Cup of Coffee: August 19, 2024

Good morning!

The Red Sox have a new/old pitcher, Alex Verdugo is allergic to batting gloves and his tattoos, and Jazz Chisholm Jr. avoids a worst case scenario.

In Other Stuff, Donald Trump unwittingly makes the case for communism, J.D. Vance unwittingly makes the case for immigration, doctors took advantage of Matthew Perry’s addiction and basically killed him, you do NOT need to know what your Gen Alpha kids are saying, and I talk an awful lot about my weekend trip to New York.

Let’s do it.

And That Happened 

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Marlins 3, Mets 2: It was Derek Hill’s day as he scored the tying run on a wild pitch in the seventh, hit a tie-breaking single in the eighth, and made a sweet catch against the wall in right center, got knocked down, but still had the wherewithal to shovel the ball to another outfielder who started a relay that turned it into a double play. Marlins avoid the sweep and dinner was NOT on Hill last night, that’s for damn sure.

Orioles 4, Red Sox 2: Albert Suárez took over Grayson Rodriguez’s slot in the rotation when Rodriguez hit the IL and he’s been pretty damn good since then, going three straight starts without allowing a run. Here he shut Boston out for six, Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson homered, and the O’s other run scored on an error. The sides split the four-game set.

Mariners 10, Pirates 3: George Kirby allowed two runs over six, Cal Raleigh hit a two-run homer, Victor Robles hit a two-run double, and Josh Rojas and Dominic Canzone each hit solo homers to give Kirby an 8-0 cushion by the fifth. Seattle snaps a five-game losing streak and avoids being swept by the Pirates, who entered the series having lost ten in a row.

Nationals 6, Phillies 4: Keibert Ruiz, Alex Call and James Wood all homered — Ruiz homered for the third time in four games — and Jacob Young’s sac fly in the top of the eighth snapped a 4-4 tie and ultimately snapped both Philly’s four-game winning streak and Washington’s four-game losing streak.

Rays 8, Diamondbacks 7: Tampa Bay had a 6-0 lead after six and blew it, with Corbin Carroll hitting a two-run homer in the eighth and Adrian Del Castillo’s three-run homer in the top of the ninth tying things up. The sides exchanged runs in the tenth but then Tampa Bay avoided a big choke when Dylan Carlson singled home the Manfred Man in the 12th for the walkoff win. The Rays swept Arizona in the three-game series, cooling off what had been just about the hottest team in the game coming into the weekend.

Royals 8, Reds 1: Dairon Blanco homered twice on Saturday, including a grand slam, and he homered once again here. Brady Singer pitched six scoreless innings, interrupted by a 45-minute rain delay, allowing five hits while striking out seven. The Royals complete the three-game sweep and have won four in a row.

Astros 2, White Sox 0: Framber Valdez — all together now! — tossed seven strong innings, shutting out Chicago on three hits while striking out nine. Two relievers finished the three-hitter. Yanier Díaz and Jose Altuve each hit solo homers to account for all of the offense. Houston takes two of three from the hapless Sox. And, as of Saturday night, the eliminated-from-playoff-contention Sox. Their elimination happened in their 124th game, which broke the record for the earliest elimination in the Wild Card or Divisional era. Great work, everyone!

Blue Jays 1, Cubs 0: Both Chicago teams were shut out yesterday. Here it was Toronto starter Bowden Francis who held the opposition scoreless through seven, also allowing three hits. Joey Loperfido’s solo homer was the game’s only scoring as the Jays avoid being swept.

Brewers 2, Guardians 0: Colin Rea wasn’t facing a Chicago team but he too tossed seven shutout frames en route to a team blanking of the opposition. He allowed just two hits and that’s all Cleveland got all afternoon. Willy Adames hit an RBI single in the first and Eric Haase’s groundout in the second scored the game’s other run. This one ended in a crisp two hours and seven minutes. Milwaukee completes the three-game sweep and has won five straight.

Dodgers 2, Cardinals 1: The Dodgers pitching has been in a shambles lately so leave it to Clayton Kershaw to come in and help ‘em out with six shutout innings. He only tossed 70 pitches and maybe could’ve gone a bit longer to help that taxed staff, but apparently L.A. is trying something new this year and is hoping to NOT have to put Kershaw on the IL in late September again. We’ll see if it works out for ‘em. Shohei Ohtani homered. Miguel Rojas knocked in the other run. L.A. takes two of three.

Rockies 3, Padres 2: Brenton Doyle led off the bottom of the sixth with a triple and scored the go-ahead run on a single by Jacob Stallings. Earlier Aaron Schunk doubled in a run. Later Sam Hilliard plated a run on a groundout. The Rockies take two of three as the Padres lose their first series in their last nine. They are 20-6 in the second half, but four of those six losses have come against either Colorado or Miami, the two worst teams in the National League. Go figure.

Atlanta 3, Angels 1: The good version of Charlie Morton showed up, allowing one run while working into the sixth and the Atlanta pen held the Halos scoreless for the next three and two-thirds. Ramón Laureano homered, Matt Olson singled home a run, and Jarred Kelenic hit a sac fly as Atlanta takes two of three.

Rangers 6, Twins 5: Like the Rays, the Twins blew a decent early lead and ended up going to extras but unlike the Rays they lost. Here that lead was 4-0, which they held until the seventh inning. That’s when Texas put up five runs thanks to homers from Adolis García and Josh Jung and RBI doubles from Marcus Semien and Corey Seager. Carlos Santana hit a solo shot for Minnesota in the ninth to send it to extras but Jung’s tenth inning infield single combined with a throwing error allowed the Rangers Manfred Man to score the winning run and allowed Texas to avoid a four-game sweep.

Giants 4, Athletics 2: Things were scoreless until the sixth when Miguel Andújar singled in a run and the Giants countered with a Heliot Ramos homer in the seventh which tied it at one. It stayed that way until San Francisco broke out in the tenth with a Jerar Encarnación two-run homer which was immediately followed by a pinch-hit job from Michael Conforto. The A’s got one back in the bottom of the tenth but they couldn’t get two and the sides split the two-game series.

Tigers 3, Yankees 2: The Little League Classic in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The Tigers were the home team for this one so they got last bats. That came in useful in the bottom of the ninth when Jace Jung singled in a run to make it 1-1 and which sent it to extras. DJ LeMahieu hit an RBI single in the top of the tenth but Zach McKinstry tied it up with an RBI single of his own, after which Parker Meadows singled in McKinstry to walk it off. Because they had last bats, see.

Also: the sides each got a 27th man on the roster for this one since it was a special game, and the Yankees called up top prospect Jasson Domínguez as their extra player. They put him in the lineup, batted him fifth and . . . he went 0-for-4 with three Ks and then was immediately sent back down. Womp womp.

The Daily Briefing

The Red Sox signed Rich Hill 

Some of you who who feel bad that there are no longer major leaguers older than you stand a good chance at getting a new lease on life, because the Boston Red Sox signed 44 year old lefty Rich Hill to a minor-league contract over the weekend. Hill will report to Triple-A Worcester today or tomorrow, but the idea is obviously to have him contribute to the big club once he knocks the rust off.

Assuming he makes the club this will be Hill’s fourth stint with Boston, having played for them from 2010 to 2012, in 2015, and again in 2022. In his 19-year career he has pitched for 13 teams in all. Last year he pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Diego Padres and became a free agent in the offseason but found no takers before now.

Fun fact: Rich Hill is five months younger than Craig Breslow, the Chief Baseball Officer of the Red Sox and the man who signed him.

Alex Verdugo is allergic to his batting gloves, and his own tattoos

Yankees outfielder Alex Verdugo has been having a pretty crappy year. I think it’s because he’s not a particularly good ballplayer who just so happens to be hitting the low-end of what is a generally mediocre range of reasonable outcomes, but if he doubts that he at least has something new to blame his 2024 on: he’s allergic to both his batting gloves and to his own tattoos. Really.

That comes via NJ.com's Randy Miller who reports that the Yankees sent Verdugo to an allergist recently after he began to develop pain, blisters, and dry skin on his hands. The allergist determined that Verdugo is allergic to cobalt and chromate, each of which are used in tanning the leather from which batting gloves are made. They’re also present in tattoo ink, and Verdugo has a good deal of ink.

Verdugo is getting new batting gloves without the chemicals and an injectable drug, Dupixent, which is supposed to help calm the reaction from the tattoo ink. Whether that helps him remember how to hit like he did when he first came up is an open question.

Jazz Chisholm avoids UCL surgery

Yankees third baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. was placed on the IL late last week with an elbow issue and many feared the worst, but he got some good news over the weekend: he does not need surgery. Even better, Chisholm was spotted taking grounders at third base prior to last night’s game against the Tigers, and says he plans on swinging the bat again soon.

So, hopefully for the Yankees, they’ll get their big trade deadline acquisition back after the minimum time on the IL.

Other Stuff

Donald Trump unwittingly makes the case for communism 

During his rambling press conference last Thursday, Donald Trump tried to attack Kamala Harris, claiming that she would institute single-payer universal healthcare. I wish that were true, actually, but she does not support that. Either way, here was the windup of his rather unfocused word salad attack:

"You're all going to be thrown into a communist system. You're going to be thrown into a system where everybody gets healthcare."

Oh, no. Please don’t throw me into that briar patch! But maybe if you keep saying Harris will give everyone healthcare — which sounds AMAZING to most people — it will convince Harris to actually support it once she cleans your clock and takes office as our 47th president.

In related news, back in 1999 Donald Trump was on “Larry King Live” and said "I believe in universal health care. I believe in whatever it takes to make people well and better." He then added that health care should be considered "an entitlement." He also advocated for it in his 2000 book, The America We Deserve, writing that America should "reexamine the single-payer plan, as many individual states are doing." In the book he said this of the Canadian single-payer system:

"Administrative costs across America make up 25 percent of the health care dollar, which is two-and-a-half times the cost of health care administration in Canada. Doctors might be paid less than they are now, as is the case in Canada, but they would be able to treat more patients because of the reduction in their paperwork. The Canadian plan also helps Canadians live longer and healthier than Americans."

If that were the Donald Trump running today I’d actually consider voting for the sumbitch. OK, not really, because he’s a notoriously horrible racist, misogynist, antisemite, homophobe, and xenophobe, but it’d be great if some Republicans advocated for a single thing someone might call a public good.

J.D. Vance unwittingly makes the case for immigration

One of the best things about Trump picking J.D. Vance as his running mate is that, unlike basically every national candidate ever, Vance has spent his adult life totally online. As such, there was absolutely no way the Trump campaign had the time or the ability to vet every batshit thing he’s said on podcasts, on radio shows, in interviews, in blog posts, and on social media over the past several years. We’ve already seen a lot of this — that’s where “childless cat ladies” came from — and we’re seeing new examples of it almost every day.

Like we saw over the weekend on a podcast appearance from 2021 which surfaced over the weekend in which Vance talked about immigration.

Most Republicans’ attacks on immigration make a big point in claiming that the immigration of today from Latin American countries is unlike the immigration of the late 19th/early 20th century from Europe. It’s a super racist argument, aimed at making a third or fourth generation German, Irish or Italian-Americans feel OK in bashing the modern equivalent of their ancestors, but that’s the line. Back then they were OK but now it’s all different! And bad!

Someone didn’t get the memo to Vance back in 2021, however, because he claimed that the immigration of 100-150 years ago was bad too:

"You had this massive wave of Italian, Irish and German immigration and that had its problems, its consequences. You had higher crime rates, you had these ethnic enclaves, you had inter-ethnic conflict in the country where you really hadn't had that before."

You’d think Vance would run away from that but he doubled down on it over the weekend, citing the movie “Gangs of New York” as some sort of cautionary tale that should cause us all to be wary of immigrants. Like, he literally placed himself on the side of Bill The Butcher and the nativists — who were the obvious bad guys! — and essentially told everyone in the country whose ancestors came over from Ireland, Italy, German, or basically anywhere else during the great waves of immigration in the 19th and early 20th century that they never should’ve been here in the first place.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had politicians railing against the scourge of the Irish and the Eye-talians and other assorted papists. The last time ANYONE said stuff like this was in the movie “Blazing Saddles” and that was done to mock small-minded townsfolk. The last time any politician said such a thing and was serious about it was probably 100 years ago. You all know how I love retro stuff and wish we had more of it, but I had no idea we’d get trad-nativists along with all of that.

Seriously, though, 19th/early 20th century immigration was a HUGE contributor to America becoming an advanced industrial and economic superpower. It literally helped Make America Great and virtually every single politician with a functioning brain cell has noted that and leaned into that for most of the past century. That Vance is now taking a position that is essentially electoral poison is a hell of a thing. It also makes a far, far better case for modern immigration than even the most passionate immigration advocate ever has! Thank you J.D. Vance! Keep talking! You’re doing great!

Doctors took advantage of Matthew Perry’s addiction, leading to his death

Matthew Perry’s death last year was determined to be caused by “acute effects of ketamine” which caused him to lose consciousness and drown in his hot tub. While Perry had been undergoing ketamine infusion therapy at a proper clinic to treat anxiety and depression, given how long it had been since his last appointment and how quickly ketamine leaves one’s system, he could not have been given his lethal dose at his last appointment. Given that the lozenges that ketamine clinics often give patients to take between infusions are low-dose, it could not have been those either. He was clearly taking intravenous or injected ketamine on his own.

In the New York Times on Friday we learned how this was all accomplished: the drugs were being obtained by his personal assistant from two doctors and two other intermediaries, none of whom seemed to care that Perry was a well-known drug addict. Indeed, they seemed to very much be exploiting Perry’s addiction in the most craven ways possible.

After the clinic Perry had been going to refused to increase his dosage, he asked his assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, to procure ketamine illegally. Iwamasa was introduced to a Dr. Salvador Plasencia, an urgent care physician who, in turn, sought the assistance of another doctor named Mark Chavez who helped obtain the drugs fraudulently. From the story:

At one point Dr. Plasencia mused on the money he stood to make with a friend, Dr. Mark Chavez. “I wonder how much this moron will pay,” Dr. Plasencia texted Dr. Chavez, who prosecutors said later supplied him with a total of 22 vials of ketamine and ketamine lozenges obtained through a fraudulent prescription for the drug. “Lets find out.”

In the days leading up to Perry’s death, Iwamasa had been injecting him multiple times a day which, on multiple occasions, left Perry unconscious. On the day of Perry’s death, the doctors and others involved in obtaining the ketamine exchanged texts in which they tried to confirm that they could not be tied to it after which they all agreed to delete texts. So they definitely knew how badly Perry was and that they were active participants in his death.

Iwamasa and Dr. Chavez have already pleaded guilty to charges related to Perry’s death and are awaiting sentencing. This Dr. Plasencia dude and the others mentioned in the story are probably going to rot in jail for a good long time. And dear God, should they.

Seen in the paper

We really, really do not need to do this, fellow, olds:

Honestly, it’s totally possible to let your kids use all manner of slang specific to their age group without knowing what it means or — heaven forbid — trying to use it yourself. As long as they answer your questions in comprehensible terms, who cares?

Anyway, catch you on the flippity-flop, lamestains.

My trip to New York

As I had mentioned previously, my son Carlo and his friend Ryan bought tickets to two shows to their favorite band, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, this past weekend. The shows were at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens on Friday and Saturday.

I did not attend the shows but I did accompany them to New York as a from-a-distance chaperone/hotel room acquirer. No, I did NOT stay in their room because I could not imagine the horror doing such a thing would be. I was in my own room way down the hall and I did not see them, even once, from the time the car dropped us off at our hotel on Thursday afternoon until we met in the lobby yesterday morning before heading to the airport. I got some occasional selfies texted to me from Carlo as he and his friend explored New York before the shows each day, but that’s it.

As they roamed around, so too did I. Highlights and observations from my couple of days in The Windy Apple, with some photos over at my Facebook page:

• I’ve been to New York many, many times, but the last several times I’d either flown in to JFK or Newark for some reason. When I used to fly in to LaGuardia it felt like flying into a bus station in a war zone, but the new (newish?) Delta terminal that felt like it had been under construction for 47 years is done and it’s wonderful. The fact that it was pleasant, uncrowded, and easily navigable — and the fact that I got a car within one minute of walking out the door — threw me off for the next six hours. I’ve never once had a trip in or out of New York that did annoy or distress me in some way and I honestly didn’t know how to process that;
• We stayed in Chelsea, just a few blocks down and over from Penn Station, because I wanted it to be as easy as possible for the boys to get to Queens for the shows. Of course the boys ended up ranging all over other parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn before the shows so they never went straight to Queens from the hotel, rendering the quick-ride-on-the-LIRR plan moot, so I guess that was kind of pointless. I like Chelsea a great deal, however, I know it pretty well, and I find it to be a pretty useful base of operations for the city, so absolutely no problem on that score;
• I make a lot of fun of New Yorkers for thinking that New York is the only place they can get and can do certain things when, in reality, you can actually get and do all manner of things in all kinds of places. My favorite example of this is when they go on about getting bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches on a kaiser roll, which is something that you can 100% get in just about every city over 100,000 people in the country. Hell, you can get them in EVERY city in the country if you’re flexible about the kaiser roll. I have had many New York BECs in the past but none since I had really started goofing on New Yorkers for them, so I got one — from a bodega! — on Friday morning, just to keep me honest. I will admit it was very good if New Yorkers will admit that you can also get good bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches in other places;
• The best part of the bodega BEC was waiting for my sandwich. That’s because while I was waiting for it a woman came in, clearly a local. She goes up to the counter and says, "I'll have the usual." The guy behind the counter said "I don't know what 'the usual' is, ma’am," so she had to say it. Part of me hopes that that’s a fun little song and dance the two of them have been doing for the past 15 years but I honestly think it was a function of a regular not being as much of a regular as she thought she was. Oh, and when the guy put my sandwich up on the counter she tried to take it, thinking it was hers. I came THIS close to going all Ratso Rizzo on her and saying, “HEY, I’M BACON EGG AND CHEESIN’ HERE!” but I just barely held back. This city will make ya tough, man;
• New Yorkers have a much better claim to having high quality pizza that is hard to find elsewhere. I’ve certainly had some great pizza in New York over the years, but I got a couple of slices at NY Pizza Suprema on 8th Avenue next to Penn Station on Thursday night that were as good as any I’ve ever had. If that’s some tourist place or a place real New Yorkers look down on, well, I don’t care. It was damn good to a guy who comes from a place where thin-crust, square-cut tavern-style pizza is the norm.
• I had originally planned to go to a museum or two on Friday but I didn’t feel like it. I felt like walking around and just looking at stuff. Luckily subscriber Richard S. had shared a walking tour of lower Manhattan in the comments which he had put together several years ago and I decided on an impulse to, more or less, follow it. City Hall, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Woolworth Building, the Canyon of Heroes — unused by a baseball team for 14 years and counting! — the park “Occupy Wall Street” occupied, actual Wall Street, Trinity Church, Alexander Hamilton’s grave, Federal Hall, a branch of the National Museum of the American Indian, Battery Park, and then back up to the 9/11/World Trade Center Memorial. Thanks for the walking tour, Richard!
• I had not seen the 9/11 Memorial before and it was more moving than I had anticipated. I had also not been to the National Museum of the American Indian. That was wonderful, and not just because, being a Smithsonian, it was free and being a museum without some big famous work of art in it it was mostly empty. I’m sure the people taking the boat out to the Statue of Liberty had fun, but I had fun too and I was in air conditioning on a 90 degree day, so I think I won.
• I had seen most of the other things on the walking tour in the past, though not for a long time. Indeed, for most of ‘em — Wall Street, Federal Hall, Trinity Church, City Hall, and the Brooklyn Bridge — I have to go back to my first trip to New York in 1988. On that trip my dad walked my brother and me from the Battery all the way up to Midtown via a zig-zaggy route though just about every neighborhood and past every notable sight. That was a fantastic introduction to New York, actually, especially in that time and place, in which the city was VERY different than what it is now. This time, in addition to being much safer though much more sanitized, I had much greater historic and cultural context for all of that stuff. This time I also paced myself better. Indeed, I stopped in and got a beer at some random place in the middle of it all to break things up. If I had done that in 1988 I’d have had a lot of questions to answer;
• While having that beer I looked at my phone to see if I could get a cheap ticket to that night’s Marlins-Mets game. I absolutely could. Could’ve gotten in the door for like $8 actually but, me being me, I saw that the cheap seats were super cheap and so I wanted to know if the normally expensive seats were less expensive. They were, and I snagged a single ticket for the Hyundai Club for less than half the usual price. Free food, snacks, and non-alcoholic drinks. Big padded seats behind and above home plate, right next to the press box. An air-conditioned club and low-traffic bathroom if I wanted to use them. Free ice cream and chipwiches and crap as you walked out the door back to the 7 train. I realize that sitting in such seats and taking advantage of such amenities is the sort of thing that is gonna get me thrown up against the wall the moment the revolution comes, but if I have to watch the Miami Marlins play baseball, dammit, I’m gonna be fancy about it. Especially if Roddery Muñoz is pitching. Man he’s horrible. In addition to being generally ineffective, he’s the slowest worker in baseball, which is quite a trick in the pitch clock era. It was hard, my friends, but I had free hot dogs and access to a nacho bar to help me get through it. It was also fireworks night so I had something to look forward to. A nice quick ride on the subway home and it was nighty-night;
• This past weekend was the opening weekend of the Premier League, so on Saturday morning I walked three blocks to a bar called Smithfield Hall to watch the Ipswich Town-Liverpool match at 7:30AM. Smithfield Hall is, I gather, a Manchester United Bar so there was almost no one there to watch Liverpool, of course. But it was nearby, the breakfast and the beer was pretty damn good, and I had a good time. This was especially the case because a family of four — a couple and their two teenage boys — was in there watching the match, all four of them in Ipswich Town jerseys. I talked to them for a bit. They’re tourists from East Anglia and planned their vacation to America before they knew their club would be promoted to the Premier League, or else they would’ve been there in person. Once the promotion happened the dad made a point to find a place to watch the match in New York and the mom made a point to get everyone new kits with the Premier League lion on it just for the occasion. The match didn’t go the way they wanted it to but they seemed to have fun anyway;
• After the match ended I wasn’t sure what I was going to do but then I got an impulse to see The Cloisters. The Cloisters, which is run by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a medieval European art and architecture museum in Fort Tryon Park, way, way, way the hell in the northern part of Manhattan. Like, take-the-A-Train-to-200th Street or thereabouts north. You can read all about The Cloisters at its Wikipedia page, and there are some pics over at that Facebook link, but I was so, so happy I went. It’s a gorgeous museum in a gorgeous and tranquil setting and I’d rather visit it ten times than any of the more tourist-infested museums downtown. At least on a weekend in the summer;
• When I got back to my room Saturday evening I was inspired to watch the 1968 Clint Eastwood movie “Coogan’s Bluff,” as the final action scene takes place at The Cloisters and Fort Tryon Park. I had seen the movie MANY years ago and, folks, it’s . . . bad. OK on attitude but the pacing is awful, Eastwood is wooden and seems to be phoning it in, and the story is thin. It’s one of those movies that was clearly aware of the changes happening in Hollywood in the late 1960s but some older studio squares were obviously still heavily involved and they couldn’t really pull it off. I’ll give it massive points for showing just how gritty and messy New York was by the late 1960s, however. I wanted to take a shower after every scene in the shabby hotel Eastwood’s character stayed in;
• Yesterday morning involved me (a) watching the Brentford-Crystal Palace match — Brentford won! Woot!; and (b) picking up a dozen gluten-free bagels for Allison from Modern Bread & Bagel on 14th street. Allison mail orders their bagels fairly often but since I was here and had the room in my bag, picking up some fresh ones just before my flight was a must-do.

I left New York with the same feeling I always have when I leave New York: I had fun, I really love the city for a few days, but a few days is usually enough.

Oh, and when I got home last night I watched “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.” The greatest New York movie ever.

Have a great day everyone.

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