Cup of Coffee: July 17, 2025

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

Yesterday was Dead Day Number One of the All-Star Break. Today is Dead Day Number Two. We'll get through it with a book recommendation, a minor trade, fried chicken, A.I., and deviled eggs.

The Daily Briefing

Attorneys in the Baseball Hall of Fame

Friend of the Newsletter, long-time subscriber, and Cup of Coffee's only true blue Miami Marlins fan Louis Schiff, and his co-author Robert M. Jarvis, have a new book out. It's called Attorneys in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Lou was kind enough to shoot me an advance copy and, yep, it's definitely a book that people interested in baseball history – especially lawyers interested in baseball history – will want to pick up. I highly recommend it.

The book, as the title makes clear, is about guys with law degrees who just so happen to have been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. There are 11 men featured: Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Hughie Jennings, Jim O’Rourke, Miller Huggins, John Montgomery Ward, Branch Rickey, Larry MacPhail, Happy Chandler, Bowie Kuhn, Walter O’Malley, and Tony La Russa. Schiff wrote the chapter on La Russa, Jarvis wrote the chapter about O'Malley, and the two of them co-wrote the chapter about Landis. The other eight essays are by various authors/legal experts, with the whole shebang edited by Schiff and Jarvis.

I read the book over the past week or so and found that it, like all of the best non-fiction, does a great job of balancing readability and storytelling with good, detailed, and well-documented information, complete with endnotes following each chapter, many of which provide entertaining and enlightening asides that make you feel like you're getting a whole separate and more in-depth look at each of its subjects. Overall neither the prose nor the details are given short shrift here, and it served to satisfy both the baseball fan and the lawyer in me.

The best part is that even if you feel like you already have a good handle on the book's subjects, there is a constant stream of fascinating facts and anecdotes that rarely make their Wikipedia pages and which are sometimes even barely mentioned in their standalone biographies. Great stuff like this about Kenesaw Landis:

In Chicago, Landis enrolled in the law school at Northwestern University (“NU”) and graduated in June 1891 (despite barely passing his Pleading and Real Property courses). In a preview of things to come, Landis was asked to address his fellow graduates. He used this opportunity to deliver a speech titled “The Conservative Man.” During his talk, Landis warned the audience about “radical men, extremists, [and] agitators”; promoted the view that German and Italian immigrants were dangerous; and embraced the Republicans’ political agenda.

That's pretty on-brand for Landis. He was his own era's Steven Miller!

Every chapter of the book contains interesting biographical nuggets like those. Stuff like how one of future MLB commissioner Bowie Kuhn's big clients during his lawyer days was the Continental Can Company, which seems temperamentally appropriate for a stiff like Kuhn. Also, I never knew that, during litigation over the then-Milwaukee Braves' plan to move to Atlanta, Kuhn, in his capacity as an attorney for the National League, cross-examined a youngish Bud Selig, then a minority shareholder of the club, on the stand in open court. I wish I had a time machine to watch that.

Another example: I knew that Miller Huggins, the New York Yankees manager from 1918 through 1929, went to law school at the University of Cincinnati and took the Ohio bar exam, but I was tickled to death that Stephanie Hunter McMahon, the UC law professor who wrote the Huggins' chapter, found a copy of the actual bar exam Huggins was given in 1902 and reproduced 12 of its 98 questions in the book. Among them:

Question 17: Is it perjury in Ohio to swear falsely to an application for a marriage license, the applicant not being one of the parties to the intended marriage?

Question 33: A died possessed of a large amount of real estate and personal property devising all to his only son. If you were attorney for A’s widow, how would you advise her?

Question 52: A farmer went to a miller and said: “I have a thousand bushels of wheat in sacks in my barn, for which I want one dollar per bushel.” The miller said: “I will give you $500 for 500 bushels.” “It’s a bargain,” said the farmer. An hour afterwards, before the farmer got home and before the miller saw the wheat, it was destroyed by fire. How is the loss borne? Why?

I will not hesitate to say that I would've failed the 1902 Ohio bar exam pretty spectacularly. Huggins didn't, but he declined to actually practice law, deciding to stick with baseball, saying “You can’t do two jobs at once . . . Either I’m a lawyer or a ball player. I can’t be both." I get it.

Schiff, a retired judge, and Jarvis, a law professor, you may recall, were the authors/editors of book Baseball and the Law: Cases and Materials, which came out in 2016 and which I've written about a few times over the years. That book, for however entertaining I find it and for however often I flip through it (often!), is a casebook designed to be used in law schools and isn't necessarily great for a general audience. Attorneys in the Baseball Hall of Fame, however, is excellent for general readers, particularly those who enjoy baseball history. And it would make a FANTASTIC gift for any lawyer or law student baseball fan in your life.

Indeed, it will be a book that, after they enjoy reading it, they will display on the credenza behind their desks, right next to their copies of Black's Law Dictionary and the state and federal rules of civil procedure. Assuming anyone still displays Black's Law Dictionary and the state and federal Rules of Civil Procedure on their credenzas. Or, for that matter, if lawyers even still have credenzas in their offices anymore. I've been out of the game awhile.

Anyway, you can buy Attorneys in the Baseball Hall of Fame now, either at the publisher's link or anywhere else you get your books. (note: it's listed on BookShop as well, but it's $10 more for some reason, so that's your call). Definitely a must-have.

Royals acquire Adam Frazier from the Pirates

The Kansas City Royals have acquired second baseman/outfielder Adam Frazier from the Pirates in exchange for Royals farmhand Cam Devanney. This is Frazier's second stint with Kansas City, having played in 104 games for them last season.

Frazier, who has seen a reduced role in Pittsburgh over the past few weeks, and who has been primarily limited to outfield play as opposed to his customary second base, is hitting .255/.318/.336 (83 OPS+). Devanney is 28, so it's not like he's a prospect, but he is hitting .272/.366/.565 with 18 homers and 14 doubles in 69 games at Triple-A Omaha this year while expanding his role from primarily being a shortstop into a super utility kind of deal. He was called up by the Royals eight days ago but he has not appeared in a big league game. As soon as the trade happened the Pirates optioned him to Triple-A Indianapolis, so, welp.

Frazier doesn't figure to play a huge role with the Royals, but he will get some time at second to cover for the injured Michael Massey, will give them a left-handed bat off the bench, and with his outfield experience he can provide some defensive flexibility. That's not nothing. His departure from Pittsburgh will open up more opportunities in the outfield for Alexander Canario or give the Pirates a chance to call Nick Yorke up from Triple-A. Neither of them are game-changers, but they're younger, so why not?

Not the most exciting transaction in history, but it's the dead zone after the All-Star Game and you take your baseball news where you can find it.

Exactly!

This post, by Defector's David Roth on Tuesday night, perfectly captures the newer ballpark + adjacent mixed-use development vibe that I really don't like but which I couldn't ever hope to articulate as succinctly as he did:

Call me old fashioned, but when I walk out of a ballpark I don't want to be in a chain restaurant and luxury hotel situation. I want to walk past mildly sketchy dudes selling Costco bottles of water out of a cooler on wheels, some moderately-OK buskers, local city folks with annoyed looks on their faces because they forgot there was a game today and they timed their errands poorly, and bars where if I drop something on the floor I'm not picking it up because, eww. THAT'S the way God intended baseball to be consumed.

Other Stuff

Um, you OK, chicken executive person?

Kentucky Fried Chicken remains an international juggernaut – seriously, there are KFCs on every damn corner in Asia and Europe, and they're always packed – but the same cannot be said about its domestic business. In the U.S. its market share has greatly eroded in the face of competition from Chick-Fil-A, Popeye's, and Raising Cane's, and it's been generally flailing here for some time. Per this story in the Raleigh News-Observer, however, it is is trying to shake things up in order to change that.

The venerable chain has improved its chicken, it says, and has made a lot of other upgrades. It knows, however, that people won't just take their word for it, so it's offering customers free buckets of chicken through its app so they can try it for themselves. Underscoring this is a laudable awareness that people aren't as interested in KFC anymore, which has them actively leaning into the "hey, come back" angle:

"We're well aware of the latest fried chicken rankings, and I'm fired up to launch a bold Kentucky Fried Comeback and remind America exactly who we are. If people can give their ex a million second chances, I hope our fans can give us one," said KFC U.S. President Catherine Tan-Gillespie in a press release.

I'm sorry, but I feel like that line about giving their ex "a million second chances" says more about KFC U.S. President Catherine Tan-Gillespie and whatever is going on with her personal life than it does about fried chicken. Stuff that frankly isn't our business and which is now causing me to associate KFC chicken with someone who is bad for me and is keeping me from being my best self.

Seriously Cath: know your worth and leave that player behind! You got this, girl!

Behold, the dumbest A.I. evangelist yet

Via a story in Gizmodo, here is Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber who had to leave the company because he fostered a work environment that was a gross and unethical bro-culture hellscape, talking about how he uses generative AI. Specifically, Elon Musk's Grok:

“I’ll go down this thread with [Chat]GPT or Grok and I’ll start to get to the edge of what’s known in quantum physics and then I’m doing the equivalent of vibe coding, except it’s vibe physics. And we’re approaching what’s known. And I’m trying to poke and see if there’s breakthroughs to be had. And I’ve gotten pretty damn close to some interesting breakthroughs just doing that . . . I pinged Elon on at some point. I’m just like, dude, if I’m doing this and I’m super amateur hour physics enthusiast, like what about all those PhD students and postdocs that are super legit using this tool?”

I cannot believe this needs to be said, but generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok do not have the ability to make new scientific discoveries on their own. They are pattern-recognition programs which literal draw, usually via intellectual property piracy, from already extant human knowledge. Even if you feed every bit of raw data that has ever been collected and made available to the greatest minds in existence it is, at best – at the absolute best – suggesting things for those minds to pursue, not giving a misogynistic college dropout who thinks Ayn Rand was a genius new insights via "vibe physics."

Separate and apart from the money they believe they stand to make with it, I honestly think that the reason tech CEO AI evangelist types are so enthralled with A.I. is because they're not as bright as the scientists, engineers, and programmers they employ, they resent that fact, and they are thus enamored with stuff that makes them feel smart. There was a time when some good old fashioned lackeys and lickspittles could scratch that itch, but it's WAY better to have a computer blow smoke up their asses.

Deviled Eggs

It's been a very, very long time since I've been to the Ohio State Fair. When I last went several years ago the cutting edge of fair food was "deep fried [anything]." Like, deep fried sticks of butter, Oreos, Twinkies, you name it.

After reading this article in my local paper about the upcoming fair, however, I'm beginning to understand that my conception of cutting edge fair food is hopelessly out of date, because they're out there committing absolutely depraved food crimes on the midway these days:

America's favorite buffet-table snack item, meet America's favorite bake sale treat. Chocolate chip cookie dough deviled eggs — a scoop of sweet, chocolatey cookie batter atop a hard-cooked egg white — will make their debut at this year's Ohio State Fair.

There's a photo, too:

There are five other new flavors of deviled egg at the fair this year as well:

• Columbus Pizza (cooked yolks mixed with marinara sauce and topped with parmesan cheese and crispy-edged pepperoni);
• Hot Honey Everything (eggs topped with a sprinkle of Everything Bagel seasoning and a drizzle of hot honey);
• Sriracha Peach (hot sauce and diced peaches);
• Spicy Crunchy (deviled egg yolks mixed with Flamin' Hot corn chips); and
• Cranberry Feta (Sweet dried cranberries and feta cheese)

I'd probably actually eat the hot honey, Sriracha peach, and cranberry feta, but I think I'd pass on the others. I'd kill the chocolate chip cookie dough one with fire and then spread its ashes in four separate corners of the realm as a warning to others.

In other news, no, I do not think I'm going to the Ohio State Fair this year.

Have a great day everyone.