Cup of Coffee: July 29, 2021

Good morning and welcome to Free Thursday!

We’re inching ever-closer to the trade deadline and we had a couple of more than notable deals yesterday. One came with an, um, quite original scouting report. We also talk about Cleveland’s name some more and a new COVID outbreak in Washington. In Other Stuff I talk about Bob Odenkirk, Miss Scarlet, Simon Biles and our nation’s empathy deficit disorder, the media getting things wrong, and a singer-songwriter I once loved very much but just can’t anymore because, man, that dude is wrong.

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Tigers 17, Twins 14: Subscriber Nato Coles attended this game and kept score. He sent me a photo of his scorebook. It looks like a crime scene:

Detroit scored eight times in the top of the fourth to take a 10-0 lead. Minnesota got six runs in the bottom half and then, down 13-6, Minnesota scored six more in the eighth. A three-run double by Eric Hasse led a four-run top of the ninth gave the Tigers a cushion and the Twins scored only two in the bottom half, rendering the comeback insufficient. A Lions-Vikings game, really. Except I suppose it’d be more likely that the Lions would lose that contest.

Fun fact: the Tigers didn’t hit any homers while the Twins hit seven. Nothing matters.

Cleveland 7, Cardinals 2: Franmil Reyes hit two homers, one of which out of the goddamn stadium and almost hit a dude riding a bike on 6th street. Not too bad. César Hernández and José Ramírez also homered. Nolan Arenado left the game after getting hit in the elbow. It’s just bruised and he’s day-to-day but it was a crappy day all around for St. Louis.

Blue Jays 4, Red Sox 1; Red Sox 4, Blue Jays 1: A split doubleheader with the same score in each game is satisfying yet pointless. Of course some of the best things anyone can do in life are satisfying yet pointless, so I’m not complaining. Robbie Ray allowed one over six in the first game Randall Grichuk homered and drove in three and George Springer went deep. In Game 2 Rookie starter Tanner Houck struck out seven over four innings and rookie outfielder Jarren Duran hit an RBI triple and scored on the play when his counterpart, George Springer, bobbled the ball.

Astros 11, Mariners 4: Yuli Gurriel singled, doubled, homered and drove in three runs, Carlos Correa had three hits as well, and Kyle Tucker homered for the Astros. Jake Odorizzi didn't give up a hit until the fourth inning and held Seattle scoreless through five before things fell apart to some degree, but he didn’t need to be Mike Scott out there or anything. Abraham Toro hit a two-run homer, giving him homers in three straight games, one with Houston, one with Seattle. The guy he’s likely gonna replace at third base next year, Kyle Seager, also went deep.

Athletics 10, Padres 4: Matt Chapman hit a three-run homer and Elvis Andrus had three hits and two RBI for the A's who were leading 10-0 before the Padres even got on the board. Sean Manaea was perfect into the sixth inning. Blake Snell: not so much, as he was hit up for seven runs in four frames and saw his ERA on the year climb up to 5.44.

Yankees 3, Rays 1: Aaron Judge was a late scratch because had a doctor’s appointment that got him to the park late but he came in later as a pinch hitter, stayed in the game, and then hit a tiebreaking single in the Yankees’ two-run 10th inning. Judge’s doctor’s appointment was related to his recent bout with COVID. Asked about that after the game he said, “I'm feeling great. The most important thing is your health and making sure you're 100%.” Judge also said this:

So you can pretty much discount what Judge has to say about health and being at 100% being important. Just absolute clownery from a great player but who, like so many other big leaguers, is being an irresponsible dumbass.

Orioles 8, Marlins 7: Miami had a 5-0 lead after two but the O’s mounted a comeback with home runs from Trey Mancini and Pedro Severino helping tie it up by the third. From there it was two runs for Miami and then two runs for Baltimore which made it a tie game heading into the ninth. In the bottom half Marlins reliever Steven Okert walked a batter, he reached third on a sacrifice that went screwy, and then he issued two intentional walks to load the bases since only the guy on third mattered. The guys on base: Mullins, Mountcastle, and Mancini. The guy at the plate: McKenna. McKenna walked, Mancini, Mountcastle and Mullins, advanced and the game ended in alliterative fashion.

Brewers 7, Pirates 3: Adrian Houser pitched five scoreless innings and Lorenzo Cain and Luis Urias each hit two-run doubles. Pirates rookie Rodolfo Castro homered twice after the game was out of reach. In so doing he became the first player in major league history to have his first five hits all be home runs. Trevor Story had the record with four when he made his big splash debut back in 2016.  

Mets 2, Atlanta 1: Six Mets pitchers, led by Tylor Megill — think his name gets misspelled a lot? — scattered nine hits and held Atlanta to one run. It was tied at one in the seventh when Brandon Drury hit a pinch-hit homer. Michael Conforto made a sweet throw to nail the would-be tying run at the plate in the ninth to preserve the win.  

Diamondbacks 3, Rangers 2: Each of these teams dealt their best hitter before the game with Eduardo Escobar getting shipped off to Milwaukee and Joey Gallo getting sent to New York — more below in the Daily Briefing, of course — so of course it was a pitcher’s duel. Madison Bumgarner won that duel by tossing four-hit ball over seven innings and Daulton Varsho hitting a tie-breaking homer in the eighth while MadBum was still the pitcher of record. David Peralta also homered for the Snakes.

Reds 8, Cubs 2: Joey Votto homered two more times, giving him dingers in five straight games. Seven homers in those five games, in fact, as he had two on Tuesday too. Tyler Mahle tossed six scoreless innings for the Reds. The Cubs have dropped seven of 11. Is that a thing? Eh, probably not.

Royals 3, White Sox 2: A Sal Pérez homer in the bottom of the ninth tied it and forced extras and then Michael A. Taylor singled in a run in the 10th to give the Royals the walkoff win. It wasn’t the Manfred Man, though. It was Hunter Dozier, who had hustled to second after grounding to short in a play that got the Manfred Man thrown out at home. But I suppose that run doesn’t score if not for the Manfred Man, so it was still dumb Manfred Ball that decided it.

Angels 8, Rockies 7: Shohei Ohtani hit a three-run homer — his third in his last four games and his league-leading 37th overall — in a five-run fourth as the Angels overcame an early hole. Max Stassi homered in the fifth to give L.A. a four-run lead, but the game was tied back up late after the Rockies scored three in the seventh and another in the eighth. Then Phil Gosselin hit a go-ahead RBI single in the bottom of the eighth to break the tie and seal the win.

Dodgers 8, Giants 0: When you’re getting your butt handed to you by your rival and the team you’re chasing, you need a stopper to step the hell up. Last night Walker Buehler was that stopped, giving the Dodgers seven shutout innings while striking out eight and even (all together now) helping his own cause with an RBI on a fielder’s choice. L.A.’s hitters came alive too, with Cody Bellinger homering and A.J. Pollock and Max Muncy notching three hits apiece.

Nationals vs. Phillies — POSTPONED:

🎶Get up, come on get down with the sicknessGet up, come on get down with the sicknessGet up, come on get down with the sicknessOpen up your hate, and let it flow into meGet up, come on get down with the sicknessYou mother get up come on get down with the sicknessYou fucker get up come on get down with the sicknessMadness is the gift, that has been given to me🎶

The Daily Briefing

Yankees acquire Joey Gallo from the Rangers

The Yankees have added a big bat in the form of Joey Gallo of the Texas Rangers. In exchange Texas will receive a large package of prospects: righty Glenn Otto, second baseman Ezequiel Duran, shortstop Josh Smith and second baseman/outfielder Trevor Hauver. As is always the case I can’t speak too intelligently about the quality of those prospects, but it’s certainly a lot of ‘em.

Gallo, obviously, is a power hitter who hits lots of homers. And who doesn’t like big dongs?

Moving on . . .

Brewers acquire Eduardo Escobar from the Diamondbacks

The Milwaukee Brewers acquired Eduardo Escobar from the Arizona Diamondbacks in exchange for prospects Cooper Hummel and Alberto Ciprian.

Escobar, 32, is hitting .246/.300/.478 with home runs for the last-place Diamondbacks. His versatility is key, though, as he can play any infield position. He’ll likely play at both third and first base given that Willy Adames is ensconced at short and Kolten Wong is the regular second baseman.

Hummel, 26, was an 18th-round pick back in 2016 and is currently at Triple-A where he’s hit well. Ciprian, 18, was signed as an undrafted free agent with Milwaukee in 2019 and is playing in the Dominican Summer League.

Nationals vs. Phillies postponed after large COVID outbreak

The Nationals and Phillies game last night was postponed after four Washington Nationals players and eight staffers tested positive for COVID-19. The postponement came one day after Nationals shortstop Trea Turner left the in the first inning against the Phillies following a positive test.

Dave Martinez said that all but one of those who tested positive have been vaccinated. Those who tested positive have either no symptoms or minor symptoms. ESPN's Jeff Passan reported that a number of the breakthrough cases came from those given the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, so make of that what you will. Feel like we’ll all be getting boosters soon regardless.

The matchup is currently scheduled to be made up as part of a straight doubleheader starting this afternoon, but there’s obviously no assurances that it will go down.

Marlins trade Starling Marte to the Athletics

The Miami Marlins traded outfielder Starling Marte to the Oakland A’s for pitcher Jesús Luzardo yesterday. It’s a straight-up deal with Miami eating all of what’s left on Marte’s contract for the rest of the year. About $4.7 million.

This is a go-for-it move for the A’s, who acquire a guy in Marte who is hitting .306/.407/.453 with seven home runs and 22 stolen bases over 63 games this season for Miami. To get him they had to give up a player in Luzardo who, despite having a pretty terrible 2021 season, has a ton of talent, a ton of upside, and who could be a big part of what is shaping up to be an outstanding Marlins rotation for several years if he can find the form that made him a dominant reliever in his rookie 2019 season and which put him atop all the prospect lists a few years ago.

Reds acquire Mychal Givens

The Cincinnati Reds have acquired righty Mychal Givens from the Colorado Rockies in exchange for minor league pitchers Noah Davis and Case Williams. Givens, 31, has a 2.73 ERA in 29.2 innings this season with 34 strikeouts and 14 walks. This is the second trade for bullpen help in as many days for the Reds. On Tuesday, they acquired Luis Cessa and Justin Wilson from the New York Yankees.

Astros add another reliever

A day after getting Kendall Graveman from Seattle, the Astros have acquired reliever Yimi García from the Marlins. In exchange the Astros are sending outfielder Bryan De La Cruz to Miami. García is an impending free agent who has 15 saves this season for Miami with an a 3.47 ERA and a K/BB ratio of 35/13 in 36.1 innings.

The Cleveland Guardians?

Last week the Cleveland club announced that it will rebrand as the Cleveland Guardians following the 2021 season. The rebrand, however, is either gonna get really expensive or really complicated if a men’s roller derby team, also named the Cleveland Guardians, has anything to say about it.

The roller derby team has used the name for a good decade and uses the same Guardian statue figures that the baseball team teased as their new logo/mascot. They are also the owners of the clevelandguardians.com domain as well as the social media handle @ClevelandGuardians on Instagram and Facebook. There’s also a pending trademark claim on “Cleveland Guardians” going back to last year which predates the team’s application from last week.

You have to figure that the roller derby team can be bought off. And it’s quite possible that the trademark claim was a bad faith claim by a would-be squatter trying to get bought off itself. If that’s the case there’s at least a decent chance that the trademark dispute goes the baseball team’s way.

Still: not exactly a smooth rollout.

The Cleveland Molly McGuires

Sticking with Cleveland, Baseball Prospectus’ Russ Carleton, who is from Cleveland and is a long-time Cleveland baseball fan, has a great column up about the history of the franchise’s soon-to-be-gone nickname, the Cleveland Indians.

In it he notes, like a lot of people familiar with Cleveland have noted, that while the new name — the “Guardians” — is being touted as having a strong connection to a local landmark, most people don’t give much of a crap about that landmark and it’s being pumped up a bit bigger than it probably should be in that regard. Which, hey, it happens. Eventually the name’s association with the baseball team will be all that matters. At least if they can, you know, legally acquire the rights to use the name.

More interestingly is his walk back through the history of how the team got its old name. A lot of that territory had been covered before — Joe Posnanski did a pretty exhaustive article on it for us at NBC several years back — but Carleton provides a much-needed update on it, both from an information and reflection standpoint. Plus it’s simply fun, as it describes how, for a brief time, the club was known as the “The Cleveland Molly McGuires.” That’d be a hell of a moniker to go by now.

Other Stuff

Bob Odenkirk is in stable condition

I, along with everyone else, sort of freaked out on Tuesday when reports came out that Bob Odenkirk collapsed on the set of “Better Call Saul.” It got even more scary when we went nearly 24 hours without an update. We got one one Wednesday evening, however, when Odenkirk’s son tweeted “he’s going to be OK” and reports came out that Odenkirk was in stable condition following a “heart-related incident.”

I don’t need to go on too long about what’s so great about Bob Odenkirk. His work speaks for itself. He’s one of the few figures of even moderate profile about whom it seems no one has ever had a bad word to say.

“Better Call Saul” is my favorite show of the past 10 or 15 years for a number of reasons. It’s obviously well-constructed and well-acted and the cast — Odenkirk, Rhea Seahorn, Michael Mando, and Jonathan Banks — are top notch. But there’s something to it that appeals to me in a far deeper way.

The journey of Jimmy McGill is the journey of a man who never fit in but who, at least for a time, desperately wanted to. He wanted in the club and wanted the approval of others. His brother. His profession. He didn’t get it, though, and everything he does after that he does in response to it. Obviously what he does is not admirable or noble, but it is, on some level, understandable and organic given what we know about Jimmy McGill.

I’m not someone who would ever act in the way Jimmy does, but I do understand what it’s like to not feel a part of a world you feel, at least for a while, like you should be a part of. I felt that when I was young. I felt it in the legal profession. I felt it in the baseball writing business. I’m certainly no crazy non-conformist or iconoclast, but, I’ve just never been able to find a place where I fit within a system, which is part of why I’m out on my own like I am now. There are pros and cons to that — more pros than cons, in practice — but because of that, I’m probably more deeply invested in “Better Call Saul” than I have been in any show for some time. It speaks some very real truths, even as it has increasingly amped up the tension and drama and become closer to “Breaking Bad” in its last few seasons than the more grounded show it was at the outset.

None of that matters at the moment. I just hope that Odenkirk is OK. He’s brought me so much joy over the past couple of decades. He’s one of the very few celebrities whose well-being I genuinely care about and who, if we lost him, would upset me a great deal.

Empathy and Simone Biles

As everyone knows by now Simone Biles left the women’s team gymnastics final on Tuesday and then withdrew from today’s all-around competition, saying she was not mentally prepared to continue and citing concerns for her physical health as well.

As most people who have weighed in on this have noted, this is a brave and perfectly defensible thing for Biles to do. Mental health is just as important as physical health and our athletes shouldn't have to destroy themselves either physically or mentally to entertain us. Biles has already sacrificed so much in both regards to become the absolute best in the world at what she does. She never owed us anything, but she certainly doesn’t owe us any more than she has already given. No athlete does.

Despite that overwhelming consensus, however, there has been a massive amount of chatter about all of this over the past 48 hours. Chatter, primarily, in the form of reaction to a handful of jackass critics who have gone after Biles for her alleged weakness, or for quitting, or what have you.

Based on what I wrote above, I do not believe there is any need whatsoever to argue the substance of any of that with these people. They are essentially bad faith actors looking for ways to gin up new culture war outrages because they make their living ginning up new culture war outrages. These people do not care about Simone Biles. They don’t care about women’s gymnastics. They don’t care about mental health. They just see the latest opportunity to rally their readers’, viewers’, and listeners’ anger and resentment and, as they long ago learned, if they can rally it against a Black woman, all the better. Biles is the perfect fodder for these cretins.

The issue here is not what these people say about any given topic. It’s that they have an audience of any consequence. It’s the fact that there are so many skeezy grifters working this beat these days which speaks to the profound lack of empathy — and lack of perspective — that exists in this society right now. It’s the fact that it’s so easy to get rich pandering to that crowd by stirring up race and gender-based resentment. All of it is testament to how unwell we are as a people at the moment.

“A balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality”

Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post has a must-read column about the failure of our media to contend with the political moment. Specifically, about its obsession with political coverage which treats the two parties as basically equal and treats everything they do as deserving of similar coverage despite the fact that the Republican Party has taken a hard turn into anti-democratic extremism.

Sullivan uses the example of the 1/6 Commission, whose hearings began on Tuesday, to illustrate this.

Democrats, quite understandably, want to conduct a substantive hearing into a deadly and unprecedented attack on the very foundation of democracy. Republicans are doing everything in their power to obstruct and undermine the hearings because they are politically beholden to the very forces which instigated and carried out the deadly attack. The majority of the coverage of that inherent conflict — one which pits an effort to protect democracy and shed light on the evil which attacked it vs. an effort to memory-hole it and protect its perpetrators — is portrayed as a mere political game, with both sides having a claim to the high ground and “winners” and “losers” declared.

Such an approach is farcical even when the stakes are lower, but when it involves matters of literal life and death and the potential for the death of our democracy, it represents an atrocious abdication of journalistic integrity. Yet its an abdication which most major media outlets seem completely uninterested in acknowledging, let alone addressing. Probably because access is too important to them. Probably because — as was brilliantly explained by Jay Rosen back in January — the political press has come to believe that its job is to stand in for “savvy” political operators and explain what they’re doing as opposed to hold their feet to the fire.

Most of them have spent enough time aligning themselves with the savvy insiders and have long since come to see the world through their eyes and to assume their values. The problem, of course, is that their values are, at best, amoral, aimed at obtaining power at any cost. If everyone is on that footing — the politcos and the press — no one is out there defending democracy. What we’re left with is not a journalism that checks power, but one that protects power. A press that seeks to curry favor with power. A press that covers for those who abuse their power by portraying them as acting within the bounds of normality when they are doing anything but.

Sullivan, like Rosen before her, offers potential solutions to this problem. Most of them, such as eschewing sources and TV/radio guests who have a track record of providing misinformation and declining to frame every story as one that has a “winner” and a “loser,” are the sorts of things that the access-addicted media is unlikely to undertake. The broader arc of it all, though — making coverage about what is pro-democracy and what is anti-democracy as opposed to what is winning politics vs. losing politics — is essential if we’re to begin to fix this horribly dysfunctional country.

Miss Scarlet Speaks

The 1985 movie “Clue” was sort of a bomb when it came out but it has, especially in recent years, turned into a cult classic. I loved it like hell from the moment it came out and have loved it for 36 years now. Lesley Ann Warren’s Miss Scarlet was a big reason for that because, well, let’s just say that I was 12, her whole deal in that movie appealed to me WAY more than whatever bleached-and-blow-dried women in music videos of the era did, and thus she, and the movie, had a very big impact on me.

If, like me, you love the movie “Clue,” you’ll be happy to read Warren’s interview about the movie over at Vulture.

Oh My God, Whatever, Etcetera

Contrary to what the cultural warriors on the right will tell you, there’s a sliding scale when it comes to so-called cancel culture. Not everyone who crosses some line that we here at Woke Liberals, Inc. have drawn has their careers ended. Indeed, most have not. I mean, Kevin Spacey and Mel Gibson have been cast in things recently. Almost no one who has been outed as a horrible jackwagon in the past few years has been truly and thoroughly shunned. At least if they have not been thrown into prison like Harvey Weinstein.

One guy that has mostly disappeared from public view, however, has been Ryan Adams. In February 2019 the New York Times published an investigative report detailing his abusive behavior toward women and reporting a criminal investigation into an incident in which Adams was alleged to have had a sexually explicit online relationship with a minor. As that year began Adams had plans to release three albums through a joint venture between his own label, Pax-Am, and Capitol Records, but since then almost nothing has been heard from him. Last December he quietly released an album called “Wednesdays” and in June he quietly released an album called “Big Colors” on his own label but they were met with almost complete indifference.

Now Adams has grown desperate, taking to Instagram to plead with record labels and publishers to work with him, claiming that he’s on the verge of losing his studio and his home. From Variety:

Adams has always been something of a drama queen — indeed, a fair amount of his appeal to fans has been his heart-on-his sleeve, sad bastard persona — but the story paints a hell of a dire picture. A picture that, I presume, will garner him at least a bit of sympathy which has quite justifiably eluded him for the past two and a half years.

At this point I’ll cop to having been a pretty big fan of Ryan Adams going back to his Whiskeytown days. His first solo album, “Heartbreaker,” was transcendent. In the years that followed Adams’ astounding prolificacy was often more of a curse than a blessing, his ego and hubris led to more artistic misses than hits, and his personal and public immaturity made him hard to root for. Still, there were always a few good songs on every one of his many records and, sometimes, some great ones.

Because of the way I’m wired and because of some degree of coincidence between what he was singing about at any given time and what was going on in my life, no small amount of Adams’ releases held deep personal resonance for me. The album “Ashes and Fire,” for example, while not a major work in his catalog, meant a great deal to me when it came out in 2011. Half of the songs on it served as the soundtrack for the disintegration of my marriage in the latter half of that year (“Dirty Rain,” “Do I Wait?” are particularly hard listens for me even now). Somehow, however, half of it served as the soundtrack for my meeting and falling in love with Allison soon after. When we got married in 2017 we danced to Adams’ song “I Love You But I Don’t Know What to Say” at the wedding.

In spite of all of that — and in spite of the fact that Adams’ music is an essential part of the playlist of my late 20s and most of my 30s — I had almost no reaction to that story in Variety. On some extraordinarily shallow intellectual level I feel bad for the guy as I feel bad for anyone going through bad stuff, but there aren’t many people of prominence who have more thoroughly made the bed in which they’re currently lying. When I read Adams talk about the records he wishes he could release I wonder how many women came to work with him when he was at the height of his fame and power and were put in a position of having to choose between yielding to his gross advances and achieving their dream of recording an album. I wonder how many women had their dreams crushed or their desire to even pursue them extinguished because of him. And that’s before you even get to the worst of the allegations against him.

There is no shortage of male artists of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s who turned out to be awful in some way. I can still listen to some of their music or watch their movies or whatever. Morrissey is all kinds of terrible, but I can still listen to Smiths records because they’re not just him and, at least as far as I know, he merely holds odious views as opposed to actively harming anyone specific. Maybe that’s not quite the distinction I’m making it out to be, but in my gut anyway there are degrees here.

Adams, though, is another matter. I just can’t with him. I think I’ve listened to his music two or three times in the past two and a half years and each time I’ve turned if off because I was unable to separate the art from the artist like I can with some others. Each time I’ve just felt gross. Back on that extraordinarily shallow intellectual level I hope he figures his life out and finds some security or whatever it is he’s looking for, but he just doesn’t rate on the list of people for whom I can find room to care.

Have a great day everyone.