Cup of Coffee: October 29, 2020

In TurnerGate, MLB goes to an old playbook: scapegoat the player

Good Morning!

As Dodgers fans continued to celebrate, the controversy surrounding MLB’s handling of Justin Turner’s positive COVID test — and Turner’s joining of the postgame celebration — continued to swirl. As I discuss in the Briefing today, however, it’s important to appreciate that those are two distinct issues, even if Major League Baseball attempts to conflate them into one, with Turner getting the bulk of the blame.

In addition to that, Rob Manfred got booed, the Dodgers sold a lot of merch, the Mets sale may have hit a snag, some players became free agents, some owners have given a LOT of money to Republicans, I talk about the joy of death threats and the time I suffered blackouts despite not consuming any booze, and we, once again, talk about “Columbo.”

It’s the offseason but, as always, there’s still a hell of a lot of stuff going on, so let’s get at ‘er.

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The Daily Briefing

MLB’s Telling TurnerGate Statement

As we discussed at length yesterday, Justin Turner received an “inconclusive” COVID test result during the second inning of Tuesday night’s Game 6. He remained in the game for six more innings, and then, upon receiving a positive result on followup tests, was removed from the game after the eighth inning.

Yesterday I raised the question of why Turner was not taken out of Game 6 when the results of his inconclusive COVID test were received in the second inning. I asked that because, as I noted in yesterday’s newsletters, under all comprehensive COVID protocols — MLB’s included — inconclusive tests are treated like positive tests until a conclusive followup test result is returned. People in general are urged to quarantine after inconclusive tests and people subject to binding protocols like essential employees and professional athletes are ordered to do so. This is because “inconclusive” could be positive and you want to err on the side of caution. Abundant caution, even.

Indeed, MLB experienced at least two such instances around game times this past season: once during a Marlins-Orioles game in early August and again during a Reds-Pirates game in mid-August. In both cases players were isolated immediately upon the receipt of the inconclusive test and games were either delayed or postponed while followup testing was conducted. It was by-the-book behavior for inconclusive tests. MLB protocols required it and, admirably, those protocols were carried out.

This, obviously, did not happen during Game 6 on Tuesday. We still do not know why that is, but it can only be one of two things:

1. Major League Baseball simply ignored COVID protocols and allowed Turner to play despite his inconclusive test because, “hey, World Series baby, who gives a crap?” or

2. Major League Baseball, without telling anyone, and against all public health best practices, actually changed its protocols at some point between the regular season and the postseason and no longer treated inconclusive tests as potentially positive tests any longer.

It has to be one of those. I can’t think of a third possibility. It has to either be that MLB and/or Dodgers officials made a spur-of-the-moment decision to ignore the protocols in place or that MLB made a decision at some point before Tuesday night to no longer abide by what everyone, including MLB itself, thought were safe protocols in the event an inconclusive test result was returned. It was either premeditated irresponsibility or irresponsibility in the heat of the moment.

So which was it?

Yesterday afternoon MLB issued a statement which may give us some insight. See if you can tell where they’re being cute:

“Immediately upon receiving notice from the laboratory of a positive test, protocols were triggered, leading to the removal of Justin Turner from last night’s game. Turner was placed into isolation for the safety of those around him.”

That’s what you did when you received the positive test in the eighth inning. What did you do when you received the inconclusive test six innings earlier? Why was that not mentioned at all?

I’ll tell you why they didn’t mention it: because that inconclusive test was really inconvenient to their decision making process. So inconvenient that they simply decided to sit on the test, let Justin Turner continue to play in violation of COVID protocols and, when the matter came up after the fact, do whatever it could to erase that inconclusive test from the public’s consciousness.

I believe that Turner was not taken out of the game and was not isolated after his inconclusive test because MLB was gambling that the followup to the inconclusive test would be negative. And of course if it was negative, news of the inconclusive test would never have come out. No one would’ve ever asked about it and no one ever would know that they played fast and loose with the protocols in order to let Turner take the field.

Maybe they thought it was a smart bet since it had been so long since anyone in the game had tested positive for COVID. Maybe they thought it was worth the risk because pulling a player or delaying the game during the deciding game of the World Series would be a public relations disaster. Shades of Rudy Gobert and the Utah Jazz back in March. But it was a gamble all the same.

A bad one, it turns out, because Turner tested positive in the followup and MLB’s failure to abide by its own protocols resulted in a COVID-positive player sharing the field, the batter’s box, and the dugout with multiple players, coaches, and umpires, all of whom, in turn, went on to share spaces with others. And it resulted in a mad scramble after the final out of Game 6 last night when a lot of reporters who have strong sourcing with the commissioner’s office had conflicting and mutating stories, which evidence Rob Manfred’s scrambling to land on a story that sounded good enough to deflect criticism.

That didn’t work. And now I have another question: who made the call to simply let Turner play?

Who was presented with Turner’s inconclusive test results from the lab? Who knew about them? Who, in that moment, decided that, contrary to what had been the practice of the league during the regular season, it was acceptable for a player to take the field with an inconclusive test in the World Series? It has to be someone, yes? And that someone either did so pursuant to some directive from above — suggesting that MLB inexplicably switched protocols from those which existed in the regular season — or did so on their own, succumbing to the pressure of the moment and going with that gamble.

Who made that call? Will MLB ever tell us? Will it come out even if they don’t? They may think that they can brush this all under the rug. Maybe, because so much of the baseball press is beholden to MLB or one of its broadcast rights holders and thus have no incentive to make trouble, but it’s a long winter and secrets are hard to keep.

Whoever made that call and why, these events reveal the league’s indifference to player safety and how little actual regard it has for the COVID testing process and how it is conducted. It shows that everything the league has said about its commitment to health and safety and its famous “abundance of caution”mantra was bullshit. MLB claimed that it cared deeply about safety and adherence to protocols when it suited them — such as when they pressed municipalities to allow teams to play in their ballparks this year and, later, endeavored to sell tickets to the postseason — but those principles were quickly abandoned the moment they interfered with a big game on its marquee broadcast.

“The health of players is our top priority,” the league so often said this past season. “But it pales compared to the need for us to pull off Game 6 without bad optics,” its actions positively screamed.

As I’ve said so many times in this space, however, we are not what we say we are, we are what we do. What MLB did on Tuesday night in allowing Turner to stay in the game was telling. Excluding the details of how it handled that from its very carefully-worded statement yesterday was also telling. The league’s continued silence about all of this is telling in its own way as well.

Justin Turner is gonna be the scapegoat

MLB’s statement was not content to simply dodge the key question about this matter, however. It decided to go after Turner affirmatively, and to make him the villain. Again, from Wednesday afternoon’s official statement:

“Turner was placed into isolation for the safety of those around him. However, following the Dodgers’ victory, it is clear that Turner chose to disregard the agreed-upon joint protocols and the instructions he was given regarding the safety and protection of others. While a desire to celebrate is understandable, Turner’s decision to leave isolation and enter the field was wrong and put everyone he came in contact with at risk. When MLB Security raised the matter of being on the field with Turner, he emphatically refused to comply.

“The Commissioner’s Office is beginning a full investigation into this matter and will consult with the Players Association within the parameters of the joint 2020 Operations Manual.”

To be clear: Turner coming back out on the field to join the celebration was wildly irresponsible and both Turner and those who celebrated with him should be dragged over the coals for it.

To be even more clear, I have no small amount of sympathy for MLB in this narrow matter because, practically, after the game was over, neither MLB nor the Dodgers had any ability to stop Turner. They’re not gonna hit him over the head with a blackjack or poke him with a cattle prod to keep him off the field. They have about as much power in that instance as a Home Depot cashier has to make a belligerent customer put a mask on. Theoretical power, yes, but no real power. The most they can do is make note of his actions and determine if, later, he should be fined or suspended. Which, it appears, they are going to do pursuant to that “full investigation.”

But let us be clear about one other thing: the decision to allow Turner to play in the game after an inconclusive test that should’ve sidelined him and his return to the field to take part in the celebration after the game are two distinct issues. Well, mostly distinct, anyway. I mean, it’s worth asking, is it not, if MLB and the Dodgers’ permissiveness in letting Turner continue to play despite having an inconclusive test hanging over his head encouraged Turner to take protocols less-than-seriously too. I doubt, however, that’ll be covered in the “full investigation.”

That aside, MLB’s mashing the stuff about Turner’s postgame behavior in with their misleading talk about the testing during the game seems aimed at conflating these two matters into one and making all the wrongdoing appear to be Turner’s wrongdoing. Yes, Turner was responsible for running out onto the field after the game ended, but MLB and the Dodgers are responsible for the stuff surrounding the test results and could have and should have prevented Turner’s continued participation in the game.

I suppose it’s possible that Major League Baseball can continue to be silent about the events surrounding the inconclusive test result and I suppose they can sucker a big chunk of the media and the fans into thinking this whole event was about Justin Turner being singularly irresponsible (the headline MLB.com put on its article yesterday was “MLB's response to Justin Turner's actions”), but they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it, because it’s straight bull.

You hate to see it

Yesterday’s newsletter had so much going on that I neglected to include what, for anyone other than Dodgers fans, may have been the highlight of Game 6. Rob Manfred getting booed:

Jared Tims @Jared_Tims

Rob Manfred was big mad

And yes, he was big mad. You don’t have to be an expert in body language to know that he was as annoyed as hell. Best part: he was being booed by the fans he worked his butt off to get into that ballpark and who, without his greed, wouldn’t have and shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Nothing satisfies like delicious irony.

Manfred’s reaction, by the way, is the reaction of a person who has surrounded himself with yes-men and sycophants for so long that he never, not even for one moment, considered that he was not a popular figure.

You absolutely hate to see it. And by “hate” I mean “love.”

Report: de Blasio tells Manfred he doesn’t want to sign off on the Mets sale

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times, due to the Mets lease on Citi Field, New York mayor Bill de Blasio has the right to block the sale of the Mets to “any person that has been convicted in a criminal proceeding for a felony or any crime involving moral turpitude.’’ Aside from one USA Today report about that a couple of weeks ago, no one believed, however, that the mayor had any interest in blocking the sale of the team to Steve Cohen.

Last night, though, the New York Post reported that de Blasio called Rob Manfred earlier this month and told him he was going to do whatever he could to stop the deal. de Blasio’s spokesman denied that report and repeated the often-heard talking point that deBlasio is merely having lawyers do “due diligence.”

The Post, it should be noted, is really the only outlet characterizing this as a real thing. They do, however, have a decent bit of inside-New-York-City-politics details in their report which makes sound at least plausible that more than “due diligence” is going on. It involves anti-billionaire politics, a past coalition that helped stymie Amazon’s HQ2 plans for New York, A-Rod and J-Lo’s thwarted ownership group, and all that kind of stuff. For my part, I can’t really see de Blasio’s practical or political incentives to mess with the Mets sale, which would piss off a ton of Mets fans and many others. At the same time, I don’t think anyone who is not intimately familiar with New York politics and New York drama is really in a position to judge the weight of the story.

Either way, it’s worth noting that, since it initially ran last night, even the Post’s take on it has been ratcheted back at least somewhat. It ends like this now:

“De Blasio can make this ugly and he can even try to stop it,” said one lawyer with knowledge of the situation. “But he has no real standing, and Cohen will sue him. And Cohen will win.”

Cohen is still expected to be approved by MLB owners on Friday. How much de Blasio wants to mess with Manfred and Cohen on all of this before relenting is an open question.

Dodgers merch flies off the shelves

Early yesterday the Dodgers set a new record for the first eight hours of championship merch sales at Fanatics. In this they surpassed the Cubs, Lakers and Eagles immediately following their titles.

I get Cubs fans needing new merch, of course. All the people who bought breeches and pantaloons festooned with “Your Chicago Base Ball Club Has Been Declared Champions of the World” in 1908 had already died. Eagles fans had never gotten a chance to buy championship gear at all and, based on what I’ve seen of Eagles fans, you could but a Birds logo on anything this side of a pile of horse manure and they’d by that jawn. Lakers fans? Well, they had to have something to alternate with their Yankees, Cowboys, and Duke basketball wardrobe. It all makes sense.

Dodgers fans buying stuff now is also understandable, of course. I mean, this was the state of the art for baseball fashion the last time the Dodgers won it all:

Gotta freshen things up, yes?

Inside sports owners political donations

Yesterday ESPN, in conjunction with FiveThirtyEight, kicked off a series of six pieces showing how professional sports owners contribute to political campaigns, why they spend millions in the space and what that financial power means.

One not surprising takeaway: sports owners have donated $10 million to Republican causes compared to $1.9 million to Democratic causes so far in the 2020 election cycle. And this is no outlier. Here are the last three cycles:

• 2016: $12,940,514 Republican | $4,065,093 Democratic

• 2018: $11,282,570 Republican | $4,174,212 Democratic

• 2020: $10,022,931 Republican | $1,874,333 Democratic

If you single out MLB owners for the three-cycle period it’s $15,181,761 to Republican campaigns, $5,184,604 Democratic.

There’s a wealth of information in that first post alone, and there will no doubt continue to be more as the series progresses.

If you don’t care so much about the specific data, though, just know this: as professional athletes have become increasingly outspoken in favor of progressive social and political causes and matters of racial justice, sports owners are overwhelmingly favoring the forces which are directly opposed to such causes and justice.

For now the owners are, carefully, if occasionally reluctantly and/or awkwardly, making space for athlete voices to be heard. Given their natural leanings, however, it does not seem likely that they’ll be able to tolerate that for long. I would not be surprised to see pushback from owners on this stuff and a resurgence of “stick to sports” sentiment from the powers that be.

The Transactions are starting

With the end of the World Series comes the beginning of the hot stove season. Yesterday, MLB teams began the business of that season right out of the gate. Of particular note:

• The Nationals declined outfielder Adam Eaton's $10.5 million option, and also declined the club options on Aníbal Sánchez, Howie Kendrick, and Eric Thames;

• The Diamondbacks declined righty Mike Leake's $18 million mutual option, a $3.5 million option on Junior Guerra and a $4 million option on Héctor Rondón;

• The Mariners declined utilityman Dee Strange-Gordon's $14 million club option for 2021; and

• The Marlins exercised outfielder Starling Marte's $12.5 million club option for 2021;

• The Mets are reported to be planning to decline their $10 million club option on catcher Wilson Ramos and options on infielder Todd Frazier and catcher Robinson Chirinos;

• The Twins declined reliever Sergio Romo's $5 million option for 2020;

• The Cardinals declined second baseman Kolten Wong's $12.5 million option; and

• The Colorado Rockies declined infielder Daniel Murphy's $12 million option

The Marte option pickup had been telegraphed by the Fish and makes abundant sense, but none of the declined options were shocking. Well, Wong’s option being declined by St. Louis was at least somewhat surprising, as he and the team had reportedly been discussing an extension.

Which makes me think this was a financial move more than anything else, with the Cards worried as hell about 2021 payroll. If and when he re-signs for a nice but insanely-backloaded deal with St. Louis, you’ll know that that’s what it was about. There could be a lot of those this year. And lots and lots of options will be declined this winter too. Lots of guys will be non-tendered. It’s the beginning of a very slow, icy offseason, I suspect.

Tomorrow we’ll begin talking about the biggest free agents on the market this offseason. Godspeed, to those poor bastards.

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Other Stuff

Comically-Obvious Metaphor Alert!

Hundreds of Trump supporters were left in the freezing cold for hours after a rally at an airfield in Omaha, Nebraska, on Tuesday night, with some walking around three miles to get back to their cars or to busses to take them home. Many, including some sick and elderly people, had to be taken away in ambulances, with cases of hypothermia reported.

If this were a TV show or a movie, the executive producers would send this script back to the writers for massive alterations because, dudes, this is way too on-the-nose in service of a point. This is late-period "M*A*S*H"-level in its overbearing obviousness. This is like if “The Newsroom” and “Grey’s Anatomy” had a baby and the baby grew up to be a simpleton creative writer who suffered from an acute case of nuance deficit disorder (NDD), which afflicts millions every year. Or something.

The joy of death threats

In the two and a half months since I began this newsletter I’ve mentioned on occasion how much nicer the tone and vibe of everything is. People who comment here or respond to me about what I’ve written on social media are overwhelmingly polite and constructive, even when critical. That makes sense, of course. You all are paying $6 a month for the privilege of reading this stuff. No one is going to pay money just to be a giant, aggressive jerk to me. A subscription price is a tool which, necessarily, selects for good people.

This stands in stark contrast to my past writing life. While at NBC, I got tons of hyper-negative feedback, bile, and even some fully-blown death threats over things I wrote. Particularly when I wrote about things like patriotism, the military’s involvement in sports culture, politics and the like. My little run-ins with the Proud Boys recently, which I talked about on Tuesday, have involved some subtly implied threats of their own. That old life — and the times I still write outside of the paywall — was a totally different deal. What I have going now is a much better deal.

But I’m not gonna lie: there’s something satisfying, on some level, about getting that kind of aggressive response, even if the substance of the threats are a bit disturbing. I don’t like the toxicity of any of that stuff, but . . . the fact of its existence always somehow made me feel like I had, I dunno, accomplished something? I don’t want it back but, at times, I almost feel like I’m missing something in all of this.

I haven’t examined those thoughts very much, but yesterday the singer and songwriter Nick Cave put it into words, and he did so almost perfectly.

Cave has a newsletter of his own — it’s free — called The Red Hand Files. In it he answers reader/fan questions. If you are familiar with Cave, his music, and his writing, you know that both the questions and the answers skew toward the cosmic. He talks about art and grief, addiction and pain, and all other things that not only touch on his personal history, condition, and status as an artist, but on the human condition as well. It’s an affecting read, each every single time a new one pops into my inbox. The waters run very deep with that guy.

Yesterday Cave was asked by someone if he received many mean messages and, if so, how he copes with that kind of negative energy. After saying that he does, occasionally, get unkind emails, he explains why he doesn’t consider them to be all that bad:

Generally, though, I like them and find them weirdly energising. There is nothing quite like a good death threat in the morning to get the juices flowing. They are a form of validation, really, as no one with a public platform and an opinion is doing his or her job effectively if they are not being attacked from time to time.

When he’s right he’s right. Gotta love Nick Cave. He's a god. He's a man. He's a ghost. He's a guru.

Blackout

This bit is somewhat personal. I almost didn’t want to share it but then I realized that both parts of this are already out there on the Internet — hell, my whole life is on the Internet, so take note, would-be death-threateners — so what the hell?

Tuesday was the ninth anniversary of Game 6 of the 2011 World Series and yesterday was the anniversary of Game 7. It was, of course, the famous Cardinals-Rangers Series in which David Freese was the big hero of Game 6, after which the Cards cruised to victory the following evening.

I was certainly watching it. As evidence, here’s something Facebook Memories reminded me that I posted after that epic Game 6. The date says October 28 instead of the 27 because it was probably in the wee hours of the following morning:

That’s a pretty good joke, I think! Especially for 2011, which was before all of us were fully poisoned by online existence and thus only told the most obscure, meme-referencing inside jokes imaginable. Back in 2011 we had to go for actual humor that didn’t rely merely on Internet loser recognition! Go, 2011 Craig!

Or not really. Because as I looked at that memory yesterday, I was and remain fully aware that I have no memory whatsoever of not only making that joke but of even watching that game. Though I did, in fact, watch that game. There’s a reason for that.

The last week of October 2011 was, arguably, the worst week of my life. My ex-wife and I had separated a couple of weeks before but for a number of reasons rock bottom hit fully on October 26, the night that Game 6 was originally supposed to be played, only to be rained out. I won’t go into the details of that rock bottom, but suffice it to say that I was in a very, very bad and unhappy place as the Rangers and Cardinals played Game 6 — which some have described as the best game ever — and then played Game 7 the next night.

And, as I wrote about that time a few years later, I have almost zero actual memory of it because I was blacking out. Not because of alcohol or drugs of any kind. But because of something I experienced something which I can only call a psychic break of some kind:

It’s 3-2 in the fifth inning of Game 7 of the 2011 World Series. I have no idea how the runs scored. I’m supposed to be paying attention to this but instead I’m watching myself watch the game from about two feet to the left of myself and a foot or so back. The man on the couch becomes less me than some other person I don’t know, but I’m fascinated with him. I’m wondering how this man starring glassy-eyed at the screen is going to write about this game given that his head is clearly someplace else. I decide I have to try to help him so I try to jump into his head and shake him out of this funk. I jump. Everything goes black.

I wake up, back in my own head. The Cardinals are celebrating in their clubhouse, champagne shooting everywhere. I’ve somehow lost more than two hours since that jump. I haven’t been drinking. It’d be easier to explain if I had. I just turned off. I look up the box score online and reconstruct what happened and somehow manage to write something serviceable about the game. This isn’t the first time I have simply turned off. I did so the night before, too. That was Game 6, and it was supposedly one of the most memorable World Series games ever, what with Nelson Cruz and David Freese and extra innings and all sorts of improbable happenings. I have no personal recollection of it. But I wrote about it. I even tweeted about it in real time, which suggests that I was actually watching it and processing it on some level. But I still had a black spot about it as soon as it was over. I’ve since watched video of it all and almost feel like I experienced in real time even if I really didn’t.

The rest of that story is pretty heavy stuff so don’t feel obligated to read it, but it goes on to describe some pretty scary times, psychologically speaking. I wrote that in March of 2016, by the way, when I was having some different sorts of problems and was seeing a therapist who told me that I needed to write about the earlier episode. It worked — I got through that business — so don’t worry about me now or anything. I’m doing fine.

I bring all of that up, though, because it serves as a pretty good reminder — one I need sometimes when it comes to relating with other people — of how different a person can be on social media than they are in real life at any given time. About how you really can’t tell what’s going on with someone based on their Twitter jokes or Instagram posts or whatever.

Hell, with me you can’t even tell with my baseball writing. I went back and read some of the things I wrote about the 2011 Series and some other things from late winter/early spring 2016 when I wasn’t doing well again, and it’s some of the best stuff I’ve ever written. It’s funny! And insightful at times! To read it, you’d have no idea that I was experiencing either a mental breakdown or depression, and I doubt anyone except people who knew me really well even knew about it at the time.

Nothing beyond seeing that Facebook memory spurred this today, but I’m glad it spurred it. We all could use reminding that people we encounter in the virtual space may be living very different existences than that which is apparent. We’re all fighting private battles, as the saying goes. Because of that, try to have empathy for the people with whom you interact. Even the assholes. Maybe especially the assholes.

Just one more thing . . .

Well, two things. The first: since there was no baseball, I watched a “Columbo” last night. It was the February 1974 episode “Mind over Mayhem.” It is easily the worst episode I have seen. And not just because a robot plays a non-trivial part in it. It’s just a lazy script — written by Steven Bochco of all people! — and even though it stars the great José Ferrer and a youngish Jessica Walter, most of the performances are mailed in. Only Peter Falk and Columbo’s dog seem to be trying here. They’re not all winners, I suppose.

Far better was an article that was brought to my attention on the comments yesterday. It’s a much-expanded version of the little cartoon from The New Yorker I shared yesterday, breaking down the essential elements of the show and explaining its basic appeal.

The key graf:

Why would a killer let a cop get close to them? In the case of Columbo, it’s simple: the killer assumes the cop is a dolt. The killers on Columbo are so rich that they presume their wealth affords them intelligence. And like the psychiatrist in Prescription: Murder, most of the time, the killer can’t help but like Columbo even as he represents everything they should fear.

The last few months of our lives have, among other things, shone a bright, unfeeling light on the class inequities in our country. Billionaires keep getting richer, while the unemployment rate soars and joblessness floods the streets. There’s little actual victory to be seen against the rich, so we have to take the victories we can get in popular culture. Columbo may not seem like an obvious example of culture portraying class warfare from either side of the battle, but it’s a major ingredient of this procedural. And when you compare Columbo to other procedurals of the 1970s and 1980s, that ingredient is not only unavoidable—it’s what makes this show special.

Yup. Even when there are robots involved.

Have a great day, everyone.