Cup of Coffee: September 4, 2020

Good morning!

Today we talk about Kershaw passing Big Six, Bryce Harper being a sooth sayer, Bryan Reynolds getting back to work better than most new dads can manage, and me watching “The Lion King.”

Also: Seaver and Nixon, Seaver and T-Bones, Seaver and dirty knees, Mariah Carey and Jeter, a masterpiece cat painting, a hat tip to all of you for making a great comments section, and a lot, lot more.

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And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Pirates 6, Cubs 2: Bryan Reynolds returned from paternity leave and hit a three-run homer. Both times I returned from paternity leave I told my secretary to hold all calls, went into my office, shut the door and alternatively slept and stared into middle distance worrying about how scary the world had suddenly become. Reynolds probably handled it better. Reynolds also doubled. I had a double.

Astros 8, Rangers 4: Houston got to Lance Lynn in the first, lighting him up for four runs, with Aldemys Díaz’s three-run shot the big blow. They’d get two more off of Lynn with Martín Maldonado going deep. Michael Brantley drove in three. Zack Greinke struck out a season-high nine in six innings while allowing three runs and six hits.

Phillies 6, Nationals 5: After the Phillies lost to the Braves on August 22, Bryce Harper said that the team needed to “win nine of 10.” The Phillies have now won nine of 10. Nice trick, Bryce. This one was won via an Alec Bohm sac fly in the bottom of the 10th. Sac fly walkoffs are probably the lease dramatic walkoffs — well, maybe a walkoff balk or a walkoff bases-loaded walk is less dramatic — but a win is a win. Trea Turner hit an inside the park homer — those are exciting sometimes! — but the Nationals have lost six straight and nine of 10 so there’s only so much excitement Nats fans can muster.

And actually, inside the park homers aren’t always exciting. This one, like a lot of them, was a function of an outfielder misjudging a ball and another outfielder not being close enough to back him up. Eh. Gimme’ a wheels triple over an inside the parker every time.  

Mets 9, Yankees 7: The Mets came back from deficits of 4-0 and 7-4 here. The final comeback was sealed when J.D. Davis homered in the bottom of the ninth to tie this up and send it to extras and then Pete Alonso hit a walkoff two-run shot in the bottom of the tenth to win it. Davis had been hit by an Aroldis Chapman pitch last week and was still sore, but he hit this homer off of Chapman. The Rays batter Chapman almost hit in the head the other day came back the next day to hit two homers. Maybe Chapman should stop hitting dudes.

Angels 2, Padres 0: Mike Clevinger made his Padres debut but he was upstaged by Andrew Heaney who tossed seven shutout innings, holding the explosive San Diego offense to three hits. RBI singles from Andrelton Simmons and Justin Upton are all the A’s could get off Clevinger but it was enough.

Blue Jays 6, Red Sox 2: Big night for Teoscar Hernández. First he broke up a would-be no-hitter by Martín Pérez in the seventh inning, then he hit a go-ahead, three-run homer in the 10th inning to give the Jays the win. That was the Jays’ seventh win in 10 games. Boston has lost four straight and seven of 10.

White Sox 11, Royals 6: Luis Robert, Edwin Encarnación and Tim Anderson homered for Chicago who posted not one but two five-run innings. Robert’s homer was an absolute moon shot. Chicago pulls to within a half-game of idle Cleveland for the lead in the American League Central. They lead the third-place Twins by one game.

Dodgers 5, Diamondbacks 1: Clayton Kershaw keeps cruising. Six shutout innings, one hit allowed, and eight strikeouts. He passed the 2,500 career strikeout mark in this game. He went just past it, actually, overtaking Christy Mathewson (2,502) for 38th place on the all-time list. Mathewson pitched for 17 seasons. Kershaw is in his 13th. Different game, obviously, but passing Big Six is a big deal regardless.

Athletics vs. Mariners — POSTPONED:

🎶Well, I'm hot blooded, check it and seeI got a fever of a hundred and threeCome on baby, do you do more than dance?I'm hot blooded, I'm hot blooded🎶

The Daily Briefing

Seaver, T-Bones and Porsches

Yesterday was filled with Tom Seaver remembrances and they’re all pretty fantastic. He was obviously one of the best pitchers to ever live, but he was an interesting guy too.

I had forgotten one of my favorite ones until a friend of mine emailed me a link to a column the great Pat Jordan wrote for Slate back in 2008. The point of the column was Jordan lamenting the end of the chummy relationship between athletes and the press that used to exist back in the 70s and, to that end, the column overall doesn’t age that well. Sure, I like a good human interest story as much as the next guy, but “reporters and their special relationship with athletes” does not crack the top-500 on the “Things Craig Gives a Shit About” list. I’ll probably share the “Things Craig Gives a Shit About” list in December when nothing is going on.

Anyway, here’s Jordan talking about the time he went to go talk to Seaver for a Sports Illustrated story one day:

Part of being great is knowing that you’re great but not making a big deal about it unless truly prompted. And then, understandably, making a big deal out of it.

Seaver’s dirty knees

One of the most Tom Seaver things about Tom Seaver was his knee drag. His pitching motion forced his right knee to the mound as he strained to get every bit of energy out of his legs. Legs which, as all good pitchers know, are where a pitcher gets his power. After every Tom Seaver start came a soiled pant knee.

Yesterday the Mets paid tribute to Seaver and his dirty right knee:

I’m not always the biggest fan of tributes and symbolism because they so easily become saccharine or hacky, but yeah, that’s a damn good tribute.

Seaver and Nixon

One more Tom Terrific bit: he didn’t stick to sports. Matthew Callan points us to some activism Seaver undertook in 1969, when he had just emerged as a superstar and had absolutely everything to lose by speaking out:

Derek Jeter and Mariah Carey

I’m guessing most of you aren’t the demographic who cares about this a great deal — or, if you are, you pretend you don’t care — but Mariah Carey is coming out with a memoir soon in which she says that two of the songs from her 1997 album “Butterfly” were written about Hall of Famer Derek Jeter.

If you’re pretending that you didn’t pay attention to this sort of thing at the time, you’ll pretend not to know that the two of them had a fling in late 1996 and into 1997. That’s when Jeter was emerging into superstardom with the Yankees and Carey’s marriage to Sony Music label honcho Tommy Mottola was crumbling. Per TMZ, Carey says her relationship with Jeter helped her “get past” her failed marriage faster than a ground ball got past Jeter when hit to his left.

OK, she didn’t say that about the ground ball, but she did say it about the relationship.

Anyway, the two songs on “Butterfly” that were about Captain Jetes: “The Roof,” which was about their first kiss on the roof of his apartment building, and “My All” which was about a trip Carey took to Puerto Rico to go see Jeter on the sly.

I’m guessing Jeter won’t be commenting on it. Partially because he has never commented on his personal life, partially because his media relations team has spent 23 years doing everything it possibly can to make him uninteresting, so spilling the tea about hooking up with Mariah Carey when she was absolute fire would ruin that whole strategy. I mean, that would be interesting.

Clemente Award Nominees Announced

The Roberto Clemente Award goes to the Major Leaguer who “best exemplifies the game of baseball, sportsmanship, community involvement and the individual’s contribution to his team.” Carlos Carrasco won it last year. This year’s nominees were announced yesterday:

• Arizona Diamondbacks – Eduardo Escobar

• Atlanta Braves – Freddie Freeman

• Baltimore Orioles – Hanser Alberto

• Boston Red Sox – Mitch Moreland

• Chicago Cubs – Jason Heyward

• Chicago White Sox – Tim Anderson

• Cincinnati Reds – Tucker Barnhart

• Cleveland Indians – Brad Hand

• Colorado Rockies – Ian Desmond

• Detroit Tigers – Miguel Cabrera

• Houston Astros – Alex Bregman

• Kansas City Royals – Ian Kennedy

• Los Angeles Angels – Mike Trout

• Los Angeles Dodgers – Justin Turner

• Miami Marlins – Miguel Rojas

• Milwaukee Brewers – Brent Suter

• Minnesota Twins – Nelson Cruz

• New York Mets – Steven Matz

• New York Yankees – Giancarlo Stanton

• Oakland Athletics – Tony Kemp

• Philadelphia Phillies – Aaron Nola

• Pittsburgh Pirates – Josh Bell

• San Diego Padres – Drew Pomeranz

• San Francisco Giants – Hunter Pence

• Seattle Mariners – Dee Strange-Gordon

• St. Louis Cardinals – Adam Wainwright

• Tampa Bay Rays – Charlie Morton

• Texas Rangers – Shin-Soo Choo

• Toronto Blue Jays – Danny Jansen

• Washington Nationals – Sean Doolittle

September 8 will be Roberto Clemente Day. Home teams will honor their nominees that day. Visiting teams will do it on their next home stand. The league-wide winner of the Roberto Clemente Award is determined by a hybrid expert panel/fan vote (you can vote here). The winner will be announced during the World Series. Assuming we have a World Series.

Dee Strange-Gordon

You may have noticed in the list of nominees that the player we know as Dee Gordon is now using the hyphenated last name Strange-Gordon. Strange was his mother DeVona’s last name. She was shot and killed when Dee was six-years old. Dee Strange-Gordon has always been his legal name, but now Gordon has informed the Mariners and Major League Baseball that he'd like to, officially, go by Dee Strange-Gordon professionally from now on as well.

Heeeeyyy Dansby

Who says baseball isn’t sexy?

The Athletics will resume play today. Probably.

Major League Baseball announced that the Oakland Athletics will be allowed to resume play at home vs. the San Diego Padres today. In so announcing they noted that, since the positive test within the Athletics’ traveling party on August 28, all subsequent tests had been negative. Not long after the press release came out it was reported that A’s pitcher Daniel Mengden had tested positive, was asymptomatic, and had been quarantined. Yet there has been no update about the A’s playing today.

I’m not sure I understand that, but as I’ve noted many times, MLB has changed rules and procedures about all of this stuff many times and they usually don’t announce it when they do it. It’s frustrating, but if what they’re doing is effective, hey, OK. I just don’t know how anyone is supposed to know if it’s effective if they’re keeping it quiet. This isn’t about state secrets or anything. No one is trying to steal the microfilm. If you have figured good things out about COVID abatement, guys, maybe let the rest of us know?

Other Stuff

• As most of you know, the term “cup of coffee,” as it relates to baseball, was not invented by me three weeks ago. It’s a venerable term referring to a brief callup to the major leagues, about which the player might say later, “the show? Yeah, I had a cup of coffee with the Cardinals at the end of the ‘78 season.” I’ve always known the phrase, but since I launched the newsletter I’ve come across a few instances of that phrase in media as well. Thankfully not in the form of cease-and-desist letters. The most recent was from the author Jacob Kornhauser, who reached out and hipped me to a book he wrote that I had missed. The book: “The Cup of Coffee Club: 11 Players and Their Brush with Baseball History.” The book features interviews or stories of 11 players who got just one game in the major leagues, with their Moonlight Graham dates ranging from 1958 to 2008. The book, Kornhauser tells me, “focuses on the commitment to the sport these men all had, and the hard psychological journey they all faced in the aftermath of their one game as they tried to climb their way back and eventually realized they never would.”It just came out at the end of February which, while usually great timing for a baseball book, was pretty rough for authors this year what with *gestures generally.* As such, I’m guessing there are a lot of people who would normally have this book come across their radar who didn’t catch it. Well, let’s try to remedy that.I’m getting a copy of it soon and I’ll post a review.

• I signed up to be a poll worker for the election yesterday. If it's not super safe for octogenarians to be in public like that, at least they can have someone with an octogenarian temperament. I promise not to squander the “I voted” stickers.

• Speaking of voting, a lot of people will vote for Donald Trump in November because they reflexively believe that Republicans care more about the military, support the military more, and are most likely to look after the interests of American service members. To the extent you or someone believes that to be the case for President Trump, I’d ask you, or them, to read this. Of note:If you’re OK with that, well, OK, you do you. I’m not OK with that.

• David asks a question:I gotta tell ya, the absolute best thing about this newsletter so far is how great the comments section is. Both because of old friends — a lot of you have been gabbing beneath my articles for 12-13 years now — and new ones. Y’all are smart. And funny. And it gives me so much joy to be the pretext for your thoughts and conversation. Which is to say: no, I do not miss the trolls who tell me to stick to sports. Most of whom have disappeared on Twitter too, presumably because they can’t say “I follow you for your baseball opinions, not politics.” Unless they’re subscribing — or getting the weekly freebie like today — they’re not really getting baseball opinions either, so the excuse is gone.So far anyway, none of them have paid $6 for the privilege of yelling at me or at any of you. Which goes to show you how shallow internet outrage is. It's the most passive and lazy thing in existence! There is no followthrough, not even for a nominal fee. Which should make you wonder why media companies try to appease internet cranks when they complain about a writer’s work or tweets. Or why they use them as a gauge of public opinion, citing them or even quoting them in articles. An internet complaint is about the lowest-bar, least-impassioned form of opinion there is, and they should be treated as such. They should be given almost no weight at all.

• Great moments in art and relationships:

I hope she makes some big changes in light of this. Like changing his title from “my boyfriend” to “my husband,” because that’s a guy who knows what’s important and good in life.

• I didn’t watch any baseball last night. Allison wanted to watch “The Lion King” for some reason. A few minutes in I said something that revealed to her that I had never seen it. She was shocked and appalled. My defense was two-pronged: (1) due to cultural osmosis, clips, and everything else I’ve seen probably 2/3 of it and know the whole story and all the songs; and (2) I was 21 when it came out and at that age the big new Disney movie is not exactly a priority. I probably saw “Speed” the weekend “The Lion King” opened. And the probably got hammered on Miller Genuine Drafts while wearing baggy khakis and a braided belt from The Gap at some bar blasting Ace of Base. Of course it’s a fantastic movie for all the reasons people say it is. I can admit that even though I don’t have the same feelings for it that someone who grew up with it might have. That may be the case with all Disney movies. When I was little Disney was at a nadir, producing some not very great movies and getting its clock cleaned by Don Bluth (oh my God, is “The Secret of NIMH” great). I guess that turned by the time “The Little Mermaid” came out but by then I had aged out of ‘em. I did see “The Little Mermaid” in the theater, though. My girlfriend and I picked it because it was at the end of its run, we knew no one would be in there except us and we could make out. Hi, Lisa, wherever you are. Anyway, I won’t spoil “The Lion King” for other Gen-Xers who gave it a miss in order to cruise around town listening to “Dookie” or whatever — I did a lot of that too in 1994 — but allow me to say that you should NOT get too invested in that whole idea of Mufasa and Simba always being together.

Have a great day. Or at least a better day than Mufasa did.