Cup of Coffee: June 1, 2023

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

I apologize if this newsletter is not as good as usual today, but Alex Rodriguez did a whole damn CBS News segment about how he was recently diagnosed with gum disease yesterday and I have been overcome with sorrow ever since. The world is falling apart, you guys, and us brave newsletter writers on the front lines are not made of stone.

Let’s try to carry on, however. Somehow.

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Brewers 4, Blue Jays 2. The coolest part of this game was when Vlad Guerrero Jr. fielded a ball that got caught in the webbing of his glove so he just threw his whole glove to pitcher Trevor Richards covering first base. Some people call this “The old Jon Lester.” Some people call this “dropping an El Duque.” Personally, I call it “Pulling a Mulholland.” That play aside, Julio Teherán allowed just one unearned run on four hits over six, Abraham Toro hit a two-run homer, and Owen Miller singled in two.

Pirates 9, Giants 4: Bryan Reynolds drove in three runs and Andrew McCutchen and Connor Joe each went 3-for-4 with an RBI. Starter Mitch Keller won for the fourth time in his last five starts, allowing four runs while scattering 10 hits in six innings with eight strikeouts. Pirates manager Derek Shelton said after this game, “I think the maturation of Mitch Keller has been one of the most exciting things that we’ve had this year.” I feel like “The Maturation of Mitch Keller” would be the worst 1990s Skinemax movie ever. The Pirates are back to .500 on the season.

Angels 12, White Sox 5: Shohei Ohtani had been in a bit of a hitting slump of late but he homered on Tuesday and then, yesterday, smacked two two-run shots. The one he hit in the fourth inning went 459 feet. Mike Trout hit a two-run blast in the first that went 476 feet. Not that those two guys need juiced balls to hit homers, but if MLB is randomly dropping them into games again this year I’m gonna guess this one had ‘em. Taylor Ward went deep too and Chad Wallach, pinch-hitting for Ohtani, hit a dinger. Jared Walsh had a pair of RBI doubles.

Nationals 10, Dodgers 6: A five-homer day powers the Nats over the Dodgers. Luis García hit a tie-breaking three-run homer in the eighth, Keibert Ruiz hit two bombs,, Jeimer Candelario homered and drove in three, and CJ Abrams homered as the Nationals overcame an early three-run deficit. Mookie Betts hit his 40th leadoff homer and added another solo shot in the eighth for the Dodgers. Maybe the juiced ball investigative team should look into the balls used in both L.A. teams’ games yesterday.

Twins 8, Astros 2: Minnesota’s rookie starter Louie Varland shut the Astros out for seven innings and Donovan Solano drove in four via a two-run single and a two-run double. The Twins have alternated wins and losses over the last eight games. If they do it a couple more times they’ve bowled a Dutch 200. If that’s a thing we can still say. I’m really not clear on whether “Dutch” is an insult or epithet in those instances. If it is, I apologize to readers in The Netherlands. Though the only one I know for sure is an American living there as an ex-pat, so maybe I’ve actually insulted no one to their face.

Guardians 12, Orioles 8: Feels like there have been whole weeks in which Cleveland hasn’t scored ten runs total but sometimes the bats come out to play. Here they really came out to play as the Guardians reached season highs in runs and hits, with 17, while scoring in double figures for the first time in a nine-inning game all season. Josh Naylor’s bat was the biggest as he homered, had four hits, and drove in six. Josh Bell and Gabriel Arias also went deep. Steven Kwan had three hits and scored three runs. Cleveland takes two of three from Baltimore and has won two series in a row for the first time since the beginning of the year.

Atlanta 4, Athletics 2: Ozzie Albies hit a go-ahead, two-run homer in a three-run fifth inning to snap the A’s two-game winning streak. And no, I usually do not refer to a team winning back-to-back games as a “winning streak” but you gotta grade this Oakland team on a curve.

Tigers 3, Rangers 2: Jake Rogers hit a tie-breaking sac fly in the sixth inning and the newly-acquired Jake Marisnick followed him with an RBI single in his Detroit debut. Texas went 3-for-10 with runners in scoring position and stranded 10 runners.

Rays 4, Cubs 3: Brandon Lowe and Jose Siri each hit two-run homers in the late innings to go ahead. The Cubs threatened in the ninth, loading the bases against Kevin Kelly with one out, but Jalen Beeks came in and struck out Miles Mastrobuoni swinging and then retired Yan Gomes on a line drive to left.

Marlins 2, Padres 1: Blake Snell and two relievers shut out the Marlins through eight and the Padres clung to a one-run lead — which came via a Gary Sánchez’s home run of all things — entering the bottom of the ninth. That’s when Jean Segura, who has been one of the weakest hitters in all of baseball this year, singled in Yuli Gurriel and then took second base on the play. The next batter was Nick Fortes who singled in Segura for the walkoff win. All that came off of Josh Hader, by the way. Good show Marlins.

Reds 5, Red Sox 4: I was about to make a 1975 World Series joke but then I went and looked and, I’ll be damned, this was the first time the Reds have beaten the Red Sox in a series since the 1975 World Series. No, they haven’t played against each other much, even in the interleague era, but that’s kinda neat. Spencer Steer hit a two-run homer to break a seventh-inning tie. He may not have had a chance to hit that homer if not for a Rafael Devers error which came just before. Levin Newman, Matt McLain and Nick Senzel had two hits each for the Reds, who have won five in a row.

Mets 4, Phillies 1: Carlo Carrasco held Philly to one run over six and Mark Canha hit a two-run homer in the third and a two-run single in the fourth to supply all of the Mets offense. The Phillies have lost three in a row and are now a season-low five games under .500.

Diamondbacks 6, Rockies 0: Tommy Henry twirled six shutout innings and two relievers finished the three-hitter. Corbin Carroll had two RBI singles, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. hit a two-run single, Pavin Smith hit an RBI double, and Christian Walker went deep. It was Walker’s 100th homer of his career. The Snakes have won four in a row, 13 of 18, and are now just a half-game behind the Dodgers for first place in the NL West.

Mariners 1, Yankees 0: It was nil-nil through regulation and then Big Dumper drove in the Manfred Man in stoppage time (i.e. the bottom of the tenth) to give Seattle the victory. M’s starter George Kirby pitched eight shutout innings allowing just three hits. Clarke Schmidt and two relievers allowed just four hits in their combined nine innings of shutout ball. Seattle avoids a three-game sweep and snaps New York’s four-game winning streak.

The Daily Briefing

The All-Star ballot is live

Balloting for the All-Star Game began at noon yesterday. The ballot — which is sponsored by Scotts for a game that is sponsored by MasterCard which will be played in a ballpark sponsored by T-Mobile — is here. As always, the real purpose of the vote is to get you to go to sponsored websites. Of course back in the day the paper ballots were mostly just ads for Gillette razors so it’s not like there was a time when the world was pure or anything. Just close your eyes and imagine a place that is before engaging in this commercial act disguised as sports democracy.

Vote early and often if you care about such things. Or even if you don’t care about such things. Be an agent of chaos. Keep society on its toes.

Blake Treinen is mad about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence too

Dodgers reliever Blake Treinen is the latest player to bash the club for inviting the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to Pride Night. He released a lengthy statement through his friend’s Twitter account, saying that “their performances are blasphemous” and that “their work only displays hate and mockery of Catholics and the Christian faith.” He adds that the Sisters being at Pride “disenfranchises a large community” — what? — “and promotes hate of Christians and people of faith.”

He goes on and on in that vein. Which is not surprising because Treinen’s not a bright guy and his brain has been completely and utterly captured by the right wing media. As his track record demonstrates, he’ll parrot anything they’re saying about whoever or whatever it is he hates. He’s been doing it for a long, long time.

Then there’s Mike Pence. A man who, as governor of Indiana, acted so callously and carelessly that he single-handedly caused a wholly preventable HIV outbreak. He’s mad about the Dodgers simply recognizing a charity group that was founded to care for AIDS patients with nowhere to turn. I don’t know if there’s a Heaven, but if I ever do find myself at its gates I hope I hadn’t pulled the kind of cruel, craven, opportunistic bullshit that Mike Pence has pulled before I died. If I did, I wouldn’t expect to get inside.

I did get an email from a subscriber yesterday that was more worthy of consideration, however. It was from a practicing Catholic who, while freely acknowledging that the Catholic Church is by no means above criticism and by no means has clean hands when it comes to a great many things, took particular issue with the Sisters for wearing nun habits in their public appearances, which he took as punching down, mocking nuns or otherwise belittling them. As he has great respect for nuns and the thankless work they are often tasked with doing, the Sisters’ Sister Act rubs him the wrong way.

At the outset I will note that, unlike the complaints of the ballplayers I’ve seen, I took this reader’s email in genuinely good faith. Unlike some of the things people have said about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, he seems to understand their position and their mission but he simply does not like what he perceives to be shots taken at nuns or for them to be treated as mascots or what have you. While I am pretty sure that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are not mocking nuns as opposed to critiquing the Catholic Church as a whole, I’m likewise sure that they themselves can speak to that better than I can. And, of course, they have.

Since this whole saga started a couple of weeks ago, however, I’ll admit that I have been thinking about nuns too. One particular nun, actually: my first wife's aunt, who was a Sister of St. Joseph.

Sister Sandra Peraldo first worked in prisons. She became close with Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme while she was assigned to the chaplain’s office of the Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, West Virginia where Squeaky lived (and from which she occasionally escaped). Sandra later tended to the sick and the dying and, unfortunately, a great deal of administrative paperwork, at a Catholic hospital in Parkersburg, West Virginia.

Sandra and I we were close. She sang at our wedding (it was a full mass, kids; there are some things you still don’t know about your over-sharing newsletter writer). Since she only lived a couple of hours away we saw her often. Both during our visits and during fairly regular phone calls Sandra and I spent a great deal of time talking about the Church, its place in the world, her place in the Church and the world, my eschewing of faith, and all manner of other things. I learned a great, great deal about both the theological and practical aspects of the Catholic Church in those conversations. And Sandra, while occasionally rolling her eyes at me, didn’t give me any grief about being somewhere on the atheistic/agnostic front.

Sandra’s faith and calling never wavered but she was often greatly disappointed with the Church and its leadership. She was particularly critical of how it approached things during the worst years of the AIDS crisis. She was no woke, progressive shit-stirrer or anything, but she was a woman possessed of both a mastery of the Bible and the Church’s teachings and a basic and straightforward sense of decency and based on that she knew damn well that if Jesus was on the streets of New York City in the 1980s He would’ve been offering comfort, compassion, and aid to people dying of AIDS, not condemning them for who they were.

It can be dangerous to speak for another person, let alone a person who has been dead for 12 years, and I have no actual idea what Sandra would think about the world in 2023. But based on everything Sister Sandra ever did and everything she ever said to me, I am pretty damn sure that she would take no offense at the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. She may not have been marching in the streets with them or anything, but I think she would admire them for their compassion and their work with the sick and dying, which was something about which she knew a great deal. I think she would be amused at those who claimed that the Church was somehow being insulted or damaged by the performative aspects of the Sisters’ work because she often observed, and lamented, that the Church didn’t give two shits about what its critics thought. I also think that, as a nun whose order had long ago dispensed with the wearing of habits, she'd find the Sisters choice of garb to be rather funny and disarming as, again, I presume the Sisters themselves intend it to be.

None of that will change the minds of people like Blake Treinen or Trevor Williams, of course. But I feel like it’s worth mentioning.

Thanks for sharing, Rod

Seven batting titles gives you a lot of leeway to be weird as far as I’m concerned but I’m not sure I’m feeling “pocket hot dogs at the movie theater.” Maybe if he hit .400 at some point I’d allow it, but even .388 isn’t enough to put that over.

Other Stuff

For that special someone

I got this ad served to me on Instagram. I have no idea why and, frankly, I wish I had never seen it:

Not gonna lie, though. Wish I had a close friend who rides motorcycles. This would be an amazing gift.

Say hello to his little friend

Just when he thought he was out, he put it back in:

I’m not gonna judge anyone here. If that’s what Pacino and Alfallah want in life, well, good for them. I just could not, personally, imagine bringing a kid into the world that I will almost certainly not be around to help raise for most of their childhood. If Pacino — or Mick Jagger or Tony Randall or any number of other dudes who become fathers at an advanced age — rolls differently than that, fine, but it’s not something I could get my mind around.

Great Moments in Child Labor

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, like a lot of Republican governors, has signed a bill to expand child labor in the state. This one is a bit more extreme than the others, though, as it allows kids as young as 14 to work six-hour shifts on school nights and, more notably, allows them to work dangerous jobs in demolition, on assembly lines, operating power saws, and more.

This may seem scary, but it’s great news for me, a tall ship captain, who is in desperate need of powder monkeys.

To be sure, the U.S. Department of Labor says that the new law violates federal labor standards which limit kids under 16 to three hours of work on school days. That’s annoying as hell because now I’ll have to hire more 14 year old powder monkeys than I planned to and I’ll have to run them in split shifts. Damn government. Don’t they know that Napoleon is master of Europe, that only the British fleet stands before him, and that the oceans are now battlefields?

The toxic culture of “Lost”

Film and television critic Maureen Ryan has a new book coming out called Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood which is an exposé of harassment and bias in Hollywood. An excerpt from that book appeared in Vanity Fair earlier this week talking about the 2004-2010 TV show “Lost.”

In the excerpt several writers and actors from the show poke to Ryan about its toxic work environment. Harold Perrineau, who starred as Michael in the first two seasons of “Lost,” spoke bluntly about his white co-stars getting the show’s major storylines and how even the storylines he and his character’s son, Walt, got were perfunctory, cliche, and lazily trafficked in racist tropes. Perrineau brought his concerns to the showrunners, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and his character was written out of the show soon after. When Perrineau gave a matter-of-fact interview about that at the time he was pressured to issue a retraction — he didn’t — because neither the people behind “Lost” nor the network wanted to hear it.

The writer’s room sounded like a hellscape as well, with open hostility and crass and racist behavior becoming the rule as time went on:

“Lost” fans will remember the character of Mr. Ecko, who first appeared in Season two. When the actor who played him, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, asked off the show because he did not want to commit to filming in Hawaii for months on-end, it angered the producers, who said they had planned to make him a central figure going forward. Given their in-house response to his exit, however, one wonders how they could’ve possibly come up with non-offensive storylines for him:

Lindelof spoke to Ryan for the book, and is quoted in the excerpt. He seems to at least to attempt to take some manner of responsibility for the environment he created and over which he ruled but it’s a lot of “wow, I don’t remember that but I’m so sorry that happened.” For his part Cuse issued a statement saying “I deeply regret that anyone at ‘Lost’ would have to hear [the crass words attributed to him]. They are highly insensitive, inappropriate and offensive.” There’s an element of him talking about a different person in it all, sort of like the way you hear people talking about their old offensive tweets from 2009.

I really liked “Lost” when it first hit the air in 2004. Like a lot of America I watched it every week and talked about it at work the next day. But as most people have observed, the show turned into a mess over time and eventually became almost a chore to watch, even if most of us saw it through to the end. It sounds like the creative mess the show became was but a faint echo of a raging, toxic storm that was going on behind the scenes. It’s all pretty ugly stuff.

Kentucky, we have a problem

The Federal Standards of Identity for Distilled Spirits Act — which is an actual thing — states that, in order for a whiskey to be called bourbon, it must be:

• produced in the United States or its territories;

• made from a grain mixture that is at least 51% corn;

• aged in new, charred oak containers;

• distilled to no more than 160 proof;

• placed in the aging container at no more than 125 proof (i.e. it must be cut with water to get down to that level); and that it must be

• bottled at 80 proof or more

Bullet (Bulleit?) point number three could be a problem soon because, based on a bunch of recent reports (and as explained in this podcast episode), we are facing a shortage of white oak, which is the overwhelmingly preferred oak for aging bourbon. The math is not too hard: bourbon has been booming for a long dang time now, dramatically increasing the amount of white oak being used and oak trees take a long time to grow.

Not that that’s all of it, of course. It’s also the case that white oak doesn’t take kindly to managed planting, doing much better in the wild than on tree plantations, so you can’t just put down a few thousand acorns in a field and hope for an oak barrel harvest on an expected schedule. It’s also due to the fact that the way in which our forests are managed has changed a lot over time. For example, we’ve made a big point over the last century or so to stop letting forest fires burn if it can be helped. Well, white oaks tend to do well after fires clear out competitor trees. Oops. Finally, there’s capitalism: if you invest in planting a bunch of white oak trees you’re not gonna get a return on your investment for, oh, 100 years or so and modern capitalism simply doesn’t do long term. You get your money out of pine and other things way more quickly.

To be sure bourbon makers can legally use other oaks, such as red oak, but for a bunch of reasons explained by a forestry professor in that podcast episode — stuff that has to do with what soaks things up and what does not, how the wood affects the color and taste of the bourbon, etc., — it’s not super practical to use non-white oak barrels. And, as stated above, you cannot re-use old white oak barrels for bourbon. They have to be new.

So where does that leave us? At the moment, if nothing changes, we’re looking at about a 70% decline in white oak harvests, which would be pretty damn devastating to the bourbon industry. We’re OK for the next 20 or 30 years, but then things get dicey. The forestry guy in the podcast says, however, that if we change the way we manage white oak forests we can weather it all. Of course America is not super great when it comes to changing the way it does things, especially if the environment is involved.

Scotch anyone?

Have a great day, everyone.