Cup of Coffee: November 7, 2022

Screw Rogers Hornsby. Know what I do when it's winter and there's no baseball? I remember that, actually, there's still a lot of baseball. And politics, ten mile walks, and great extinction events

Good morning!

People sometimes ask me what I write about in the offseason. Some even unsubscribe when the offseason hits and re-scubscribe come Opening Day. With all due respect to any of you who have either done that before or planned to do but just forgot: these people are morons.

As any half-wise baseball head knows, there is a ton of stuff that goes on in the offseason. The hot stove league and all of the various deadlines and administrative acts, many of which are truly meaningful, that go into that. Awards. The Hall of Fame. News about the upcoming season. Sometimes even uniform changes and stuff like that. I mean, I managed to write year-round for 11 years at NBC and two years before that at my old blog and never lacked for content, so what makes anyone think this newsletter would go dark once the stadium lights do?

Take today, for example. Today we have a massive contract extension for Edwin Díaz, the full offseason calendar for your perusal, a handful of more minor completed transactions — including trades and signings — and some reported impending transactions. There are some coaching hires too. All of this one day removed from the end of the dang World Series when you’d think everyone would call in dead. Nah. Baseball never stops. Not for anything except the occasional greed-driven owners lockout.

In Other Stuff I have a link to the latest episode of the Bob Dylan podcast, there’s a commercial that came out last week that has me thinking about calling my lawyer, and I offer some dark thoughts on the state of politics but some brighter thoughts about the state of the world. Note: those brighter thoughts may look like dark thoughts to some of you, but you gotta take my word for it when I say that things like The Quaternary extinction event and The Great Dying of the Permian–Triassic make me feel good. Honest!

Now, let us thumb our nose at Rogers Hornsby and his farkakte “People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring” quote. For one thing, he probably never even said that. For another, it’s a stupid damn way to be. There is all kinds of cool stuff about the late fall and winter, even if you don’t love baseball. And Hornsby was an ass anyway. Don’t forget that.

Let’s get at ‘er, shall we?