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Within five minutes of waking up, and despite my brand new air purifier, I felt the bad air seeping in. but at least the sky doesn't like like sunrise on Mars yet. Not setting foot outside till tonight, when we hopefully fly to Rochester, NY to visit family. (No guarantees about the smoke monster not eating our flight, of course.) If you don't see me post tomorrow, it's because I am not in a mood to fight with my phone.

So weird that SNY showed a rerun of the previous night's Mets game. Why not show a good episode instead?

I don't think that Messi choose Miami over Saudi Arabia for ethical reasons, but at least someone said no to their money this week. Though I am pretty sure that he really wanted to go back to Barca, only Barca couldn't afford him anymore. Still, it's a pretty big deal for him to play in the US. Reminds me of when Pele came to the Cosmos, only MLS is in much better shape than NASL ever was.

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"Oh goodness!! That ball had a family!" That call was awesome.

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It’s looking grim in DC and not just because of the smoke… Patrick Qorbin somehow earned a “quality start“ despite surrendering three runs in the first inning and 11 hits over six innings overall. The bullpen – including new cannon fodder Jordan Weems, who replaced old cannon fodder, Andres Machado – surrendered 3 more runs. The offense has ghosted us almost as fast as Zach Davies did his wife in 2022. The timing is not good, given that the Nats head off to Houston and Atlanta after tomorrow and then have to host the Marlins, who own them. I said to a friend last night that the next game on the schedule I would not be surprised that they won is Juneteenth at home versus the Cardinals. Woof.

PS We will never know, but I wonder if Jacob deGrom would’ve had this many problems if he had always had to pitch with the pitch clock… He feels like one of those max-effort guys who probably wore his ligaments to a nub by going all out.

PPS I have a friend who has suffered through this horrible Reds rebuilding era - so it’s fun to see them winning. It’s probably best I don’t think about why the Nats don’t have a pipeline of star prospects of their own.

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In theory, shouldn't all outdoor laborers not had to work yesterday in the smoke for the same reason they baseball players didn't? That would be highly disruptive, but the idea is the same.

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If Canada only raked their forests...

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There’s been some bad takes about the deGrom injury. It’s one thing to say “the Mets dodged a bullet” and leave it there. As a Yankees fan one of my immediate takeaways was “this helps the Yankees out.” So I’m good with that level of selfishness. But Craig Carton says deGrom is a turncoat (???), Super 70s has to bring up old pitchers. DeGrom at his peak was maybe the most dominant right-handed pitcher since Maddux or Pedro. I saw something that said he’d have gone like 22-3 had he pitched for the Yankees in 2018 instead of 10-9 with that 1.70 ERA. At least he and Stras got generational wealth for their families.

Speaking of the Yankees, the fan base turning on Volpe is so ridiculous, as is their obsession with Florial. Florial can’t hit major league pitching. He’s a quad-a player at best and Yankees fans still think he’s the next superstar. I understood the loyalty to Andujar because of how reliable he was in 2018. I don’t get it to Florial.

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I feel like there are more run-scoring squeeze bunts this year than in previous years. If true, I wonder why - just a copycat trend? I can't see how it would be tied to the new rules. Someone somewhere must track such things.

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Leaving work yesterday, the smoke was so bad i could smell it in the building lobby. Driving home was like podracing on Tattooine. (no Sebulba on the nj turnpike, unfortunately) My eyes were bugging out from how weird the color hues were, orange/sepia everywhere. The camera in my phone could not properly capture it as it kept auto adjusting. But i'll never forget yesterday and hope it was mostly a one-off.

Does anyone here watch mls with any regularity? Soccer/Futball confuses me greatly in determining levels of competition amongst so many leagues here and in Europe. I can really only use baseball as my baseline. So if Premiere League is MLB, is mls... comparable to AAA, or lower? I wonder if bringing Messi over will encourage other teams to chase after more european players? I remember going to a Cosmos game at Giants Stadium as a kid - the place was packed. A few years later they were out of business. In '94 I was convinced that soccer would become bigger in the US. It kinda got a little bigger but didn't quite get there. I think between this move and the next WC - it has its best chance. Go Miami!

If the Mets get swepped today, I am praying that Uncle Stevie wakes up and hammers his underlings. This can't continue. Why is Vogie continually out there? Why can't the bullpen hold anything?

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I was late getting to my Coffee yesterday due to - shock! - having to work. But I did want to briefly note the discussion of new Phillies part owner Stan Middleman.

I know Stan, having worked at Freedom Mortgage for two years a decade or so back. For one of those years, I reported directly to him meeting with him one on one at least once monthly. Random note: his office was in a building formerly used by NFL Films and the Sabol family.

Stan is a huge Philadelphia sports fan. His office was packed with memorabilia from the 76ers, Eagles, Flyers and local colleges. Baseball was 3rd or 4th on his list. And he tried buying into the 76ers at some point.

He is as close to a self made billionaire as is possible. No family money. He started as an insurance salesman and ended up building a mortgage brokerage. When I was there, the company wrote over $2.5 billion in new loans each month.

Highly impatient and not fond of rules. His risk / reward calculation tilts far towards acceptance of risk. He has a small number of highly loyal employees who have been with him for years, but there is also a lot of churn of folks who don’t fit. He would pay lavishly but made high demand for output.

Spends a lot on some things. Corporate parties, bottles of wine, cars, vacation homes. But can be really cheap on others like the offices themselves. Gruff personality.

I don’t like him at all and my departure was acrimonious but respect his intelligence, creativity and drive.

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I’m so tired of wealthy people trying to tell me what it’s like for me to work at home. An awful lot of us actually get more done because we aren’t bogged down in interruptions from the random pop-ins of those who are so insecure they think we need to return to our veal pens.

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When I left my workplace yesterday the outside air smelled of the fires.

Welcome to the new global warming future, everyone. 😠

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Yeah, the smoke is really bad here too... on top of the insanely high pollen counts we've had for weeks, just taking a normal breath feels like a luxury these days.

I've also been working from home for a few years, and working from home twice a week for a few years before that. I've never been more productive.

Finally, I'm glad to see there will be a good group in Minneapolis on the 17th. I wanted to make the trip but couldn't stomach the cost of the flights. Hope everyone has a super weekend.

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I’ll never forget Iron Sheik putting Hulk Hogan in the ‘Camel Clutch’, Hulk shaking and standing up to get out of it (the first escape ever from the clutch’) giving the sheik the atomic leg drop and then pinning him for the title to win the belt ! HULKAMANIA IS RUNNING WILD !!!

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There are some who have always doubted me here, even told me to “smoke another fat J”, when I have stated the obvious that MLS is, without question, the top soccer league on the planet. I imagine there are several hot, steaming plates of crow being eaten for breakfast this morning.

As the great Tim the Enchanter once said, “I warned you! I warned you, but did you listen to me? Oh, no, you knew it all, didn't you? Oh, it's just a harmless little upstart soccer league, isn't it? Well, it's always the same. I always tell them.”

We all know the story by now. The MLS All-Stars rocked Bayern Munich 2-1 in 2014 in Portland - a Bayern Munich team that was both the reigning FIFA Club World Cup champs and basically the entire German national team fresh off a World Cup title. And Landon Donovan ran circles around their helpless asses. You can’t say Bayern was treating it as an exhibition match - their coach Sep Guardiola was super pissed after the match, indicating competitiveness and a desire to win, but they simply lacked the talent of the MLS All-Stars. The MLS had resoundingly staked its claim at the top of the world soccer league mountain.

Then, the influx of the world’s best superstars from the Euro Leagues to MLS began to flow like wine. Wayne Rooney. Thierry Henry. Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Didier Drogba. David Villa. Bastien Schweinsteiger. Robbie Keane. Frank Lampard. Gareth Wales. I could do this all day, but as you can see - it’s a clear, undeniable pattern.

And now, the crown of them all. The undisputed greatest player in the world and perhaps history, Lionel Messi, has followed in their footsteps, leaving the inferior Euro Leagues behind to sharpen his skills against the best in the world in the MLS. He even turned down Saudi bonesaw cash to do it, proving his desire to play against the best rather than take the money from a crown prince who is turning golf into gulf. Lionel isn’t Messi-ng around like the pathetic PGA - he wants to compete.

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The Twins' inability to score runs except for when they explode with 8+ is nuts. A local scribe pointed out that they lead the league with 625 strikeouts, a little over 10 a game and 10% more than the next team. Rod Carew struck out 55 times in 694 appearances in his MVP season.

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Sooooo, like, Messi wanted to step out of the spot light and focus on himself by....become the biggest football attraction on an entire continent? Good luck with that dude.

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