Cup of Coffee: September 2, 2021

The good news: today is Free Thursday! The bad news: we regret to inform you that the McFlurry Machine is down. Hey, you get what you pay for.

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday! If you’re here only because it’s free day, might you consider a subscription?

Or gifting one?

Thanks, y’all. You’re swell.

For the first time since late April the Dodgers are in first place and for the umpteenth time this year the Mets have dubious off-the-field news. Speaking of dubious, I’d like to think that if I was in my 70s and had family members with serious medical conditions that I’d get the COVID vaccine, but maybe Bob Boone knows something I don’t. In less depressing news, the Mariners extended a couple of important contracts and yesterday was the anniversary of a significant day in baseball history.

In more depressing news we have today’s Other Stuff, in which I talk about the Texas abortion ban which, if you’re just visiting today, will serve as a heads up about how I roll, so if that’s gonna upset you ya may want to click away now (suggested click). I also note the passing of someone who was important to someone who is important to me, sip some tea while sharing a local news item first reported on a “Local News Blog,” and I regret to inform you, once again, that the McFlurry machine is down.

---

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Brewers 5, Giants 2: The Giants have lost four straight games, have scored five total runs while doing it and that, my friends, is how you fall out of first place. Well, that along with the Dodgers continuing to win at a breakneck pace, but we’ll get to them in a second. And of course let’s not write the Brewers out of this narrative because, folks, they’re pretty damn good. Here Jace Peterson hit a go-ahead single in the seventh for ‘em, Lorenzo Cain homered for a second straight game, and seven Milwaukee pitchers — necessitated by Brett Anderson getting hit on the shoulder by a comebacker early — mostly stymied the San Francisco bats.

When I woke up this morning and scrolled back on the old timeline, there was a lot of despair among my Giants fan follows, but dudes, there’s still a month to go in the season. Sure, it’s September, and the Giants have gone a collective 51-79 over the past five Septembers, but I’m sure this time will be different.

Dodgers 4, Atlanta 3: The Dodgers just finished up a stretch in which they played 22 games in 23 days and won 18 of them to make up a deficit between them and San Francisco that was as large as five games in mid-August. Here Austin Barnes and Max Muncy homered early to give them a 2-0 lead which they held for a while thanks to Max Scherzer going six shutout innings and striking out nine. At that point Scherzer left after only 76 pitches due to a mildly wonky hamstring and Atlanta powered ahead thanks to the bats of Eddie Rosario and Dansby Swanson. L.A. got two in the eighth on Justin Turner and A.J. Pollock singles, however, allowing them regain the lead, take the game, and ascend to the top of both the NL West and Major League Baseball as a whole. And don’t worry about Max Scherzer, he says. The hammy is fine. Just a little tight.

Mariners 1, Astros 0: There’s a meme out there which says that if you gave a Pilgrim a single Sour Patch Kid it would kill them instantly. The idea being that people from the past are so wholly ill-equipped to deal with the horrors and wonders of the modern world that their systems simply could not handle the shock. I think the baseball equivalent of that would be showing someone like Christy Mathewson a 1-0 ballgame that took three hours and seventeen minutes and required ten pitchers to complete. That’s what we had here, with Abraham Toro’s sixth inning sac fly being the only offense and five M’s pitchers combining to scatter nine hits in a shutout of the powerful Astros lineup. The future is horrifying, my friends, yet we cannot run back to the past.

Cardinals 5, Reds 4; Reds 12, Cardinals 2: Paul Goldschmidt hit two homers in the opener of a doubleheader it behooved the Cardinals to sweep if they wanted to start making more noise in the Wild Card race, but they had to settle for a split after the Reds stomped all over J.A. Happ in the second game. Stomped him to the tune of seven runs on eight hits in one inning, after which the rest was academic. Nick Castellanos drove in six with a grand slam and a two-run shot in the first two innings alone. Speaking of memes, ever since the Thom Brennaman thing last year there’s been a meme floating around out there about how Castellanos homers are always associated with some sort of disaster or another. With the way the world turned yesterday, I’d say that meme is pretty damn accurate.

Rockies 9, Rangers 5: The Rockies came from behind with a five-run ninth inning in which they only got one hit: a two-run double from Brendan Rodgers. That’s not an easy thing to do, but a lot of walks and a lot of errors — four of them! — from the other guys will get you there. I’d say this was the ugliest thing that happened in Texas yesterday, but as the discussion down in Other Stuff makes clear, sadly it was not.

Diamondbacks 8, Padres 3: Yu Darvish got shellacked, giving up six runs on eight hits and failing to escape the Dbacks’ six-run third inning. In his previous start he gave up four runs and the one before that five. Indeed, Darvish has allowed at least four runs in five of his seven post-All-Star break starts. That’s . . . kinda concerning. Ketel Marte and Pavin Smith had three hits each, Josh VanMeter homered, and Luke Weaver gave up only one run on four hits over six innings, walking none, and barely breaking a sweat in his 79-pitch outing.

Blue Jays 5, Orioles 4: Marcus Semien hit a solo home run, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. had two hits and two RBI, and Randal Grichuk hit a tie-breaking sacrifice fly in the eighth to power the blue birds to victory. Over the orange birds? No one ever calls either of these teams the birds, really, do they? The Cardinals get the “Redbird” thing sometimes, but not these guys. Shame.

Yankees 4, Angels 1: Gerrit Cole played stopper and then some, striking out 15 Angels batters in seven innings and ending the Yankees’ losing streak. Luke Voit hit a two-run single early and Aaron Judge homered late.

Red Sox 3, Rays 2: Jarren Duran had a tie-breaking RBI single in the ninth to help end the Rays’ nine-game winning streak. The Red Sox’ COVID streak continued, however, as infielder Yairo Muñoz became the latest Sox player to test positive. That makes eight players and two coaches to either have had a positive test or to be designated a close contact since last Friday. I saw some Boston sports goon blame this all on a Cleveland officials imposing an unreasonably long rain delay in a game last week that kept the club confined to the clubhouse for a few extra hours rather than low vax rates, poor safety protocols, and bad luck befalling the Sox. That’s certainly a take.

Tigers 8, Athletics 6: Miguel Cabrera hit a two-run homer to tie the game up in the fourth and then hit a go-ahead RBI single in the seventh. I don’t think I’ve shared the “The old man's still an artist with a Thompson,” clip from “Miller’s Crossing” all year, so now is as good a time as any:

Cubs 3, Twins 0: Justin Steele allowed just one hit in five shutout innings and Adbert Azolay pitched in four blank frames, also allowing just one hit in a quintessential getaway day performance from the Twins bats. Frank Schwindel’s three-run blast was all the offense here.

Cleveland 5, Royals 3: Yu Chang homered in the seventh to tie things up at three and Austin Hedges hit a bloop RBI single in the 11th to score the Manfred Man and give Cleveland what would prove to be the winning run. Chang struck again with an RBI double after that. Cleveland has beat Kansas City ten straight times.

White Sox 6, Pirates 3: Gavin Sheets hit two homers. If someone tells me that guy is Ben Sheets’ kid I’m gonna completely lose it because there’s no way Sheets is old enough to have a kid who is a major leaguer, is there?

*goes to check*

Phew. It's Larry Sheets’ kid. Which now that I write that out I realize I knew because I think I riffed on Larry Sheets earlier this year when Gavin was first called up. My God there are a lot of baseball games in a season. How do you people read all this stuff? Has to get old.

Phillies vs. Nationals; Marlins vs. Mets — POSTPONED:

🎶He came into town in the early springtime
To work with my daddy down in the mines
It was hot in the summer when he said goodbye
And he left me a secret I can no longer hide
Now the only thing here that is welcoming me
Is a cold rainy morning, and a Greyhound bus seat
He just had to come back and try to explain
Cry for your daughter, Appalachian rain

Mountains of sorrow, mountains of pain
You'll never give for my baby a name
My family's honor took it away
Cry for your daughter, Appalachian rain🎶

---

The Daily Briefing

Mets GM Zack Scott arrested for drunk driving

The New York Post reported yesterday that Mets general manager Zack Scott was arrested for driving while intoxicated after he was found asleep in his car at 4:17 AM Tuesday morning in White Plains, New York. Scott reportedly refused to give blood or submit to a breathalyzer but underwent a field sobriety test and failed.

Which, while this is not anything close to the most important part of all of this, is totally stupid on Scott’s part, by the way.

There are various schools of thought regarding refusing breath tests, and there are various penalties attached to refusing them too, so consult a lawyer if you find yourself in that position. It’s also the case that even if you refuse a blood test, courts can order blood draws over your objection. But DUI attorneys will uniformly tell you not to do the roadside tests, which they often refer to as “stupid human tricks” because they are really poor indicia of actual drunkenness and will always be used against you, often prejudicially, in your prosecution. They often are portrayed as evidence of drunkenness even among sober people and in no event do they ever help you. Oh well, Scott didn’t call me, so it’s not my problem.

Beyond all that, Jeff Passan reported that Scott was at Mets owner Steve Cohen’s house on Monday night for a fundraiser. That fundraiser was reportedly over at 9PM or so, though, so this arrest is almost certainly on Scott’s afterparty choices, not on whatever champagne and canapés he had at Chez Cohen.

Scott will be back in court today. Someone please set the “Days Since the Mets Have Had a Totally Self-Inflicted P.R. Disaster” sign back to zero. Someone also ask Sandy Alderson how he’s vetting the people he hires, because he’s been coming snake eyes on these guys for some time.

Mariners promote Jerry Dipoto, extend Scott Servais

The Seattle Mariners promoted GM Jerry Dipoto to the title of President of Baseball Operations and extended the contracts of both Dipoto and manager Scott Servais, the team announced yesterday.

Dipoto has been with the franchise since 2015. Servais is in his sixth season as manager. He’s the second-winningest manager in team history, behind Lou Piniella.

The M’s are doing better this year than expected. They have a winning record and are still alive in the Wild Card race in September and, really, not a ton of people expected that of them this year. I haven’t really heard anyone calling for either of their heads. I can’t really think of a reason for them to not continue to stay on in their current gigs. Maybe hardcore Mariners fans feel differently about that, but I think they generally do the right things, even if it hasn’t led the club to the promised land just yet.

Nationals firing employees who won’t get vaccinated

Britt Ghiroli of The Athletic reports that the Washington Nationals began firing unvaccinated employees yesterday.

Jesse Dougherty of the Washington Post reports that two of them are scouts. Dougherty also reports longtime major leaguer, former manager, and long time Nats front office member Bob Boone is resigning rather than get vaccinated. Boone is 73 and his son has a heart condition, so that’s certainly a damn choice on his part. Who wouldn’t rather risk getting COVID in one’s old age rather than keep a cushy, likely do-little job with a Major League Baseball team, all at the cost of two nothingburger shots to the arm?

Ghiroli also reported that as of this past Monday, the Orioles also are requiring vaccinations of all full-time and year-round employees. The deadline to get vaccinated is October 31 if you want to keep your job. The Orioles also said that all new hires are required to be vaccinated as a condition of employment.

Cue the wackos screaming about freedoms and Republican governors demanding legislation to make anti-vaxxers a protected class. And if you see Bob Boone walking toward you, walk the other way.

September 1, 1971

Fifty years ago yesterday, the Pittsburgh Pirates fielded Major League Baseball's first ever all-Black and Latino starting lineup:

1. Rennie Stennett 2B

2. Gene Clines CF

3. Roberto Clemente RF

4. Willie Stargell LF

5. Manny Sanguillen C

6. Dave Cash 3B

7. Al Oliver 1B

8. Jackie Hernandez SS

9. Dock Ellis P

It’s no accident that the Pirates were consistently excellent thru 1970s. They, along with fellow NL clubs like the Giants and Cardinals embraced building around Black and Latino players from the 1950s on, and their on-the-field success — and just how far behind the slow-to-integrate American League was behind the NL — is a testament to how bigotry and winning do not go together.

That all-Black-and-Latino lineup was a milestone to be sure, and you should read about its significance and history. But it was also, unfortunately, a far more fleeting moment than it was a watershed moment. That’s because, while the presence and prevalence of Black players in Major League Baseball was on the rise in the 1970s and would peak in the early 1980s, since then baseball has become whiter and more conservative. Indeed, there are no teams in the league at this moment who could field such a lineup even if they wanted to.

September 1, 1971 was a monumental day in baseball history. But it was — to shamelessly pilfer a phrase from literature — pretty damn close to the high-water mark. That place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

---

Other Stuff

Texas and the looming national abortion ban

As of Tuesday night at midnight, abortion is effectively illegal in Texas. I say effectively because, while the law that the U.S. Supreme Court refused to stay pending appeal is styled as a restriction, its terms — no abortions, even in the case of rape or incest after six weeks of insemination — make it a functional ban as missing a period, figuring out you’re pregnant, and then getting an appointment at a clinic will eat up all of that time in virtually every case. The Texas legislature knew what it was doing. They’ll freely tell you that that’s what they were doing.

I am likewise confident that the conservative-dominated Supreme Court — three members of which were appointed by a president who lost the popular vote and instigated an attempted coup against the United States government — will sustain the law, essentially overturning Roe v. Wade. This is why most of them are there in the first place. They became judges, advanced in their careers, and were selected for both their current seats and their previous ones on almost exclusively that basis. It’s the defining project of the conservative movement and they’ll be damned if they don’t take their best available shot at eliminating the right to get an abortion in America.

When that happens, individual state legislatures will rush to pass blanket abortion bans. There are 30 states with Republican-controlled legislatures. There are 23 states which have a so-called Republican “trifecta,” meaning that both houses of their legislatures and their governorship is controlled by the GOP. At least those 23 will pass such laws. Many of the others will attempt to do so, looking to override vetos from Democratic governors. Every state race in 2022 will feature Republicans attempting to gain control in states they do not currently control. Theocratic movements, and the Republican Party is, at its core, a theocratic movement now, are motivated movements.

As the news of the Texas law coming into effect Tuesday night spread, I saw a lot of people angrily re-litigating past elections, proposing boycotts of Texas, and the like. I get the impulse there, but that’s all pretty unproductive. You don’t help the people who are harmed by these laws by abandoning them or by implying that it’s their own damn problem if they live in a place which bans abortion. I talk a lot about choosing where I want to live — and I do believe that these sorts of laws, over time, will lead to brain drain among younger generations and the movement of people who can more easily relocate — but most people do not have that choice, and the people who live in places run by the monsters who mean them ill do not deserve the miseries and injustices that are visited upon them. Republicans have waged a cold civil war in this country for years now, and many people are stuck behind enemy lines. And no, I do not use the word “enemy” lightly. Between their positions with respect to the pandemic, public health in general, and the health and safety of the environment, the Republican Party simply does not care whether a great many people live or die, and that is the very definition of an enemy.

At the same time, we must not fall into despair. If history has shown us anything, it has shown us that people must constantly fight to keep those who mean us harm from visiting that harm upon us, and people will fight. The best ways to fight right now: donate to abortion funds like The Lilith Fund, which provides financial assistance and emotional support for people who need abortions in Texas. Donate to state legislative campaigns and organizations which mobilize their resources on the state level as those are the battlefields which will matter most once Roe v. Wade is a dead letter.

If Tuesday night’s news is motivating you to do something, and if you are able, please do something constructive like that rather than fall into recrimination and despair. Fighting malevolence is never easy. Especially when it has the sort of upper hand it has in this country at the moment. But there is no choice but to fight it. There is no choice but to do whatever one can do to make this country a place that reflects our values, not the values of a callous, selfish, controlling, and privileged minority.

Meanwhile, in “Local News Blogs”

Seems that some Ohio rabble rouser has put someone’s ass in the jackpot:

In 2018, New Albany-Plain Local School Board Member Phillip Derrow and his wife created what’s called the “New Albany Center for Civil Discourse and Debate.” The city says it’s designed to “foster lifelong learning, the open exchange of different views and ideas and civil discussion especially related to political discourse.”

Derrow is now facing calls for his resignation after what many call an insensitive tweet that he’s since removed. Derrow’s tweet on Aug. 15 made a comparison to the government forcing schools to mandate masks for children to that of the Holocaust . . . After the tweet was first reported on a local news blog, parents complained, and it was later deleted and Derrow’s Twitter account no longer exists.

If anyone sees the person behind the “local news blog” in question, by all means, do not attempt to apprehend him. He’s probably busy watching “Columbo” and contending with this teenagers, and he may lash out if cornered.

In related news: never get involved in a land war in Asia, never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line, and never get into a pissing match with a self-employed former trial lawyer who writes 20,000 words a week, possesses prodigious research skills, and can get by on five hours of sleep a night for weeks on end.

School board meeting tonight. Yah Mo B there.

The Feds are gonna figure out why the McFlurry machine is down

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the Federal Trade Commission is investigating McDonald’s over the frequent breakdown of its McFlurry machines.

While your first response might be to ask why the FTC cares about McFlurrys, Cup of Coffee readers who have been around since last spring know what this is really about. I talked about this back in May. It’s really a Right to Repair case.

Right to Repair clauses involve suppliers of a machines who retain the sole ability to fix the machines, often because there’s a lot of money in fixing broken things. If you’re a McDonald’s franchisee, and your McFlurry machine is broken — and they do break down a lot — you have to use a certain company to fix it, and that often is (a) damn expensive; and (b) takes a long damn time, ergo your McFlurry machine is down.

As Wired reported last spring, there two entrepreneurs from California invented a little device you can put in your frozen dessert machine — the same tech for McFlurrys is used in the frozen yogurt business too — that will let you know about problems before they arise, allowing machines to be way more easily and cheaply maintained. They sold the devices to McDonald’s franchisees who loved them and found that their machines worked far more reliably. McDonald’s, however, sued the makers of the device and franchisees who bought them, claiming that it violated the right to repair clauses in their contracts.

]I was a summer intern for the Civil Task Force of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division in 1996. While I can’t say I did anything remotely important in the three months I was there, I do remember a senior lawyer who would look at cases like these and say “that’s some horseshit, right there.”

Well, that’s some horseshit right there. Go get ‘em, FTC.

Donna DeCarlo: 1947-2021

A few years ago I wrote about my great-great grandmother murdering my great-great grandfather with an axe. I mention that fairly often because, while it’s pretty horrific, it’s a hell of a good yarn. And when I do mention it I do it kinda flippantly because it was 111 years ago, I didn’t know those people, and time heals all wounds. Well, not Grandpa Frank’s wounds. Nellie Kniffen hit him hard enough to make sure those lasted. Yuck.

There’s a part of that story, though, that is more recent and which is not something I talk about flippantly.

As I wrote at the time, most of my extended family on my mother’s side has experienced hard times over the last century. There are a lot of reasons for that but the massive disruption and displacement of two generations as a direct result of the murder is a pretty damn big one. Another strong contributing factor to that, though, was the mental illness which fueled Nellie’s violence. After the murder, Nellie was diagnosed with “manic depressive psychosis,” which we now more commonly refer to as bipolar psychosis, with the “psychosis” part describing hallucinations or delusions. The contemporaneous reports of the killing make it clear that Nellie was, without question, in a psychotic state at the time.

Sadly, that illness did not die with Nellie. My mother’s older sister, Donna, suffered from the same thing and, as I wrote in the story, it bedeviled her for her entire life.

Donna was a brilliant and engaging child, but she began to suffer the effects of her mental illness as a teenager. Effects which no one around her was even remotely equipped to understand, let alone treat. She became a delinquent and then a runaway. She settled down for a while in her 20s, married and had children — the youngest of which is my older brother, who my parents adopted at birth because Donna was unable to take care of him — but she soon became an addict and then a drifter and remained so into her late 40s. On one occasion Donna attempted to kill my mother while my brother and I, then toddlers, played in the next room. My mom had to fight her own sister off of her to keep from being strangled to death.

My mother had every reason to wash her hands of her older sister after that, but she never did. Indeed, she was the only point of contact Donna had with reality and the only source of support she had for most of her life. My mother attempted to get Donna medical or psychological help each time she showed up on our doorstep, even if it was rarely lasting or successful. She eventually succeeded, however, finding Donna on the street in the 1990s and getting her a permanent bed in a group home with 24/7 observation and care.

Donna was made a ward of the State of Michigan at that point, rendering her unable to refuse care and confinement which, while regrettable, was necessary given that, as the years went on, she spent more and more time in psychotic states of various intensity and duration. Thankfully, due to heavy medication, she was no longer violent or a risk to herself or anyone else. My mother would visit her regularly, attending to her personal needs and advocating on her behalf with doctors and state administrators when necessary. When she’d take Donna out to a store or a restaurant Donna would calmly claim that total strangers were her friends. She would also claim to see old friends and relatives who had been dead for years.

Donna’s physical health was never great. She was a chainsmoker who probably weighed 90 pounds, if that. Last week she fell and broke her hip. The doctors said that given how frail she had become she’d not survive the surgery to repair it. It ended up not mattering. Donna stopped taking food and water and began to shut down. The doctors said she’d maybe last a week. She didn’t make it that long. Donna Kniffen DeCarlo died late Tuesday afternoon at the age of 74. My mom, sensing that the week the doctors gave her was overly optimistic, had made the drive up to Michigan to see her. She was by her side when her sister passed.

I had no relationship with Donna and had not seen her since I was a kid, so as I mark this loss, I do not do so for myself, because I don’t really feel any loss here. Rather, I do so for my mother, who loved her sister deeply through all of the sadness, ugliness and trauma of their lives. My mother whose empathy and selflessness is boundless and whose compassion is unmatched. If any of us could demonstrate even a fraction of what she has demonstrated over the course of her life, the world would be a much better place. Would that we all have someone like her looking out for us when we are at our lowest points and need a little help in this world.

Have a great day everyone.