Cup of Coffee: May 27, 2021

Callaway, fisticuffs, naked men scurrying into pipes, kings being killed in brawls, forgotten Australian funny men, a win-vulturing Uber driver, and Star Wars

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Today’s recaps feature fisticuffs, naked men scurrying into pipes, kings being killed in brawls, nearly forgotten Australian funny men, a win-vulturing Uber driver, and a boy on a flat roof, leaning against a wall of rain, aerial held high, who is about to have a bad time of it. We also, finally, have a decision from MLB on what to do about Mickey Callaway, some drama in Chicago regarding foreign substances, some injuries, another Tony La Russa-related outrage, baseball cards, and more news about those janky-ass New Era caps.

In Other Stuff, I explain how J.J. Abrams could’ve saved the “Star Wars” reboot, note our first vaccination lottery winner, revisit Spygate, and talk about a place where there are more stars than the heavens.

Let’s get at ‘er.

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And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Astros 5, Dodgers 2: Carlos Correa, José Altuve and Aledmys Díaz all homered to stop a four-game slide. There was some slugging in the stands, too:

Rocky the Husky @rocky__k

Game gettin wild @barstoolsports

Two notable things here. First: dude with the backwards cap? Your buddy is getting pummeled. Maybe help a bit more?

Second: the dude doing the pummeling was getting help from a woman who seemed to be his wife or girlfriend (the blond in the Dodgers jersey above). As they were doing that, what seemed to be their toddler child was sitting there crying her eyes out, likely terrified. An Astros fan saw this, picked her up and moved her away from the fight and comforted her as security was arriving. That person was a saint. Those adults fighting were terrible. What in the hell is wrong with people?

In related news, from the AP gamer:

There were plenty of LA fans in the crowd of 30,939, but they were decidedly less vocal and rowdy than they were when Clayton Kershaw pitched the Dodgers to a 9-2 victory on Tuesday.

In the writer’s defense, you can’t really get a good look at the crowd from the press box. Also:

[Dusty] Baker loved the energy from the fans.

"We enjoyed them," he said. "They were into the game. ... It was a lot of fun. This is how I remember Houston being."

Can’t see them very well from the dugout either.

Twins 3, Orioles 2: Trey Mancini homered in the first, In the sixth Miguel Sanó did the Crocodile Dundee voice and said, “that’s not a homah, this is a homah,” and hit a three-run shot. OK, that’s a lie. Sanó is more of a “Young Einstein” fan when it comes to 1980s Australian comedies.

Rays 2, Royals 1: Tyler Glasnow tossed eight shutout innings and struck out 11 but got a no-decision because his mates only scored one while he was in and reliever J.P. Feyereisen gave up a ninth inning homer to Andrew Benintendi to tie it and force extras. Feyereisen stayed on for the tenth and vultured a win that rightly should’ve been Glasnow’s by being the pitcher of record when Manuel Margot singled in Kevin Kiermaier to walk it off.

Don’t be too hard on Feyereisen, though. He’s a working man. From the Tampa Bay Times, talking about how Feyereisen, though just traded to the Rays, is familiar with the area:

The Wisconsin native had never been to Tropicana Field before, but is somewhat familiar with the Tampa Bay area. Before being traded to the Brewers in September 2019, Feyereisen had three springs as a Yankees minor-leaguer training in Tampa.

And in 2018, he spent his free evenings as a driver for Uber.

“I had to make a little money as a minor-leaguer,” Feyereisen, 28, said. “So I kind of got to know the area pretty well.”

What an endorsement for Major League Baseball and its treatment of minor leaguers.

Cardinals 4, White Sox 0: There was some foreign substance drama here, which I detail down below in The Daily Briefing. That aside it was all Cards with John Gant tossing five shutout innings and three relievers finishing up the six-hit shutout. Tommy Edman hit two homers for St. Louis and Edmundo Sosa singled in two in the ninth.

In completely unrelated news there was a King Edmund of England back in the early 900s. He had a half-brother named Æthelstan who proceeded him. You don’t come across many Æthelstans these days. Edmund’s reign was, according to Wikipedia, “marked by almost constant warfare, including conquests or reconquests of the Midlands, Northumbria, and Strathclyde.” I’m guessing the “reconquests” were because Æthelstans messed up the first conquest. SO like him. Edmund was only king for six and a half years, because he was “killed in a brawl with an outlaw at Pucklechurch in Gloucestershire.” I imagine killing a king in a brawl now. That would be amazing tabloid fodder.

Edmund was succeeded by his brother Eadred, who was succeeded by Edmund's sons Eadwig and then Edgar the Peaceful. I’m guessing Edgar the Peaceful was not killed in a brawl, but it’d be pretty hilarious if he had been. Then I suppose he’d be Edgar the Ironic. We should start putting adjectives back in people’s names, by the way. I’d be Craig the Discursive.

Athletics 6, Mariners 3: James Kaprielian pitched seven scoreless innings, allowing two hits and walking two. Matt Olson homered, Seth Brown had two hits and two RBI, and Ramón Laureano and Matt Chapman each drove in a run. So sayeth I, Craig the Succinct.

Angels 9, Rangers 8: Taylor Ward hit a three-run homer and Justin Upton went deep as well in a five-run first. The Angels then took a 9-1 lead thanks to a four-run fifth which featured two more Taylor Ward RBI. Texas was add two in the sixth and five in the eighth in a close-but-no-cigar comeback effort led by two-run shots from both Nate Lowe and Joey Gallo. Ward almost had to pull an Edmund and embark on a reconquest of Texas thanks to the Angels’ Æthelstans-ass bullpen, but L.A. held on.

Tigers 1, Cleveland 0: It was 0-0 until the eighth when Robbie Grossman hit a sac fly. That was it. That was the only run in the game. The teams only managed seven hits between them too. The Tigers ended a four-game losing streak overall and a six-game skid against Cleveland. Which led Tigers pitcher Derek Holland to say, “We're knocking on the door. Soon we're gonna kick that thing down.” Nice win I guess, Derek, but keep your powder dry, Tex. Your team had three hits. Y’all are barely tapping.

Cubs 4, Pirates 1: David Bote homered and Kris Bryant had two RBI singles to back up a six-inning one-run performance from Trevor Williams. Chicago won for the fifth time in six games and stayed a half-game back of St. Louis for the NL Central lead. Pittsburgh lost their fifth in a row and eighth of nine.

Marlins 4, Phillies 2: The teams traded runs in the third and Philly took a 2-1 lead in the fifth but Miami came back plating one via RBI singles from Jon Berti and José Devers in the eighth. Berti’s was a two-run job. Philadelphia played without Bryce Harper, Didi Gregorius and J.T. Realmuto. They’ve dropped eight of 11.

Red Sox 9, Atlanta 5: Rafael Devers homered and drove in three, Hunter Renfroe also homered, Christian Vázquez had three RBI, and Xander Bogaerts walked twice and scored three times as Boston put a stop to Atlanta’s four-game winning streak. There was a three-hour rain delay in the middle of this one. That’s a long night at the park.

Padres 2, Brewers 1: Chris Paddack and Eric Lauer each allowed only one run in six innings of work. It went tied that way into extras. Victor Caratini's leadoff single scored the automatic runner with the go-ahead run in the tenth. Milwaukee threatened in their half of the 10th, putting runners on the corners, but Jake Cronenworth made a diving stop of a Jackie Bradley Jr. grounder, got up and threw out the potential tying run at the plate.

Giants 5, Diamondbacks 4: Arizona took a 4-0 lead in the second inning but the Giants chipped two back in the sixth. In the eighth Austin Slater hit a tying pinch-hit homer and right after that Jason Vosler hit a solo shot to give San Francisco a lead they’d hang on to despite an attempted rally by Arizona in the ninth. They couldn’t scratch a run out despite loading the bases with one out, which meant ten straight losses for the Snakes.

Reds vs. Nationals— Suspended: Hey, the game didn’t get finished, but at least there was some action:

Patrick Smith @patricksmith04

Where is the perfect place to hide after streaking in a rain delay during a Washington Nationals baseball game? It appears to be the rain tarp roller tube // @GettySport

Here’s a video of the guy’s full streak, complete with tarp slide and his temporary escape from security into the roller. President Biden: pardon this man.

Blue Jays vs. Yankees; Rockies vs. Mets — POSTPONED:

🎶There's a storm outside
And the gap between crack and thunder
Crack and thunder
Is closing in
Is closing in

The rain floods gutters
And makes a great sound on concrete

On a flat roof, there's a boy
Leaning against a wall of rain
Aerial held high
Calling "Come on thunder
Come on thunder!"🎶

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The Daily Briefing

Mickey Callaway placed on ineligible list through at least 2022

It took nearly four months, but Rob Manfred finally took action against Angels pitching coach Mickey Callaway, placing him on the Ineligible List until, at a minimum, the end of the 2022 season, at which point Callaway will be eligible to apply for potential reinstatement.

Manfred’s statement:

“My office has completed its investigation into allegations of sexual harassment by Mickey Callaway.  Having reviewed all of the available evidence, I have concluded that Mr. Callaway violated MLB’s policies, and that placement on the Ineligible List is warranted.  We want to thank the many people who cooperated with our Department of Investigations (DOI) in their work, which spanned Mr. Callaway’s positions with three different Clubs.  The Clubs that employed Mr. Callaway each fully cooperated with DOI, including providing emails and assisting with identifying key witnesses.  Harassment has no place within Major League Baseball, and we are committed to providing an appropriate work environment for all those involved in our game.”

On February 1, in a report in The Athletic, five women in sports media accused Callaway of lewd behavior. Callaway is alleged to have “aggressively pursued” these women, sending inappropriate photographs and requesting naked photos in return, thrusting his crotch in a reporter’s face while she interviewed him and telling another woman he’d provide information about the Mets, which he then managed, if she got drunk with him.

Callaway’s behavior, which subsequent reporting has made clear was “the worst-kept secret in sports,” was said to be known by many people in New York, Cleveland, and Anaheim when he worked there. Notably, though, there was no other discipline and no mention of any other baseball figure in connection with Callaway’s actions. If clubs were providing emails and “key witnesses” that were important to the investigation, it at least suggests institutional knowledge on their part of Callaway’s behavior, but nothing has come of it publicly. At the very least one would hope that some sort of report, even if a broad view, might be released to explain why a lech like Callaway was able to get away with everything he got away with for so long, but there is no suggestion from Major League Baseball that such a thing is forthcoming.

Not surprisingly, the Angels fired Callaway as soon as MLB dropped the hammer on him. They issued a brief statement thanking MLB for its investigation. The Mets had no comment. Cleveland’s owner Paul Dolan issued a curious comment that simultaneously admitted that the team did not create an environment in which Callaway’s victims felt like they could report his behavior, and that MLB issued recommendations to the team about how it could better handle such matters in the future, but he then felt obligated to make clear that “there was no finding against the Cleveland Indians related to the Callaway matter.” Not their fault, they want everyone to know.

For his part, Callaway issued a statement through a spokesperson:

"My family and I fully support MLB's strong stance against harassment and discrimination and are grateful to the Commissioner and his office for their thorough investigation. I apologize to the women who shared with investigators any interaction that made them feel uncomfortable. To be clear, I never intended to make anyone feel this way and didn't understand that these interactions might do that or violate MLB policies. However, those are my own blind spots, and I take responsibility for the consequences.

"In my 25 years in professional baseball I have never taken for granted the privilege of being even a small part of this great game of ours. To say I regret my past poor choices would be an understatement. I remain hopeful that I can return to baseball when eligible at the conclusion of next season, but for now, I plan to work on my own shortcomings and repairing any damage I have caused with my colleagues and, particularly, my family."

A useful thing would be to know what failures took place in the Mets, Angels, and Cleveland organizations that allowed this to happen and what MLB told them about how to deal with this better going forward. A useful thing would be to know the specific failures and the people in positions of authority who looked the other way when this “worst kept secret in baseball” was allowed to persist.

We don’t get that, though. We get Mickey Callaway’s head, temporarily, on a plate. And nothing else.

Anti-foreign substance enforcement got real in Chicago yesterday

Before the season began Major League Baseball said it was going to crack down on pitchers using foreign substances this year. It said it would monitor spin rates to see who might be obviously using pine tar and the like and that it’d confiscate balls and other equipment for inspection if umpires suspected pitchers of using the old sticky stuff. Which makes it weird that the only thing confiscated this year before yesterday were a couple of Trevor Bauer-used baseballs, after which we heard nothing. It’s weird because virtually every pitcher is using gunk these days. That’s why all of those amazing spin rates and ungodly tailing fastballs and sliders exist.

Yesterday, though, we had an enforcement action. It took place in the Cardinals-White Sox game when umpire Joe West asked Cardinals reliever Giovanny Gallegos to change hats in the bottom of the seventh inning due to there being a foreign substance on the brim. Cardinals manager Mike Shildt came out to argue with West over the incident and got ejected. Right after the game, Shildt laid it out on the line:

“This is baseball's dirty little secret, and this is the wrong time and the wrong arena to expose it. You want to police some sunscreen and rosin? Go ahead. Get every single person in this league. Why don't you start with the guys that are cheating with some stuff that's really impacting the game?”

He’s not wrong. If you start taking away caps of every pitcher doctoring baseballs, you’re gonna have a national hat shortage. Dudes will be forced to wear back stock of those New Era Local Market caps that made the news on Tuesday.

Later Shildt released an additional statement to clarify some of his earlier comments:

“I have a great working relationship with the umpires and Major League Baseball. They have a lot of challenges to doing their job and they do it well. Having to police foreign substances, candidly, shouldn't have to be a part of their job.”

View that as Shildt’s “please don’t suspend me” makeup statement. But again, he’s not wrong. Everyone is doing this. How MLB is going to get it back under control via some half-assed challenge or spot-check system is beyond me.

Corey Kluber out two months

Yankees starter Corey Kluber is expected to miss at least two months with a right shoulder injury. A subscapularis strain, to be specific, but which is something I’ve never heard of. It’s related to the rotator cuff so it’s no bueno for a pitcher, that’s for damn sure.

Kluber was pulled after three innings Tuesday night during his start against Toronto. It was his first outing following his no-hitter last week. He can’t throw for at least four weeks, followed by at least four weeks of rehabilitation, the Yankees said.

Thanks for the no-no, I guess. But damn.

La Russa’s Lounge?

The Chicago White Sox have a lounge at their ballpark that, for 16 years, had been named after a beloved, longtime concessions employee, who began working for the team in 1945 and remained with the club for over 60 years. Her name was Loretta Micele, and the name of the lounge was “Loretta’s Lounge.” It was named after her during the 2005 World Series when, at the age of 85, she was still reporting for duty. A brief story about that honor can be read here.

Sometime since last fall, when Tony La Russa got hired, the lounge got a name change:

Tyrone Palmer @TheTyronePalmer

This legit pissed me off. This was formerly named Loretta’s Lounge after Loretta Micele. She worked concessions for the Sox for 60 years. They dedicated it to her during the 2005 World Series. She gave so much to the organization and replacing her name to that of TLR is shameful.

When asked about this, a team spokesman confirmed the change but said that there’s now a plaque to commemorate Micele. Why on Earth they felt obligated to rename a concession lounge that La Russa will never, ever visit but which meant a hell of a lot for someone who dedicated over 60 years of her life to is beyond me, but I suppose this isn’t the first time La Russa has received special and undeserved treatment recently.

1933 Babe Ruth card to break the bank

A mint-condition 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth card is going to be sold via Memory Lane Auctions between June 21 and July 10. The card is expected to become the most expensive baseball card ever, passing the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle that sold for $5.2 million back in January.

The Ruth card was part of the collection of one Thomas Newman who, inspired by his mother throwing out his childhood card collection, spent his entire adult life collecting some of the rarest and most valuable cards in existence. He, unfortunately, died back in January of COVID. His entire collection is up for sale. It’s expected to fetch $20 million or more.

Oh, that’s why?

The Washington Post ran a story about the disaster that was those New Era Local Market caps. They actually got a quote from New Era about they were pulled from the market:

“It recently came to our attention that a few caps omitted a relevant area code,” a New Era spokesman wrote in an email Wednesday. “In light of this, we removed the collection from our website so we could review the design accuracy of all the caps. We apologize for any unintentional design mistake with regard to this collection.”

Well, there were multiple area codes omitted from multiple teams’ caps, but if you wanna go with the singular here that’s fine. No word on the countless other train wreck elements of these things. I guess we’ll have to wait for the Netflix documentary about them to find out the rest.

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Other Stuff

J.J. Abrams’ problem with “Star Wars” was not that he did not have a plan

Yesterday Collider posted an interview with the director J.J. Abrams which is getting a ton of attention. The reason: Abrams, who wrote and directed first and third installments in the rebooted “Star Wars” trilogy, “The Force Awakens” and “Rise of Skywalker,” seems to agree with critics that the new trilogy was a mess, and that a criticism many have had — that Abrams and the studio didn’t have a plan or a pre-determined story in mind when they began making these movies — was valid.

Here’s the quote people are keying on:

There are projects that I’ve worked on where we had some ideas but we hadn’t worked through them enough, sometimes we had some ideas but then we weren’t allowed to do them the way we wanted to. I’ve had all sorts of situations where you plan things in a certain way and you suddenly find yourself doing something that’s 180 degrees different, and then sometimes it works really well and you feel like, ‘Wow that really came together,’ and other times you think, ‘Oh my God I can’t believe this is where we are,’ and sometimes when it’s not working out it’s because it’s what you planned, and other times when it’s not working out it’s because you didn’t [have a plan].”

You just never really know, but having a plan I have learned – in some cases the hard way – is the most critical thing, because otherwise you don’t know what you’re setting up. You don’t know what to emphasize. Because if you don’t know the inevitable of the story, you’re just as good as your last sequence or effect or joke or whatever, but you want to be leading to something inevitable.”

“Ah HA!” people responded. “He admitted he didn’t have a plan!” And yes, that is quite an admission from a guy who, you know, was supposed to be the creative force behind it all. And I will note that, no it does not appear as if there was a plan at all. I will further note that “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” was easily the worst of the “Star Wars” films in my view specifically because J.J. Abrams really, really had no idea what he wanted to do and thus it ended up being poorly constructed, derivative and aggressively unimaginative.

But I’m gonna say something a lot of people may disagree with: the overall trilogy still could’ve worked, even without a pre-set plan. It really could’ve. It’s just that Abrams screwed it up by violating the cardinal rule of improvisation.

And make no mistake, the trilogy was an improv act, by design. Abrams wrote and directed the first movie and handed it off to Rian Johnson with the intention of letting Johnson run with it in the direction he chose. That may seem weird in an age of well-planned-out movie franchises, but it is a process that can lead to wonderful things if you (a) have talented and creative people involved; and (b) you follow the essential rule of improv: “yes, and.” As in, accepting what the first participant gave you — say “yes” to it — and then expand on that line of thinking by building on what you have (the “and”).

Johnson, for his part, followed the rules: he took what Abrams gave him and built on it, starting where he left off, using his characters and making them go places that made sense in context with the previous film and going wherever he wanted with the rest of it. You may not have liked it (I did for the most part) but what he did was on all fours with the concept of improv.

In the improvisation that was the rebooted “Star Wars” trilogy, it was then incumbent upon Abrams, once he started work on the third movie, to say yes to what Johnson gave him and to build on that. But he didn’t. He and the studio freaked out at the negative reaction “The Last Jedi” got in some more fan-boyish quarters of the Internet, rejected what was given to him, and went off in what he thought was a safe direction but which was, creatively speaking, a disastrous one because it wasted all that had come before. In many instances it explicitly repudiated what came before and in others he invented crap on the fly that had no connection to it at all. If this was an improv class instead of a multi-billion dollar movie franchise, the teacher would’ve stopped and said “what the hell are you doing, J.J.? Start again!”

J.J. Abrams could very well have made a decent third installment of the “Star Wars” reboot and he could’ve saved the whole trilogy, artistically speaking, if he had a plan from the outset, yes. And given the budgets and all the considerations that go into franchise moviemaking, he probably should’ve. But even without that plan, the trilogy still could’ve been successful if Abrams had followed the rules. There’s a chance that the fan boys wouldn’t have liked it — a good chance if many of the suggestions Rian Johnson left out there at the end of “The Last Jedi” had been followed to their logical conclusions — but it would’ve been coherent and it would’ve told a story. He just didn’t want to. He just couldn’t say “yes.”

Colorado following Ohio’s lead with vaccination lottery

I regret to inform you that I did not win the first of five drawings in Ohio’s Vax-a-Million lottery yesterday. Abbigail Bugenske of Silverton, Ohio won the $1 million for being vaccinated. One Joseph Costello of Englewood, Ohio will be given a full-ride college scholarship to a state university here. They’re doing five drawings in all, so we have four more weeks to get lucky. Or, in Anna’s case, unlucky, as she does not wanna go to college here in Ohio. I’ll keep you posted.

In related news, the State of Colorado is going to do what my state is doing: make a lottery out of vaccinations, giving out $5 million in drawings. Those who have been jabbed are eligible.

Good for you for following our lead. Ohio: you should now follow Colorado’s lead on other matters of great public interest. No that I have any personal interest in such a thing. Nope, not me, never. Uh-uh.

Arlen Specter’s Son says Donald Trump tried to stop federal Spygate probe back in 2008

In 2007, the NFL “Spygate” scandal erupted, in which the New England Patriots were caught videotaping coaching signals from the New York Jets. In early 2008 Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter threatened to launch a full-blown Congressional investigation into it. Was it Congress’ business? Eh, no, but Specter (a) was from Pennsylvania, a state that had a team the Patriots beat in a Super Bowl a few years before; and (b) had some beefs with the NFL, including, but perhaps not limited to the fact that his largest campaign contributor, Comcast, also from Pennsylvania, was in a carriage fee dispute with the NFL Network. Football, politics, and broadcasting are all messy. I dunno.

Anyway, yesterday Don Van Natta, Jr. and Seth Wickersham of ESPN.com reported that when Specter was ramping up his call for hearings a rich and well-known man reached out to him and told him that, if he’d drop the investigation, there’d be a lot of money in it, presumably in campaign contributions, for Spector. The man who said that, according to Specter’s son, Shanin Specter: Donald Effing Trump. Not only that. an Natta and Wickersham report, via Shanin Specter, that Trump had told Senator Specter he was acting on behalf of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

Trump’s spokesman and Kraft are denying it, but veracity and those guys aren’t always on speaking terms. Arlen Specter died in 2012, and dead men tell no tales. Legally speaking this is all way to thin and out of date to result in anything, so it likely dies by dinnertime tonight. Still, pretty interesting.

Amazon buys MGM

Amazon announced that it will acquire MGM, the venerable and downright iconic film and television studio, for $8.45 billion. That’s a considerable premium over and above what other companies thought it was worth, though it’s pocket change for Bezos.

It should be noted, though, that despite all of the big headlines, MGM is not what it used to be and hasn’t been for decades. Yes, once it was the gold standard of classic Hollywood — it famously contained “more stars than the heavens” — but it’s old school studio was sold to Sony ages ago and its classic film library was sold off to Warner Brothers, which is why you can see so many old MGM classics like “The Wizard of Oz” and “Singing in the Rain” on HBOMax.

What does it get? A half-interest in the James Bond franchise. Also, parts of the old MGM empire that weren’t sold off to Warners, such as United Artists and Orion, which still have pretty notable movie catalogs. There are a few thousand other movies that weren’t part of the main classic catalog, a number of current and future productions under the MGM banner, and a whole lot of television shows, all of which can now be plopped into Prime in this, the age of content, content, content in service of competing streaming services. Which is a business, it should be noted, that Amazon hasn’t done as well with as a lot of others have. Netflix and Hulu have done a better job of developing original stuff. Even Peacock has gotten some more buzz about its shows than Amazon, which has some stuff, but certainly not the top tier.

Now it has some more volume with which to compete as we hurtle ever more quickly into the streaming age.

Have a great day, everyone.