Cup of Coffee: August 29, 2024 (2024)

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

And away we go.

And That Happened

Cubs 14, Pirates 10: The Pirates were leading 10-3 heading into the seventh inning and the damn wheels fell off, with the Cubs scoring two in the seventh, three in the eighth, and six in the ninth. Christian Bethancourt almost single-handedly bashed the wheels off, actually, as he drove in six of the 11 runs Chicago scored from the seventh on and had seven RBI in all, including a two-run single in the ninth which put the Cubs ahead to stay. Pete Crow-Armstrong had four hits, Ian Happ had three. I’d blame the Pirates collapse on it being a getaway day but they’re only getting away to Cleveland, which is about an 11 minute flight, so I’ll just chalk it up to “the Pirates have really sucked in the second half, man”-itis. Or I suppose we could chalk it up to “the Cubs have scored 73 runs over their past seven games” syndrome.

Guardians 7, Royals 5: The Royals blew a lead too, though it was only three runs, not seven. Here Bo Naylor homered, brother Josh singled in another run, Will Brennan another, and then Jhonkensy Noel singled home Brother Josh with the go-ahead run in Cleveland’s four-run seventh. The Guardians avoided a four-game sweep and, in the process, regained sole possession of first place in the Central.

Astros 10, Phillies 0: Spencer Arrighetti had a no-hitter going into the eighth and left after seven and two-thirds having allowed zero runs, two hits, and striking out 11. Yordan Alvarez, meanwhile, homered three times: a two-run shot in the fourth and solo shots in the seventh and eighth. Chas McCormick also went deep as the Astros avoided a three-game sweep

Mariners 6, Rays 2: Víctor Robles and Julio Rodríguez each hit two-run homers in the fifth and Randy Arozarena smacked one in the eighth. The Mariners win two of three. It’s their second series win in a row, which is something they hadn’t done since June.

Athletics 9, Reds 6: The A’s blew a 5-0 lead but got it back thanks to Seth Brown hitting two homers, including a three-run shot in the eighth which put Oakland back on top after the Reds had just put up a six-run seventh. Lawrence Butler and Brent Rooker also went yard. That’s three wins in a row for the A’s and three losses in a row — and five of six — for the Reds.

Nationals 5, Yankees 2: Dylan Crews led off the bottom of the first with his first big league homer and later hit an RBI double. Nasim Nuñez and James Wood each singled in a run and the Nats scored another one on a balk. MacKenzie Gore and the Nats staff, meanwhile, held Aaron Judge homerless for the third straight game and held Juan Soto hitless in 12 at-bats as they took two of three from the Bombers.

Red Sox 3, Blue Jays 0: Brayan Bello tossed eight shutout innings, allowing just two hits and striking out nine. It was a close one for most of the game, too, with Boston clinging to a 1-0 lead until the eighth when Tyler O’Neill hit a two-run shot. Normally here is where I provide the state of the series but I’m still fairly confused about how anyone is counting that makeup game from Monday so I’ll let it lie.

Atlanta 5, Twins 1: Jorge Soler homered in the first and Atlanta put together a four-run seventh with RBI doubles from Matt Olson and Luke Williams and an RBI single from Ramón Laureano. Chris Sale picked up his 15th win on the year after allowing one over six, extending his streak in which he has allowed two earned runs or fewer to 14 straight starts. The Barves sweep the Twins.

Cardinals 4, Padres 3: An eighth inning Kyle Higashioka homer tied things up at three but the Cards mounted a two-out rally with Masyn Winn and Victor Scott II singling after which Nolan Arenado hit a single which plated Winn for the walkoff win. St. Louis can force a split with a win this afternoon.

Brewers 5, Giants 3: Milwaukee scored all five of their runs in the fifth with William Contreras’ two-run homer serving as the big blow. Blake Perkins drove in two with a double and Jackson Chourio hit an RBI single. Freddy Peralta pitched six scoreless innings. These two clubs play the rubber match this afternoon.

Rangers 3, White Sox 1; Rangers 4, White Sox 3: Another two games another two losses for Chicago. Though, if the White Sox wanna make themselves feel better they can say that they only lost one yesterday since the first game was the continuation of Tuesday’s suspended contest and thus was technically registered as a Tuesday loss. No? Well, what can you do. Marcus Semien hit a tie-breaking RBI double in the seventh of the continuation game and Corey Seager added an RBI single. In the game actually scheduled for yesterday Wyatt Langford his a three-run homer in the fourth and Seager struck again late, hitting an RBI single in the top of the ninth to break a 3-3 tie. Six straight losses for the Chisox and ten of 11.

Tigers 3, Angels 2: The Tigers remain hot, winning their sixth game in a row despite a second night in a row with a lengthy rain delay. Spencer Torkelson hit a two-run home run in the second and Kerry Carpenter added an RBI single in the third. Not trying to stir up sh*t here or anything, but the Tigers are only 4.5 back of the third Wild Card.

Rockies 8, Marlins 2: Kyle Freeland was solid, Aaron Schunk hit his first major league home run, Nolan Jones hit a pair of RBI singles, Drew Romo added two hits and an RBI, and Ezequiel Tovar added a two-run double in the bottom of the eighth. The Marlins committed four errors. They play the fourth game in this battle of the NL’s worst today, with the Rockies looking to take the series and the Fish looking to force the split.

Diamondbacks 8, Mets 5: Corbin Carroll hit two homers and drove in five and Joc Pederson hit a two-run shot to pace the Diamondbacks. Carroll’s second homer — a grand slam — came in the eighth, after the Dbacks had blown a 4-0 lead to fall behind 5-4, so color him the hero of the evening. Starter Eduardo Rodríguez was not sharp but Arizona got four innings of shutout ball from the pen to keep the Mets from building on their lead and from coming back once they fell back behind.

Dodgers 6, Orioles 4: It was Shohei Ohtani’s bobblehead night at Dodger Stadium and the bobblehead featured both him and his dog, Decoy. But the night was even more special thanks to Decoy throwing out the first pitch:

That’s some good first pitch-throwing. Good boy.

A half inning after that Ohtani himself hit a solo homer. He’d later score when Teoscar Hernández hit a three-run homer and scored a third time on a fifth inning error. Walker Buehler was not great but the Dodgers pen was, tossing four and a third innings of shutout ball to close things out.

The Daily Briefing

Oneill Cruz is now a center fielder

The Pittsburgh Pirates erstwhile shortstop Oneill Cruz got the start in center field in yesterday’s game against the Cubs. The Pirates had said earlier this week that that was going to happen sooner or later and now it has.

This was not a one-off. Indeed, just the other day Pirates manager Derek Shelton said Cruz would play center “for the foreseeable future.” Shelton also said that this was about Cruz’s leg injury which ended his 2023 season, though it strikes me that this is more about team concerns regarding Cruz’s defense at short.

It’s not great defense — Cruz commits a lot of errors — but he’s not shockingly bad and his arm makes up for a lot of mistakes. I figure that the Pirates are doing this as a test over the final month of the season to see how Cruz handles center so that they can figure out the offseason plan. Whatever the case, before yesterday afternoon Cruz had played exactly one inning in the outfield in the majors, in left, in 2022. He played ten games in the outfield in the minors. So this isn’t TOTALLY insane, but it is unexpected.

I will say, though, that Cruz got done dirty on his first day patrolling center. In the top of the second inning Pete Crow-Armstrong of the Cubs hit a single up the middle that plated a run. Cruz fielded the ball cleanly and fired a 100+ MPH throw to the plate that almost any catcher besides Yasmani Grandal handles, but Grandal failed to snag it and Paul Skenes neglected to properly backup home plate. As a result, Crow-Armstrong advanced to third and the official scorer charged Cruz with a throwing error.

Some people probably went home unhappy on Shohei Ohtani bobblehead night. That’s by design.

As mentioned in the recaps, last night the Dodgers held their second Shohei Ohtani bobblehead night of the year. This time the bobblehead featured both Ohtani and his dog, Decoy. Given that they were giving out only 40,000 bobbleheads but the Dodgers sold over 53,000 tickets for Ohtani’s last bobblehead night, people were lining up outside Dodger Stadium five hours before the gates opened yesterday to ensure that they’d get one.

So why in the hell don’t they just make the same number of bobbleheads as there are seats in the stadium? The Los Angeles Times talked to Diamondbacks president Derrick Hall — whose club also limits the number of giveaway items — and Dodgers president Stan Kasten about that yesterday:

As to Hall’s point, I get the limits on, say, corporate-branded beach towels or other junk, but bobbleheads are genuine collectibles, especially when they’re for a superstar like Ohtani. You cannot tell me that the Dodgers and whoever their sponsor is couldn’t make 56,000 of them and, if there were some left over, they couldn’t make a mint selling them, thereby ensuring that everyone who ponied up for an (outrageously marked-up) ticket for last night’s game got one. As former A’s marketing executive Andy Dolic, also quoted in the article, said, “why [limit the supply] when the promotional concept is to put a smile on someone’s face?” I agree!

Kasten’s comment seems a lot more honest: they know that if they limit the supply of bobbleheads on bobblehead day that thousands of people will be waiting right when the gates open which will massively increase concession sales. How uplifting.

I’m probably just being overly-sensitive here. Like a lot of parents, I spent a lot of time when my kids were growing up trying to track down the hot toy, the hot pair of sneakers, the hot concert ticket, or, yes, the cool ballpark giveaway. That sh*t was stressful, man. I hated the fact that not only did we have to go through the inconvenience of getting someplace early and/or lining up but I also had to prepare the kids and myself for the possibility that we wouldn’t be able to get or do whatever the desired thing was. There are obviously way bigger problems in the world, but that can be some surprisingly emotional stuff and I hated it. I couldn’t imagine getting to the ballpark just a bit late, walking up to the gate with my kids, and being told “sorry, they’re all gone.” Well, yeah, I can imagine it and it seems like that would suck.

So, yeah, I’ll grant that I am probably being too touchy about this, but how much cooler would it be for the Dodgers to have spent what I am sure is a pretty insignificant amount of money by their standards to make 16,000 more Ohtani bobbleheads, thus ensuring that everyone who bought a ticket got one?

Other Stuff

Parenting can be hazardous to your health

The report cites American Psychological Association studies which say that nearly half of parents report “overwhelming stress” most days compared with 26% of other adults. Likewise, in a 2021 survey 65% of parents said they were lonely, compared with 55% of those without kids.

Any of us who have raised kids know, on an intuitive level, that it can be stressful as hell and how it’s often isolating. But I can only imagine it’s way worse now than it was when my kids were still young. In addition to all of the existential issues captured in the study, housing prices, grocery prices, and the sketchy availability and prohibitive cost of daycare and education are all way worse than they were even 10-15 years ago when my kids were in their still-tender years.

J.D. Vance and his buddies spend a lot of time moralizing about parenthood, lamenting declining birthrates, and shaming people who do not have children for whatever reason. But they don’t ever seem to acknowledge the actual reasons people are having fewer kids and they never, ever propose a single thing that would make it easier for people to raise kids.

Maybe Vance would be more popular if he did.

Oh, Francis, no . . .

Look, I’m STILL excited to see the absolute soup sandwich that “Megalopolis” is bound to be, but if Francis Ford Coppola offers more takes like this one he gave to Rolling Stone, I’m going to do it with far less enthusiasm:

If, in the year 20 goddamn 24, anyone utters the words “woke” or “canceled” without them dripping with irony, they should be poked with a cattle prod. I suppose I’ll cut Coppola a little slack because he’s 85 now and I don’t expect an 85 year old to keep up with The Discourse, but rolling out some misappropriated, past-their-sell-by-date buzzwords still wears pretty poorly on a guy who has spent the last 50 years fairly successfully cultivating an image of timelessness.

All of that being said, it’s a pretty good interview. I was particularly taken by him talking about his late wife, the documentary filmmaker Eleanor Coppola, who died earlier this year. Coppola made two comments about grieving her death, one almost in passing, which struck me.

One was about how he plans to work next in London because that’s a place where he and Eleanor didn’t spend much time together and thus didn’t have much history. there He doesn’t elaborate on that, but I think a lot of people understand how ghosts, in the form of memories, can haunt you when you lose someone, and that avoiding the haunted spaces in favor of something new is often desirable or even necessary. It’s certainly a thing I’ve thought about a lot, with respect to deaths and estrangements and other such things. When someone is out of your life, you really don’t want to spend too much time in the spaces you shared, at least until you’ve healed some.

The other thing Coppola said had him offering up a Marcus Aurelius quote: "When you lose a loved one, you should honor them by trying to be more like them. It's in your actions that they will remain alive.” I didn’t check to see if that’s actually an Aurelius quote or just something that modern day fans of Stoicism say because it sounds cool. Either way, Coppola talks about how, since his wife died, he does things he would not normally do, such as call friends just to chat, because those are things Eleanor did. And that by doing them he is able to “keep her in me.” The London thing speaks to necessary avoidance and Aurelius thing speaks to leaning in. Those impulses may be somewhat contradictory, but both of them ring very true and I get it.

Anyway, Coppola flinging around “woke” and “cancelled” notwithstanding, I’m still gonna go see “Megalopolis.” Even if it’s a complete omnishambles inside of a dumpster fire on the promenade deck of the Andrea Doria.

Nicholas Rossi’s lawyers basically admit their client’s identity

Remember our friend Nicholas Alahverdian, who also went by the name Nicholas Rossi, and who committed all manner of crimes, fled the United States for Ireland and then England, faked his own death, moved up to Scotland, and then assumed a new identity as a ridiculous caricature of a British man named Arthur Knight? And then, after being discovered, not only steadfastly insisted that he was Knight but then mounted a bizarre and stupid P.R. campaign to that effect before being extradited back to Utah?

The lawyers among you will note that his attorney’s specific language there is at least an attempt on their part to leave the door open for them to challenge all of this based on mistaken identity later, but honestly, that’s not going anywhere.

Mostly because, as the story notes, authorities did a DNA test on Alahverdian/Rossi/Knight when he arrived back in Utah and it matches the DNA samples from the rape prosecution. Because of this — and because they are not morons — it’s highly likely that the lawyers know they cannot, ethically, advance any identity claim their client wants to make so they did their best to sidestep the matter at this preliminary hearing without directly contradicting his public claims. But really, the game is up, just as everyone except Rossi himself knew it was some time ago.

Rossi will be back in court in October, when he’s expected to ask permission to post bail pending trail. Which is totally not happening, of course.

The Look of Love

Allison and I had a fun time last night. We, and many, many other old people, attended a concert featuring 80s acts Haircut One Hundred, ABC, and Howard Jones. It was a nice old person’s show, with doors at 5:30 and the first act hitting the stage at 7. Thank the lord for small mercies, especially on a weeknight.

For what it’s worth ABC — which is really just singer Martin Fry with a surprisingly tight backing band — was the best of the three acts. Fry’s voice sounds like it’s still 1984 and he effortlessly belted out “Be Near Me,” “Poison Arrow,” “How to be a Millionaire,” “The Look of Love,” and other songs just the way you remember them. He and his band were also wearing suits and ties which, while expected and appropriate from a New Romantic act, had to be less-than-ideal for them given how damn hot it was here yesterday, both outside and in the venue. Fry knew it too, as he joked from the stage about how ABC had a high fashion standard to maintain, on nights like that he wished he was in the Red Hot Chili Peppers and could come out mostly naked.

Haircut One Hundred was great. They opened the night by playing three high energy tracks, they did a perfect rendition of the timeless “Love Plus One,” ripped through a hot version of “Boy Meets Girl,” and then went to hang out at the merch stand while ABC set up. Makes sense given that they really only put out one album, but they knew the assignment and they aced it. Also: I forgot how much of their whole deal was brass and super fast, Latin-tinged percussion. The Old Blighty Sound Machine, maybe.

Howard Jones was the headliner because he had more hits and albums than the other two, but I don’t think his set was as good as ABC’s, his cover of Kajagoogoo’s “Too Shy” — done because Kajagoogoo’s Nick Beggs is Jones’ bassist on this tour — notwithstanding. Jones relied on the audience to sing a lot more of the songs than you’d really hope. It’s fun on an anthem or two but when it’s every song it feels a bit lazy. All of that said, he was engaged and amiable and he sure as hell looked the part:

I tweeted that photo out and someone on Twitter said that they never knew that Tim Walz played the keytar. You know what? I can see it.

Anyway, a fun night listening to a bunch of songs, some of which are over 40 years old. sure, it was the temporal equivalent of your grandparents going to listen to a big band revue in 1985, but Martin Fry is aging better than Benny ever Goodman did, so who cares?

Cool Britannia

Because I apparently have to write something about Oasis every day this week, I’m going to make a request — nay, a demand! — that Ben & Jerry’s bring back the Cool Britannia flavor.

This is Oasis-related because Oasis was the poster child of the so-called “Cool Britannia” era, which is a term the British press used to describe the Britpop scene, Tony Blair’s New Labour government, and those things’ associated cultural influence in the mid-to-late 90s. The ice cream flavor existed only from 1995-98, which coincided with that period quite nicely.

Cool Britannia, the scene, had a really short shelf-life and has aged poorly given that (a) Britpop basically cocained-itself out of existence fairly quickly; (b) New Labour ended up being an empty exercise in branding that degraded politics and public policy in some of the worst ways; and (c) xenophobic right wing assholes have coopted the Union Jack, rendering most of the iconography of the period retroactively unfortunate.

But the ice cream, oh man, the ice cream was great.

Cool Britannia ice cream was simple: vanilla, chocolate-covered shortbread, and strawberries. And it tasted fantastic. My wife and I used to get it at the Alexandria, Virginia Safeway all the damn time. But then it disappeared, no doubt because people have crap taste and would rather eat overly-chocolated fudge bombs than something as divine as chocolate-covered shortbread and strawberries. I miss it dearly. So much so that I am probably gonna follow one of those DIY recipe recreation videos to make a little batch of it for myself soon, even though (a) I do not own a stand-mixer; and (b) it probably won’t be quite the same regardless.

As I do so, I’ll listen to this ditty from the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band — the guys who coined the phrase “Cool Brittania” in 1966 — on repeat:

No, that’s not much of a song but it’s better than most of “Heathen Chemistry,” so we’ll go with it.

Have a great day everyone.