Cup of Coffee: March 9, 2023

The WBC, damaged pinstriped goods, Great Moments in Public Subsidies, a NIMBY Blue update, me hawking another book, appliances, steering wheels that fly off, gun nuts, and C*H*A*T*G*P*T

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

It’s a pretty loaded newsletter today, so let us get to it without further ado.

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The Daily Briefing

World Baseball Classic Stuff

Baseball is back, baby. Even if Panama outfielder Luis Castillo may prefer it to have remained dormant for a few more days after taking this knock:

World Baseball Classic @WBCBaseball

A catch you need to see to believe by Luis Castillo. 😳 #WorldBaseballClassic

Castillo, by the way, was once in the Tigers system. He’s 32 now and has been out of U.S.-based pro baseball for many years, but he’ll have that highlight forever. The body soreness will likely go away in a couple of days.

Otherwise, since we last met, Panama beat Taiwan 12-5 and lost to the Netherlands 3-1, and Australia upset South Korea 8-7 thanks to a hilarious brain fart on the part of Korean player. As the newsletter goes to press this morning, Shohei Ohtani and Japan are leading China and Italy and Cuba are just getting underway.

Venezuela has yet to play a game, but one of its pitchers — Martín Pérez of the Rangers — is in peak Venezuelan National Anthem shape.

Anyway, happy WBC to all who celebrate. Even the subscriber who emailed me last night to say “Craig, how about cheering for your country’s baseball team?” As if the world won’t be classless, moneyless, and stateless after The Revolution, rendering things like sports, international competition, and patriotism so much opium for the masses. Sheesh.

(man, I cannot believe what NBC used to let me get away with writing about).  

The Yankees traded for damaged goods

Last summer the New York Yankees sent four prospect to the Oakland A’s for starter Frankie Montas. The plan was for Montas to be the team’s number two starter behind Gerrit Cole. Montas, however, pitched poorly, posting a 6.38 ERA in eight starts and then missed most of September with a shoulder injury. This past offseason Montas had another shoulder setback that caused him to undergo surgery that will cause him to miss most, if not all, of the 2023 season.

All of that has made a lot of Yankees fans pretty mad, of course, with many of them asking if the Yankees were suckered into acquiring damaged goods. Yesterday Montas spoke to the media and confirmed that, nope, no one suckered the Yankees. They knew he was risky. Mostly because Montas himself fully knew that he was not in good shape:

“I was like eh-eh. I wasn't fully 100 percent. I was trying to pitch through it. Of course I got traded to a new team, I wanted to show what I can do. Things didn't go the way I was expecting.”

Not that this should be a huge revelation given that Montas left one start early and missed two others with shoulder inflammation in the weeks leading up to the trade. I feel like that shoulda been a red flag in and of itself, but the Yankees apparently ignored it, hoping for the best. The club probably hoped that all of that bad stuff would get lost in the optimism of spring and the dawn of a new season, but the fact that Montas has now said it out loud like this is an unpleasant reminder.

Great Moments in Public Subsidies

Here’s a fun fact about Ohio’s Governor Mike DeWine: he and his family own the Asheville Tourists of the South Atlantic League. And, like all good conservative Republicans, he’s pro-socialism when being pro-socialism is good for his bottom line:

Asheville facilities manager Chris Corl recently told the city council "like many of the city's facilities, McCormick Field is at, or past, its life expectancy and needs significant repairs."

But there are just 25 days left for Asheville leaders to come up with financing for a $37.5 million upgrade for McCormick Field or risk losing the city's Minor League Baseball team . . . City council members have received more than 1,400 emails from area residents, the vast majority of whom support using public dollars to make the upgrades.

“This is all about keeping the team here and providing a better fan experience,” Tourists president and team owner Brian DeWine said.

Brian DeWine is, of course, my governor’s son.

You will not be surprised to learn that the big push for tax dollars for stadium upgrades is couched in bogus economic development claims. Even more ridiculous than the specific dollar amounts claimed in that regard — something like $9 million a year, which seems implausible once you back out both tangible costs and opportunity costs — is the claim that the Asheville Tourists are, in and of themselves, a major driver of tourism in the Asheville area.

It’s something of an obvious point, but the team was named after tourists who were already coming there. That baseball team could disappear tomorrow and there would still be 10-11 million people coming to Asheville a year for the Biltmore, the natural beauty and outdoor activities, the shops, the art galleries, the restaurants, and the microbreweries. In contrast, the all-time record for Asheville Tourists attendance is . . . 187,718. Or about how many tourists Asheville draws in an average off-peak week.

Given how Asheville rolls these days, a much, much stronger argument could be made that any money spent on rehabbing the stadium in which the team my governor owns plays is wasted money. Indeed, the city could tear down the ballpark and sell the land on which it sits to hotel, condo, and restaurant developers and make way, way more money. Maybe they should.

Even Greater Moments in Public Subsidies

It was announced yesterday that a group of Wisconsin business, tourism and health care leaders, former office holders, and other booster types who have christened themselves “The Home Crew Coalition” are “working to find a bipartisan solution to keeping the Milwaukee Brewers in the state.” Such a thing may shock you given that there has been absolutely zero suggestion by anyone, anywhere that the Brewers have any plans to leave, but forget it, they’re rolling:

The Home Crew Coalition was formed as Gov. Tony Evers and the Brewers have teamed up behind the governor's proposal to spend nearly $300 million on repairs to American Family Field. In exchange, the baseball team said it would extend its lease at the stadium by 13 years, through 2043.

I love the smell of astroturf in the morning. It smells like . . . crony capitalism!

“The Milwaukee Brewers are a point of pride for Wisconsin and it's important that we do what is needed to ensure Major League Baseball is preserved in our state for the next generation,” [local restaurant owner and developer Omar] Shaikh said in a statement. “Through our collective efforts, the Home Crew Coalition aims to deliver that message statewide and ensure the Brewers can call American Family Field their home for years to come.”

Evers has touted his proposal as a way to keep a Wisconsin tradition alive, while also helping a business that creates a large number of jobs and tax revenue for the state. Without it, Evers suggested, the Brewers might leave.

Most state-funded plans to head off franchise relocation schemes at least have a kernel of a real franchise relocation threat at their core. I applaud these intrepid Wisconsin boosters for, for the first time in recent memory, having the gumption to pair up such a plan with a totally nonexistent threat of relocation. There’s a certain satisfying symmetry between the fake relocation threat and the fake economic benefit justification. Two negatives make a positive! That’s just math.

NIMBY Blue: UPDATE!

The other day I wrote about how former MLB umpire Greg Gibson is leading a community group in Ashland, Kentucky which is trying to stop the creation of a group home for the disabled. As I noted in that post, Gibson’s group is scaremongering, casting all manner of unwarranted aspersions on the disabled, and generally giving off a bunch of extremely bad looks in their efforts.

Last night Cup of Coffee’s Chief Kentucky Correspondent attended the community meeting led by Gibson and dutifully reported his findings in this Twitter thread. The upshot: far more of the crowd was against Gibson’s group — and in favor of the home for the disabled — than who were for it. Nevertheless Gibson made a point to give plenty of microphone time to his supporters while cutting off those who spoke against him.

Two of his supporters were police officers who made the bad look of it all look even worse by casting people with traumatic brain injuries as putatively violent:

Umpires are supposed to be able to diffuse tense situations but Gibson forgot one of the first things they teach you at Public Meetings 101: if you don’t give your opponents a chance to speak, they will yell and when they yell they’ll be far less polite than if you had just let them speak in the first place.

Oh well, thanks to our Chief Kentucky Correspondent for the updates. Hope things go better for you in the future, Greg!

Stars of Major League Baseball

You may remember me mentioning that I have a new book coming out. It’s not necessarily a book for everyone, however. Perversely, it may be especially unnecessary for you if you’re already a baseball fan, which I presume most readers of this newsletter are.

The book, Stars of Major League Baseball, comes out on March 21, but you can buy it now. It’s aimed at young readers — ages 9-12 per the publisher — who may be curious about baseball or who are just getting into it and who want to know who some of the big names are these days. It contains short bios — say, 500-600 words each — of 28 players I have somewhat arbitrarily determined to be the biggest stars in the game today.

As the age range suggests, it’s the kind of book you might find in school libraries or at book fairs and things, which is where I presume it’ll primarily be sold. That being said, if you look at the little “Look Inside” preview at Amazon, you’ll see that I did not write it in overly basic terms or in a way that talks down to kids or anything, so if you or someone you know is new to baseball and don’t really know who the big names are these days, it could prove useful I suppose.

Anyway: I’m putting two kids through college, so even if you already know the basics about, say, Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, or Aaron Judge, you can help a fella out by buying it and donating it to an elementary school or put in your Little Free Library or something. Thank you for your support.

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Other Stuff

Appliance Mart

In early February my washing machine started making a VERY loud noise during its spin cycle. While I know that our society is a pretty disposable one and people generally don’t get appliances fixed anymore I nonetheless called a guy out to look at it in the off-chance there was just some minor adjustment or part that might give the thing more life. While the guy was out I also had him look at my refrigerator which, while still working properly, made a really loud buzz fairly often and the freezer iced up more than it should.

The verdict: the drum of the washing machine was hanging by a thread and was going to turn into a brick at any moment. “It could happen today, it could happen in six weeks, but it ain’t gonna last six months,” the guy said. The fridge was about to die too, I was told. Bad compressor (or something) important. Neither appliance was worth the trouble to fix or replace — it’d cost almost 3/4 the replacement cost to fix them and not give them enough extra life to be anywhere approaching cost effective — so I had the rare privilege of replacing both of them at one time. The only saving grace was that they both hit their deathbeds right as the President’s Day sales were going on.

Yesterday my new fridge and washer/dryer were delivered:

The washer/dryer unit is an LG because everyone says, when it comes to washers/dryers, that LG is the best for the money. The fridge is a Whirlpool, because everyone says, when it comes to refrigerators, not to buy an LG or a Samsung no matter what you do. We live in a confusing world. And an expensive one.

If you know, you know

From the Associated Press:

U.S. auto safety regulators have opened an investigation into Tesla’s Model Y SUV after getting two complaints that the steering wheels can come off while being driven . . . The agency says in both cases the Model Ys were delivered to customers with a missing bolt that holds the wheel to the steering column. A friction fit held the steering wheels on, but they separated when force was exerted while the SUVs were being driven.

And if you don’t know, I highly recommend that you watch this sketch so as to educate yourself. Especially if you’re Elon Musk, who could probably get some good ideas from it.

Mind. Blown.

As the former General Counsel and Senior Vice President of Business Affairs for Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, I heartily endorse this video.

Won’t someone think of the gun nuts?

Recently the City of Columbus — which is controlled by Democrats — passed a gun ordinance which bans high-capacity magazines that can hold 30 or more rounds. It may not last forever — right-wingers have sued over it — but so far the city has prevailed in litigation. I believe that, ultimately, some conservative judge in a county into which the Columbus suburbs barely cross will invalidate it or the Republican supermajority in the Statehouse will preempt the ordinance by passing a law that blasts it out of existence, but until then you’re gonna have to make do with 29 rounds if you wanna shoot up the City of Columbus. Well, at least if you want to do it with only one gun. Still no laws at all about strapping on a half dozen guns and waltzing down Broad Street with them.

Yesterday our local newspaper, The Columbus Dispatch, ran a story about how gun owners are unhappy with the ordinance. The piece could’ve been written by the gun lobby. It quotes multiple gun owners — and the owner of a shooting range — talking about their “freedoms” and their “right to self-defense.” Those quoted cast themselves as victims who are “made to feel like criminals.”

Do you know what the article doesn’t have? Not even one word of? Someone speaking about the purpose of and rationale for the law. It likewise contains not a single reference to mass shootings which have become an epidemic in this country or a single solitary quote from anyone in this city of over 900,000 people who is in favor of the ordinance, of which there are MANY. The city attorney is quoted, but he spends far more time reassuring gun owners that no one is going to bother them than he does defending the law he is now tasked with enforcing.

The “best part” of the story comes from one of the gun owners who says “there's a genuine part of us that wants to be part of this solution,” — though, again, the problem is not mentioned in any sort of detail anywhere in the article — “but how can you not even give us a seat at the table?” Apparently he is unaware of the fact that 91 of Ohio’s 132 state legislators, the governor and every single statewide office holder, a majority of the state Supreme Court, both one of its two U.S. Senators, and ten of the 15 Members of Congress from this state are Republicans, all of whom favor basically unfettered gun rights. Maybe if we gave people who think that guy a few more seats he’d be happy?

As it stands, one city and the vast majority of the people who live inside its city limits want to do something different. Yet even that is a bridge too far. A bridge so far that the newspaper which covers this city cannot even run a story on it without stacking the deck.

C*H*A*T*G*P*T

Things I did not know: (a) Alan Alda has a podcast; and (b) Alda has “become obsessed with artificial intelligence technology.” I know it now, though, because the New York Times wrote a story about how Alda asked the artificial intelligence software ChatGPT to write a scene between Alda’s “M*A*S*H” character, Hawkeye Pierce, and his buddy B.J. Hunnicutt and then he and Mike Farrell, who portrayed Hunnicutt on the show, read the scene in character.

I’d like to say that the scene was funny and immediately zapped us all back to the 1970s and the greatest sitcom of its era, but nah, it kinda sucked. The setup, supplied be Alda, was Hawkeye accusing B.J. of pranking him by stealing his “lucky undershorts.” It went like so:

Hawkeye: Where are they? My shorts.

B.J.: Your what?

Hawkeye: My shorts — the ones I wear every time I have important surgery. I know you took them.

B.J.: I wouldn’t be caught dead in your underwear.

Hawkeye: They’re not just underwear; they’re comfortable and I like wearing them and they’re missing.

And no, it did not get funnier. Or even funny at all. It picked up a couple of vague rhythms from “M*A*S*H” dialogue but no one would ever mistake it for the real deal. Alda, for his part, was well aware that it was bad:

On the podcast, Farrell said the resulting script and the idea that artificial intelligence could one day supplant human TV writers had unnerved him. Alda seemed less concerned, noting that when he commanded ChatGPT to “make it funny,” it came up with “some really stupid stuff.” The technology also had a tendency to get sappy, leading him to direct it to “stop being sentimental.”

Alan Alda was the single most influential creative force of the latter seasons of “M*A*S*H,” producing and often writing and directing the show. He did a lot of great work in that capacity, but if there was one knock on those latter seasons it’s that the show under Alda’s direction often dove head-first into melodrama, preachiness and, yes, sentimentality. So if Alda is knocking the AI bot for going too far in that direction, hoo-boy, you know it went way too far in that direction.

Still, we should give it a chance. Maybe the final ChatGPT episode will feature a moving story arc in which a character forces someone to smother a laptop to death but, after talking to a therapist, reveals that it was actually an iPad.

Goodbye, farewell, and amen, at least for today, everybody.