Cup of Coffee: April 23, 2024

Good morning!

We had a wild ejection in yesterday’s Yankees game, a closer learned why he’s been sucking, the men who own a couple dozen private jets between them and who hire out luxury SUVs to drive them everywhere want you to have a happy Earth Day, I wish you a Happy Las Vegas A’s-a-versary, and the transactions page gets a little too real.

In Other Stuff Jeff Pearlman speaks or, at the very least, DMs, Terry Anderson passed, the Supreme Court is poised to pretty much nail 21st century American, I ask you to beware of online junk, and I decide if the habitability of the planet or coffee is more important. Don’t look at me, I’m thinking it over!

And That Happened 

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Athletics 2, Yankees 0: Zack Gelof hit a two-run homer in the top of the ninth for the game’s only scoring and the game ended with A’s closer Mason Miller — who is an absolute freak in the best sense of the term — punching out Anthony Volpe, Juan Soto and Aaron Judge with a few 102 and 103 m.p.h. fastballs in the mix. But I don’t care about that. I only care about how the game started.

As you probably saw, Yankees manager Aaron Boone was ejected a mere five pitches into this game under the most bizarre circumstances. To wit: Athletics leadoff hitter Esteury Ruiz was hit by a pitch and The Yankees' dugout thought Ruiz swung at it, with Boone yelling at home plate umpire Hunter Wendelstedt about it. To our great entertainment, the whole exchange was picked up by the YES Network mics:

Wendelstedt: "You're not yelling at me! I did what I was supposed to do and checked. I'm looking for him to get hit by the pitch! You got anything else to say, you're gone!"

*One pitch later*

Wendelstedt: "You're done! You're gone!"

Except Boone didn’t say anything. This fan in the blue shirt in the front row did, and Wendelstedt thought Boone did:

We know this because the TV cameras were on Boone, who was looking away, not saying anything. When he was ejected he ran out to protest, and Wendelstedt said "I don't care who said it. You're gone." Just bananas!

After the game Boone said of his ejection "It's embarrassing. It really is a bad, it's embarrassing." He’d probably say more but, because MLB is a league in which umpires suffer no public accountability at all, expounding on the incident would likely cause Boone to get fined. And not surprisingly, Wendelstedt deflected afterwards:

Standup umps like Jim Joyce own up to their obvious mistakes, but most of ‘em don’t. Seeing Wendelstedt double down like this is even worse.

Pirates 4, Brewers 2: Some scariness before this as Brewers pitcher Jakob Junis, who is on the injured list already, was taken away in an ambulance after being hit in the neck by a line drive during batting practice while Junis was standing around in the outfield. According to the AP, “Junis remained down for about 20 minutes while being treated by medical teams. The team said he was conscious, alert and responsive and sent to a hospital for further evaluation.”

As for the game, the Pirates Jared Jones allowed one run over six while Oneil Cruz had a couple of doubles, a single and a couple of RBI. Andrew McCutchen homered. Here’s hoping Junis is OK.

Phillies 7, Reds 0: Ranger Suárez continues to be outstanding to start the year, allowing just two hits in seven shutout innings. That runs his scoreless streak up to 25 frames (close enough). The game was already decided by the ninth due to a couple of sac flies, a run-scoring groundout, and a JT Realmuto RBI double but Kody Clemens put it way out of reach with a three-run homer just before the curtain dropped. Philly has won seven in a row.

Tigers 7, Rays 1: I watched most of this one and was really impressed with Tarik Skubal who struck out nine over six shutout innings. Javier Báez had himself a good one, going 2-for-4, driving in a run and making a handful of outstanding plays on defense. Then there was this guy:

And by “this guy” I obviously mean the man on the left. Fans who paint themselves gold are a dime a dozen but I have never seen someone have their soul so thoroughly leave their body while they assume such a dead-eyed stare before.

Atlanta 3, Marlins 0: Bryce Elder was an All-Star last year but struggled late and had a horrible spring and found himself starting the season at Triple-A Gwinnett. He was called up yesterday, made his first start of the season, and shut out Miami on eight hits in six and two-thirds. I suppose one could say the Marlins aren’t much of an improvement over the International League competition but we never make hack jokes like that in this space, no siree. On offense, Travis d'Arnaud remained hot, hitting his fifth home run in his last four games.

Twins 7, White Sox 0: Chris Paddack joined the pitching party last night by striking out ten over seven, Max Kepler had two hits and three RBI in his first game back from the injured list, and Edouard Julien had three hits including a homer. Chicago has lost 10 of 11 and stands at 3-19. The 1988 Orioles had the worst start in the history of baseball, and the White Sox obviously did not match their 0-21 performances. But those O’s did start 3-24 and, frankly, I’m not sure it’s a huge stretch to believe Chicago will lose five more straight to match ‘em. Even if they don’t, they’re last in baseball in runs scored per game and last in the AL in runs allowed so it’s hard to get worse than this.

Let’s go to manager Pedro Grifol for his take on the latest loss:

Um. What?

Blue Jays 5, Royals 3: Bo Bichette tripled with the bases juiced in the third, Daulton Varsho hit a two-run homer in the sixth, and the Jays held on despite a couple of Royals homers. Yusei Kikuchi allowed two over six. Toronto has won three of four.

Cardinals 5, Diamondbacks 3: Arizona went up 3-0 by the fifth but then the Cards offense finally showed something, with Lars Nootbaar singling in two in the sixth, Paul Goldschmidt homering to tie it up in the seventh, and Nolan Gorman walking it off with a two-run blast in the bottom of the ninth. To say St. Louis needed that — both the win and the show of power — would be an understatement.

Padres 3, Rockies 1: Dylan Cease allowed one run on one hit and struck out eight over seven while the Padres picked up three RBI singles, including a go-ahead pinch-hit base knock from Tyler Wade in the eighth. Cease is now 3-1 with a 1.82 ERA on the season.

Orioles 4, Angels 2: James McCann and Colton Cowser homered, Adley Rutschman drove in two, and Craig Kimbrel struck out Mike Trout looking with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth to end this one. The Orioles are winners of 10 of their last 13 games and with this win they move into first place in the AL East.

Giants 5, Mets 2: Michael Conforto homered, Nick Ahmed hit a two-run single, Matt Chapman added a two-run double, and rookie Keaton Winn did just that, striking out six while allowing four hits and working into the seventh. In other news, Giants closer Camilo Doval now comes into the ninth inning to this display:

In keeping with that “I hate it when people do things for me” stuff I wrote about last week, I can tell ya, if I was a closer I’d feel really self conscious if they did this sort of thing when I came into a game. And if I blew the save, oh my God, I’d feel mortified. This, in addition to my age and my complete lack of physical talent, is why I am not a professional athlete.

The Daily Briefing

Pete Fairbanks lands on the IL 

Less than a week after offering a pretty great quote about sucking and not knowing why he sucked, Rays closer Pete Fairbanks was placed on the injured list with a “nerve related issue.” So that, it would seem, is why he has sucked.

Fairbanks, who has not sucked much in his career, has started 2024 by allowing seven earned runs in his first seven innings. Now he’ll be on the shelf for an as yet unspecified period of time.

Happy Belated Earth Day

Yesterday was Earth Day. Like most corporate citizens, Major League Baseball wanted you to know it cares:

If I had an intern I'd have them research all of the political and charitable donations of the 30 MLB owners to see how committed they are to environmental and climate causes but I don't so I guess we'll never know! Maybe instead I’ll just go cover the next owners meetings and try to ask them personally as they’re leaving the hotel to get into their 30-35 luxury SUVs to take them all to the same airport where they’ll board 30-35 private jets to take them home, many to the same city.

Anyway, happy belated Earth Day! And remember: you can’t virtue signal without virtue!

Happy one year since the A’s announced their move to Las Vegas 

Per this article in The Athletic I was reminded yesterday that it has been one year since the Oakland Athletics announced that they were moving to Las Vegas.

Congratulations to John Fisher and Dave Kaval for all they've accomplished toward realizing that goal in the 12 months since! Sure, objective observers might note that, if anything, they seem farther away from actually moving to Las Vegas today than they did a year ago, but let’s not give oxygen to the haters!

Ronny García: 1999-2024

Ronny García, who was once a pitching prospect for the Houston Astros, has died at the age of 24 in a motorcycle accident in the Dominican Republic. Sadly, his father died in the same accident.

García joined the Astros' organization as an international signee when he was 16. He pitched in their system in the Florida Complex League and Class A. He topped out at high-A Asheville in the Carolina League last season, where he pitched 29 games. He had signed with the York Revolution of the independent Atlantic League in late February.

Weirdly, As Dodgers Nation writer J.P. Hoornstra noted on Twitter yesterday, the official minor league baseball website noted García’s death on its transactions page, as though it were a release or a trade or something:

Which, um, OK.

Anyway: rest in peace Ronny García.

Other Stuff

To complete the circle from yesterday . . .

The Internet. It’s wild, man.

Holy shit, they fixed Voyager

The Voyager 1 space probe stopped sending readable science and engineering data back to Earth last November. This had long been expected and, if anything, happened many years after it was initially assumed that Voyager’s computers would cease functioning.

But now:

The linked article goes into detail about what was wrong with Voyager’s computer and how the team back here on terra firma fixed it. It’s all real technical and stuff, but the short version is that some aging, mostly-retired government workers reprogrammed a 47-year-old computer with the memory of a Commodore64 and which is currently sitting 15.1 billion miles away while all commands are subject to a 22-hour time lag.

Elon Musk, meanwhile, can’t make a pickup truck that can drive in the rain.

Viva socialism.

Terry Anderson: 1947-2024

Terry Anderson, the Associated Press journalist who was taken hostage in Lebanon in 1985 and held by pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad terrorists for nearly seven years, has died at the age of 76. Anderson was obviously most notable for being the longest-held of the scores of westerners abducted and held hostage in Lebanon during that country’s 15-year civil war. Not all survived captivity.

After Anderson was released he wrote a book and taught journalism at various universities, including Ohio University, where he also owned a bar/music venue for a few years. He also worked with humanitarian causes, particularly in Vietnam, where he launched an organization that built schools. Anderson had previously served as a Marine journalist during two tours during the war.

One of the more notable things about Anderson’s post-captivity life was when He ran for the Ohio state senate as a Democrat while teaching down at OU back in 2004. The woman he ran against, an outrageously homophobic teacher-turned businesswoman named Joy Padgett, had been appointed to the seat earlier in the term. During the campaign she ran ads saying that Anderson would be soft on terrorism.

This was the same campaign cycle during which Republicans claimed that John Kerry, a genuine war hero, was a dishonorable coward. Like George W. Bush, Padgett won. In case you’re under the impression that Republicans brazenly and hypocritically lying about their opponents in the most appalling of ways is somehow new.

Rest in peace Terry Anderson.

This week in the Supreme Court

Yesterday the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Grants Pass v. Johnson case, which will determine whether or not cities can punish people without shelter for sleeping outside. On Thursday it will hear arguments as to whether or not anyone can punish a former United States president for committing actual crimes.

While I am a complete and utter idiot and still hold out hope that good things will happen for some reason, given how the arguments went in the Grants Pass case yesterday, the current composition of the Court, and the general bullshit trajectory of what I feel to be an increasingly failing American Experiment, I find it far more likely that it will give cities a free hand to criminalize homelessness while giving Donald Trump a license to commit crimes than the opposite.

But I’ll be sure to circle back and see where we land on these matters.

Beware of online junk 

One of the best parts of being a 50 year old dude is that most of the latest, allegedly amazing products being pitched on social media or via e-commerce channels are not being pitched to me. I am outside of the coveted 18-49 demographic. I see a lot of posts about shipwrecks, building construction videos, and articles about old movies, but rarely do I see the newest gizmos. And even if those pitching such wares didn’t know my age, the fact that I use words like “gizmo” would probably have tipped them off that I am not worth their time anyway. Allison will fairly often ask me what I think about the latest hot product people are talking about and about 95% of the time I haven’t heard of it.

I am aware, however, that there is just a massive wave of trending junk products washing over us these days. From shoddily built plastic shit from drop-shippers, to the latest desk accessory which promises to fix your posture, your temperament, and your workflow, to monthly subscriptions to allegedly cutting edge food and nutrition solutions that are nothing more than frozen Lean Cuisine meals with better packaging and marketing, the internet is just rotten with trash.

The other day Annemarie Conte of the New York Times’ Wirecutter contributed a bit to the NYT newsletter about this wave of trash and how best to avoid it or, at the very least, to check it out and see if a given product is, in fact, trash. Beware of influencers just passing along marketing copy as they cash in their payola. Read the one-star reviews. See if anyone with any actual independent credentials has actually endorsed this stuff. Common sense things that, because of the way the internet rolls, are easy to forget sometimes due to the hype.

I suppose the column itself is something of an ad — an ad for Wirecutter — but I’ve found that Wirecutter is a pretty useful site when I’m looking to make a non-routine purchase. But even if you’re not a fan of Wirecutter, there are other independent review/recommendation resources. My 80 year old dad uses Consumer’s Reports. I’m sure there’s something like that out there for non-old people too. Anything besides simply hearing about something on Instagram and jumping at it.

Death or Postum

From Slate:

Given that, per the article, coffee cultivation is one of the top drivers of deforestation I suppose we coffee drinkers are screwed either way. But at least by continuing down the deforestation route I’ll be in an alert and agreeable mood when the world ends. Sure, that might not happen if, as the article advocates, we move to a bunch of bean, root, and grain-based coffee substitutes that taste almost but not entirely unlike coffee. But if that were to happen I’ll be cranky and dissatisfied much of the time. Don’t discount that.

Have a great day everyone.