Cup of Coffee: October 26, 2023

Dusty hangs it up, Counsell and the Mets, the Frick nominees are out, Mad Dog backs down, I'm walking here, Patrick Stewart's memoir, Martin Guerre and the military industrial complex

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

There was no baseball last night. There will be no baseball tonight. But, as subscribers who stick around during the offseason know, the lack of baseball games in no way inhibits this newsletter. Let’s get at ‘er.

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The Daily Briefing

Your World Series Schedule

Not that you don’t know. But in case you don’t know, now you know:

• Game 1: Friday, Oct. 27, 8:03 p.m. ET, Fox

• Game 2: Saturday, Oct. 28, 8:03 p.m. ET, Fox

• Game 3: Monday, Oct. 30, 8:03 p.m. ET, Fox

• Game 4: Tuesday, Oct. 31, 8:03 p.m. ET, Fox

• Game 5 (if needed): Wednesday, Nov. 1, 8:03 p.m. ET, Fox

• Game 6 (if needed): Friday, Nov. 3, 8:03 p.m. ET, Fox

• Game 7 (if needed): Saturday, Nov. 4, 8:03 p.m. ET, Fox

See you there.

Dusty Baker announces his retirement

We talked about this the other day after the Astros were eliminated, but now it’s official: Dusty Baker has announced his retirement.

Baker, 74, has spent 26 years as a big league manager. His run with Houston saw him win two pennants and the 2021 World Series title. He also led the Giants to three postseason berths, including a pennant in 2002. He also managed the Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds, and Washington Nationals, taking all of those teams to the postseason as well. His career record: 2,183 wins and 1,862 losses. The win total is seventh all time. His 57 career postseason wins ranks fourth all-time. His 13 total postseason appearances also ranks fourth all time.

That managerial record alone makes him a lock for the Hall of Fame, but his 19-year playing career in which he hit .278/.347/.432 (116 OPS+) while winning two Silver Slugger Awards, making two All-Star teams, and winning a World Series title as a player with the Dodgers in 1981 is more than enough sugar on the top.

Happy trails, Dusty Baker. See you in Cooperstown.

Craig Counsell to interview with the Mets

So it seems that Brewers manager Craig Counsell is interviewing for the Mets job. With his old boss, David Stearns. Gee, I wonder if he’ll get the job?

Counsell, whose contract just ran out, has managed the Brewers for nine seasons, leading them to three National League Central titles and five postseason appearances in the past six seasons and reaching the NL Championship Series in 2018. The Mets, of course, fired Buck Showalter earlier this month. Around the same time they hired Stearns. So I’m guessing that if Counsell wants the job it’s his.

Sean Casey will not return as the Yankees hitting coach in 2024

Sean Casey announced on his podcast yesterday that he will not return as the hitting coach for the New York Yankees in 2024.

Casey was hired in the middle of this past season. There was always a “this is a trial run” kind of thing to it as Casey was not sure if he wanted to be a uniformed, traveling coach full time. In his announcement he cited his desire to be near his family, so it all tracks from that perspective.

That said, Brendan Kuty of The Athletic reported that, per his sources, Casey was a favorite among Yankees veterans, but that “there was some disconnect between his teachings and what was taught in the minors, & some in/out of org speculated if that contributed in part to 2nd-half struggles of rookies Volpe, Peraza, Pereira.” Which, if true, is kind of funny on some level because the whole reason Casey was brought in was supposed to be that the club’s hitting instruction was not good and had led to the stagnation of young hitters like Volpe, Peraza, and Pereira.

I dunno, man. Ain’t my team, ain’t my business. But I love that the Yankees just went through a bad-for-them season and are facing some pretty existential questions about how to run the entire organization, and the only person leaving is a guy who didn’t show up until July and who is now, somewhat disingenuously it seems from my perspective, being blamed for a thing that wasn’t really his fault to begin with.

Gonna be a fun winter in the Yankees Universe.

Ford Frick Award nominees announced

The Ford C. Frick Award is presented annually for excellence in baseball broadcasting. Despite that, Hawk Harrelson somehow won it back in 2019, so they don’t always hit the mark. Yesterday the Hall of Fame announced the finalists for the 2024 Frick Award. It’s a decidedly better crop. They are:

• Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper of the San Francisco Giants;

• Tom Hamilton of the Cleveland Guardians;

• Ken Korach of the Oakland Athletics;

• Joe Castiglione of the Boston Red Sox;

• Gary Cohen of the New York Mets;

• Dan Schulman of the Toronto Blue Jays and ESPN;

• Jacques Doucet, retired French-language broadcaster of the Blue Jays

• Joe Buck, the longtime voice of Fox Sports; and

• Ernie Johnson, Sr. of Atlanta

Hard to vote against Krukow and Kuiper. Or, for that matter, Cohen. Joe Buck was a polarizing for quite some time but I think his overall tenure in baseball has earned him the right to the honor. And, of course, I’m personally partial to the late Ernie Johnson Sr., who was one of the main voices of may baseball fandom for most of my childhood. Really, almost everyone on this list deserves serious consideration. It’s one of the most loaded Frick ballots I can remember in some time.

The winner will be announced on December 6 at the Winter Meetings in Nashville.

Mad Dog reneges on his retirement promise

As noted yesterday, Chris “Mad Dog” Russo had vowed to “retire on the spot” if the Diamondbacks won Games 6 and 7 of the NLCS. The Dbacks did their part but Russo has, quite predictably, failed to deliver on his vow.

On the Howard Stern Show yesterday Russo “negotiated” a fallback option. Instead of retiring, Russo will wear a Diamondbacks bikini and walk through the streets of New York wearing a sign that says “I’m a liar and a dope.” Stern wanted him to wear a sign that said “I’m a douche” but Russo wasn’t comfortable with that. Which, fair.

Congratulations to all of us for giving that jackwagon the attention he deserves. We’re all a part of the problem.

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Other Stuff

He walks

My leg, which I injured during my Coast-to-Coast walk, stopped hurting a little over a week ago and, while I had been able to walk around the neighborhood a bit and through the airports down to Texas and back over the past week, I had not tried to actually do anything strenuous with it until yesterday. Yesterday I walked the .4 of a mile to my gym, did 45 minutes on the treadmill at a moderate but respectable speed and incline, did some upper body weight work, and then walked the .4 of a mile back home. No pain. No stiffness. No fallout. I’m back, baby. If you need me I’ll be in the Lake District climbing a fell!

[Editor: Take it easy, Sir Edmund Hillary. You’re grounded for the winter. Maybe just spend the next couple of months getting back in shape and take a nice day-hike or two in the Appalachians or something once spring comes]

Fine.

Making it So

My air travel and my resumed walking has me back on audiobooks and I’m currently reading Sir Patrick Stewart’s memoir, Making it So. I was and remain a “Star Trek: The Next Generation” freak so I’m practically obligated.

At the outset I’ll note that it’s shockingly long for a celebrity memoir that, so far anyway, does not include tales of prison sentences, near-death by misadventure, headline-level disgrace, or general tawdriness. It’s nearly 500 pages in print and over 18 hours on audio which seems a lot for a well-respected but mostly normal guy who, as far as I know, has not done anything to shock or appall anyone.

Once I got into it — and I should note that I’m like seven hours in and he’s still a 19 year-old actor in his first real job in reparatory theater — I discovered why it’s so long: there is not a moment of Stewart’s life upon which he does not comment. Like, in-depth stuff about the bathroom in his childhood home, random events from his school days that do not seem particularly formative, and digressions about how the style of stage makeup changed in the late 1950s due to advances in lighting, the proper way to mix brick mortar, his secret to curing hiccups, and how much the bus cost between Mirfield and Dewsbury, West Yorkshire when Clement Atlee was Prime Minister. It is, to say the least, exhaustive.

Yet . . . I’m liking it? A big part of this is because of the audiobook format. Stewart reads it himself and, even if his voice has gotten a tad raggedy with age over the past couple of years, it’s still Patrick Fucking Stewart reading it and I’d listen to him read anything.

More significantly, you can tell just how much he’s enjoying reading it and how much he enjoyed writing it. There is a “we’re sitting in armchairs, having a Scotch while I tell you stories that make me happy” vibe to the whole thing that is — dare I use the word? — engaging. You get the sense that, even though there was an editor for the book, Stewart told him that his suggestions would be rejected because, damn it, he has stories he wants to tell and he will not cut any of them out. And I don’t really begrudge him for it like I might some other writers because it’s all so good natured. Stewart is no doubt proud of his career and how far he has come since growing up in near-poverty with an abusive father in a house without indoor plumbing in the middle of damn nowhere, yet he doesn’t think this is The Most Important Thing You Have Ever Read. He’s simply telling people about his life. Which is a thing he has 100% earned the right to do, even if he’s taking his damn time in doing so.

Plus there’s a lot of fun stuff in it so far.

I’ve always been a big TNG fanboy but I somehow never knew that Stewart, who is known for being a Shakespearian actor with The Voice of God, grew up with an almost incomprehensible Yorkshire accent he had to consciously un-learn as an acting student. He trots it out in the audiobook from time to time, by way of example, and it’s jarring but hilarious. He talks about going bald young which is perhaps something that speaks to me more than it might speak to other people. He has also gone off — and gone off hard — on how much he hates Margaret Thatcher a couple of times, which is always fun. Based on my Wikipedia-level knowledge of Stewart’s life it’s pretty clear that he was a decent and progressive fellow overall but knowing that he comes from a Labour family and, to this day, has some VERY strong opinions on Maggie Thatcher make me smile.

Given the size of the book and the rate at which I’m consuming it it may be weeks before I actually get to him being cast as Jean-Luc Picard, but I feel like it’ll be an enjoyable journey to get there. I strongly suspect that if you don’t care about Star Trek you won’t be all that into this book, but as someone who does, I’m happy I’m reading it.

Natalie Zemon Davis: 1928-2023

The historian Natalie Zemon Davis died on Saturday. She was 94.

I didn't have a handle on what history could be beyond the straight chronicle of kings, presidents, wars, and great inventions until my professor in my freshman history class assigned us Davis’ book, The Return of Martin Guerre, back in 1991. The book totally changed my understanding of how history can be told. It made me appreciate that the stories of common people, how they understood their world, and how they lived their lives was every bit if not more important to our understanding of history than the chronicle of the elites is. It made me understand that history, done properly, is a study of humanity, not a study of Great Men.

RIP to a real one who made history lively and approachable to an idiot like me. And if you haven’t read The Return of Martin Guerre, make a point to do so. It could change your life. It did mine.

Great Moments in the Military Industrial Complex

I’m a person who believes that the United States should, generally speaking, use its power and its wealth to help make the world a better place to the extent it is able. That general guiding principle can, quite obviously, lead to all kinds of thorny ethical problems once it starts being practically applied, but I do think, as a first impulse, if you are someone who has power you should at least try to use that power to help those in need. Basic Spider-Man shit.

That can, depending on the circumstances, involve military aid or even the direct use of military power. It can involve helping supply our allies, or those who are simply in need of defending themselves, with weapons. I absolutely abhor war but I am realistic enough about the world to where I understand that, sometimes, it is necessary. It is my hope in such situations that our involvement in a given war can lead to less net human suffering than if we were not involved in it. I don’t think our national batting average on that score is terribly high but as a principle I think, perhaps naively, that it can still be a sound one.

That last bit — understanding the gravity and the violence and the suffering entailed by the pursuit of even that least-bad course of action — is something that is lost on some folks, it seems. Folks like Morgan Stanley analysts on earning calls with defense contractors like Raytheon who refer to the manufacturing and supplying of weapons to Ukraine and to Israel as “opportunities” that “fit quite nicely” with the company’s portfolio:

On an October 24 earnings call, RTX Corporation CEO Greg Hayes said that the defense contractor stood to "benefit" from a US Department of Defense's budget increase which would fund the supply of weapons to Israel and the restocking of weapons in Ukraine.

"I think really across the entire Raytheon portfolio, you're going to see a benefit of this restocking," Hayes said on the call. "On top of what we think is going to be an increase in DOD top line."

The statement was in response to a question from Kristine Liwag, an analyst from Morgan Stanley. Liwag asked how quickly RTX Corporation, formerly known as Raytheon Corporation, could profit if Congress approves President Biden's request for a DoD budget increase in 2024.

"Looking at this request, you've got equipment for Ukraine, air and missile defense for Israel, and replenishment of stockpile for both," Liwang said. "And this seems to fit quite nicely with the Raytheon Defense portfolio."

You can read the whole earnings call transcript here if you have the stomach for it. Know, however, that a brief comment at the outset regarding the “tragic situation” in Israel notwithstanding — one that was quickly followed with “With that said, let me turn to an update on our end markets” — no one seems all that interesting in acknowledging that the “restocking” to which they refer means more bombs being fired at people and that the “benefits” and “opportunities” to which they refer are underwritten in human blood.

I’m assuming that dwelling on the tragedy of the world’s “elevated threat environment,” to use a phrase from the transcript, would have material negative impacts on future “opportunities.” And we obviously can’t have that.

Have a great day, everyone.