more survivable than they were in the past.1

But, as this in-depth story from the New York Times reveals, those positive trends have reversed themselves since 2020. Why? Driver behavior, mostly:

Above all, though, the problem seems to be us — the American public, the American driver . . . In 2020 and 2021, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has calculated, approximately a quarter of all fatal wrecks in the United States involved vehicles traveling above the posted speed limit; a significant percentage of the dead, whether passenger or driver, were not wearing seatbelts . . . national intoxicated-driving rates have surged to the extent that one in every 10 arrests is now linked to a suspected D.U.I. And aggressive driving, defined by AAA as “tailgating, erratic lane changing or illegal passing,” factors into 56 percent of crashes resulting in a fatality. (Distressingly, this statistic does not cover the tens of thousands of people injured, often critically, by aggressive drivers, or the 550 people shot annually after or during road-rage incidents — or the growing number of pedestrians and cyclists deliberately targeted by incensed motorists.)

The Times spoke to an emergency room doctor from Nevada who has made a point to study these trends. She believes that the pandemic basically turned Americans into aggressive, reckless drivers, saying “My own theory is that whatever personal conflicts they had were exacerbated because they’d been sheltering in place during Covid. So they’d get on the road having self-medicated with drugs or alcohol, or they’d just be incredibly reckless.”

The article goes on to cite statistics about people’s general levels of stress, aggression, and hopelessness and suggests that there’s a link between those things — all exacerbated by the pandemic — and bad driving. I don’t know enough about that kind of stuff to have a strong opinion about it, but it seems plausible.

Obviously distracted driving — which the article also talks a lot about — is a huge factor too. A lot of us like to think that “everyone” got a smart phone in 2010, but smart phone usage continues to rise each year, even if incrementally. And app makers have gotten way, way better and delivering products which immerse us in our phones. As time has gone on people have likely become more dependent on them and more comfortable, unfortunately, with using them when they shouldn’t.

That’s not all the article is about, of course. It’s a pretty massive and all-encompassing thing about the state of road safety, traffic laws, and road and city planning stuff, much of which is super interesting though much of which will not be surprising. Shocker: traffic calming measures, protected bike and pedestrian lanes, and speed cameras all work, even if they annoy people. Americans, of course, hate to be annoyed. Or, rather, hate to be even mildly inconvenienced, so it’s always a greater struggle for those things to be implemented here compared to other places.

I think the most telling thing from the whole article, though, is that on the whole, most Americans agree that driver behavior has gotten terrible and is a huge problem. Except they almost always believe they, themselves, are just fine. Everyone else is an idiot or a maniac. That’s probably the most American thing of all.

Ohio, yet again, chooses evil

Yesterday the Ohio House of Representatives voted to override a veto of a bill that will ban transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming care including puberty blockers and hormone therapy. It will also prevent transgender athletes from playing women’s sports. To put the nature of the bill in perspective, it was even too extreme for our Republican governor who himself issued a bunch of anti-trans executive orders literally last week. The override effort now turns to the senate where it will, 100%, be overridden. This bill will be the law of the State of Ohio before the month is out. It will, inevitably, inflict massive harm on trans kids and their families.

It’s probably worth noting that a great many of the legislators who voted to override the governor’s veto have received campaign donations from a man who, on Tuesday, was revealed to have had sex with trafficked teenagers. All of them, if you ask them, will tell you that they are supporting the bill in the name of morality.

There is obviously evil and hate behind this effort and many of these legislators voted for it with glee. But it’s also the case that this law would never have made it to the floor for a vote if Ohio was not gerrymandered to the nth degree. That’s because, the true zealots aside, there are many Republicans who would prefer not support a law that is so transparently hateful and unnecessary. They voted to override, however, because thanks to gerrymandering the only threat to their power in their districts is being primaried from the right. They are vulnerable if they even nod at moderation or, in this case, basic humanity. They are politically safe if they punch down hard on trans youth.

If anyone doubts this, just look at Representative Brett Hillyer. He is a Republican but he has never been a zealot. He abstained from voting for this bill prior to its initial passage. He, actually, sponsored a bill called the Ohio Fairness Act which sought to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or expression. Yet, when it came time for the override yesterday he voted in favor. The reason — the ONLY damn reason! — is because he is from a gerrymandered red district, there are virtually no votes to be gained by being a reasonable, moderate person, and if he didn’t vote to override he’d be targeted by the state GOP who would fund a primary opponent who is even farther to the right than he is. The Republican Party is already mostly captured by right wing zealots, but when you add gerrymandering on top of that it ads rocket fuel to the extremism.

Reasons, of course, matter little. Actions are what matter. And if you’re the sort of person who acts to inflict pain and hardship on trans children, many of whom will end up taking their own lives if left without supportive care, you are a fucking monster. I hope each and every one of the people who supported this override are haunted in all of the worst and most insidious ways for the rest of their hopefully short, miserable lives.

Why are the youths leaving red states? It’s a total mystery!

In extraordinarily related news, the governor of Mississippi used his inauguration speech yesterday to decry the trend of young people leaving the state to pursue careers elsewhere. He said “For too many decades, Mississippi’s most valuable export has not been our cotton or even our culture. It’s been our kids . . . They made other places better, and we missed out on all they could have done here at home.”

This is not an uncommon thing to hear from officials in red states. You hear it in Ohio which, apart from the oasis that is Columbus, is hemorrhaging young people. You hear it in West Virginia, where I’m from and which I left after high school. You hear it from officials in places like Iowa, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Idaho too. There is a fair amount of overall migration to some red states — particularly Texas — but most of that comes from retirees and other older people. There is considerable brain drain when it comes to kids leaving for college and work in other states and younger professionals hightailing it for the border.

It’s not a mystery why this is.

Republican officials who run these places have aggressively pursued policies that are tailor made to alienate young people and young professionals. Abortion restrictions are the most obvious example, but GOP officials have also pushed theocratic policies on public schools and have worked to drain them of resources while favoring private religious education. They have eviscerated higher education and have, more broadly, stigmatized the idea of education in general. They’ve demonized gay people, trans people, and people of color. They have eagerly pursued every possible anti-environmental policy they can conceive. They have enacted all manner of measures that make it harder to raise kids. They have aggressively sought to enact antidemocratic, anti-pluralistic, and in some cases abjectly authoritarian policies in order to neutralize any pushback.

And now they have the gall to turn around and pretend to wonder why promising young people want no part of the place? Fucking spare me.

Dystopia watch: Greenland ice in Dubai cocktail bars

From The Guardian:

Frozen daiquiri anyone? Drinking a cocktail on top of a Dubai skyscraper may seem decadent enough, but a Greenland entrepreneur wants to add ancient glacier ice scooped from the fjords to the glass, for the ultimate international thrill.

Arctic Ice harvests ice from the fjords of Greenland and then ships them to the United Arab Emirates to sell to exclusive bars.

The entrepreneur in question talks pretty defensively about how this enterprise has “low carbon-intensity” and that, though he’s not there yet, he is “committed to becoming fully carbon-neutral.” In this he sounds a lot like someone who gets a 10% off coupon code from some unnecessary store, spends $379 dollars, and then claims he’s “saving money.” It’s also worth remembering that this was literally a “Simpsons” joke back in the day.

I’m not going to suggest that every choice to be made in this world must be made with an eye on what it means for the environment. And even when we do take the environment into account the choices to be made aren’t always easy ones. But I would hope that “shipping ice over 9,000 nautical miles in refrigerated freighters so the ultra-wealthy can optimize overpriced cocktails while sitting in the middle of a desert” would not be on the table in this day and age. I mean, it’s the sort of thing that even Douglas Adams or Kurt Vonnegut wouldn’t write because it’s too on the damn nose.

Have a great day everyone.

The Cubs signed a Japanese pitcher. The Marlins hired a woman for an important front office position. The charges against Wander Franco have been reduced but he still faces jail time and may never be allowed back in the United States. Shohei Ohtani has California officials wanting a change in the tax law. Another affiliate of Atlanta is moving operations to Georgia.

In Other Stuff, my old neighbor — Ohio’s richest man — is in even deeper Jeffrey Epstein-related trouble. People are using LinkedIn as a dating app for some reason. The Pope doesn’t know how babies — at least babies who are said to be the Son of God — are made. January Jones may not know some things but she stumbled upon a great business idea.

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There was not a ton of baseball news yesterday but we’ll have enough fun with what there was. Which is to say that there are like four things that were at least baseball-adjacent about which I make hacky jokes and, really, isn’t that this newsletter’s value proposition?

In Other Stuff there was a development of sorts with respect to Substack and Nazis but I’m skeptical and I’m not sure it moves the needle on my decision to move the newsletter off the platform. I share it anyway because your opinions are what matter to me most and you all often think of things I don’t when it comes to this stuff, so your thoughts are welcome.

In less heavy news, there’s something about Martin Scorsese. I share an item about men being decidedly weird. I write a whole lot of words about the OpenAI/New York Times/authors litigation, fair use, and how even people I usually tend to agree with get things wrong with this stuff. And, finally, I pick some low-hanging Star Wars fruit, because I’m not any better when it comes to that than I am about hacky jokes. So, as always, I’m keepin’ it real.

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The Mets signed a pitcher, the Mariners and Rays made multiple trades, and the Giants and Cardinals got in on that action as well. Also, a 15-year veteran who has a claim to being one of the best players-to-be-named-later of all time has called it a career.

In Other Stuff swearing is on the goddamn upswing, I saw a good but inadvertently frustrating movie over the weekend, we look at Elon Musk’s drug use, and we talk about a new app focusing on toilets that doubles as another sign of creeping dystopia.

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Today we have an unexpected extension, a desperate Trevor Bauer, a signing, the A’s saying no to the B’s, and MLB M&Ms, K? In Other Stuff we have met the enemy and he is us and we look back to the days of logging on to the internet via . . . Compuserve.

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Let’s jump on into it, shall we?

The Daily Briefing

Wander Franco formally accused of sexual exploitation, money laundering

The Associated Press reports that Dominican prosecutors have formally accused Rays shortstop Wander Franco of commercial sexual exploitation and money laundering. The money laundering charge is related to Wander allegedly paying off the mother of one of his alleged victims.

Prosecutors have requested that Franco be held on an $86,000 bond, which he obviously can afford, but that he also be barred from leaving the Dominican Republic and that he be placed on house arrest. Prosecutors have also asked that the mother to whom Franco allegedly paid the money also be placed on house arrest and be barred from leaving the country. That latter part is, obviously, geared toward a key witness against Franco simply up and disappearing on an extended vacation.

The judge is expected to issue a ruling on this stuff on Friday.

Padres sign reliever Woo Suk Go

This one has brewing for a day or two, but the San Diego Padres have signed Korean reliever Woo Suk Go. It’s a two-year $4.5 million deal. The deal includes a mutual option for 2026.

Go — or is it Woo? I’m often confused with Korean names — has pitched for seven seasons for the LG Twins of the KBO. In that time he has posted a 3.18 ERA with 139 saves and has struck out 401 batter in 368.1 innings.

He joins a Padres bullpen which has already added Yuki Matsui and which also has Robert Suarez, each of whom have been talked about as the potential closer following the departure of Josh Hader via free agency. Now make it three guys in that mix.

Ross Atkins insists the Jays weren’t used for leverage in the Shohei Ohtani negotiations

Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins spoke to the press yesterday for the first time since the club lost out on the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes to the Dodgers. He talked about how disappointing it was not to land the two-time MVP but says he was proud of how the Jays put together the best pitch they could make.

He was then asked if he felt like the Jays were being used for leverage:

"Absolutely not," he said. "I feel strongly otherwise. We feel really good about the process. It was an incredible effort, from ownership to business to baseball, people coming together. Not the outcome we wanted, but feel really good about the process and absolutely felt like it was authentic and real."

I don’t doubt that Toronto’s effort was sincere from their own perspective, but dude, you totally got used for leverage. How else to explain the reports from Jon Morosi of MLB Network, Jim Bowden of The Athletic, and J.P. Hoornstra of Dodgers Nation, each of whom either explicitly reported or strongly implied that Ohtani was going to the Jays? Those guys didn’t practice great journalism in those final 24-48 hours, but I doubt they made that stuff up from whole cloth either. Someone — and I’d guess it was someone associated with Ohtani’s camp — at least suggested to them that the Jays were on the verge of signing Ohtani and I’d guess that was done in order to motivate the Dodgers to up whatever their last offer was.

Again: this doesn’t reflect on Atkins or the Jays, who had nothing to do with any of that. But I think it’s crazy to assume that the Jays weren’t being used as a stalking horse as things went down to the wire.

The Dodgers and Brewers made a minor trade

The Milwaukee Brewers acquired lefty Bryan Hudson from the Dodgers in exchange for lefty Justin Chambers and a player to be named later or cash considerations.

The Dodgers had DFA’d Hudson last week to clear up a roster spot for Yoshinobu Yamamoto. He gave up seven runs in 8.2 innings for the Dodgers in his first major league season. He might snag a spot in Milwaukee’s bullpen, but he has options left and will probably spend more time at Triple-A.

Chambers was the Brewers’ 20th round draft pick in 2023. He’s still just 18 and hasn’t appeared in any pro games yet.

A call for common sense sports gambling regulation

Over at Slow Boring, Ben Krauss — who himself enjoys betting on sports now and again — talks about how insidious and dangerous gambling marketing and the online gambling experience is.

Legalized gambling is not necessarily a problem in and of itself, he says, but gambling companies have basically weaponized their products, all but ensuring that people will gamble irresponsibly:

“This issue is exacerbated when individuals already have a bet on the game, as some sports gambling companies aggressively send push notifications encouraging additional in-game bets. Clinical psychologist Meredith K. Ginley, a specialist in gambling addiction, emphasizes that these in-game notifications are strategically crafted to trigger risky behavior in individuals predisposed to such tendencies. Essentially, these gambling apps, driven by profit motives, exploit psychological triggers to encourage habitual and hazardous betting practices among their customers.”

He argues that the lack of any real barriers to placing bets is a big problem. As an example he compares sports gambling habits in Delaware, which only allows bets to be placed at brick-and-mortar sportsbooks, to gambling in New Jersey, which gives online sports gambling free rein. Problem gambling and gambling volume has remained pretty steady in the former. Both are spiraling ever-upward in the latter, no doubt because of how readily available gambling opportunities are.

He further argues that limiting gambling’s “cultural salience” — the ubiquitous marketing, celebrity endorsements, and misleading come-ons for gamblers to place increasingly risky bets — is necessary. There is almost zero chance we will ratchet back legalized gambling and, indeed, more states will be legalizing gambling as time goes on. But we can and should put in place some form of common-sense gambling regulations, at the very least with respect to advertising.

None of you will be surprised to hear that all of this makes perfect sense to me. It’s not gonna happen, though, because state governments and all manner of stakeholders with lobbying power — TV networks, sports leagues, and the sportsbooks themselves — will never let it happen.

Bernie Williams to play with the New York Philharmonic

From the AP:

Former New York Yankees center fielder Bernie Williams will make his New York Philharmonic debut on April 24 when future music director Gustavo Dudamel leads the orchestra's spring gala at Lincoln Center's David Geffen Hall.

Williams, 55, was a five-time All-Star while playing for the Yankees from 1991 to 2006 and won the 1998 American League batting title. He is classically trained guitarist who began playing at age 7, and has released two recordings, in 2003 and 2009.  

There’s not much else to say about that, but (a) I like bringing up Bernie Williams as much as possible because people need to be reminded that the Yankees’ alleged Core Four of the championship years was not just four dudes. Bernie deserves his props; and (b) because I talk about “Maestro” down in Other Stuff, and I love it when a thematic thread can run through multiple items in a given newsletter.

Other Stuff

Sigh

From the AP:

Former President Ernest Bai Koroma has been charged with treason for his alleged involvement in a failed coup attempt in November, Sierra Leone’s government said Wednesday.

Maybe one day we’ll have the sort of commitment to the rule of law that Sierra Leone has.

Hi, Les!

Hundreds of documents from a long-settled civil lawsuit connected to Jeffrey Epstein were publicly released last night. The names in the documents had been redacted back before the suit was settled in 2017 but, given the passage of time, the death of Epstein, and the incarceration of his partner — and partner in crime — Ghislaine Maxwell, they were un-redacted. That’s what people are talking about today when they talk about “the list of names released” or what have you. It’s not, as some have irresponsibly claimed, a “client list” or anything like that.

Many of the biggest names in the documents — including former presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump — were just mentioned in passing and there are no accusations of wrongdoing connected to them. Some other notable people, while not necessarily accused of anything specific, are mentioned in somewhat juicier contexts.

Such as my former neighbor and Ohio’s richest man, Leslie Wexner, whose name came up in a deposition of one-time civil plaintiff and Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre:

As many of you know, I’ve been following Wexner’s connection to the Epstein case for some time. Back in 2019 I wrote about how one of Epstein and Maxwell’s sexual assaults occurred in a house that Epstein owned but which sits on Wexner’s property in New Albany, Ohio and which is guarded by Wexner’s private security. Wexner cut ties with Epstein a decade or so later and claims to know nothing about any of Epstein’s illegal activities. Virginia Giuffre clearly believes otherwise.

Wexner’s name coming up in this latest batch of documents began getting some play in the Columbus media last night. That’s pretty unusual, actually, as Wexner — the single most powerful figure in Columbus, Ohio over the past 50 years — has routinely been protected by the local media. Indeed, as recently as a couple of years ago it took a good two or three days for the local paper to report on stories connecting Wexner and Epstein after national outlets like the Washington Post or New York Times already had. It felt as if the wagons were being consciously circled or, at the very least, that high-level meetings were held in which people carefully decided how much they could say about our own local Mr. Burns.

But Wexner has fallen at least somewhat from grace here in Columbus over the past couple of years. He stepped down as CEO and Chairman of the empire he built with The Limited stores, Victoria’s Secret, and Bath and Body Works and he has divested himself of a great deal of the company’s stock. The poor business performance of his companies and Wexner’s age — he’s 86 — were cited, but many people think the Epstein-related press had something to do with it (I certainly do). While I don’t doubt that Wexner still pulls many strings in town, his profile is certainly much lower. Maybe so low that circling the wagons doesn’t seem as important as it once did.

I don’t think anything will ever happen to Wexner, legally speaking. Like I said, last night’s documents did not provide some sort of actionable new information or anything. They were merely reminders of what most people who have paid attention to this stuff for some time have long knew or at least strongly suspected.

But I do wonder if the many, many buildings and institutions which continue to bear Wexner’s name in this town — most of which are associated with Ohio State University, including its entire hospital system, which is vast — will be getting a name change one day soon. At least a technical one in which OSU or whoever asserts that, actually, these things were named after his wife, the philanthropist Abigail Wexner or the family at large or something, and not the guy who a sexual assault victim believes knows more than he claims and that he’d lie about it if asked.

I mean, it’s not unheard of for universities to play such silly games.

Great Moments in Chutzpah: Ghislaine Maxwell Edition

Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s partner who was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for her role in Epstein’s sexual abuse and sex trafficking, decided that the day of the document dump was a good week to play the victim in all of this. From The Daily Beast:

Maxwell’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, said on NewsNation’s Cuomo that Maxwell has “nothing to say” about the impending release of names—but that the former socialite takes issue with the fact that the only person facing consequences over the rampant sex trafficking of young girls is a woman. “I don’t think she has anything to talk about except maybe that if you look at this crime, this overall crime, it’s all about men abusing women for a long period of time… and it’s only one person in jail—a woman”

I’m a feminist through-and-through but there’s a special circle of hell reserved for people, like Maxwell, who try to act like victims of sexism in situations like these. I mean, sure, I’d personally be happy if a woman was not the only person in jail for this. It’s just that, unlike Maxwell, who no doubt feels like she’s been unfairly singled out, I’d love it if a great many men who, like her, sexually abused women and girls, were in jail along with her.

Short of that, lets us all remember that Epstein, a man, would be in jail now too if he hadn’t un-alived himself back in 2019. So be careful what you wish for, Ghislaine. You could be in worse places. As one day, even if it takes many decades, I suspect you will be.

To BE The Man you’ve got to . . . be scammed by the man?

Look, I’ve long been a critic of cryptocurrency as it’s all clearly a giant Ponzi scheme, but that was before I was pitched crypto by a stylin,' profilin,' limousine riding, jet flying, kiss-stealing, wheelin’ dealin' son of a gun:

In related news, Flair has been a financial train wreck for several decades now, having gotten into monster trouble with the IRS for not paying taxes, taking out loans he had no intention of paying back, getting sued over all manner of failed ventures and broken promises, failing to pay the lawyers he retained to fight said suits, and ultimately filing for bankruptcy.

So nah, sorry, I’m not gonna be buying Nature Boy crypto I don’t figure.

Speaking of horseshit . . .

My personal website has an email form via which readers can contact me. Over the past several months, unfortunately, it has become close to useless as bots have exploited it, leading to me receiving several spam emails a week. Most of which tend to be things like “Attention webmaster of craigcalcaterra.com! Do you want ten thousand business leads! AI can do that for you!” or “Hey, I like your page! But It’s not appearing high enough in search results! Let our product rocket you to the top!” And things of that nature.

I should probably just shut down the contact page, but I keep it up for two reasons. First, because despite it primarily sending me spam, I still do get occasional emails from it from people who are genuinely trying to contact me. I’ve gotten story leads in the past, for example, and on a few occasions people who were looking for me in a personal capacity have tracked me down there.

The second reason I keep it? Because sometimes I get absolutely unhinged lunacy like this one:

Hey,

Ground-breaking research reveals that people who don’t grow up wealthy…
Has a shrunken hippocampus, a walnut-sized region in your brain.

Your brain's wealth centre, the hippocampus, might be smaller. This blocks "billionaire brain waves," stopping you from attracting your dream life.
Left unchecked, it even affects your children.

But there's hope!

A special sound frequency can grow your hippocampus 6x faster, magnetizing money in just 7 seconds daily.

Ready to activate your inner billionaire?

You can’t put a price on that kind of content, man.

Random movie stuff

We’re not obsessives or completists or anything, but each December/January Allison and I at least try to watch as many of the potential Oscar flicks as we can. In the past couple of weeks we’ve seen four pictures which are likely to get some Academy love, and Allison half-watched one I had already seen:

“Maestro”

I was prepared not to like this one because I’ve been unable to take biopics seriously ever since “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” came out in 2007. I was further prepared not to like it because some people whose opinions I respect said it may be the most Oscar-thirsty movie ever, and that kind of thing can be distracting. Having watched it on Tuesday night, however, I have to say that it was pretty dang good.

“Maestro” wisely eschews the most cliched biopic conventions in favor of telling a narrow, more focused story of just a couple of aspects of Leonard Bernstein’s life. Carey Mulligan was fantastic as Felicia Montealegre. Bradley Cooper, for as much crap as he took over the prosthetic nose — which was a non-issue while watching the movie as far as I was concerned — also did a great job as Bernstein. It’s still hard to shake how hard he’s trying as so many of his scenes seem to have a neon “FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION!” sign over his head, but I’m prepared to admit that a lot of that is me bringing in my preconceptions to it. You can tell he worked his ass off and he and Mulligan do a great job of talking in a way that is closer to how real people talk as opposed to actors archly exchanging dialogue, which is a common thing in prestige pictures. Cooper’s direction is pretty deft too. Lively and kinetic in some places, slower and more measured in others, fitting the dramatic beats nicely. Just a good solid movie.

Also: I am willing to bet that “Maestro” features more conspicuous smoking than any movie in cinematic history. It was positively distracting how much Cooper chain smoked in this thing. It was almost comical.

“Poor Things”

I really, really liked this one. A completely out-of-left-field kind of flick, and I mean that in the best sense of the term. And if Emma Stone doesn’t win Best Actress they ought to burn down Hollywood.

To be sure, this is not gonna be for everyone. Especially if you’re the type who does not care for frank and sometimes graphic sexuality in movies. Even if you’re fine with it, don’t watch this with your parents or anything because, man, no one needs that kind of awkwardness in their lives. That being said, neither the sex nor the nudity is there for salaciousness. It absolutely serves the story and the journey Stone’s character takes in the film.

Beyond that: Willem Dafoe plays the most Willem Dafoe character of all time and that’s saying something. Like, if he had turned the role down I halfway feel like they would’ve just shut down production because I don’t know who else could’ve done it. Also, it was nice seeing Mark Ruffalo in a non-Marvel movie. A lot of great actors slum it for the paycheck in those films but Ruffalo’s detour from prestige work was much longer than most and his presence was missed. It helps that you can tell he had an absolute ball playing his character here.

“The Holdovers”

The Best Hal Ashby movie since “Being There.” And I’m not saying that just because Alexander Payne was clearly trying to ape the look and feel of those small 1970s movies, right down to the opening credits and stuff. Payne wholly embraced the sort of character-driven stories those movies often told and which movies could still tell if they wanted to. There’s just not a big market for it now I don’t guess. Whatever the case, it’s a wonderfully bittersweet love letter to an era in filmmaking that I love more than any other. If, in a couple of years, we start to see “The Holdovers” as a weird pastiche or shallow homage or something, well, fine. But I greatly enjoyed this little bit of wintery goodness when I saw it.

“May December”

Todd Haynes somewhat campy take on the Mary Kay Letourneau story was certainly an interesting watch. There’s been so much talk about whether it’s exploitative or even whether it’s a drama or a comedy1 that I feel like most people are missing what it really was: an absolutely savage take on actors.

I haven’t read much press about the movie but it would not shock me at all if Haynes and Natalie Portman set out to take down the sort of Hollywood types who see strife, tragedy, and damaged human beings as nothing more than fodder for their art. Part of me also suspects that Portman, in crafting her actor character, had a specific real life actor in mind for her character and was mercilessly mocking them. I never say anything to celebrities if I see them in the real world because it seems pointless and rude, but if I ever find myself in Natalie Portman’s presence I’m totally gonna ask her who she modeled Elizabeth after.

“Oppenheimer”

I saw it at the theater over the summer and I really liked it even if, like a lot of Oscar bait, I doubt I’ll rewatch it or anything. Allison hadn’t seen it before last week, though. She began watching it while I was upstairs watching another movie. This was our text exchange:

“Dean Spanley” was pretty fun though.

Have a great day, everyone.

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It was a very slow baseball news day yesterday, but I talk about the Cubs new bench coach, check in on the Oakland A’s chaotic relocation, and talk about Paul Lukas’ decision to step away from Uni Watch.

The bulk of today’s newsletter is Other Stuff. I have a lot to say — way, way too much, actually — about the band James. Don’t blame me, though. Blame the two subscribers who asked me questions about ‘em. Apologies in advance for getting way too deep into the weeds.

Beyond that I talk about my bum knee and my flat bum — just go with it, it pays off — people’s hopes for 2024, and the plight of a wonderful writer whose recent health scare has caused him to run smack into the realities of both the modern journalism industry and the American healthcare system.

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Yeah, 2024 began yesterday. And no, I didn’t even send out a comment thread or anything. Sorry. I was up past my bedtime Sunday night and slept too late yesterday morning to make it happen. We could all use a day offline, though, yeah?

But now we’re back to it. And today we’re talking about Omar Vizquel’s sad attempt at P.R. management and USA Today’s pathetic aiding and abetting of that effort. We also talk about a couple of Red Sox moves, the Reds signing a starter, and how things can go from Cup of Coffee’s pages to God’s ear. Or at least to federal court. And Cup of Coffee had nothing to do with it but let’s take credit anyway.

In Other Stuff we talk about Mickey Mouse in the public domain, an Edward Hopper documentary, the efficacy of cold medicine and why there are still so many useless decongestants out there, and why I will no longer be self-conscious about how damn often I use the word “however.” And folks, I use it a lot.

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It’s the last newsletter of 2023, folks. Which means . . . well, nothing really. I don’t do end-of-year-lists or year-in-review stuff, so this is just Friday. Monday is a holiday and will thus likely be a thread instead of a real newsletter but I suppose that could change. Depends on whether I manage to shake this cold. Depends on whether anything worth writing about happens. I’ll be here in some form, however, to usher in the new year.

Today we have more Wander Franco news, the most minor signing possible, bad sports merch, a notable retirement, and some seriously immature words about that retiree’s anatomy. Don’t blame me, though. It’s impossible to grow old as long as you remain young at heart and, technically speaking, to be a middle school-level jackwagon is to be young at heart.

In Other Stuff I talk about Nikki Haley’s non-gaffe — and really, it’s not a gaffe because she said what she meant — and talk some about cities. Yeah, it’s another light day but, in my defense, I spent most of yesterday hacking up my lungs. And yeah, it’s serious:

No one takes me seriously. Even when my heart aches. Even when a drowsy numbness pains my sense as though of hemlock I had drunk and whatnot. How long is this posthumous existence of mine to go on?

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Today, unfortunately, you’re gonna get what you pay for, as I have a hellacious cold. The every-bone-and-muscle-of-my-body-aches kind of cold. The cough-to-rattle-the-rafters kind of cold. It happens — and Mom and Dad, I’m fine, so don’t call me all worried this morning — but it also means that (a) my energy and attention span was bupkis yesterday; and (b) I NyQuil’d out at like 9PM last night and set this sucker to go live on its own this morning, so if I missed some big late night news, welp, it happens.

Before get on to the abbreviated news of the day, let us all praise the Great and Mighty God Doxylamine and His disciples: Ibuprofen Chased with Hot Tea, Lemon, Honey, and a Shot of Evan Williams.

Praise be Thy name. Selah.

The Daily Briefing

The Dodgers introduce Yoshinobu Yamamoto

“Yoshinobu Yamamoto, these are the Dodgers. Dodgers, this is Yoshinobu Yamamoto.”

*25 sets of handshakes, plus a few more for coaches and staff and owners and stuff*

“Thanks for coming everyone!”

OK, there was a bit more. Yamamoto had this to say:

“I’d like to thank everyone in the Orix organization, the Dodger organization and all the people close to me who have given me so much support throughout this free-agent process. I am truly excited to wear Dodger Blue and can’t wait to play in front of a packed Dodger Stadium.”

Later in the press conference he said that Shohei Ohtani “wasn't the sole reason I decided to come here. Even if he decided to go somewhere else, I probably would've ended up on the Dodgers.” Which I guess lets Steve Cohen and Hal Steinbrenner off the hook, not that any of us should care about that too much.

In related news, the Dodgers designated lefty Bryan Hudson for assignment to make room for Yamamoto on the 40-man roster. Every time that sort of transaction is made in order to make room for a huge star I wonder if the dude who got DFA’d brags about it to his baseball playing buddies when they get together. Like if there’s some sort of cachet in getting taken off the roster for a superstar as opposed to an average player or simply being let go because you’re not cutting it. The “what are you in for?” thing but for baseball players instead of inmates.

What else, what else . . .

Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s agent, Joel Wolfe, in noting the lengths clubs went in making an impression on him, said one club presented Yamamoto with a team-issued javelin as a gift.

I’m not sure that a piece of track and field equipment would move the dial for me if I was a top free agent, but the right kind of javelin might make me think twice:

Did I mention that I’m absolutely loopy on cold meds right now?

Wander Franco summoned by Dominican authorities

Some clarity to yesterday’s report about the Dominican authorities looking for Wander Franco from ESPN's Enrique Rojas and Juan Recio:

Tampa Bay Rays shortstop Wander Franco has been summoned by authorities in the Dominican Republic to answer a complaint of allegations that he had inappropriate relationships with minors.

Franco and his lawyers are required to attend a meeting on Thursday with the Specialized Prosecutor's Office for Children and Adolescents in the city of Santo Domingo.

Rojas and Recio report that “at least two people have filed legal action against Franco, and he is also under investigation for allegedly having a relationship with a third minor.”

I have no damn idea how this stage of the proceedings corresponds to the U.S. criminal justice process. Maybe they’re asking him in for questioning. Maybe this “summons” is akin to a surrender/arraignment. I’ll leave that up to the abogados among you, if there are any among you, to sort that out. I’m sure we’ll hear eventually.

No one affiliated with the Rays or MLB is commenting, but it’d be silly to expect them to comment at this juncture. Partially because it’d be way out of the usual habit for them to do so and partially because they’re all probably busy inventing new forms of mathematics which will allow them to calculate the massive suspension Franco is gonna get when this is all wound up.

Blue Jays sign Isiah Kiner-Falefa

The Blue Jays were in the bidding for Shohei Ohtani. They didn’t get him. This week they’ve began to spend some of the money they were, at least theoretically, gonna shoot his way. On Tuesday it was re-upping Kevin Keirmaier. Yesterday it was signing infielder Isiah Kiner-Falefa to a two-year, $15 million deal. The contract includes $1 million in performance bonuses.

Kiner-Falefa, who will turn 29 just before Opening Day, had spent most of his time as a shortstop before last season but was converted into a full-blown utility guy by the Yankees in 2023, playing 78 games in the outfield to go with 31 games at third base and a smattering of appearances elsewhere. He also turned in his worst offensive season in his six-year career, hitting .242/.306/.340 (78 OPS+) with six homers in 113 games, though thats not orders of magnitude worse than he’s hit in the past. You pretty much know what you’re gonna get from the guy on that score by now.

I suppose Kiner-Falefa is simply filling the Whit Merrifield spot for the Jays, but Toronto has like eleventeen infielders either on the 40-man roster or close to it, so I’m not sure why they needed to shell out fifteen large for Kiner-Falefa, but it ain’t my money.

Other Stuff

The mob has spoken

I said yesterday that I was leaning toward waiting to migrate to Buttondown — if I do indeed settle on Buttondown — until comments were available. I also asked your opinion. I did not count the replies exactly but the result was approximately 99.999% in favor of waiting, so that’s what I’m gonna do. When the newsletter migrates, it will migrate with full commenting functionality on Day 1. Thanks for the feedback, everyone.

In related news, Radley Balko wrote a thoughtful and detailed post about this whole Substack mess yesterday. In it he talks about the challenges writers face in switching platforms and why it’s not so easy to simply say “screw you, Substack, I’m leaving.” Not every single one of the considerations he cites applies to me in quite the same way as it applies to him, but, as is the case with me, Substack is Balko’s livelihood and enough of the things he talks about apply enough to me to where it had me nodding my head a lot.

Which is not to say that I’m not leaving Substack. I am. But if you do follow and subscribe to newsletter writers who are not bolting or who are not bolting quickly enough for your tastes I hope Balko’s piece causes you to cut ‘em a little slack.

Stealth musicals

Allison and I went to see “Wonka” on Tuesday afternoon. My take: pleasant and enjoyable, even if it’s pretty much the definition of an inessential movie. When taken on its own terms, as opposed to comparing it to the original or the Tim Burton remake, it’s a perfectly fine, ahem, confection, with a good cast and some good performances. The decision to not, once again, tell the Golden Ticket story from the book and both movie versions was a good one. If you’re super into Wonka stuff or if you are a big Timothée Chalamet fan, you’ll like it. If not, you really don’t need to see it, even if it is perfectly fine entertainment.

The best part of the whole moviegoing experience, however, came right when Chalamet hit the first note of his first song, which was about 11 seconds into the movie. That’s when an adult man down the row from me, who was taking in the movie with his whole family, audibly groaned “oh, NOOO.” It was obvious that he had no idea “Wonka” was a musical and he was not at all eager to watch a musical. To his credit that was the first and last time he made any noise during the movie, presumably because his wife or one of his kids elbowed him to shut up.

I was amused at the man’s reaction because I was not sure how anyone could not know that “Wonka” was a musical. The original one was, after all. And I’d read a couple of articles about the movie as it was being developed and as it shot over the past couple of years which talked about the song choices and the choreography and things like that which made it clear what the film really was. But then, after talking to some folks on Tuesday night, I learned that many people were surprised by it and that my awareness of it was an exception born of my media habits, not the rule.

What most of these people hipped me to was Ben Lindbergh writing at The Ringer back in mid-December about how Hollywood has taken to hiding the fact that a given movie is a musical. This can be seen primarily via the trailers, which almost completely edit out all the song-and-dance business in an effort to disguise the genre. The thinking, as Ben’s well-reported article explains, is that a pretty wide swath of moviegoers are turned off by singing and dancing and stuff so it’s better to downplay that and get butts in the seats, even if deception is required. Given that a number of otherwise well-regarded musicals have flopped over the past few years, it’s probably not a dumb move, though it sort of makes me wonder why, if that is the case, anyone makes musicals at all anymore.

After reading that and thinking for a minute, I realized that I was the weirdo here, not the guy down the aisle from me. I watch almost no TV with commercials these days, so I didn’t see televised trailers for “Wonka” in the runup to its release. I probably did see a music-free trailer for it at the theater several months ago but, as noted, I had already looked it up and read stuff talking about it as a musical well beforehand so I wasn’t really paying attention. It makes perfect sense, however, for most people to go into a movie only having seen the trailers. Especially a family-friendly movie around the holidays which is not always the most carefully considered ticket-buying decision.

The funniest thing about all of this, though, was that before “Wonka” started, there was a trailer for the new “Mean Girls” movie. When it rolled, I turned to Allison, confused, and asked why they were remaking “Mean Girls” already. She didn’t know. Then, when I read Lindbergh’s article, I learned that it too is a musical and that its trailer, like “Wonka’s,” completely hides that fact. Same with “The Color Purple” by the way, though I also randomly knew that was a musical already.

Whatever the case, I cannot for the life of me remember a time when an initial impulse on my part — to feel mildly superior to the guy down the aisle from me — had been shown to be so thoroughly and hilariously wrong as quickly as this one had. It serves as a good reminder for me to be careful with my assumptions.

Tommy Smothers: 1937-2023

The great Tommy Smothers died on Tuesday. He had cancer. He was 86.

It’s hard to explain The Smothers Brothers’ success to people who are not already familiar with them or their time, but for those who don’t know, they were two straight (in the counterculture/non-counterculture sense) boy-next-door brothers who played folk songs that quickly devolved into comedic asides and arguments. The basis of the arguments: sibling conflict in which the older brother, Tommy, offered all manner of malapropisms and seeming confusion about the subjects of the songs and was subsequently corrected by the seemingly more intelligent and refined younger brother Dick. Eventually Tommy would offer his big catchphrase — “Mom always liked you best!” — and the audience roared.

The Smothers Brothers’ act shouldn’t have lasted for more than a comedy album or three in the early 1960s after which it probably should’ve petered out alongside the folk boom which the Smothers Brothers lampooned. But two things happened that changed that.

First, those albums were WAY funnier than a mere description of them could capture. There was broad humor and narrow humor, low humor and high. The bits almost always came close to falling apart but then wrapped up satisfyingly with either a surprisingly coherent musical conclusion or in abject chaos. My parents had a couple of Smothers Brothers albums lying around when I was a kid. I absolutely loved them both on the level a kid can love anything funny but also because I sensed that there was some stuff going on with them that, even if I didn’t quite understand it, I wanted to.

The second and far more important thing, culturally speaking, was “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” which ran on CBS between 1967 and 1969.

I’m guessing the network exec who gave the show the green light figured that Tommy and Dick would just be moving their comedy club/album schtick to television. What they did, however, was to bring satirical, countercultural and sometimes downright radical sentiments into America’s living rooms. The show, for which Tommy was the unquestionable driving force, was simultaneously entertaining and subversive. There was slapstick comedy — a young writer named Steve Martin got his real start there — political commentary, and the showcasing of the day’s hottest rock acts and counterculture comedians. The Smothers Brothers took on the war in Vietnam,1 spoke out against racism, talked about sex and politics, and much more than winked at recreational drug use. From the outset Tommy’s vision was such that he was forced to wage war with the network censors like it was his job. Which is a good reason why, in the spring of 1969, he was out of a job with the show being cancelled and replaced by a new, much safer comedy/variety show called “Hee-Haw.”

In later years Tommy would admit that at some point in all of that he sort of lost the plot and became pretty damn humorless about it all, which is kind of a problem for a comedian. He gave interviews in which he claimed thats Richard Nixon personally leaned on the network to cancel the show and took to going on rants as opposed to using his wit and talent to make the message go down more easily. He’d eventually shake that off and he and Dick would return to network TV a couple of more times as the years went on, but the moment was sort of lost.

They would continue to tour their two-man act for decades, though, and from what I saw of it via TV clips and the like, they remained sharp and funny, and Tommy still delivered some political commentary, albeit in a less in-your-face way. That said, I tend to think that Tommy Smothers blunted his critique of Nixon and eventually Reagan’s America far less than a lot of his contemporaries did, and I’d guess that he and his brother left a lot of money on the table as a result.

It’s probably not a surprise to you to hear that Tommy Smothers was something of an inspiration to me. Like I said yesterday when talking about my political leanings, I’m not anyone’s idea of a radical, certainly not superficially speaking. I’m not gonna storm the castle or anything because that’s just not who I am. I do, however, believe in poking at, questioning and, when necessary, challenging authority. And, while I’m content to keep to myself most of the time, I will refuse to compromise my principles when people or circumstances lean on me to do so.

Blacklisted Hollywood types were those kinds of people. Jim Bouton was that kind of person. So too was Tommy Smothers. It’s those sorts of folks who are the closest things I have to heroes, and when one of them shuffles off, it’s worth toasting their memory.

Rest in peace Tommy Smothers.

Have a great day everyone.

Today we’ve got an unexpected update about Wander Franco, a couple of signings, a player looking for yet another fresh start, and a player giving a teammate’s wife a big expensive gift. Which would normally be a little suspect but isn’t here.

In Other Stuff I have a question for you about Cup of Coffee’s impending platform…

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If you’re someone who celebrates Christmas I hope you have a merry one.

If you’re someone who doesn’t celebrate Christmas I hope you have a pleasant day. Which is probably made all the easier by having all of us Christmas celebrators out of your hair.

Whichever camp you fall into, know that today it is socially acceptable to start drinking champagne at 8am or so. If you have children under ten years old, you can start at 7.

Have a great day everyone.

The biggest piece on the board — Yoshinobu Yamamoto — signed last night. There were some rules tweaks announced yesterday. I have a few more words about this newsletter’s eventual migration to another platform. Also: life imitates art, life imitates Orwell, a Duke Boy gone bad, and a guest post about Babe Ruth . . . not playing baseball.

And just a heads up: I’ll likely post a thread of some kind for chatting purposes on Monday and Tuesday — and if some truly big baseball news happens between now and then I’ll post at least something about it — but there won’t be full newsletters those days. Monday is Christmas of course. Tuesday is Boxing Day. I don’t actually celebrate Boxing Day — I’ll mostly be watching soccer and stuff — but since I write the bulk of these things the day before, and since I prefer not to work on Christmas, we’ll resume normality on Wednesday. Thanks for understanding and ho-ho-ho now I have a machine gun, etc.

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Last week I signed on to an open letter directed to Substack’s management seeking answers to questions many are raising about the company’s platforming and monetizing of Nazis. Today one of Substack’s founders, and the person who has essentially been the platform’s public face, Hamish McKenzie, posted a response. To say it was disappointing is a massive understatement. McKenzie:

Hi everyone. Chris, Jairaj, and I wanted to let you know that we’ve heard and have been listening to all the views being expressed about how Substack should think about the presence of fringe voices on the platform (and particularly, in this case, Nazi views). 

I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either—we wish no-one held those views. But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we don't think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse.

We believe that supporting individual rights and civil liberties while subjecting ideas to open discourse is the best way to strip bad ideas of their power. We are committed to upholding and protecting freedom of expression, even when it hurts.

He goes on but you get the idea. Needless to say, I think this is a shitty response.

There is no “protecting freedom of expression” issue here. Substack is not the government. Substack is a private business and it’s free to decide who and what it does and does not wish to platform without imperiling anyone’s rights. Indeed, it already does so with newsletters written by sex workers. That’s their choice. So too is this.

Deciding not to platform Nazis, white supremacists and the like would not be censorship. It would simply be a business deciding not serve and profit from Nazis, white supremacists and the like. In contrast, deciding to publish them and, going further, arguing that doing so is virtuous, is a pretty clear signal that you simply don’t understand the threat posed by Nazism, white supremacy and the like and you’re ignorant of the strategies they pursue to advance their agenda. Or that you do know it and you simply don’t care because your 10% cut of their revenues is just as good as the 10% they get from me and other writers who publish on Substack.

Again, this is not a matter of anyone’s legal rights and to the extent anyone claims it is is lying to you. It is, however, a matter of the sorts of folks with whom one chooses to associate. Both on Substack’s part and on the part of those who publish on this platform. Substack has now spoken. Now it’s time for the rest of us to speak.

For me, it seems pretty simple.

If I frequented a bar and noticed that Nazis and extremists started showing up and then, in response to customer complaints, the bar’s owner said “I don't like Nazis either, but they like beer too,” I'd start going to another bar. Changing where I publish this newsletter is not something I can do as quickly as walking out of a bar, but it’s something I can do. Unlike a lot of Substackers, this newsletter is my full time job and sole source of income. It pays my mortgage, puts food on my table, and pays my kids’ college tuition. As such, it may take some time for me to leave Substack as, to do so, it I have to research alternatives and determine whether or not they will work for me.

But it’s gonna happen sooner rather than later. Substack has made it pretty clear what it stands for. And it’s nothing I can stand with.

Craig Calcaterra

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Let’s jump on into our day, shall we?

The Daily Briefing

Padres sign Yuki Matsui

The San Diego Padres have reportedly signed Japanese closer Yuki Matsui to a four-year, $21 million contract.

Matsui, 28, has recorded 326 career saves in ten seasons for the Rakuten Golden Eagles, including 39 this past season. He’ll likely take over as San Diego’s primary closer heading into 2024.

Mets, Brewers make a trade

I always raise an eyebrow when a new GM makes a trade with the team he just left. My assumption is that he knows more about the player(s) he’s acquiring than anyone and if he wants them on his new team maybe the old team should think twice about letting him go. That’s probably flawed reasoning, though, because if the old team was happy to let the old GM go, does it not mean that they don’t think his judgment is as good as who they have in the job now? I’m guessing it’s more complicated than that. Or less complicated. I dunno. It’s just a thing I think about.

I mention that because the New York Mets, the new home of former Brewers’ GM David Stearns, has acquired starter Adrian Houser and outfielder Tyrone Taylor from Milwaukee in exchange for minor league pitcher Coleman Crow.

Houser, a slightly above average innings eater type, fills a hole at the embattled back-end of the Mets rotation. Taylor will be a reserve outfielder in New York in all likelihood, and his departure from Milwaukee helps clear up space for top prospect Jackson Chourio, who just got that pre-debut $82 million extension. Crow, 22, just underwent Tommy John surgery and will miss the season but the Brewers no doubt see him as useful in the future.

I’ll probably forget about this trade in approximately three days, but if it turns out that the Mets got a steal in acquiring Hauser, someone remind me about my raised eyebrow back in December, because I’ll definitely gloat about it and claim an uncommon prescience about such things. If the trade is a bust for New York or even a wash I’ll probably just delete this item and pretend it never happened.

What the Shohei Ohtani contract means for the Dodgers

We talked a great deal about how great a deal Shohei Ohtani’s massively-deferred money contract is for the Dodgers. In the L.A. Times yesterday Jack Harris spoke to some finance and sports business folks and had them expand on that a bit more. Their assessments were pretty startling:

“They’re getting a huge financial windfall for this contract [when compared to the $460-million present value disclosed],” said finance expert Morrie Aaron, founder and president of MCA Financial Group. “They’ll make a lot of money — a lot of money — on this thing.”

One rival agent offered up a jaw-dropping estimate.

“This may be close to an $800 million to $1 billion gain for the Dodgers over a decade,” the agent said, noting that if the team were to simply take the $680 million in deferrals and invest it — say, with an asset management firm like Guggenheim Partners, which is run by Dodgers owner Mark Walter — then the money could more than double in a decade’s time.

“They may be able to make $1 billion extra,” the agent reiterated.

Yesterday we talked some about what baseball opinions would make normie/civilian baseball fans angry at you. Many of you, quite correctly, mentioned player salary opinions being one of them, as there remains, to this day, a strong sentiment among civilians that ballplayers are massively overpaid. As such: next time you’re at your local saloon, elbow the guy at the barstool next to you and tell him “man, the Dodgers are making out like bandits by paying that Japanese fella $700 million. What a deal for them!”

Please report back your findings.

Some uniforms are gonna look mildly janky next year

Paul Lukas has an item over at UniWatch that is of some interest. It has to do with a mild uniform tweak that Nike and MLB have embarked upon that will result in a weird look for a couple of teams.

It’s a small technical thing relating to uniform graphic templates which, apparently, are the same size for every uniform, even if the designs themselves obviously vary. Nike and MLB have decided to narrow that template a little bit in order to make an adjustment to uniforms which have those solid outlines around players’ necks and down along either side of the buttons, which Lukas calls “headspoon pipining.” That narrowing makes those uniforms look a bit sleeker but it disrupts the spacing on uniforms which feature writing across the chest, requiring teams to either move the script an inch or so to the left, rendering it lopsided, in order to keep the same button break in the lettering. Or they have to change where the script breaks for the buttons.

All of that sounds like word salad, but if you click through to UniWatch you’ll see the effect it has, particularly on Dodgers and Cardinals jerseys. Each of them previously had button breaks in the small, low line between letters, making it barely noticeable. Now that break comes in the middle of letters and sticks out like a sore thumb.

In related news, I’ve been reading UniWatch for many, many years now and I never cease to be amazed at how much is going on with uniform design and how much seemingly little things matter. Which I suppose is the entire point of UniWatch.

Other Stuff

I approve of your mission but question the likelihood of its success

The post:

The photos:

It looks better than a Cybertruck but that’s not sayin’ much. Mostly it just looks frightened. Or maybe its just shaken. This car as SEEN THINGS, man.

A woman after my heart

Last week Washington Capitols and Wizards owner Ted Leonsis and Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin announced plans to move the Washington Wizards and Capitals from Capital One Arena in downtown Washington D.C. to a new complex in the Potomac Yards neighborhood north of Alexandria, Virginia. That has led to a lot of the usual discourse surrounding stadiums and arenas and development and all of that.

I will not pretend to understand the politics required to get that proposal through the Virginia legislature and to a place where shovels start to dig dirt, but I feel like this statement from Virginia state Senator L. Louise Lucas is possibly relevant. And undeniably delicious:

According to her Wikipedia page, Lucas is 79 years old and has five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Despite that, and despite the fact that I already have a wife, I think I want to marry her.

Sticking with Virginia . . .

The other day I wrote about the injunction that was issued to stop the removal of a statute in Arlington National Cemetery which glorifies the confederacy and slavery. That injunction was removed and the statue has been as well.

I was unaware of the precise dynamics of the legal challenge, but this story explains a couple of fun things.

First, it seems that the group wanting to protect the statue — Save Southern Heritage — had filed a previous action to preserve it in the District of Columbia. They lost that. Then they re-filed basically the same action in Virginia without telling the court that they had just lost in D.C. That’s generally a no-no and the judge made an annoyed note about it.

Second, that group, rather than just rely on procedural grounds or citations to environmental impacts of the statue’s removal, actually straight-up defended it as “promoting reconciliation” between the north and the south and thus not being offensive. About that . . .

Some of the figures also on the statue include a Black woman depicted as “Mammy” holding what is said to be the child of a white officer, and an enslaved man following his owner to war . . . Tuesday’s hearing focused largely on legal issues, but [Judge Rossie] Alston questioned the heritage group’s lawyers about the notion that the memorial promotes reconciliation.

He noted that the statue depicts, among other things, a “slave running after his ‘massa’ as he walks down the road. What is reconciling about that?” asked Alston, an African American who was appointed to the bench in 2019 by then-President Donald Trump.

Trump appointee or not, what on earth makes anyone think it’s a good idea to walk into a courtroom presided over by a Black judge and argue, with a straight face, that a statue erected by a southern state during the Jim Crow era which features mammies and slaves following a confederate soldier as he departs for battle is a benign, non-racist thing? Like, how blinkered do you have to be? Usually groups like these sorts of people come up with total horseshit in order to hide their abject racism, but I feel like they’ve gotten so high on their own supply that they don’t know when they’re telling the truth and when they’re shoveling said horseshit.

Not that the statue is going away entirely:

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who disagrees with the decision to remove the memorial, made arrangements for it to be moved to land owned by the Virginia Military Institute at New Market Battlefield State Historical Park in the Shenandoah Valley.

Remember when Youngkin was running for office and people claimed he was a moderate Republican who could take the party into a new, less-bigoted and less-confrontational direction? Yeah, that was hilarious.

Jackwagons

I’ve been using the word “jackwagon” for a long time. It started at NBC, where I couldn’t really swear, and the word was deployed as a synonym for “asshole.” I had picked it up from some commercial that aired during the World Series several years ago. It starred R. Lee Ermey — the drill sergeant from “Full Metal Jacket” — and he used it in the same way. I wanna say the commercial was for salsa or tortilla chips or something. I can’t remember.

The weird thing about my use of “jackwagon” was that hardly anyone else seemed to remember the commercial and so a lot of people thought I made the word up. A few people mentioned older uncles or grandparents who had used it but, for the most part, my deploying “jackwagon” was met with amusement and the mistaken impression that I had coined it. It was some real Mandela Effect stuff. At times I almost wondered if I had simply dreamed that commercial.

Yesterday I took Anna and Carlo out to a nearby diner for lunch. While waiting to be seated I looked into the kitchen and saw this:

I already liked this place, but now I like it even more. And I may have to inquire about getting me one of those shirts.

The Rolling Stones

As Christmas approaches and the news cycle slows down, I’m more inclined to talk about non-pressing stuff than usual, so let’s argue about music some, shall we?

Yesterday in the comments a little conversation about the Rolling Stones popped up. It started with someone saying that “Exile on Main Street” sucked, to which I jokingly threatened a banning (I was only half-joking; I’m watchin’ you, buddy!). After that some people talked some about the Stones’ late-60s, early-70s peak, during the course of which one of you said “The Rolling Stones as an entity are wildly overrated.”

My take: I hate almost all “underrated/overrated” analysis as it’s unnecessarily reductive. What I will say, though, is that the Rolling Stones were, for a time, as the well-worn slogan goes, The World’s Greatest Rock Band. But they also have been irrelevant for far longer than they were great even if a lot of folks won’t really acknowledge that. You can call that what you’d like, but it’s where I fall with them.

Here’s the quick and dirty, as far as I am concerned, and no, I do not claim an ounce of originality in this assessment, as many critics with far more knowledge and expertise than I possess have said much the same:

1964-65: A nice bluesy counterpoint to the Beatles — and better than most of the many other English bluesy bands which popped up in the early 60s — though nowhere near the Beatles level in quality. I have listened to their first few albums before (self-titled until “Out of Our Heads” and whatever compilations that material appeared on) but have never felt really compelled to revisit them;

1965-1967: A big leap forward with “Out of Our Heads” through “Between the Buttons.” Much stronger songwriting and much greater adventurousness. I personally prefer the Kinks in this era to the Stones, but I know I’m unusual in that regard. To most people, this is when they buried all of the other British Invasion bands in the ground, save the Beatles. If the Stones had died in a plane crash in 1967, or if they had all retired from music to become monks, they’d still be remembered and lauded as one of the best bands of the 60s based on this output. I go back and listen to these albums fairly regularly.

Their Satanic Majesties Request: Eh, nice try. I know there has been a lot of revisionism about this album, and I’ll acknowledge that a couple of songs are truly great, but this was obviously a dead end for them. But its failure is also what set them on the path to their greatest accomplishments in . . .

The Peak: “Beggar’s Banquet,” “Let it Bleed,” “Sticky Fingers,” and “Exile on Main Street.” Throw in the live “Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!” as well. All of these came out in a three and a half year period. The only other artists I can think of who put out this much top product in such a short period of time is Dylan in the mid-60s and, perhaps, the Beatles. Though, I should note, the Beatles’ peak featured a couple of lesser works (“Magical Mystery Tour” and “Yellow Submarine”) and one uneven album (“The White Album”) whereas the Stones’ produced nothing lesser or uneven at all in this period. This run is peak rock classic rock-era rock and roll — it may be all-time peak rock and roll — and I’m usually inclined to say that it’s rather preposterous to argue otherwise. And I don’t care what anyone says, “Exile on Main Street” is the best of ‘em, even if it’s not as immediately accessible as “Let it Bleed.” It may be the best of them precisely because it’s not as immediately accessible.

The Rest: The immediate post-peak run of “Goats Head Soup” through “Black and Blue” has its moments and some killer tracks and would represent the peak of a lot of bands, but it’s obviously more than a step down for the Stones. What wouldn’t be? 1978’s “Some Girls” was a masterwork which I would argue is on-par with The Peak. But it was also the last great album they’d ever put out. Indeed, in my assessment, they’ve only put out one more truly interesting album in the 45 years since “Some Girls.” That would be “Undercover,” which wasn’t a great work or anything — indeed, it was a stylistic reach for them and was both a mess and ultimately a failure in a lot of ways — but they were at least trying something different.

In the 41 years since “Undercover” came out the Rolling Stones have only released six studio albums of original material, one album of blues standards, and a massive amount of live material and greatest hits sets. The blues standards album, 2016’s “Blue and Lonesome,” is excellent and serves as a great career coda even if they just put out that new record. The rest of it is mostly throwaway stuff to justify tours. These albums, collectively, have a very small handful of decent songs but not enough to even make up a decent “late period” playlist or compilation in my view. The Stones have, quite obviously, earned the right to do whatever they want, and I certainly won’t criticize Stones fans who love some of this later material because we all like what we like, but I find it almost uniformly uninteresting and unnecessary.

I’m not sure where that falls on the “overrated/underrated” scale, but that’s what I think about ‘em.

Have a great day everyone.

I hope you’re having a good runup to Christmas. Let’s just jump right into it today, shall we?

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There were only some low-level hot stove things yesterday so I spend a lot of my time today discussing how delusions about the crime rate affect the free agent market. Or don’t. I don't know. But it’s a simultaneously fascinating and enraging topic and that’s right in my wheelhouse, Jack.

In Other Stuff I . . . talk even more about the crime rate. But I do it differently, so it’s OK. I also talk about how Ronald Reagan made Americans shorter and I spend far, far too long talking about self-checkouts at the grocery store. You know, the important stuff.

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There wasn’t a ton of big news over the weekend but we have what there was: the Hank Aaron Award winners, Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s dinner plans, Tyler Glasnow’s extension, Mac Scherzer’s bad back, the Royals continuing to stoke the hot stove, and the Dbacks bringing back a reliable bat.

In Other Stuff I talk about three very different movies: “Godzilla Minus One” “Living,” and “Love Actually.” And, actually, it’s mostly not me talking about “Love Actually.” It’s a guest poster whose opinions on the Christmas mainstay are, to say the least, a bit more pointed than mine.

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