Cup of Coffee: June 17, 2021

Everyone's beefing about the foreign substance crackdown, deGrom is hurt again, two of my criminal friends are in the news, and I have a movie for you to see.

Good morning, and welcome to Free Thursday! This is when I usually insert a bunch of buttons:

If you choose to mash either the first or third, you’ll pay only around 20 cents a day for a newsletter like this one five days a week. What a bargain. That is a bargain for you. If you mash the second one your friends will thank you and think you are a person of taste and discernment. Mostly because I don’t think I have any scatological humor in today’s newsletter. I show restraint when others are watching.

Anyway, lots to get to today, so let’s get to it.

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And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Rockies 8, Padres 7: The good news for San Diego: Fernando Tatís Jr. hit a changeup on the outer half of the plate 477 feet to his pull side for a monster homer:

San Diego Padres @Padres

FOUR. SEVENTY. SEVEN. The longest of @tatis_jr's career. padres.com/allstar

That’s . . . a hell of a thing.

The bad news: they still lost thanks to Charlie Blackmon singling home the winning run in the ninth. It was hotter than blazes in Denver yesterday and that boosted the offense. In addition to Tatís’ bomb, Trent Grisham and Jake Cronenworth homered for the Padres and C.J. Cron and Elías Díaz went deep for Colorado. The Padres lost for the 13th time in 17 games. Just an ugly, ugly skid.

Athletics 8, Angels 4: I feel like I’ve done a half dozen recaps over the past four years in which Ramón Laureano both (a) hit a home run; and (b) robbed the opposition of a home run. I doubt there were actually that many games in which that happened, but it sure feels like it. He did it here anyway, coming off the injured list to rob Justin Upton of a dinger in the top of the fourth and hitting a home run of his own in the bottom half. “As so often happens, etc. etc.” L.A. still led 4-2 heading into the sixth but Oakland tagged Angels reliever Tony Watson for six runs in the sixth. Watson didn’t even record an out. Ouch. The A’s have won six straight.

Yankees 3, Blue Jays 2: Gerrit Cole allowed two runs over eight innings and, after the game blasted MLB for taking away grip substances, saying that he had a hard time holding the ball in this one and that the league should’ve talked to players about this first. I’m not sure how that would’ve worked given that, when first asked about it last week Cole gave a really awkward and silly denial, but everyone’s venting right now.

Gary Sánchez homered. He also threw out Vlad Guerrero Jr. at third when he was trying to retreat back to the bag on a comebacker. It was close and the call was upheld as an out, but a lot of Toronto people on the old timeline were beefing about it. They were also beefing about a play just after that when what was pretty clearly a swing and a miss and a passed ball was ruled a foul ball, largely because Sánchez sold it as one. The home plate ump, CB Bucknor, was hit in the mask and didn’t make a call immediately, and it seemed like the other umps backed a foul ball call because otherwise Bucknor would’ve looked bad for not being on top of the play.

Speaking of looking bad, Ross Stripling looked terrible publicly calling out his infielder for a mistake:

Ben Verlander @Verly32

I hate this. Never show up your defenders. Ever.

Uglyville, man. Ugly all around, but the Yankees will take it.

Cardinals 1, Marlins 0: A fantastic pitchers duel between Sandy Alcantara of the Marlins and Johan Oviedo of the Cards. The latter pitched seven shutout innings. The former pitched eight shutout innings and worked into the ninth before an error, a walk, and then a Yadier Molina RBI single ended the game in walkoff fashion. Tough break for Alcantara.

Reds 2, Brewers 1: Tyler Mahle struck out 12 batters in six innings and his pen shut out Milwaukee the rest of the way. A Tucker Barnhart RBI double in the seventh broke a 1-1 tie and gave the Reds the three-game sweep. Cincinnati has won six straight and 11 of 13.

Tigers 6, Royals 5: Kansas City led 3-1 heading into the seventh when Willi Castro of the Tigers hit a two-run homer to tie it and a wild pitch brought in Detroit’s go-ahead run. The Tigers' fifth run also scored on a wild pitch one inning later and they added a run in the ninth for a 6-3 lead. A late Royals rally fell short. Detroit sweeps in three. Kansas City has lost six in a row and 11 of 12.

White Sox 8, Rays 7: Chicago led 7-2 after five, blew that lead by the eighth, but came through in the 10th when José Abreu moved the Manfred Man over to third with a groundout and Yasmani Grandal knocked him home with a walkoff single. Earlier Abreu homered. Chicago has won 10 of 13.

Nationals 3, Pirates 1:Paolo Espino is 34 and just last night he got his first big league win despite being a 2006 draftee. Espino allowed three hits in five scoreless innings. Former Pirate Josh Bell hit a two-run homer. Yan Gomes homered too. Ten straight losses for the Pirates.

Mets 6, Cubs 3: The big news here was Jacob deGrom leaving early with an injury, but more on that down in the Daily Briefing. Dominic Smith and Kevin Pillar each homered and each drove in two. deGrom himself knocked in a run before leaving. Francisco Lindor drew a bases-loaded walk. The Mets have taken three in a row from Chicago and look for the four-game sweep later today. Obviously, of course, the deGrom stuff hovers over everything.

Cleveland 8, Orioles 7: José Ramírez homered and drove in three, César Hernández had a two-run triple, and Aaron Civale became the first pitcher in the league with 10 wins this year. A five-run third did in the Orioles. O’s manager Brandon Hyde said after the game, "we had 12 hits and scored seven runs, but we just had one bad inning.” Sometimes that’s all it takes.

Red Sox 10, Atlanta 8: Boston blew a 6-3 lead and Atlanta clung to their lead, 7-6, in the seventh, the Sox loaded the bases, and, with two outs, Christian Arroyo came on as a pinch hitter and knocked one clean out the park for a grand slam. Boston takes both games in the two-game set and has won three in a row overall.

Astros 8, Rangers 4: José Altuve ended Tuesday’s game with a walkoff grand slam. He led off the first inning in this one with a solo homer. He homered again in the eighth. I’d say he’s locked in right now. Chas McCormick of the Astros also connected twice. It wasn’t all good news for Houston, though, as third baseman Alex Bregman after he exited with a strained left quadriceps he injured running to first base in the first inning. We’ll likely get an update on him today.

Giants 13, Diamondbacks 7: Buster Posey hit a three-run homer in a first inning and Steven Duggar and LaMonte Wade Jr. homered in the fourth as the Giants built an 8-2 lead by then and a 13-2 lead in the fifth and never looked back. Five dingers on the night for San Francisco. Arizona dropped its 22nd straight road game, tying the record held by the 1963 Mets and 1943 Philadelphia Athletics. It was also their 13th straight loss overall.

Twins 7, Mariners 2: Nelson Cruz hit a three-run homer and rookie starter Bailey Ober struck out six despite only pitching four innings. Josh Donaldson left after scoring in the first inning with “a right shin strain.” I had no idea you could “strain” your shin, but I suppose if anyone is gonna do it it’s gonna be Donaldson.

Phillies 2, Dodgers 0: Zack Wheeler delivered six shutout innings and two relievers finished the job, shutting out L.A. on five hits overall. Rhys Hoskins homered in the first, ending an 0-for-33 stretch, and J.T. Realmuto doubled home a run in the third. The Dodgers and Phillies combined for only 14 runs in the three-game set.

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The Daily Briefing

Jacob deGrom leaves with shoulder soreness

Mets ace Jacob deGrom left last night’s start against the Cubs with right shoulder soreness after pitching three perfect innings. He struck out eight of the nine batters he faced while driving in a run with an RBI single in the second but was visibly angry as he walked up the tunnel from the dugout after being yanked. The team said he’d have an MRI today. deGrom insisted afterward that this was “nothing” and that he does not expect to miss time. We’ll see.

This is not the first brush with injury deGrom has had this year, of course. Last Friday, he left the game against the San Diego Padres after six innings with flexor tendinitis in his right arm. He was also pulled on May 9 against the Diamondbacks after five innings with right side tightness, leading to two missed starts. On May 4, he was scratched from a start because of the same ailment.

Thanks to deGrom's three shutout innings his ERA is now a microscopic 0.54 and he has 111 strikeouts in 67 frames, but how long he’s going to hold up this year is an open damn question.

Scott Boras makes a good point before veering off into crazy

Scott Boras weighed in on the foreign substance crackdown yesterday. The first, oh, two-thirds of his comments, criticizing the blanket crackdown on all grip-enhancing substances, makes a lot of sense. He also notes, as have many, that MLB and the clubs have long known what was going on. Again, nodding along here.

But then he veers off on an analogy that is so bad that, had he offered it when he was in law school, would’ve likely caused him to be laughed out of the lecture hall:

“To suggest pine tar can be used (on bats) by the very same players that play defense is truly an umpire's conundrum. The pitcher hits using pine tar and is suspended for applying the substance to the baseball, or the position player with pine tar on his throwing hand from the prior at-bat transfers it the ball and then both he and the pitcher are deprived of 10 days of performance for legal use of a permissible substance. The grey divide continues!!!!”

Gotta love “The grey divide continues!!!!” though. I thought it’d never miss that kind of emphatic non-sequitur after Trump got banned from Twitter, but I’m almost happy to see it back again.

Expect more of this sorts of equivocal and/or nonsensical and/or mealy-mouthed kinds of comments about all of this because it is, in fact, a no-good-answers, grey area subject in a world in which bold pronouncements are seen as the the best sort of pronouncements. Saying things like “this sucks and something has to be done but there are no perfect solutions and no one’s hands are really clean so we’ll muddle through as best we can in a vaguely unsatisfying way” does not make for great copy. But it’s about the only thing that can be said here.

Old Hoss Radbourn makes a better point

Old Hoss Radbourn(e) @OldHossRadbourn

If you had told me in 1884 that between putting goop on a ball and inserting a cadaver’s tendon into a damaged arm only the former would be against the rules I think I’d have been surprised.

When you think about it, baseball is a really messed up sport, you guys.

Zac Gallen calls out Manfred, Michael Hill

Dbacks pitcher Zac Gallen sat for a presser before yesterday’s game to talk about his return from the injured list. After talking about that he ripped MLB VP of on-field operations Michael Hill for the ball-doctoring crackdown, accusing him of telling pitchers to use foreign substances when he was the Marlins GM and Gallen was in the Marlins organization.

“He was in charge of an organization that was definitely at one point saying, ‘Hey, you’re going to need these things to help you,’” Gallen said. When asked to clarify he said, “you can read between the lines.” Gallen also ripped Rob Manfred for not speaking publicly about the issue, saying, “until the commissioner wants to come down and hold a press conference to talk about the findings and testing and all this stuff, then I’ll come back to you guys.”

Hill later fired back, not mentioning Gallen, or his agent, Scott Boras, by name, but saying “It is predictable that a player represented by a particular agent would make false accusations about me given my current role and the agent’s obvious desire to distract people from the current issues surrounding the use of foreign substances. The assertions, however, are completely false.”

Scott Boras then returned the volly:

“A player trained in the Marlins organization spoke candidly and truthfully. The then-GM’s response is none other than the antiquated Sgt Schultz defense: 'I see nothing!' Next we’ll be asked to believe the Tooth Fairy was the farm director.”

Way better than his stuff about pine tar. And a more judicious use of exclamation points too. Nice recovery, Scott.

Know what? I believe Gallen. And I agree with him completely about Manfred’s lack of public comment on all of this. Manfred hasn’t made himself available to the press for anything for over a year. His ducking of scrutiny like that is something more people should be talking about. Of course, given that half of the baseball press either works directly for MLB or for an MLB broadcast rights holder, people don’t beef much about it.

Rich Hill is mad at the union

Rays starter Rich Hill said yesterday that the MLBPA “dropped the ball” when it came to this week's crackdown on ball-doctoring. Hill:

“I think this falls on the PA, the players' association. I think that this is where something should have been done. The players' association had the opportunity to work with MLB, and MLB used their strong hand to put it on the players, and that's unfortunate that this is what happened. I feel like they should have come together and settled this, and handled it like professionals. I feel like a rule change in the middle of the season is very difficult for everybody across the league.”

I get that he’s mad — a lot of pitchers are mad — but I’d really like Hill to explain what, exactly, he expected the MLBPA to do here. This is not a new rule which required MLB to consult the union. It’s the enforcement of an existing rule and, by all accounts, MLB is acting unilaterally here. In large part because the matter was brought to the forefront by other players who are also union members.

Ultimately I agree that the league and the union should sit down and carve out something about permissible grip enhancement. But there was nothing compelling MLB to do that here and there’s no mechanism I know of that would allow the union to intervene in this process right now.

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Other Stuff

“Heist”

Worldwide news broke in 2013 about a massive bourbon heist at the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky. It would come to be known as the Pappy Van Winkle Heist, due to that most exclusive of bourbon labels being the alleged centerpiece of the theft. The case went cold for two years but, in March of 2015, a gang was arrested for the crime.

I had followed the case closely and, as a result, I had a tentative book deal to write about the Pappy Van Winkle Heist in the summer of 2015. Indeed, that was what I was working on during my Amtrak Writer’s Residency that I’ve mentioned before. Sadly, the book fell through as the legal proceedings were slow-rolled, everyone lawyered up, and no one would talk.

I had all but given up on the case and any story about it when, in the winter of 2018, out of boredom, I reached out to the accused ringleader of the heist and told him I wanted to tell his story. He was still under indictment at the time, out on bail, having pleaded guilty after years of pretrial maneuvering and awaiting sentencing. Despite the fact that there was no upside for him at all, he invited me to Frankfort to meet with him. I went down there and, in an empty CrossFit gym on a cold and rainy Saturday night that January, I became the first person to interview and write the full story about Toby Curtsinger, the Pappy Van Winkle Bandit. The kicker to the story is that, actually, there really was no Pappy Van Winkle Heist at all — and, if anything, Buffalo Trace benefitted from the thefts — but to understand why, you have to read the story.

In the months that followed a couple of documentary filmmakers and some true crime podcasters reached out to me to ask me if I could put them in touch with Toby Curtsinger. I did so, knowing that they had no idea what they were dealing with. Toby is an interesting guy, but he’s rough around the edges to put it kindly and not particularly user friendly. I get on with him well because he likes that I’m from West Virginia and I know a bit about the legal system, but if you’re from the coasts and are just interested in bourbon stories, he isn’t likely to be very welcoming. For a couple of years nothing came of those inquiries. One of the filmmakers told me that Toby had asked for six figures just to talk to him — and good for him for asking — souring any possible deal.

Earlier this year, however, Toby texted me to tell me that he was going to be in a Netflix documentary. He asked me to be quiet about it because it didn’t have a release date but he texted me again last night to let me know that the trailer had dropped. His story is going to be part of a limited series called “Heist” which, based on the trailer below, covers three high-profile heists, actually.

Toby is the first guy who talks in it. He’s the fella with the buzzcut. He’s not hard to mistake:

Goodbye, Larry

The Ohio House of Representatives voted to expel representative and former Speaker of the House Larry Householder from the body yesterday, nearly a year after he was indicted in the biggest political corruption scandal in the history of the state. Most of you probably don’t care about that, but since Householder is my former client, I’ve taken a pretty keen interest in what he’s done.

Back in 2004-05, the first time Householder was the Ohio Speaker of the House, I helped him get out from under an ethics investigation that could’ve gotten very ugly very quickly but, for reasons, did not. Then, when he ran for a county office after term limits forced him out of the House, the race was so close that the election results wound up in court. I won that trial for him and he won the office. All in all, I consider myself to be 2-0 representing that guy.

I haven’t practiced law for nearly 12 years, but I’m still licensed, so continuing obligations of confidentiality and loyalty to my former client still exist. As such, I can’t say too much about Householder, especially about my work for him, but based on what’s in the public eye with respect to the current charges against him, his days as a free man probably aren’t all that much longer than his days as a public official were until yesterday. Two of his codefendants have pleaded guilty and are likely helping make the case against him. One of his other codefendants committed suicide not too long ago. It’s not the sort of vibe that swirls around a case where acquittals to alleged ringleaders happen.

I think about Larry Householder and my time with him fairly often. A bit more in the past 11 months since he was indicted, obviously. I have a lot of opinions about it all. One day I’ll share them.

Juneteenth

On Tuesday the Senate unanimously passed a bill that would make Juneteenth, which commemorates emancipation from slavery in the U.S., a federal holiday. The House quickly took up the measure yesterday and passed it as well. All of which is great, of course.

It should not be lost on anyone, however, that a great many elected officials have voted in favor of making Juneteenth a national holiday while simultaneously working overtime to ban people from teaching about it and its purpose in schools or to suppress the Black vote. I suppose when active malevolence is your day-to-day normal, empty gestures are the best anyone can manage.

One Representative who didn’t vote for the Juneteenth holiday was Matt Rosendale of Montana. Here was his rationale:

“Let’s call an ace an ace. This is an effort by the Left to create a day out of whole cloth to celebrate identity politics as part of its larger efforts to make Critical Race Theory the reigning ideology of our country”

I have never heard the term “let’s call an ace an ace.” I have heard the term “let’s call a spade a spade.” I have also heard that latter term used as a racial epithet. Indeed, it was a pretty damn common one when people Representative Rosendale’s age were growing up.

It takes some pretty aggressive racism for someone to dog whistle a racist epithet while voicing one’s opposition to a holiday celebrating the end of the enslavement of Black people, but pretty aggressive racism is not something anyone in the Republican party considers to be a dealbreaker these days.

Go here to learn about Juneteenth.

Great Moments in Authoritarian Propaganda

Jared Kushner has signed a deal with HarperCollins’ conservative imprint, Broadside Books, to write a book on his time in Trump’s administration. Broadside’s press release said, “His book will be the definitive, thorough recounting of the administration — and the truth about what happened behind closed doors.”

He is Donald Trump’s son in law. There is zero reason to believe that there will be anything approaching “truth” in this book and every reason to believe that it will be an exercise in propaganda.

But it’s worse than that. The Trump Administration represented the mainstreaming of authoritarianism in this country. Really, that’s what the Republican Party has become since 2016: an authoritarian party. For a good exploration of that, check out this article Zack Beauchamp of Vox wrote yesterday. We really and truly are on the path toward the United States being an authoritarian country in the literal political sense of the term and we need to face up to that rather than just case what Republicans are doing right now as some partisan policy choices, just as valid as whatever Democrats are pursuing.

It was one thing for publishing houses to give more or less equal time to two competing small-d democratic political parties over the years, but to the extent they’re giving massive book deals to people like Jared Kushner, they should own up to the fact that they are in the business of selling authoritarianism to the country. I’m not sure how a person could go in to work at a place like HarperCollins and be OK with that.

“The Kid Detective”

I watched the movie “The Kid Detective” last night. I knew nothing about it going in other than it came out last year and that it was about an Encyclopedia Brown-type who grew up and, now, in his 30s, is dealing with the sort of arrested development someone who was a boy genius like that might actually face in real life.

I had no idea what to expect but I was blown away. It was fantastic. If you’re into detective stories, you should watch it. If the idea of burned out gifted kids relates to you at all, you should watch it. It was ten times better than I expected it to be. Above all else it stuck the damn landing at the end in a way I’d never expect from a story like this but which, upon reflection, rings absolutely true for a story like this. It’s the best new movie I’ve seen in a long, long time.

It’s on Starz of all places. If you don’t subscribe to it, you can get it for two months for like 99 cents through Amazon Prime and then just cancel later. Otherwise it’s still like $15 to rent online. Even then, though, it’s worth it.

Kindie Rock

Yesterday I dropped a video of Laurie Berkner singing “The Cat Came Back” at the end of the newsletter. Many of you nodded in recognition because, if you’ve had little kids over the past 20 years or so, you’re likely familiar with Berkner’s work. Preschooler music can be insipid sometimes, but she and a handful of others like her make it pretty tolerable. It’s much like good kids’ TV shows in that, while it’s mostly for the little ones, there are things in it for the grownups too. In Berkner’s case good musicianship and a human, as opposed to cartoonish appeal you sometimes get with acts for kids.

I mention Berkner again because I wanted to share with you something I found when I Googled her yesterday: the term “Kindie Rock,” which has its own Wikipedia page. Apparently the term was coined by a Salon writer in 2006, which was when my life was dominated by the stuff, but somehow I had never heard it.

“Kindie Rock.” That’s pretty damn clever.

Mea Culpa Corner

Finally . . . I wrote some stuff about the location of solar panels in yesterday’s newsletter that turned out to be really dumb. No sense in rehashing beyond my acknowledging that (a) solar panels work everywhere; (b) moving anything, including energy, brings with it many costs; and (c) generally don’t listen to me talk about science shit unless I link someone else who knows about it and say “what they said” because I topped out in college freshman year biology and even then I got a C because I half-assed a fruit fly experiment that 10th graders routinely master. Those who can’t write.

In my defense: the entire purpose of the item was not to drop solar panel knowledge. It was to make the Bill Gates/Jeffrey Epstein joke. On those I have much greater intellectual standing.

Have a great day, everyone.