Cup of Coffee: April 22, 2021

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

Today we have our usual set of recaps, a couple of signings, a vibe check on former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, and a revival of a friend’s feature, the Dead Player of the Day. Or something like that.

In Other Stuff we consider the risks of middle aged people not getting enough sleep which, um, hits a bit close to home, offer a contrary take to a contrary take on a movie that might win an Oscar or three, and offer a hearty way, way, way to go O-HI-O.

If you’re just visiting today, might I direct you to the gift shop?

Or, hey, just hang around today and enjoy. That’s what Free Thursday is for!

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Marlins 3, Orioles 0: Plenty of seats available at Loan Shark Park for the first pitch of this one:

That comes courtesy of subscriber Lou Schiff, who was at the game. He referred to it as “a typical pre-pandemic crowd at Marlins Park.” which gave me a chuckle. Still, we probably shouldn’t get into attendance shaming until most of us are vaccinated. Not that Florida cares. They’ve been off wildin’ since last year, really. I’m pretty sure there aren’t even any laws down there. Forget it, Jake, it’s Florida.

At least the assembled few got a nice game out of it, with Marlins starter Trevor Rogers tossing seven shutout frames and all three of the Feesh runs coming in the fifth via a two-run double from Jesús Aguilar and an RBI single from Adam Duvall.

Rockies 6, Astros 3: Houston has lost nine of ten. You know what that means. Yep: everyone’s gonna break out that famous quote in that one movie which that character invokes “Houston” during a catastrophe. I am talking about, of course, when General Zod says “so this is planet Houston?” in “Superman II.”

Austin Gomber allowed two hits over six innings. One was a two-run homer, but it all washed out in the end as Trevor Story hit a two-run double, Yonathan Daza hit his first major league home run and Dom Nuñez doubled, singled and drove in two.

Seriously, dudes, go watch “Superman II” if you haven’t before. It’s among the best comic book movies ever. Better than everything DC has put out in the past decade and better than a lot of MCU movies. It’s just fantastic. I mean:

Cubs 16, Mets 4: Chicago’s offense has sucked all year. It did not suck last night. Javier Báez hit a grand slam, David Bote drove in four, Matt Duffy drove in three, and Willson Contreras had two hits and scored twice. Not that it was all Chicago doing the damage. The Mets committed three errors in Chicago’s seven-run fourth, helping pave the way for this butt-kicking.

Francisco Lindor hit a homer for the Mets, and then he said this after the game:

Everyone understands that sentiment, but I feel like that’s the kind of thing that the New York press — which, as I said a couple of weeks ago treats a 162-game season like 162 one-game seasons — is gonna file away and throw back at him and the team if the season turns disappointing. Like, every five games after 50 losses, someone is gonna dig that back up in an effort to stir shit.

Pirates 3, Tigers 2; Tigers 5, Pirates 2: Ah, the gradual decline into disorder that is a split doubleheader. Tyler Anderson pitched five solid innings in the first one, backed by three runs in the fourth. Spencer Turnbull pitched five solid innings in the second one, backed by three runs in the fifth and a couple of others. Thanks to the split, when they all retired to their homes and hotel rooms, nothing had been truly accomplished. At least nothing that would not have been had they just stayed home and read books.

Phillies 6, Giants 5: Philly had a 4-1 lead after six but old friend Darin Ruf tied it back up with a three-run jack in the seventh and then Alex Dickerson gave the Giants a 5-4 lead with an RBI single. Bryce Harper hit a tying solo homer in the bottom of the seventh, though, and then scored the winning run on walkoff single from Andrew Knapp. One-time number one draft pick Mickey Moniak hit a three-run homer for the Phillies earlier in the game.

Nationals 1, Cardinals 0: Max Scherzer out-dueled Carlos Martinez, six shutout innings to six innings and one run. An Alex Avila RBI double in the second was the game’s only run.

Athletics 13, Twins 12: The proceedings were pitching-optional before extras, with Nelson Cruz hitting two home runs and driving in four and Matt Olson homering twice and driving in three among the many offensive exploits. It was tied at 10 at the end of regulation. Byron Buxton hit a two-run homer in the 10th to give Minnesota the lead but then the A’s scored three in the bottom half, all with two outs and all without the benefit of a hit.

A walk put two men on (remember, training wheels rules), another walk loaded the bases, one run scored when the second basemen allowed a ball to clank off his glove, and then two runs scored when the third baseman airmailed a throw to first. Either play, if handled cleanly, would’ve ended the game with a Twins win, but instead it was at walkoff win for the A’s. Or stumble-off loss for the Twins. Pick your poison. Whichever you choose, it’s eleven straight victories for Oakland.

Rangers 7, Angels 4: The Halos had a 3-1 lead after four and held on to it until the eighth, but that’s when Adolis García hit a go-ahead, three-run homer. Nate Lowe homered as well. Then, in the ninth, Joey Gallo drew a bases-loaded walk and Isiah Kiner-Falefa scored on a balk, both off of Junior Guerra. The hero of the game, though, was obviously García, who has only been up in the majors for a brief spell, but has five extra-base hits in his last eight games, including the first three homers of his major league career.

Brewers 4, Padres 2: San Diego clung to a 2-1 lead heading into the sixth but then Omar Narváez and Jace Peterson each homered to put Milwaukee up 4-2 and that would end up being that. It was the second game in a row with a homer by Peterson against his old team, as the Brewers sweep the Padres in the three-game set.

The worst part for San Diego may not have been the loss, however. Dinelson Lamet made his first start of the season after dealing with elbow issues late last season, causing him to miss the postseason and causing him to be brought along super slowly this spring. He looked good for two innings but then had to leave the game due to right forearm tightness. You can look great in bullpen sessions, but nothing matches in-game intensity, I suppose. Here’s hoping this doesn’t lead to bad news after he has an MRI later today.

Atlanta 4, Yankees 1: Atlanta had only four hits in the game but when you’re facing the punchless Yankees these days that can be enough. Atlanta starter Ian Anderson limited New York to four hits himself, but walked four in 6.2 innings. Still, New York couldn’t push one across. The, uh, Bombers, are hitting .163 and are averaging 2.57 runs in their past seven games. Giancarlo Stanton is 3-for-his-last-34. Gleyber Torres is just 4-for-his-last-32 Aaron Hicks is in a 1-for-17 slump. Clint Frazier got the Yankees only RBI here, breaking a 1-for-27 slide with a bloop RBI single. It was his first RBI of the season. Gio Urshela has been hitting but he left the game with lower back tightness. What a first three weeks of the season for the Yankees.

Diamondbacks 5, Reds 4; Diamondbacks 8, Reds 5: The first game was the continuation of the game that was suspended on Tuesday night with one out in the eighth due to rain and snow and the lousy Ohio S’march weather. It was 5-4 when it was suspended and ended at 5-4, so there’s not much to say.

In Wednesday’s scheduled game the Reds took a 3-0 lead into the ninth thanks to a fantastic performance by Tyler Mahle, who struck out nine while pitching into the seventh, but Josh VanMeter hit a three-run homer off of a wild Amir Garrett to tie things up. The Reds sent the would-we winning run home in the bottom of the ninth but Kole Calhoun nailed him with a great throw and forced extras. The Snakes put up a five-spot in the tenth. You do that and you’re gonna win.

Royals 9, Rays 8: The Royals have won 54 straight when leading after seven innings. That kind of stat usually means that you have a fantastic bullpen and you just don’t let games get out of hand once you have a lead. Sometimes, however, those streaks stay alive because you come out on the good end of some crazy shit that happens late in a game. This was one of those games for Kansas City.

Tampa Bay had a 4-0 lead before the Royals even came to bat and led 6-3 as late as the seventh. Things got kinda wild from there with Hanser Alberto tripling in two and Carlos Santana hitting a two-run homer to give Kansas City the lead. The Rays plated two more in the eighth to regain the lead, though, and then the Royals rallied in the bottom of the ninth, scoring one via a Nicky Lopez safety squeeze — set up by pinch runner Jarod Dyson stealing second and then advancing to third on a bunt — and then Sal Pérez walking it off with an RBI single. It was Pérez’s third walkoff hit since Saturday.

Just how they had it drawn up.

Blue Jays 6, Red Sox 3: Vlad Guerrero, Bo Bichette, Randal Grichuk and Marcus Semien each had two hits for Toronto as they jumped on Garrett Richards early to get a 4-0 lead after two. It was a bullpen game for the Jays, whose bullpen now leads the majors with a 2.14 ERA.

White Sox vs. Cleveland — POSTPONED:

🎵Where is Mona, she's long gone?Where is Mary, she's taken her along?But they haven't put their mittens onAnd there's fifteen feet of pure white snow?

Where is Michael, where is Mark?Where is Mathew, now it's getting dark?Oh, where is John, they are all out back?Under fifteen feet of pure white snow

Would you please put down that telephoneWe're under fifteen feet of pure white snow🎵

The Daily Briefing

The Astros, Martín Maldonado agree to a contract extension

The Houston Astros and catcher Martín Maldonado have agreed to a one-year $5 million deal for 2022 that includes a $5 million vesting option for 2023 or, alternatively, a $500,000 buyout. That $5 million becomes guaranteed if Maldonado plays in 90 or more games this season. He is currently making $3.5 million in 2021, which is the second season of a two-year, $7 million contract.

Maldonado is off to a dreadful start this year but he posted a 98 OPS+ last season and is considered to be about the best pitch-framer in baseball, and that’s certainly someone you want to keep around. At least until the robot umps gain sentience and render the art of pitch-framing obsolete.

Dee Strange-Gordon signs with the Brewers

Free agent infielder Dee Strange-Gordon has signed a minor league contract with the Milwaukee Brewers and has been assigned to their alternate training site. Strange-Gordon had gone to spring training with the Reds but was released on March 26. He’ll be infield depth for a Brewers club who have had a handful of infielder injuries.

What’s Frank McCourt up to?

Back in March we talked about former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and his checkered stewardship of the French football club Olympique de Marseille. According to a story in The Athletic at the time, Marseille has lost roughly 500 million euros since McCourt purchased it in 2016. At the end of January, angry club supporters stormed its training facility to confront players and staff over the team’s poor play, “sparking a fiery riot that saw defender Alvaro Gonzalez get hit by a flying object.” He has likewise failed to win over the fan base, and that’s an understatement. He rarely if ever shows up at matches or, for that matter, is never in Marseille itself. As a result of the teams’ sinking fortunes and McCourt’s indifference, there have been loud calls for him to sell the team. At the time that story came out rumors began swirling that McCourt was, in fact, seeking to sell the club or was at the very least seeking deep pockets to come on as co-owners with him to help offset his mismanagement.

Yesterday I got a tip that, late last week, McCourt filed documents to change Olympique de Marseille from a New York to a Delaware LLC. Given that, for purposes of buying the team, he had it registered as a Delaware LLC, after which he changed it to a New York one, the French folks who reached out to me believe that this move back to Delaware is a precursor to an outright sale or the sale of a significant equity stake. I don’t know corporate law well enough to know if there’s some advantage to being in Delaware for such a move — there are lots of basic advantages to being incorporated in Delaware, of course — but it’s possible.

I’m guessing not a ton of people who read this newsletter care about what happens to a French football club, but (a) it’s always fun to check in with the single worst baseball owner of my lifetime; (b) it’s always good to see that time is, in fact, a flat circle when it comes to Frank McCourt’s incompetence; and (c) I wanted to keep my streak of writing something about soccer alive.

Three days in a row, baby! I truly am the Internet’s foremost expert on The Beautiful Game!

Dead Player of the Day

My podcast mate Steve Goldman has dusted off a long-running feature of his that has been on hiatus for a spell: The Infinite Inning PlayerStories, which he also refers to as “Dead Player of the Day.” Though not all of ‘em are dead.

The idea: Steve types “random” into Baseball-Reference.com and writes something — anything — about whoever pops up. He does five a week over at his Patreon, one of which is free for all, much like our Free Thursday here. This week’s freebie is “Glass Arm Eddie” Brown, who inspired Steve to talk about nicknames, not all of which are super nice, and how a guy who did nothing but hit singles and limply toss balls into the cutoff man made a career for himself. An entry from last year is Ángel Berroa, who once was what passed for the Royals’ top prospect and served as an object lesson about the value of a ballplayer lying about his age and cost of being found out for doing it.

There are nearly 130 PlayerStories in the archive already and new ones coming out all the time. Steve is a wonderful writer, and this idea — using random players as prompts — is a fantastic idea via which one gets to both learn stuff about baseball and find ways to connect baseball to the world at large.

Which, if you’re here, is something you’re obviously keen on already.

Other Stuff

Sleeping Too Little in Middle Age May Increase Dementia Risk

Talk about news someone like me can use.

The New York Times reported yesterday on a study that found that those who sleep six hours or less a night in their 50s and 60s are more likely to develop dementia in their late 70s. Like, 30% more likely. Like all major studies, this one comes with a lot of caveats and uncertainty, but unlike a lot of (really bad) reporting on scientific and medical research, this report talks about the weaknesses and uncertainties in pretty good and clear detail.

The upshot, to the extent they can figure, is that it has something to do with the ability of sleep — and healthy lifestyles that are associated with good sleep — to fight the sorts of plaques found in cerebrospinal fluids which eventually deposit themselves on your brain, leading to Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

I’m not yet in my 50s, but my sleep patterns make me wonder about how this might affect me.

I do not use an alarm. Like, ever. I go to sleep when I’m tired and I just wake up on my own. I’m also one of those people who, if I concentrate for a few minutes just before going to sleep, I can wake up at a certain time. Like, I just say to myself “5:15, 5:15, 5:15” and I almost always wake up within five minutes of that time. It’s probably the only super power I possess. If I wanted to wake up at 5:30 this morning. And I just . . . did.

Against that backdrop I, quite frequently, sleep about six hours. Sometimes less. As I read the Times story on Wednesday, I was working on almost exactly six hours. I turned the light off at 11:07 Tuesday night and woke up at 5:05 without an alarm Wednesday morning. That’s pretty typical. Sometimes it’s 10:30 to 4:45. Sometimes it’s 11:30 to 5. On the weekends I get a little more because, somewhere in my mind I tell myself that I don’t need to be up to recap games or whatever, but even then seven hours is about the most I get. When I wake up after seven hours, I feel like how many people describe nine or ten hours of sleep. I feel like I slept the whole day away.

I’m just wired like that. I don’t take naps and I don’t get tired during the day unless I’ve had considerably less than six hours for multiple nights in a row. Like if I go three nights with five hours, I may very well crash for more than seven as a makeup, but I never really have to make up sleep if I’m banging about six.

I guess that’s all to say that, if I’m still writing this newsletter 30 years from now, and it starts to become incoherent, welp, maybe we know why?

Who is: LeVar Burton?

The other day when I was talking about Joe Buck guest hosting “Jeopardy!” I mentioned the push by fans to have LeVar Burton do a run as a guest host. Welp, I’ll be damned:

That’s a feature, not a bug, Ted

When you’re so close to an epiphany you can almost taste it . . .

A lot of people say that Ted Cruz is dumb, but I actually think there’s a method to his tweets along these lines. He knows that lefties like me are going to say things like “actually, Ted, we WANT to destroy the energy industry” and that provides him with the ability to go to his conservative supporters and donors and say “see, I told you the liberal hordes want to ruin America! I’m here to protect you!”

It’s another question altogether whether that kind of bad faith bullshit really matters in any way. I tend to think it doesn’t — elections and politics are far more influenced by larger forces, demographic shifts, and the macro fundamentals of a given election cycle — but that’s generally what I think dickheads like Cruz are up to in their social media and cable news games. The creation and highlighting of enemies as a means of keeping their constituents and donors scared.

The Case Against “Nomadland”

I saw “Nomadland” a couple of months ago and said some kind words about it here. I think it’s an excellent movie with an Oscar-worthy performance by Frances McDormand. Is it the Greatest Movie of All Time? Nah, but it’s a pretty strong flick in my view.

Jack Hamilton Slate has a decidedly opposed view and, on Tuesday, wrote a column entitled “The Case Against ‘Nomadland.’” I think the column stinks as much as the bucket Frances McDormand’s character takes a dump into in the middle of the movie.

My broad brush issue with Hamilton’s review is inspired by his intro, in which he says “I don’t think “Nomadland” has much of anything to say, but it’s a film that wants to have something to say, and wants its viewers to think it has something to say.” I’d counter that the movie is more interested in showing something than saying something — at least the direct sort of somethings that Hamilton later says he wished was in the movie — and that simply showing something is a perfectly legitimate purpose for a movie’s existence.

Hamilton wants “Nomadland” to be a sharper critique of Amazon, the gig economy, the lack of options and the lack of a safety net for older Americans. He specifically says he would’ve preferred “a coherent critique of political conditions” as opposed to McDormand’s character’s acceptance of those conditions. I’m not sure how one could walk away from “Nomadland” not seeing a critique of all of that, and I’m not sure what he thinks real people in the McDormand character’s position are really like and how they live their lives.

I mean, yeah, I guess McDormand could’ve stood up on a table at the Amazon fulfillment place where her character was working with a sign that said “UNION” like Sally Field in “Norma Rae” but is that really necessary? Is anyone watching this movie looking at the circumstances in which McDormand’s character and the others are living and thinking “gee, that looks like a swell life of rugged, self-sufficient mavericks, living the dream of American freedom”? Maybe a subtler alternative to that would be punishing McDormand’s character more — killing or maiming her in the end as opposed to letting her just drive on into the sunset — but again, this movie does not portray someone with an easy existence here. That comes across really, really obviously.

If your takeaway from “Nomadland” is, to use Hamilton’s words, that it is comprised of “fantasies of capitalist ideology” I really don’t feel like you were watching very closely or thinking very hard about the lives of the characters. And, for that matter, I don’t feel like you’ve met many people who have lived hard and desperate lives, most of whom do not spend a ton of time actively querying the political conditions which dictate their existences and search for just the right critique. A great many poor and working people, actually, simply attempt to get through their day like McDormand’s character does here, often unquestioningly. I’m sorry if that bugs Hamilton, but most people do not live their lives interrogating their existence through a political lens like he seems to want the characters in “Nomadland” to do.

Hamilton has two other critiques I find to be way worse, to the point of being petty or even cheap.

The cheap shot is a swipe he takes at McDormand’s acting, which he diminishes because it is played against non-actors in most of the supporting roles, which he says results in “a mix of vérité and performance that heightens the impact of McDormand’s “transformation.” Basically, he’s saying the movie’s casting is a gimmick that makes it easier for McDormand to shine since she’s opposite amateurs. In this he fundamentally misunderstands what acting fucking is. Ever dance with someone who doesn’t know how? Ever play tennis against someone who’s not held a racket for 20 years? It really sucks and it doesn’t make you look good by comparison. It sure as shit ain’t easy.

The other thing Hamilton slams is the movie’s being set in 2011, which he seems to think conveniently allows “Nomadland” to avoid Trump-era politics and the fact that a great many of the characters in the movie are the sorts who, a few years later, would likely gravitate to Trump. Hamilton says, “[t]hat’s obviously a much more complicated and uglier story, that “[t]elling that story well would make for a better movie, and a far more difficult one.” He goes on to say that, as “Nomadland” is, the audience can stop thinking about its characters as soon as the movie is over but if they had made a Trump-era “Nomadland” it would be more challenging and insightful.

Bullshit.

For one thing, the movie is set in 2011 because the thing that drove McDormand’s character to this life was the financial crisis and recession which hit in 2008-2009 and caused a lot of people to lose their homes and pursue itinerant lives. Kinda important to “Nomadland” because it’s called, you know, “NOMADLAND.”

Beyond that, the Trump era did a lot of things but one thing it did is that it allowed the sorts of people who watch Oscar bait and write and read reviews in Slate to more easily dismiss the poor and desperate people who gravitated to Trump for whatever reason. To write off Red State America even more than we already did as Trump polarized the national mood to unprecedented degrees.

If “Nomadland” has a purpose, it’s to cultivate an awareness of and empathy for a swath of overlooked people living at the edges of society, barely hanging on. If you have one of the characters at the swap meet selling MAGA caps instead of pot holders, a lot of people’s empathy switches would’ve immediately turned off and viewers would not have stopped to think about their humanity or their plight. A plight that persists and is in need of acknowledgment and understanding regardless of their politics. A great many viewers would say, “well, they deserve that shit having voted for Trump.”

To the extent I’ve talked to people who watched “Nomadland” or read commentary about people who’ve watched it, the biggest takeaway from the film by most viewers is a shock and fascination about the sort of human existence the movie portrays. It’s hard to do more than one hard thing in a movie, and enlightening viewers about a subculture with which they are completely unfamiliar is a pretty hard thing. Hamilton, it seems, would’ve preferred a movie that did that AND said “but ask yourself: would you give a shit about these people if you knew a bunch of them were pretty racist?” In addition to being far too much to expect a movie to do, the inherent assumption that such a thing would make it a more “complicated” and implicitly better story is ridiculous. Chloé Zhao may have wanted to do a lot of things with this movie, but making people ask themselves if we should condition our compassion for a person on their politics is decidedly not one of them.

Quality of a movie is in the eye of the beholder, so if Hamilton simply didn’t like “Nomadland” I’d not think much about it. But it strikes me that his issue is less about him not liking it and more about him wishing they made an entirely different movie than the one that was made, and that’s a review tack that I’ve always found troubling.

Why aren’t young, diverse professionals moving to Ohio?

Like a lot of Midwestern states, young people have been increasingly leaving Ohio for large cities like Chicago and Atlanta, rapidly growing cities like Charlotte and Austin, and, of course, the traditional urban power centers on the coasts. Recently, Ohio's governor has attempted to address that sort of brain drain and the state’s failure to attract and retain young, diverse professionals.

To that end Ohio has been running "move to Ohio!" ads in places like California, attempting to sell our low cost of living, lack of traffic, and genuinely underrated cultural amenities as a lure. When the governor announced the ad campaign back in February he said “we want to position Ohio as the place to be . . . Ohio is a welcoming place. I don't care who you are, we want you to come to Ohio. It's a progressive state.”

But then things like this happen: the governor proposes changing the wording in Ohio's antiquated adoption law to make it clear that any "legally married couple," which includes LGBTQ couples, can legally adopt children. Which, yeah, you sort of HAVE to do that given what the law is now. Except Ohio’s GOP lawmakers — a group controlled by hard right Trumpist types who are basically immune to challenge given how aggressively gerrymandered the state is — have taken out the change and reverted it to the old "husband and wife."

The reversion to the old language would, ultimately, not stand, of course, because even if enacted in that way it would be successfully challenged as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. In light of that, I suspect that the language will be once again removed from the law and that the governor's attempt to modernize it will go through.

But that doesn't really matter, does it? Because even if that happens, our state's legislature has already successfully signaled to LGBTQ people that it hates them and that, if they had their way, they'd never be able to adopt children because it considers them to be unfit deviants or something. And, in the chance that our governor caves -- and since he’s a Republican he might -- or is overridden -- which, despite the fact that he is a Republican, he has been recently -- LGBTQ people would still have to sue to overturn the illegal provision, which is a giant expensive hassle no one wants to have to deal with if it can be avoided.

When you see stuff like this — and there is something new like this from Ohio’s legislature almost every week — there’s little uncertainty about why our young people are leaving and why progressive, diverse, professionals aren’t moving to Ohio. And little uncertainty that a TV ad touting our low corporate tax rate and the fact that you can, actually, get a fairly decent IPA even in our smaller towns now isn’t gonna change any of that.

Ohio has never been among the most progressive states in the Union, but it wasn’t all that long ago that it at least aspired to decency and tolerance or, at the very least, didn’t go so conspicuously out of its way to be actively hostile to people in the way it is at the moment. This newer dynamic has been ascendant, however, since my children were born. It is thus absolutely no coincidence that each of them -- bright kids with bright futures -- have made it crystal clear that they will not go to college in Ohio and do not plan to live here after high school. And it is why my wife and I, at least nominally productive and respectable folks, the sort of which states like to have around, are increasingly likely to leave the state the moment we can.

The youngest graduates high school a little over two years from now, in case you want to guess when that moment may be.

Have a great day, everyone. And if you’re a visitor who likes what you read today, consider a subscription: