Aaron Judge stays in New York, Xander Bogaerts goes to San Diego, Kenley Jansen and Masataka Yoshida ship up to Boston, the Mets sign José Quintana, the Cardinals sign Willson Contreras and more
Loeffler wasn't a great candidate, though not nearly as bad as Walker. Kemp did beat Abrams 53.4% to 45.9%, so I do think a candidate like Kemp (who presents as not batshit) would have won against Warnock. Candidate quality really only matters though for races within a couple points of a coin flip.
As a longtime Georgia voter, I have had to hone my skills at political ad avoidance. Add that to my long aversion to broadcast news and I honestly did not hear Walker's vampires/werewolves speech until yesterday, after the race had ended and I sought it out. I realized it was taken from a speech he made at a Heisman award banquet several years ago. The stakes back then being nonexistent, I found him to be a charming (if not always fully intelligible) speaker, and I watched the speech several times once I discovered it. It never failed to lift my spirits, and it enhanced my opinion of him. I acknowledge the validity of any negative views on Walker that anyone might have, but I'm glad on an extremely minute and selfish level to retain some of my feelings for him as a weird but charming dilettante.
As a person of a certain age, I am glad that I can go back to merely remembering Herschel running over Bill Bates and Lester Munson’s “my god, only a freshman” call.
Not that this newsletter is home for top tier college football discussions but I was hoping that Craig would use Kaitlin Collins’ tweet instead of the Politico (?) story to then make the Red Sox analogy. Ms. Collins is a quality political reporter ... who also is an Alabama grad with a picture of Nick Saban in her Twitter background. Dawgs v Elephants?
When I was 13 I clipped and saved the Atlanta Journal reports of his Wrightsville HS games, which were such events that they merited big city newspaper coverage. It was clear to everyone by the time Herschel was 16 (at the latest) that book learnin' was not going to necessarily be required of him. His college eligibility was never going to be in doubt. Even so, after he left UGA to play in the USFL, he said he was going to continue working towards a criminal justice degree in the off season. Flash forward to 1985 and I'm waiting on the campus bus with none other than Herschel Walker, me with my textbooks and he with his. Wow, I thought, he does not have to be doing this. At. All. So it's from that lofty perch that I've had to revise my opinion of him, and I can't help but hold on to a tiny bit of that admiration.
And I would have assumed that "don't hold a gun to your wife's head and threaten to blow her brains out" would have been covered in Walker's coursework. That curriculum could use some updating.
I don't have the stomach to watch his campaign speeches, but Walker did use the vampire/werewolf bit on the trail. So this wasn't just pulling stuff out-of-context from years ago. And it was just a drop in the bucket of the stupid shit he's said as a candidate.
I know -- I heard the about ridicule he was getting, then saw the clip of the campaign speech and realized he was borrowing from the speech I remembered, which caused me to muse on the effect of the different contexts (which, honestly, the only offensive thing about it back then was his contention that Fright Night is a bad movie...Fright Night is, in fact, an awesome movie).
I saw it in about 3rd grade and we were too giggly (the girl took off her b-r-a-w as one friend stated) to get scared. Not surprisingly, the mother who let us watch was the one you went to for booze in high school (and probably anything else you wanted based on a news segment about kids and fireworks where she ended up being interviewed).
“At one time, science said man came from apes, did it not?” Walker, the frontrunner for the Georgia Republican Senate nomination, said in an appearance over the weekend at a church in Sugar Hill, Georgia. “If that is true, why are there still apes? Think about it.”
As a biologist, I've seen this stupid anti-evolution argument a bazillion times. If you do a Google search of the question, there are dozens of articles written that answer the question. Asking this question publicly is an admission that one would rather wallow in ignorance* (or peddle to those who do), rather than be taken seriously as thinker.
* Walker clearly is a true believer in ignorance rather than a peddler
Ah, an occasion to tell one of my favorite recent anecdotes from a road trip with my band! It was winter 2019, and we were nearing the end of a quick little run to the Northeast and back. We woke up in Carbondale, Illinois after a great night there. Our last date was a Sunday in St. Louis but a December ice storm had blown in and after a heavy phone call, my friend/the promoter in St. Louis and I decided to postpone and we called it off and tried to just make it as far north as possible.
Well, road conditions in southern Illinois didn't allow for much progress, so we ended up just getting a motel in Salem, Illinois. The town had almost shut down, despite what a Minnesotan would consider a mere inch or two of icy slushy snow (yeah, we don't like it, but our cities still function during such conditions). We tried to find a bar, anything, and as we walked around the downtown area we passed a historic looking old house with a placque in the yard. I brushed the snow off it and read. BOYHOOD HOME OF WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN.
"Hey guys!," I said, "look! It's the boyhood home of William Jennings Bryan!"
Silence.
"William Jennings Bryan! You don't know William Jennings Bryan from high school social studies? Three time Democratic nominee as a populist in the old-school sense of the word and three time loser? 'Mankind shall not be nailed to a cross of gold' and such?"
Still silence. Then a lightbulb went off above our keyboard player Luke's head.
"Oh! I know him!" Luke announced proudly. "He was the evil lawyer from the Scopes Monkey Trial!"
The Evil Lawyer From The Scopes Monkey Trial. I'd edit WJB's wikipedia page to have it say that, but I respect wikipedia's guardians too much to give them that shitwork to do. Anyway, I love this story so much.
Hilarious. I find it historically fascinating that a leading progressive was also somewhat of a fundie, whereas today's fundies worship supply-side Jesus.
Well, to quote Lou Reed: those were different times.
The discourse surrounding modern (right-wing) populism is sometimes startingly ahistoric. Yes, it sucks. But there was a time when the populists would stand on the picket line with you outside whatever the late 19th century equivalent of a unionizing Starbucks was.
If you ever make a series of poor life choices and find yourself in Dayton, TN; Monkey Town Brewing is actually pretty good. Far better beer than I'd expect for a small town Tennessee brewery.
I don't know Dayton but I do know that area and that's some absolutely gorgeous contryside. I also have some experience coming across randomly awesome breweries in very small towns, but that's mostly in Wisconsin which for some reason feels like it should be the baseline experience as opposed to Tennessee, which is many things but not a state many people primarily associate with beer.
I will note that the last time Germany arrested someone for plotting to overthrow the government, he was in prison for eight month, during which time he wrote his manifesto. We can hope they have learned from the mistake, but if we are comparing nations, we need to have note that the US is not the only one to reward its traitors in some fashion.
Man, I just loved all the transactions the past few days. It's fun to have this kind of merry go round in baseball again and not just in the NBA. Even if I share Craig's apprehension about the Mets acquiring an openly homophobic player. (Will note, BTW, that I saw a report one reason deGrom wanted out was because he's a secret antivaxxer. This is a sport that has way too many people I would want nothing to do with.)
Mets also acquired Yankees prospect Zach Greene in the Rule Five draft, adding another potential arm to the bullpen mix. Things are starting to come together for the 2023 team, though as things stand now, I think they are doing enough to be in the mix but not enough to poke ahead of the Phils and Braves, Though, given that the Phils made the World Series as a wild card, all that should matter is getting into the playoffs. Which, come to think of it, won't be easy either.
At least a point for the current situation is that their random prince seems to be less charismatic than the ringleader the last time Germany dealt with this kind of thing.
It's a sort of funny point, but honestly Germany has been locking up people for espousing Nazi ideologies since the end of WWII. Just last October they arrested the Terror Granny. By most accounts they still remember what letting bigoted nationalistic political movements go unchecked leads to.
The American "freedom of speech" part of me doesn't like sending people to jail just for saying the wrong thing. The Jewish part of me is fine with it.
Frank, it's actually the LAW there. They have American style Freedom of Speech EXCEPT for anything regarding Nazi ideology.
Post War Germany was SERIOUS about earning the world's trust again. I was an Army officer in Germany from 1989 to 1991 (you may have heard Germany had some things happen those years) and I knew a lot of Bundeswehr officers. They were all aggressively non-political, and incredibly professional (if a little slovenly by US Army standards, another way, I think, that they deliberately set themselves apart from their history).
In point of fact Germany had to get and then finalize a constitutional exemption to send peacekeepers to the Balkans a couple years later during the Yugoslavian breakup. I vividly recall tearing up reading about Serbian war crime site discovered and secured by a Bundeswehr unit at the time. A mass grave of victims, discovered by German soldiers, who secured the site, began the investigation, and called in UN and Hague investigators so that the perpetrators could be caught.
Germany has earned the right to be trusted to set some conditional limitations on speech.
I was reading something on the new government of Italy that pointed out that the country never went through a similar de-Nazification process after WWII as Germany did and some of the effects are showing up now.
And of course the Reconstruction after the American Civil War did nothing of the sort in terms of sorting out the impulses that led to that conflict and we're still paying for shoving that festering boil under the rug for well over a century.
Yep! Italy never really reckoned with their WWII, nor did Japan (although their issues were slightly different) in the way the Allies ensured Germany did.
And, as you say, the fecklessness of Reconstruction is legendary. Reading about how most administrations mostly ignored enforcing it in favor of westward expansion and then utterly abandoned it in 1877 (to get a Democratic congress to agree to set aside violence and seat a Republican president...at that time the parties being reversed in the area of Black rights). Reading about that period now is sort of like reading about a train wreck while you watch the results roll into your ER.
That last thing you said? Perfect analogy. We had a chance to actually enact equity of opportunity after the Civil War but this stupid country blew it, and now here we are.
This is exactly my point. I'm glad you are more familiar with the details and shared them. America used to limit speech all the time, and it was only once we started limiting hate speech in the 80s that we came to believe the 1st amendment is this total ban on all speech. It used to be "commercial speech" was easily regulated, and now what you do is "who you are, as an artist."
It is comforting, in its way, to know that Germany sets limits on ideas that reach a certain threshold of hideousness. We are not insane for thinking that when someone calls for the death of a group of people (gays, jews, SJW, congresspeople, Vice Presidents) that those people should be silenced and their threats punished by jail time.
We don't have to just throw our hands up and say "the constitution."
Right. That's almost always way down on the list of reasons players sign somewhere. This isn't like the NBA where coaching strategy and system takes center stage.
The departure of Jansen and arrival of Jimenez means that the Atlanta charter flight can use the same weight calculations in planning the flights. My goodness that is a large person. Keep the Terry Forster fat tub of goo fan club alive!
Malloy is the only ATL position player on any prospect top X lists. But he is old for his class so I
guess despite not trading from a position of strength it is okay.
Bogaerts deal probably puts the final mail in the coffin for any hopes of Swanson returning. Oh well. Rumors have ATL talking with CLE about Rosario to fill the void.
Craig, I am shocked and outraged that you did not mention the Rule 5 draft, which saw the Nats draft RHP Whosy Whathisname (aka Thad Ward) from the Red Sox with the first pick overall. He immediately becomes the Nats’ 13th overall prospect (that’s not a bit), is expected to spend the season in the bullpen and, as someone said on Twitter last night, Davey Martinez will probably have him on the injured list by June.
PS I just finished a three-week lap around the country and, while it’s not a statistically valid sample, I did not see anything like the support for 45 I expected. Lots of Christian billboards and some complaints about gas prices (all supporting candidates who lost or opposing candidates who won) but almost nothing in support of the man himself. I have no doubt that they are reloading in support of someone else like DeSantis, but I think the guy may have finally permanently damaged his brand politically.
PPS In my lap around the country I was on the following interstates, not including three-digit city spurs like 270 and 880: 81, 80, 74, 70, 68, 66, 65, 55, 40, 30, 20, 10, 8 and 5. Grateful to start and end the day in the same time zone for a change. Pass the coffee.
I dream of doing that lap without ever being on an Interstate, or at least minimizing the use of them. Of course, it'll take six weeks my way, which is why it won't happen until I'm retired.
I am right there with you. My first trip out Florida to Maine and back took 100 days. I try not to drive more than 3-4 hours a day. Definitely stay of the interstates if at all possible. There was a day we had to drive through WVA all interstate through mountains. It was the worst driving experience ever in the old RV.
I had the same sense as I made the trip - I was trying maximize my time at my daughter's in SF so it was interstates all the way out and back. When I'm not trying to get back for work anymore I will go see the VW Beetle spider in Avoca, IA and all of the other things the billboards suggested along the way.
I-95 north of Squirrel Level Rd in North Carolina is an abyss of despair and I-80 across Nebraska is a combo version of the hell envisioned by the ancient Greeks and Hebrews.
I-95 isn’t horrible for its entire length. Once you get as far south as the bypass around Richmond it becomes, at worst, tolerable. There are stretches of other eastern interstates that are much worse. I-75, for example.
We used to drive from DC to Sarasota to visit Mary's mom and I always felt like the whole thing was miserable. Though to be honest the worst part of the drive was the white-knuckle across Florida on I-4.
I’m putting the over/under at 36.5 hours on when we’ll see the first “Bogaerts never wanted to stay with Boston” column from some management friendly who will probably just do a find-replace on the Mookie and Lester articles that we’ve seen in the past.
Why would the Padres move their best defensive shortstop to second base, and move their best (aside from Kim perhaps) second baseman to first for Bogaerts? Cronenworth is a good player, but he doesn't really have the production you expect from a first baseman. If Bogaerts is the extra player, and the position hole is at first base...
The whole idea of signing a shortstop was pretty questionable. But the Padres seemed bound and determined to sign a big money free agent for their lineup, and didn't seem to care much who it was. In their defense, the top bats after Judge seemed to all be shortstops. So if they wanted to add a big bat, it had to be a shortstop.
If they had succeeded in signing Judge, would that have committed them to put Tatis Jr. in center before they actually found whether he was any good at it?
Trouble is, you and I aren't taking into account the egos of these highly paid players insisting on what position they want to play. What if Bogaerts and Tatis both demand to play short?
I tend to think that is overrated. I think it’s more overrated when talking about players joining a new team. And Tatis’ ringworm has most likely eaten more than its share of ego.
Tatis isn't demanding anything next season -- he needs to stay humble and prove himself after his PED suspension. The last thing he needs is more controversy.
I've always wondered what Cronenworth's value would be as a mop-up pitcher and super sub. He's a borderline All Star at second, but probably average at first. Maybe they'll sign or trade for a first baseman and relegate Kim to utility and defensive sub. Kim had fantastic defensive numbers, but if they slip just a bit he probably doesn't hit enough to be a regular.
Will depend on next year.. if he demonstrates a 3rd consecutive year of health (150ish games, 25ish pitching starts) and is in the 6-8 WAR range at least, I could easily see 6/300 given the way salaries are exploding this winter.
Hell, maybe even 8/400. He'd only be 35 at the end of that contract!
On Hershel Walker, lots of unqualified people try to run for office. And they usually go nowhere because nobody votes for them in the primary. (Exception: Trump, Donald J.) if he was such a bad candidate (which he was), then why the hell did you vote for him in the primaries?
To me the bigger question is how a clearly unqualified candidate still got 48% of the vote? But Trump won an election, so I guess I'll never understand voters.
We've been seeing unqualified people getting elected for ages. Jim Bunning wasn't qualified, either. I don't think most athletes are. Bill Bradley was the exception.
Off the top of my head I can think of one other example of an ex-athlete who was a star who also was qualified for the elected position in which he served. Alan Page became the Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court for years. He is, in a word, awesome.
We're so partisan now (most Independents strongly lean strongly one way or the other) that even woefully unqualified people have a very high floor of votes. In national politics, we no longer see much ticket splitting or waves of people temporarily voting for the opposition (there's no equivalent of "Reagan Democrats"). Candidates like Walker can lose close elections in purple states, but he would have easily won in a deep red state.
I think it's the other way around -- candidates are more partisan than ever. Voters often are forced to vote for a radical, for fear of an ideologically opposed radical winning.
Alaska is interesting, though. With their ranked choice voting, they'll elect Murkowski and Peltola and do so happily. I support statewide and local ranked choice and open primaries because these things allow for the nearly unthinkable in our current age of politics: candidates don't need to cater to the extremes of their base in order to win. Hell, maybe do it for the presidency as well.
Candidates will say a lot of things that are outlandish in primaries to get the nomination from the party. They need to, primary voters are overwhelmingly more left/right than the general election voters. After getting the nomination savvy candidates usually try to slide to the middle to gain independent votes and those slightly left or right of center who may not be all in on the other candidate.
In Georgia, and a couple other cases around the country, (PA, AZ) Donald Trump's full throated endorsement pushed these candidates across the primary finish line in very close races. To this point he still enjoys a lot of sway with hardcore primary voters.
When the general election comes there are any number of reasons why he would get that number of votes. Some will never vote D, ever. Some were likely receptive to messaging on a single issue, ie abortion and judges. Some wanted a check on the democrats power in Washington. Hell, maybe some people thought he had a great stance of vampires vs werewolves.
I think its important that a lot of the "shift to the left" in these states like GA and AZ is due to the terrible candidates that cannot win anything but the base. I believe Warnock would have had a very tough time against a moderate republican, although it seems those are endangered at the moment.
As for Trump winning, that's a whole other can of worms.
Walker was exposed as a phony and not a true family man. A certain number of the family values and christian conservative types in Georgia were probably turned off by him.
If a candidate is consistent with their message and authentic, they can win even if the have a strong ideological bent in the general election. The problem is politicians are generally liars and phonies and get exposed for it in the race.
No they weren't. More than 80% of voters who described themselves as born-again or evangelical voted for him.
It's because they are racist and a vote for Walker was a vote against the party that has more support from black voters. (Of course most evangelicals are pretty crappy as "family men" too so of course there was an appeal there.)
I'm convinced that the GOP thought that nominating a second Black man would split the Black vote, which of course is insulting to voters' intelligence and ignores why Black people overwhelmingly vote Democrat.
Evangelical voters are the single greatest threat to our secular pluralistic democracy around. Their churches should be subject to taxation and scrutinized for possible classification as hate groups.
Yeah, Trump was exposed as a phony long ago and still enjoyed cult-like support from the family values types. They don't actually care about a person's "family values" as long as that person helps them install unqualified hacks throughout the judiciary that will ban abortions and make it legal to shit all over the poor, minorities, women, and LGBTQ+ folks.
The Christian conservatives were just fine with Walker. He performed virtually as well as Loeffler did against Warnock. The fact that Warnock is actually a practicing minister, at MLK's church no less, meant nothing to the family values people. He preaches loving your neighbor, helping the poor, and living the values of Jesus - all things the fundamentalist Evangelical crowd finds to be evil. THEY are the ACTUAL phonies.
Seemed clear to me that many of them weren’t voting for Walker as much as they were voting against the horror of a 51st Democratic Senator. Same mindset was how Hilliard lost to Trump.
Baerga was once replaced by Alomar, but that would be problematic here. Do we go for the utility journalist Chone Figgins or a throwaway one like Knoblauch?
Craig knows the punks aren't shelling out subscription money unless they have a damn good reason, thus this song on this particular date. It'll be James or Dylan or 100 Gecs tomorrow.
Thank you, Craig. Re San Diego, I do agree it’s a lovely spot. Only been once, April 2004, holiday tacked onto a work event of my then partner and I was blown away by how pretty, how interesting and how lovely the weather was. Also, the eagle-eyed, or memoried (eh?) will know that was the month Petco Park opened so I got to see two games against The Dodgers in the new stadium. Wonderful it was.
Craig mentioned the lovely eateries and that was certainly my experience. One of them had an on-site brewery, a less common event in the US then than now, I believe, and when I ordered a beer and chatted briefly about cask-conditioned ale they immediately assumed that anyone from England was automatically an expert and so insisted on bringing me all their options for free for me to opine on. Not one to look a gift horse I duly dived in, my initial careful thoughts (Hmm, pleasantly hoppy?) becoming increasingly expansive as I got through the menu (“I’m getting clarity at the start but increasing depth later, rather like the dawn of a spring day but with dark clouds massing from the south west”) as the lovely staff continued to to nod eagerly and make notes and most importantly, bring me further ales whilst my stepdaughter and partner fidgeted and rolled their eyes.
It was a lovely evening - at least for me, which I’m sure you’ll agree was the main thing - and rather cemented San Diego in my affections.
I went to the Mets' Pride Day game this year, and it was honestly one of the most fun days I've ever had at the ballpark. Everyone was just super happy to be there, the game was pretty fun, and Mark Canha even changed his walkup music to Madonna and Lady Gaga for the day. The Mets wear their inclusiveness pretty well, in comparison to most other baseball teams.
Look back in June to see if Brooks Raley has a bruised toe or flu-like symptoms that have sent him to the injured list immediately prior to the Pride Day game. That's the only way he won't be pressured to comply by the Mets.
Erica Scherzer has also been supportive of Pride events, so I would think her labor activist hubby is at least somewhat on board (though I know women who are open minded but have hubbies who aren't).
Right - but more often than not it's a package deal. The Doolittles, the Hendrikses ... it is great to see some more progressive voices in a highly non progressive sport.
Commenting merely to say that I already loved Taijuan for the taco truck thing and some other social media stuff, and learning this makes me love him even more. I'll root for the enemy laundry to a point, and Taijuan Walker checks all the boxes.
I've always pulled for him since I saw him fire off a 1-hitter in Minneapolis, that was a fun game to watch! (The only hit was an absolutely demolished Miguel Sano laser-beam homer down the LF line.)
(Not his career best by Game Score, however - he had a complete game 3-hit shutout against the Angels the following season with a 92 Game Score, one better than his Game Score in the Twins 1-hitter.)
My favorite quote about the Herschel Walker campaign was in a Washington Post story yesterday: “Herschel was like a plane crash into a train wreck that rolled into a dumpster fire. And an orphanage. Then an animal shelter. You kind of had to watch it squinting through one eye between your fingers,” said Dan McLagan, an adviser to Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, one of Walker’s defeated rivals in the GOP primary.
Lions, during one of the 2016 Republican Primary debates the captions for the hearing impaired was reduced to transcribing something as "Incoherent Yelling". If THAT isn't indicative, NOTHING is.
As a Cubs fan, I can only roll my eyes when I see Jose Quintana — truly Theo & co. overthought this one and gave up a great pitcher (Dylan Cease) and a solid (albeit oft-injured) slugger (Eloy Jimenez) for a middling pitcher.
That said, if I'm reading this correctly, Craig defines him as a "creep." What is that in reference to?
"Actually, there’s a chance the Mets are getting more than an innings eater in Quintana as, after a few years in the average-at-best wilderness, 2022 was a bounceback year that reminded us how well that creep used to roll."
It's a reference to Jesus Quintana, the "pederast" whose bowling team faces the Dude and friends in The Big Lebowski. It's a quote from John Goodman's character.
Loeffler wasn't a great candidate, though not nearly as bad as Walker. Kemp did beat Abrams 53.4% to 45.9%, so I do think a candidate like Kemp (who presents as not batshit) would have won against Warnock. Candidate quality really only matters though for races within a couple points of a coin flip.
The previous runoff had two elections, so that may have had a lot to do with the increased voter turnout.
As a longtime Georgia voter, I have had to hone my skills at political ad avoidance. Add that to my long aversion to broadcast news and I honestly did not hear Walker's vampires/werewolves speech until yesterday, after the race had ended and I sought it out. I realized it was taken from a speech he made at a Heisman award banquet several years ago. The stakes back then being nonexistent, I found him to be a charming (if not always fully intelligible) speaker, and I watched the speech several times once I discovered it. It never failed to lift my spirits, and it enhanced my opinion of him. I acknowledge the validity of any negative views on Walker that anyone might have, but I'm glad on an extremely minute and selfish level to retain some of my feelings for him as a weird but charming dilettante.
As a person of a certain age, I am glad that I can go back to merely remembering Herschel running over Bill Bates and Lester Munson’s “my god, only a freshman” call.
Not that this newsletter is home for top tier college football discussions but I was hoping that Craig would use Kaitlin Collins’ tweet instead of the Politico (?) story to then make the Red Sox analogy. Ms. Collins is a quality political reporter ... who also is an Alabama grad with a picture of Nick Saban in her Twitter background. Dawgs v Elephants?
When I was 13 I clipped and saved the Atlanta Journal reports of his Wrightsville HS games, which were such events that they merited big city newspaper coverage. It was clear to everyone by the time Herschel was 16 (at the latest) that book learnin' was not going to necessarily be required of him. His college eligibility was never going to be in doubt. Even so, after he left UGA to play in the USFL, he said he was going to continue working towards a criminal justice degree in the off season. Flash forward to 1985 and I'm waiting on the campus bus with none other than Herschel Walker, me with my textbooks and he with his. Wow, I thought, he does not have to be doing this. At. All. So it's from that lofty perch that I've had to revise my opinion of him, and I can't help but hold on to a tiny bit of that admiration.
Yet, even with college criminal justice classes, he still doesn't know that an honorary sheriff's badge does not make him an LEO.
And I would have assumed that "don't hold a gun to your wife's head and threaten to blow her brains out" would have been covered in Walker's coursework. That curriculum could use some updating.
I don't have the stomach to watch his campaign speeches, but Walker did use the vampire/werewolf bit on the trail. So this wasn't just pulling stuff out-of-context from years ago. And it was just a drop in the bucket of the stupid shit he's said as a candidate.
"Clump" seems more appropriate for the contents of the bucket you describe.
I know -- I heard the about ridicule he was getting, then saw the clip of the campaign speech and realized he was borrowing from the speech I remembered, which caused me to muse on the effect of the different contexts (which, honestly, the only offensive thing about it back then was his contention that Fright Night is a bad movie...Fright Night is, in fact, an awesome movie).
I saw the original Fright Night at a sleepover when I was in maybe 1st grade. It's a good horror flick, but boy did that movie fuck me up for a while.
I saw it in about 3rd grade and we were too giggly (the girl took off her b-r-a-w as one friend stated) to get scared. Not surprisingly, the mother who let us watch was the one you went to for booze in high school (and probably anything else you wanted based on a news segment about kids and fireworks where she ended up being interviewed).
I remember being rather shocked by that part too. I'm just glad the movie didn't ruin Humperdink for me.
LOL, you're not joking:
“At one time, science said man came from apes, did it not?” Walker, the frontrunner for the Georgia Republican Senate nomination, said in an appearance over the weekend at a church in Sugar Hill, Georgia. “If that is true, why are there still apes? Think about it.”
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/16/politics/herschel-walker-geogia-senate-candidate-evolution-apes/index.html
As a biologist, I've seen this stupid anti-evolution argument a bazillion times. If you do a Google search of the question, there are dozens of articles written that answer the question. Asking this question publicly is an admission that one would rather wallow in ignorance* (or peddle to those who do), rather than be taken seriously as thinker.
* Walker clearly is a true believer in ignorance rather than a peddler
Ah, an occasion to tell one of my favorite recent anecdotes from a road trip with my band! It was winter 2019, and we were nearing the end of a quick little run to the Northeast and back. We woke up in Carbondale, Illinois after a great night there. Our last date was a Sunday in St. Louis but a December ice storm had blown in and after a heavy phone call, my friend/the promoter in St. Louis and I decided to postpone and we called it off and tried to just make it as far north as possible.
Well, road conditions in southern Illinois didn't allow for much progress, so we ended up just getting a motel in Salem, Illinois. The town had almost shut down, despite what a Minnesotan would consider a mere inch or two of icy slushy snow (yeah, we don't like it, but our cities still function during such conditions). We tried to find a bar, anything, and as we walked around the downtown area we passed a historic looking old house with a placque in the yard. I brushed the snow off it and read. BOYHOOD HOME OF WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN.
"Hey guys!," I said, "look! It's the boyhood home of William Jennings Bryan!"
Silence.
"William Jennings Bryan! You don't know William Jennings Bryan from high school social studies? Three time Democratic nominee as a populist in the old-school sense of the word and three time loser? 'Mankind shall not be nailed to a cross of gold' and such?"
Still silence. Then a lightbulb went off above our keyboard player Luke's head.
"Oh! I know him!" Luke announced proudly. "He was the evil lawyer from the Scopes Monkey Trial!"
The Evil Lawyer From The Scopes Monkey Trial. I'd edit WJB's wikipedia page to have it say that, but I respect wikipedia's guardians too much to give them that shitwork to do. Anyway, I love this story so much.
Hilarious. I find it historically fascinating that a leading progressive was also somewhat of a fundie, whereas today's fundies worship supply-side Jesus.
Well, to quote Lou Reed: those were different times.
The discourse surrounding modern (right-wing) populism is sometimes startingly ahistoric. Yes, it sucks. But there was a time when the populists would stand on the picket line with you outside whatever the late 19th century equivalent of a unionizing Starbucks was.
If you ever make a series of poor life choices and find yourself in Dayton, TN; Monkey Town Brewing is actually pretty good. Far better beer than I'd expect for a small town Tennessee brewery.
I don't know Dayton but I do know that area and that's some absolutely gorgeous contryside. I also have some experience coming across randomly awesome breweries in very small towns, but that's mostly in Wisconsin which for some reason feels like it should be the baseline experience as opposed to Tennessee, which is many things but not a state many people primarily associate with beer.
So nice to see someone who is truly a moron instead of just pretending to be a moron to get votes. I can almost respect that.
I will note that the last time Germany arrested someone for plotting to overthrow the government, he was in prison for eight month, during which time he wrote his manifesto. We can hope they have learned from the mistake, but if we are comparing nations, we need to have note that the US is not the only one to reward its traitors in some fashion.
Man, I just loved all the transactions the past few days. It's fun to have this kind of merry go round in baseball again and not just in the NBA. Even if I share Craig's apprehension about the Mets acquiring an openly homophobic player. (Will note, BTW, that I saw a report one reason deGrom wanted out was because he's a secret antivaxxer. This is a sport that has way too many people I would want nothing to do with.)
Mets also acquired Yankees prospect Zach Greene in the Rule Five draft, adding another potential arm to the bullpen mix. Things are starting to come together for the 2023 team, though as things stand now, I think they are doing enough to be in the mix but not enough to poke ahead of the Phils and Braves, Though, given that the Phils made the World Series as a wild card, all that should matter is getting into the playoffs. Which, come to think of it, won't be easy either.
At least a point for the current situation is that their random prince seems to be less charismatic than the ringleader the last time Germany dealt with this kind of thing.
It's a sort of funny point, but honestly Germany has been locking up people for espousing Nazi ideologies since the end of WWII. Just last October they arrested the Terror Granny. By most accounts they still remember what letting bigoted nationalistic political movements go unchecked leads to.
The American "freedom of speech" part of me doesn't like sending people to jail just for saying the wrong thing. The Jewish part of me is fine with it.
Frank, it's actually the LAW there. They have American style Freedom of Speech EXCEPT for anything regarding Nazi ideology.
Post War Germany was SERIOUS about earning the world's trust again. I was an Army officer in Germany from 1989 to 1991 (you may have heard Germany had some things happen those years) and I knew a lot of Bundeswehr officers. They were all aggressively non-political, and incredibly professional (if a little slovenly by US Army standards, another way, I think, that they deliberately set themselves apart from their history).
In point of fact Germany had to get and then finalize a constitutional exemption to send peacekeepers to the Balkans a couple years later during the Yugoslavian breakup. I vividly recall tearing up reading about Serbian war crime site discovered and secured by a Bundeswehr unit at the time. A mass grave of victims, discovered by German soldiers, who secured the site, began the investigation, and called in UN and Hague investigators so that the perpetrators could be caught.
Germany has earned the right to be trusted to set some conditional limitations on speech.
I was reading something on the new government of Italy that pointed out that the country never went through a similar de-Nazification process after WWII as Germany did and some of the effects are showing up now.
And of course the Reconstruction after the American Civil War did nothing of the sort in terms of sorting out the impulses that led to that conflict and we're still paying for shoving that festering boil under the rug for well over a century.
Yep! Italy never really reckoned with their WWII, nor did Japan (although their issues were slightly different) in the way the Allies ensured Germany did.
And, as you say, the fecklessness of Reconstruction is legendary. Reading about how most administrations mostly ignored enforcing it in favor of westward expansion and then utterly abandoned it in 1877 (to get a Democratic congress to agree to set aside violence and seat a Republican president...at that time the parties being reversed in the area of Black rights). Reading about that period now is sort of like reading about a train wreck while you watch the results roll into your ER.
That last thing you said? Perfect analogy. We had a chance to actually enact equity of opportunity after the Civil War but this stupid country blew it, and now here we are.
This is exactly my point. I'm glad you are more familiar with the details and shared them. America used to limit speech all the time, and it was only once we started limiting hate speech in the 80s that we came to believe the 1st amendment is this total ban on all speech. It used to be "commercial speech" was easily regulated, and now what you do is "who you are, as an artist."
It is comforting, in its way, to know that Germany sets limits on ideas that reach a certain threshold of hideousness. We are not insane for thinking that when someone calls for the death of a group of people (gays, jews, SJW, congresspeople, Vice Presidents) that those people should be silenced and their threats punished by jail time.
We don't have to just throw our hands up and say "the constitution."
Or maybe deGrom prefers Bochy to Showalter. I was struck last off season how many Mets free agent pitchers signed elsewhere.
Scherzer and Verlander, both future hall of famers, signed on to be managed by Buck.
deGrom wanted to leave for other reasons.
Right. That's almost always way down on the list of reasons players sign somewhere. This isn't like the NBA where coaching strategy and system takes center stage.
The departure of Jansen and arrival of Jimenez means that the Atlanta charter flight can use the same weight calculations in planning the flights. My goodness that is a large person. Keep the Terry Forster fat tub of goo fan club alive!
Malloy is the only ATL position player on any prospect top X lists. But he is old for his class so I
guess despite not trading from a position of strength it is okay.
Bogaerts deal probably puts the final mail in the coffin for any hopes of Swanson returning. Oh well. Rumors have ATL talking with CLE about Rosario to fill the void.
I remember the "feud" between Terry Forster and David Letterman.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjrOuC_vBqY
Took me about 10 seconds before I did a double-take and said "Oh, that's Ernie!"
Craig, I am shocked and outraged that you did not mention the Rule 5 draft, which saw the Nats draft RHP Whosy Whathisname (aka Thad Ward) from the Red Sox with the first pick overall. He immediately becomes the Nats’ 13th overall prospect (that’s not a bit), is expected to spend the season in the bullpen and, as someone said on Twitter last night, Davey Martinez will probably have him on the injured list by June.
PS I just finished a three-week lap around the country and, while it’s not a statistically valid sample, I did not see anything like the support for 45 I expected. Lots of Christian billboards and some complaints about gas prices (all supporting candidates who lost or opposing candidates who won) but almost nothing in support of the man himself. I have no doubt that they are reloading in support of someone else like DeSantis, but I think the guy may have finally permanently damaged his brand politically.
PPS In my lap around the country I was on the following interstates, not including three-digit city spurs like 270 and 880: 81, 80, 74, 70, 68, 66, 65, 55, 40, 30, 20, 10, 8 and 5. Grateful to start and end the day in the same time zone for a change. Pass the coffee.
How long since Ward’s TJ surgery? He could be protected by an “injury” rather than an actual injury.
The R5 pick that interests me is Noah Song, a top prospect out of college who is still serving a military commitment post Annapolis.
Agreed. Song is the highest upside pick in a long while.
I dream of doing that lap without ever being on an Interstate, or at least minimizing the use of them. Of course, it'll take six weeks my way, which is why it won't happen until I'm retired.
I am right there with you. My first trip out Florida to Maine and back took 100 days. I try not to drive more than 3-4 hours a day. Definitely stay of the interstates if at all possible. There was a day we had to drive through WVA all interstate through mountains. It was the worst driving experience ever in the old RV.
I had the same sense as I made the trip - I was trying maximize my time at my daughter's in SF so it was interstates all the way out and back. When I'm not trying to get back for work anymore I will go see the VW Beetle spider in Avoca, IA and all of the other things the billboards suggested along the way.
You missed a couple of pro-Donald signs in the middle of NC by not making it to I-95.
I saw a few in Nebraska but not many ... and (politics aside) if I never have to drive on I-95 again it will be too soon.
I-95 north of Squirrel Level Rd in North Carolina is an abyss of despair and I-80 across Nebraska is a combo version of the hell envisioned by the ancient Greeks and Hebrews.
Can confirm. I-80 through Wyoming, however, was amazing - and then horrible again in the Nevada wastelands.
I-95 isn’t horrible for its entire length. Once you get as far south as the bypass around Richmond it becomes, at worst, tolerable. There are stretches of other eastern interstates that are much worse. I-75, for example.
We used to drive from DC to Sarasota to visit Mary's mom and I always felt like the whole thing was miserable. Though to be honest the worst part of the drive was the white-knuckle across Florida on I-4.
Sir, I would prefer that, next time, you list the interstates in chronological order of use. Please make a note of it. ;)
I’m putting the over/under at 36.5 hours on when we’ll see the first “Bogaerts never wanted to stay with Boston” column from some management friendly who will probably just do a find-replace on the Mookie and Lester articles that we’ve seen in the past.
Great coverage this week of all the happenings at the Winter Meetings. This is why I subscribe and so should you. Have a good day all.
Why would the Padres move their best defensive shortstop to second base, and move their best (aside from Kim perhaps) second baseman to first for Bogaerts? Cronenworth is a good player, but he doesn't really have the production you expect from a first baseman. If Bogaerts is the extra player, and the position hole is at first base...
The whole idea of signing a shortstop was pretty questionable. But the Padres seemed bound and determined to sign a big money free agent for their lineup, and didn't seem to care much who it was. In their defense, the top bats after Judge seemed to all be shortstops. So if they wanted to add a big bat, it had to be a shortstop.
If they had succeeded in signing Judge, would that have committed them to put Tatis Jr. in center before they actually found whether he was any good at it?
‘Twere it me, I’d play Xander in RF, Soto in left and Tatis, when he returns from his suspension, in CF.
Trouble is, you and I aren't taking into account the egos of these highly paid players insisting on what position they want to play. What if Bogaerts and Tatis both demand to play short?
I tend to think that is overrated. I think it’s more overrated when talking about players joining a new team. And Tatis’ ringworm has most likely eaten more than its share of ego.
Tatis didn't seem to mind playing OF in 2021.
Tatis isn't demanding anything next season -- he needs to stay humble and prove himself after his PED suspension. The last thing he needs is more controversy.
I've always wondered what Cronenworth's value would be as a mop-up pitcher and super sub. He's a borderline All Star at second, but probably average at first. Maybe they'll sign or trade for a first baseman and relegate Kim to utility and defensive sub. Kim had fantastic defensive numbers, but if they slip just a bit he probably doesn't hit enough to be a regular.
This makes a lot of sense. Starting infielders generally don't play the full 162 games. The Padres will need a utility infielder to fill in the gaps.
Bogaerts gives the Padres more flexibility -- not less.
What I'm most curious about after this offseason is "Will Ohtani be the first $50M man?"
My thoughts exactly. I absolutely would give him 3/$150m, but not more years for that AAV.
Will depend on next year.. if he demonstrates a 3rd consecutive year of health (150ish games, 25ish pitching starts) and is in the 6-8 WAR range at least, I could easily see 6/300 given the way salaries are exploding this winter.
Hell, maybe even 8/400. He'd only be 35 at the end of that contract!
On Hershel Walker, lots of unqualified people try to run for office. And they usually go nowhere because nobody votes for them in the primary. (Exception: Trump, Donald J.) if he was such a bad candidate (which he was), then why the hell did you vote for him in the primaries?
To me the bigger question is how a clearly unqualified candidate still got 48% of the vote? But Trump won an election, so I guess I'll never understand voters.
We've been seeing unqualified people getting elected for ages. Jim Bunning wasn't qualified, either. I don't think most athletes are. Bill Bradley was the exception.
Off the top of my head I can think of one other example of an ex-athlete who was a star who also was qualified for the elected position in which he served. Alan Page became the Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court for years. He is, in a word, awesome.
Page, like Bradley, prepared for his second career parallel to his first. Plus he was active in the NFLPA.
I just wonder: when the court turns down an appeal, does he proclaim: "After further review, the play stands"?
While he wasn't a US politician, Ken Dryden was a member of Canadian Parliament and I'm pretty sure he was a lawyer as well.
We're so partisan now (most Independents strongly lean strongly one way or the other) that even woefully unqualified people have a very high floor of votes. In national politics, we no longer see much ticket splitting or waves of people temporarily voting for the opposition (there's no equivalent of "Reagan Democrats"). Candidates like Walker can lose close elections in purple states, but he would have easily won in a deep red state.
I think it's the other way around -- candidates are more partisan than ever. Voters often are forced to vote for a radical, for fear of an ideologically opposed radical winning.
I see no real evidence that moderates do more than a couple of percentage points better than radicals.
Alaska is interesting, though. With their ranked choice voting, they'll elect Murkowski and Peltola and do so happily. I support statewide and local ranked choice and open primaries because these things allow for the nearly unthinkable in our current age of politics: candidates don't need to cater to the extremes of their base in order to win. Hell, maybe do it for the presidency as well.
Well... Doug Jones did beat Roy Moore, so there's still a glimmer of hope. But that was an eternity ago, wasn't it...
With Moore still getting 48.4% of the vote. The floor for even the worst candidate is ridiculously high.
Candidates will say a lot of things that are outlandish in primaries to get the nomination from the party. They need to, primary voters are overwhelmingly more left/right than the general election voters. After getting the nomination savvy candidates usually try to slide to the middle to gain independent votes and those slightly left or right of center who may not be all in on the other candidate.
In Georgia, and a couple other cases around the country, (PA, AZ) Donald Trump's full throated endorsement pushed these candidates across the primary finish line in very close races. To this point he still enjoys a lot of sway with hardcore primary voters.
When the general election comes there are any number of reasons why he would get that number of votes. Some will never vote D, ever. Some were likely receptive to messaging on a single issue, ie abortion and judges. Some wanted a check on the democrats power in Washington. Hell, maybe some people thought he had a great stance of vampires vs werewolves.
I think its important that a lot of the "shift to the left" in these states like GA and AZ is due to the terrible candidates that cannot win anything but the base. I believe Warnock would have had a very tough time against a moderate republican, although it seems those are endangered at the moment.
As for Trump winning, that's a whole other can of worms.
Walker was exposed as a phony and not a true family man. A certain number of the family values and christian conservative types in Georgia were probably turned off by him.
If a candidate is consistent with their message and authentic, they can win even if the have a strong ideological bent in the general election. The problem is politicians are generally liars and phonies and get exposed for it in the race.
No they weren't. More than 80% of voters who described themselves as born-again or evangelical voted for him.
It's because they are racist and a vote for Walker was a vote against the party that has more support from black voters. (Of course most evangelicals are pretty crappy as "family men" too so of course there was an appeal there.)
I'm convinced that the GOP thought that nominating a second Black man would split the Black vote, which of course is insulting to voters' intelligence and ignores why Black people overwhelmingly vote Democrat.
Evangelical voters are the single greatest threat to our secular pluralistic democracy around. Their churches should be subject to taxation and scrutinized for possible classification as hate groups.
Yeah, Trump was exposed as a phony long ago and still enjoyed cult-like support from the family values types. They don't actually care about a person's "family values" as long as that person helps them install unqualified hacks throughout the judiciary that will ban abortions and make it legal to shit all over the poor, minorities, women, and LGBTQ+ folks.
The Christian conservatives were just fine with Walker. He performed virtually as well as Loeffler did against Warnock. The fact that Warnock is actually a practicing minister, at MLK's church no less, meant nothing to the family values people. He preaches loving your neighbor, helping the poor, and living the values of Jesus - all things the fundamentalist Evangelical crowd finds to be evil. THEY are the ACTUAL phonies.
Seemed clear to me that many of them weren’t voting for Walker as much as they were voting against the horror of a 51st Democratic Senator. Same mindset was how Hilliard lost to Trump.
If you can't trust Carlos Baerga's reporting then who can you trust?? What's happened to journalism these days smh.
Baerga was once replaced by Alomar, but that would be problematic here. Do we go for the utility journalist Chone Figgins or a throwaway one like Knoblauch?
Unexpected Circle Jerks! It's a good Free Thursday.
Craig knows the punks aren't shelling out subscription money unless they have a damn good reason, thus this song on this particular date. It'll be James or Dylan or 100 Gecs tomorrow.
It's the off-season, you do what you gotta to keep people showing up. And what draws the casual baseball fan better than 80s hardcore?
What's the over/under on the entire Legless Bull EP concluding a newsletter before pitchers and catchers report?
Thank you, Craig. Re San Diego, I do agree it’s a lovely spot. Only been once, April 2004, holiday tacked onto a work event of my then partner and I was blown away by how pretty, how interesting and how lovely the weather was. Also, the eagle-eyed, or memoried (eh?) will know that was the month Petco Park opened so I got to see two games against The Dodgers in the new stadium. Wonderful it was.
Craig mentioned the lovely eateries and that was certainly my experience. One of them had an on-site brewery, a less common event in the US then than now, I believe, and when I ordered a beer and chatted briefly about cask-conditioned ale they immediately assumed that anyone from England was automatically an expert and so insisted on bringing me all their options for free for me to opine on. Not one to look a gift horse I duly dived in, my initial careful thoughts (Hmm, pleasantly hoppy?) becoming increasingly expansive as I got through the menu (“I’m getting clarity at the start but increasing depth later, rather like the dawn of a spring day but with dark clouds massing from the south west”) as the lovely staff continued to to nod eagerly and make notes and most importantly, bring me further ales whilst my stepdaughter and partner fidgeted and rolled their eyes.
It was a lovely evening - at least for me, which I’m sure you’ll agree was the main thing - and rather cemented San Diego in my affections.
I went to the Mets' Pride Day game this year, and it was honestly one of the most fun days I've ever had at the ballpark. Everyone was just super happy to be there, the game was pretty fun, and Mark Canha even changed his walkup music to Madonna and Lady Gaga for the day. The Mets wear their inclusiveness pretty well, in comparison to most other baseball teams.
Look back in June to see if Brooks Raley has a bruised toe or flu-like symptoms that have sent him to the injured list immediately prior to the Pride Day game. That's the only way he won't be pressured to comply by the Mets.
One can only hope. Recall that Tai Walker was the other strong voice supporting Pride Day activities, and he's no longer on the team.
Erica Scherzer has also been supportive of Pride events, so I would think her labor activist hubby is at least somewhat on board (though I know women who are open minded but have hubbies who aren't).
Right - but more often than not it's a package deal. The Doolittles, the Hendrikses ... it is great to see some more progressive voices in a highly non progressive sport.
Commenting merely to say that I already loved Taijuan for the taco truck thing and some other social media stuff, and learning this makes me love him even more. I'll root for the enemy laundry to a point, and Taijuan Walker checks all the boxes.
I've always pulled for him since I saw him fire off a 1-hitter in Minneapolis, that was a fun game to watch! (The only hit was an absolutely demolished Miguel Sano laser-beam homer down the LF line.)
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MIN/MIN201507310.shtml
(Not his career best by Game Score, however - he had a complete game 3-hit shutout against the Angels the following season with a 92 Game Score, one better than his Game Score in the Twins 1-hitter.)
There's also the possibility that Raley might be re-traded to another team...
My favorite quote about the Herschel Walker campaign was in a Washington Post story yesterday: “Herschel was like a plane crash into a train wreck that rolled into a dumpster fire. And an orphanage. Then an animal shelter. You kind of had to watch it squinting through one eye between your fingers,” said Dan McLagan, an adviser to Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, one of Walker’s defeated rivals in the GOP primary.
You know someone said some deeply offensive shit when Paper redacts it.
Lions, during one of the 2016 Republican Primary debates the captions for the hearing impaired was reduced to transcribing something as "Incoherent Yelling". If THAT isn't indicative, NOTHING is.
Was that the one where they were comparing penis sizes?
You know I believe so.
Because voters already knew Trump was a sexist. It wasn't the same as a supposed family man like Walker being exposed as the complete opposite.
Also something like 80% of white evangelicals supported Walker.
Pretty clear which word of their identity is most important in their thinking.
I mean, the man did have three different families due to all the divorcing. Probably more with all the philandering. That counts for something.
Not what it *should* count for, obviously, but something. ;-)
So, voters only care when they learn something NEW about a person? I don't buy it.
tl;dr: it's nobody's fault but the candidate that we backed.
As a Cubs fan, I can only roll my eyes when I see Jose Quintana — truly Theo & co. overthought this one and gave up a great pitcher (Dylan Cease) and a solid (albeit oft-injured) slugger (Eloy Jimenez) for a middling pitcher.
That said, if I'm reading this correctly, Craig defines him as a "creep." What is that in reference to?
"Actually, there’s a chance the Mets are getting more than an innings eater in Quintana as, after a few years in the average-at-best wilderness, 2022 was a bounceback year that reminded us how well that creep used to roll."
It's a reference to Jesus Quintana, the "pederast" whose bowling team faces the Dude and friends in The Big Lebowski. It's a quote from John Goodman's character.
Ahhhh, thank you. That movie has never quite resonated for me like it does with others. I realize I'm on an island there.
The Mets got the Cuervo Gold. They got the fine Columbian.