Cup of Coffee: May 11, 2023

Correa booed, Alvarado injured, a billionaire's bunker, George Santos keeps his promises, MLK and Malcom X, a blogging trailblazer passes, Bob Dylan whiskey, and just one more thing

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

Today we, as always, have the recaps. We also have Carlos Correa getting booed and a potentially troublesome injury for the Phillies. In Other Stuff, I went down a silly rabbit hole regarding a local billionaire’s bunker, congratulate George Santos on keeping his promises, look at a potentially game-changing revelation regarding the relationship between Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X, offer a sad goodbye to a blogging trailblazer, pencil in a trip to Louisville to drink some Bob Dylan whiskey, and there’s . . . just one more thing.

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And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Dodgers 8, Brewers 1: Clayton Kershaw had your standard ho-hum Clayton Kershaw start, going seven innings, allowing one run, striking out eight and picking up his National League-leading sixth win on the year. It was on a day after L.A. used seven relievers, too, so it was real stopper stuff. After the game, Brewers losing pitcher Wade Miley said of Kershaw, “He’s the best lefty we’ve seen in this game probably since dadgum Koufax.” Yes, he actually said “dadgum,” but he’s from the south so we’ll let him have that one. Anyway, Freddie Freeman homered and drove in three. Will Smith and Miguel Vargas also went deep. The Dodgers lead the league with 64 homers. Which, again, I am told is worrisome.

Tigers 5, Guardians 0: Eduardo Rodríguez keeps up his strong pitching, shutting out the G-Men (eh, we’ll work on that) for seven innings while striking out eight. In his last start he shut out the Mets for eight innings. Three starts ago he shut out Baltimore for eight. He’s rolling on a 19.1-inning scoreless streak. His ERA on the season is 1.57. That’ll play.

Rockies 4, Pirates 3: It was a close game and the Pirates had loaded the bases with no outs against Daniel Bard in the bottom of the sixth. Bard struck out Connor Joe, then in came Brad Hand. Hand gave up a fly ball to Jack Suwinski to shallow center field. Bryan Reynolds, who was on third, figured he’d tag up and score. Rockies center fielder Brenton Doyle felt differently about it, catching the ball and firing a perfect strike to catcher Austin Wynn to tag Reynolds out and to snuff out a would-be rally with the double play. The Rockies, who took two of three from the Pirates, have won eight of ten.

Yankees 11, Athletics 3: Anthony Volpe hit a grand slam. It was his first and the first ever by a Yankees rookie shortstop, so take that Phil Rizzuto, Tom Tresh, Mark Koenig, Frankie Crosetti, Tony Kubek, and Cap’n Jetes. Harrison Bader hit a first-inning three-run jack. D.J. LeMahieu hit a two-run homer. The Yankees sweep the hapless A’s, outscoring them 28-10 in the three-game set.

Rangers 4, Mariners 3: Marcus Semien homered in the third and singled in a run in the sixth and Dane Dunning, making a special appearance as a starter, allowed only two runs in six strong innings. He has a 1.72 ERA in two starts and eight relief appearances this year. Swingmen are never the leading men, but they are essential supporting actors so of course the Dane is taking to the role well.

Marlins 5, Diamondbacks 4: You’ll be shocked to hear this but the Marlins won another one-run game. Their 12th straight to start the season which is a new MLB record. Jesús Sánchez hit a three-run homer and doubled to star the winning rally in the ninth, after which his pinch-runner scored the winning run on a Joey Wendle double. The Miami bullpen was lights out, tossing five and two-thirds shutout innings and getting posted 10 of those 17 outs via strikeout. Snakes batters struck out 15 times in all.

Nationals 11, Giants 6: Washington had an 8-0 lead before the Giants even scored. The bottom of the order did the damage here, with seventh batter Stone Garrett going 2-for-4 with a two-run single, eighth batter Ildemaro Vargas going 3-for-5 with a two-run triple and an RBI double, and ninth batter Riley Adams hitting a three-run shot. Lane Thomas also homered and starter Josiah Gray allowed two over seven. Washington takes two of three from the Giants and now fly home to take on the struggling Mets.

Phillies 2, Blue Jays 1: Zack Wheeler (7 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 7K) and Kevin Gausman (6 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 9K) each pitched well enough to win but each lacked run support. A Brandon Belt homer in the fifth and a J.T. Realmuto RBI double in the ninth sent this one to extras. In the tenth the Manfred Man scored when, with two men on, Bryce Harper hit one back to the pitcher but Bo Bichette threw the ball away trying to turn two. Philly has won three in a row.

Astros 5, Angels 4: A Yordan Álvarez first inning solo shot and a four-run fourth put this one just out of reach. Cristian Javier was strong for the Astros, allowing two runs and striking out 11 over six. A two-run Shohei Ohtani homer and a couple of subsequent base runners in the ninth made this one a bit hairy, but it was too little too late for the Angels. Houston takes two of three.

Orioles 2, Rays 1: Dean Kremer shut the Rays out through six and the two the O’s plated in that sixth inning vian an Adam Frazier groundout and an Austin Hays single were enough. Baltimore taking two of three from the Rays closes the gap in the AL East to 4.5 games. Could be interesting.

Mets 2, Reds 1: Justin Verlander got his first win as a Met after allowing just one run on two hits over seven with seven strikeouts. Pete Alonso’s second inning homer tied things at one and Brandon Nimmo’s RBI single in the fourth concluded the scoring.

Red Sox 5, Atlanta 2: Bryan Bello allowed six hits and two runs in six innings — one of those came on an insanely long Ronald Acuña Jr. homer — but Raimel Tapia doubled in a run in the seventh to break a 2-2 tie and Triston Casas hit a two-run homer in the ninth to give Boston a three-run lead. That brought in Kenley Jansen who allowed a hit but picked up his 400th career save. He’s seventh on the all-time list, three ahead of Craig Kimbrel. Next up is Billy Wagner at 422.

Royals 9, White Sox 1: Nick Pratto, Michael Massey and Edward Olivares homered, Brad Keller allowed one over five, and four Royals relievers struck out seven batters over four scoreless innings to give Kansas City its third win in four games.

Twins 4, Padres 3: San Diego trailed 2-0 but tied it up late in regulation via a Juan Soto homer and a Manny Machado sac fly. The sides traded runs in the 10th but in the 11th Alex Kiriloff singled home Max Kepler for the walkoff win. I did not watch this one but my spy network informs me that both the Padres and the Twins broadcasters used the term “Manfred Man” in extras. We accept you, one of us. We accept you, one of us. Gooble-gobble, gooble-gobble.

Cubs 10, Cardinals 4: Jordan Montgomery got shelled and the Cards pen didn’t do much better. Willson Contrearas was DHing, however, so I have no idea who they’re blaming for that. Yan Gomes and Patrick Wisdom homered for Chicago. The Cubs avoid the sweep.

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The Daily Briefing

Carlos Correa: “I’d boo myself too”

The Twins $200 million shortstop is off to a horrendous start in 2023. On Tuesday night, as he was en route to an 0-for-5 night on which he stranded six base runners, the Target Field crowd turned on him and showered him with boos.

Correa, asked about it after the game, said this:

"I'd boo myself too with the amount of money I'm making, if I'm playing like that. Obviously, (the boos are) acceptable. It's part of the game, part of sports. Fans want production, and fans want a team that's going to compete out there and win games. It's to be expected when you play poorly.”

That’s a pretty chill way to react to that I suppose. Though I suspect it’s easier to be zen about it when, despite all your struggles, your team is in first place because no one in the AL Central is particularly good.

Phillies place José Alvarado on the IL

The Philadelphia Phillies have placed reliever José Alvarado on the injured list due to inflammation in his pitching elbow. Which really sucks given how good a season he’s had so far: He has tossed 14.1 innings and has truck out 24 batters and walked just one while posting a 1.88 ERA.

It especially sucks inasmuch as this sounds like it could be a major injury, with manager Rob Thomson telling reporters, “I'm a little concerned, for sure.” Stay tuned.

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Other Stuff

When you have too much time on your hands

Ever since I began writing about Les Wexner — Ohio’s richest man and the mogul behind the Limited, Victoria’s Secret, Bath and Body Works, and all of those companies — I’ve gotten a lot of emails and messages from people wanting to share dirt on him or ask for whatever new dirt I may have on him. Which, sure, billionaires are weird and interesting and Wexner has had a lot of shady shit orbiting around him over the years, so I get it.

Last week I got a message on Instagram from someone I don’t know. It read in relevant part:

I was doing some research on [Leslie] Wexner’s property in New Albany and recently read your article about it that you wrote 4 years ago. I stumbled across some forums discussing how he has a bunker that is located about 20 minutes from his residence. Here are the coordinates: [redacted because it seems kinda creepy]. If you plug them into Google Earth you can clearly see the concrete entrances, air vents, etc. It’s very interesting because the outskirts of this land on google earth show a barn type gate and fence with a no trespassing sign on it. I was wondering if you know if this belongs to Wexner, or know anything else about this?

I’ve been sort of off the Wexner beat for a bit and so I ignored this message for a couple of days and then forgot about it completely. While checking an Instagram message yesterday from someone I did know I saw that one sitting there again and figured that, since I was kinda bored, I’d see what I could see.

First thing I did was plug in the coordinates on Google Earth. The location is out in farm country, not terribly far from me, and a few minutes shy of that “20 minutes from his mansion” suggestion in the message. Though it’s off the beaten path, I know the area pretty well. Here is what Google Earth reveals:

I have no idea what those black boxes that are scattered around are — I think that’s what my correspondent believes to be air vents — but note the structures on the far left of the photo, here in detail:

Those two things look like bunker entrances of some type. Compare to this BBC photo of a decommissioned nuclear fallout bunker built for government officials in the UK:

And though it’s hard to tell from the photos above, a wider Google Earth view does show the land behind my mystery structures to be raised, seemingly artificially so, as though they are entrances into something dug into the ground, not unlike this UK site. So, I at least have a suspicion that it’s some kind of bunker on this farmland that is apparently not being utilized for any other purpose except, probably, hay.

With still more time on my hands I went to the county auditor’s website to search real estate records.

These structures sit on a 129-acre plot of land that is owned by something called the The Wesleyan Conservation Corp. That company, which is listed as a “for profit agriculture” operation, names its statutory agent as one Dorothy Snow. I looked her up. She died in 2012 but according to her obituary she spent decades as a paralegal for the now-defunct Columbus law firm of Schwartz, Kelm, Warren & Rubenstein. Some quick Googling revealed (a) that Snow’s business address matched that law firm’s address at the time of incorporation in 1990; and (b) that that firm “represent[ed] Les Wexner’s personal investment company” and his public company, The Limited at the time. Finally, I found that the Wesleyan Conservation Corp has for its business address, as opposed to its agent’s address, the same address, down to the office suite, as The Wexner Family Charitable Fund, here in New Albany.

So: Wexner definitely owns this land and whatever’s on it, even if it’s routed through both an agriculture concern that doesn’t seem to do much if any farming and his family’s charity. Further, that agriculture concern’s statutory agent has been dead for 11 years and the law firm for which she worked when designated the corporation’s agent has been defunct for over 25 years and the Secretary of State’s website shows zero corporate filings or restructuring or activity of any other kind for over 30 years. And, as noted, there appears to be little if any agricultural activity happening on this for-profit agriculture company’s land.

My takeaway: I think there’s a bunker there. I don’t know if it’s your standard “billionaire who thinks he’s gonna live forever wants to protect himself from the apocalypse” kind of thing, a “protect myself from the pitchfork-wielding masses panic room kind of thing, a Dr. Evil lair kind of thing, or some combination of all all three, but it’s a bunker of some kind. And frankly, I find it all fascinating if, for no other reason, than it can all go into the massive file I have in which, for the past 18 years, I have collected various bits and bobs for a massive novel based on New Albany, Ohio that I keep telling myself I’m gonna write one day.

For that much I was thankful, so I wanted to reply to the person who sent me the tip on the Wexner maybe-bunker.

His account has been deleted. Hmm.

If you don’t hear from me in the next few days, assume they got to me too and avenge me, my readers. Avenge me.

George Santos keeps his promises

Look, the guy is a serial liar who has been charged criminally, but unlike most politicians, George Santos is delivering on his campaign promises:

Now all we do is wait for him to sit down with Amy Chozick of the New York Times for the puff piece in which he’s referred to as “Anthony Devolder” and his lies and crimes are portrayed as the doings of the character George Santos, an identity which society demanded he assume in order for a gay Brazilian man to make it in Republican politics.

His kindness to his pets and his taste in cafes will carry the profile.

MLK’s famous criticism of Malcom X was apparently fabricated

There has long been this notion that Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X were hopelessly at odds, with King espousing non-violent protest, Malcom X advocating for violent revolution, and the former sharply disapproving of the latter’s ideas and methods.

A great deal of that comically reductive and misleading notion has been informed by a posthumous whitewashing of King’s legacy. Indeed, King was far more of a radical than most of us understand him to have been. Among white people he was largely hated and feared until the day he died, at which point his words and messages were significantly sanitized. Since then he has became a secular saint, rife for coopting by a white America which would prefer not to acknowledge the things he actually said and did. In the meantime, that idea — “King kindly and good/Malcom scary” — gained pretty wide purchase and has largely not been shaken.

Beyond the mere fantasy of white people, a great deal of the King/X dichotomy was based on a wide-ranging interview of King by the author Alex Haley in Playboy magazine in 1965. In the interview as printed King was quoted as saying that X “has done himself and our people a great disservice” with his “fiery, demagogic oratory” and that X’s approach “can reap nothing but grief.” As Jonathan Eig, the author of an upcoming King biography discovered, however, it appears as though Alex Haley completely fabricated King’s criticism of Malcom X.

Working with a full-typewritten transcript of Haley’s interview with King that Eig found in Haley’s archives, he learned that some of the words attributed to King in the article were taken completely out of context in order to make them apply to X. Other passages which appeared in the article, including “I feel that Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice” do not appear anywhere in the transcript at all.

Haley has long been accused — and on one occasion, legally determined — to have plagiarized and/or fabricated some of his work. Given that the Playboy interview has shaped a great deal of the public’s ideas about Martin Luther King Jr.’s views of Malcom X and his politics, it’s a big, big deal if that too was fabricated. Which it appears to have been.

Heather Armstrong: 1975-2023

Heather Armstrong, a/k/a Heather Hamilton, a/k/a “Dooce” died of suicide on Tuesday. She was 47.

Armstrong gained immense popularity in the early days of blogging, focusing first on motherhood and then, later, on her struggles with major depression disorder and alcoholism. In recent years she took a great amount of justified criticism for trafficking in anti-trans sentiment. She had, at some point recently deleted all of her previous posts save one about working on her sobriety. Her partner, Pete Ashdown, told the Associated Press that she recently had a relapse following 18 months of sobriety, that “really spiraled her down” and he attributes her death to that spiral. It all sounds horrible and tragic.

It’s hard to overstate how significant and influential a figure Armstrong was in the early days of blogging. She was one of the first people who demonstrated that you could make a living just writing about your life and your interests on the Internet. She pioneered a first person writing voice and wide-open sharing of her personal life that would become the norm for bloggers. She was the namesake for the act of getting fired from one’s day job for blogging about it on the sly, which became known as “getting dooced” after her nickname, which was itself based on a typo for the word “dude.” As someone who has turned his inner monologue into a career, who probably overshares about his life and his kids, who is known for his typos, and who was, in large part anyway, dooced from his law firm job in 2008, Armstrong was a pretty damn relatable figure for me, at least for a good while.

Back when I and a lot of other people were reading Armstrong’s blog on the regular it felt like we were going through the struggles of parenting young kids together. Indeed, Armstrong leaves behind a daughter who is 19, which is my daughter’s age, and a 13 year-old son, each of which I read about a great deal when they were young. I understand that one of the major criticisms Armstrong received over the years was that she overshared and overexposed her kids in a public forum, but I can’t help but feel like I watched them grow up for a while and it was a good thing that, at times, was helpful to me as a young, sometimes struggling parent.

I absolutely ache for her kids today. How incredibly sad this is.

Bob Dylan’s Heaven’s Door whiskey gets a brand center in Louisville

I was rather pleased when Bob Dylan — or, rather, the folks connected to Bob Dylan Inc.™ who handle such things — came out with his Heaven’s Door whiskey and bourbon line a few years ago. It’s pretty tasty stuff. The bourbon has a high rye content which is what I prefer, as a nice spicy bite is better than sweeter wheat notes as far as I’m concerned. I’m guessing the fact that it’s good stuff stems from the fact that, unlike a lot of celebrity spirits, the company is not run like some quickie gimmick brand.

The CEO of Heaven's Door is a guy named Marc Bushala, who was a co-founder of Angel's Envy which, while I’m a bit cold on it, I know a lot of people love. The master blender of the label is a guy named Ryan Perry. He’s experienced in the industry on both the distilling and the branding side and he persuaded Dylan — who was already looking to enter the whiskey world — to eschew a kitschy, outlaw “bootleg” branding strategy he had come up with, aimed at tying into his “Bootleg” series of album releases, and to go with something more refined. What’s resulted is a couple of surprisingly good expressions of whiskey that punch above their price point and which are packaged and marketed in an attractive and understated way. Which is something of a rarity in late-Bourbon Boom America.

Heaven’s Door is based in Tennessee and sources most of its whiskey from Tennessee distillers, but it’s about to open a new brand experience center — a fancy name for tasting room/bar — in the hip NuLu neighborhood of Louisville. It’ll be in an old church gymnasium with the name Last Refuge. Again, Dylan does not run Heaven’s Door on a day-to-day basis, but that’s a dead-on Dylan name. Heaven’s Door bottles feature images of Dylan’s iron works — he’s big into that¹ — and the new center in Louisville will feature pieces of his art alongside other art installations.

It’s been a minute since I’ve been down to Louisville, but it sounds like a place I gotta see.

Just one more thing . . .

A Utah widow and mother who, in the wake of her husband’s death, wrote a widely praised book aimed at helping children deal with grief, has been charged with murder for allegedly poisoning her late husband with a lethal dose of fentanyl.

There’s a lot to be said about this story but all I can think is that if you put this back in 1974, cast Joyce Van Patten, Jennifer Warren or, perhaps, Jo Ann Pflug as the wife, and set it in Los Angeles you’d have yourself a crackin’ “Columbo” episode.

Columbo: Mrs. Richins, pardon me for being such a bother, but there’s still something I just can’t figure out.

Mrs. Richins: [impatiently] What is it, Lieutenant?

Columbo: Well, it says here in your statement that you slept in one of your children’s bedrooms the night your husband died.

Mrs. Richins: Yes. Eric had woken up with a nightmare. I went to my daughter’s room so I could get some sleep. I had a very busy day ahead of me.

Columbo: Yes, yes, I read that in your statement as well. And believe me, I know how busy people in your line of work can be. When my wife and I were buying our house we couldn’t even get our realtor on the phone. Of course, the commission on our little bungalow in Silver Lake is not all that important I don’t supp—

Mrs. Richins: Lieutenant! I really must be going.

Columbo: Of course, of course. Sorry, Mrs. Richins. What I meant to ask you, though . . . .

And so on. The actual case seems to be turning on the woman’s cell phone usage, but we can’t have that in “Columbo.” Maybe for our purposes the whole thing turns on an inconsistency in the story about sleeping in the kids’ room. There’s also something in there about how she claimed she gave him a Moscow mule — probably what the poison was in — and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t spend a great deal of time yesterday researching both ginger allergies and copper toxicity to see if there might be a clue that the good lieutenant might find in all of that. I ultimately gave up because no one is paying me to write a TV episode and, even if they were, the writers are on strike and it’d feel kind of scabby, but just know that it’d be a top tier episode, I bet.

Have a great day, everyone.

1. That link, examining Dylan’s metalworking, contains an excellent observation about what the writer calls “the unfortunate and relatively recent phenomenon” of people getting cranky when artists who are famous for one thing try to do something else: “For centuries artists were encouraged to venture outside one particular medium. At some point the Renaissance Man became a problematic concept for our nation of branding. Artists, much like athletes in the 21^st Century, are often encouraged to specialize. Strangely, there seems to be a subtle resentment of interdisciplinary talent in our culture. ‘Stay in your own lane’ has become a kind of mantra in response to the actor who paints or the rapper who acts.” While there are many examples where artists might’ve been better off not branching out — no one needed Bruce Willis to sing bad blues songs — I agree that the knee jerk assumption that a singer shouldn’t sculpt or an actor shouldn’t write are sad and limiting. It can be amazing what people do when they leave their comfort zone, even if there are more failures in that regard than successes.