Cup of Coffee: August 26, 2024
Ohtani in the 40/40 club, Danny Jansen to make history, Jeter was 75% miserable, a lawsuit, some labor stuff, a book rec, Trump on a curve, a dumb criminal, and Oasis
Good morning!
Today we talk about the club Shohei Ohtani belongs to, about some history that will be made today, about how Derek Jeter was, by his own admission, miserable for 75% of his career, about a lawsuit against the White Sox connected with a shooting, and about some labor advances in Japan and in women’s soccer.
In Other Stuff I have a book recommendation, we have another chance for Donald Trump to be graded on a curve, I admire a writer for writing, even if it was dumb for him to have written anything, and Oasis definitely — well, maybe — getting back together.
And That Happened
Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:
Nationals 5, Atlanta 1: Washington starter DJ Herz struck out eight in five one-hit innings while a three-run seventh put some distance between the sides. CJ Abrams had two hits and two RBI. Jacob Young had two hits and scored twice. Nats avoid the sweep.
Diamondbacks 7, Red Sox 5: Boston had a 4-0 lead after four with Rafael Devers’ 200th career homer — a three-run shot — pacing them. The Dbacks have been all but impossible to keep down of late and, yep, they came back with three in the fifth and three more in the sixth on the back of Eugenio Suárez’s three-run jack. Arizona completes the sweep and has won six in a row. Hottest team going.
Pirates 4, Reds 3: A three-run seventh put the Reds up 3-2 but Yasmani Grandal smacked a two-run walkoff homer to give the game and the four-game series to the Buccos.
Yankees 10, Rockies 3: Aaron Judge hit homers 50 and 51 on the season. It’s still August, man, and he’s over 50. On the second shot he went back-to-back-to-back with Juan Soto and Giancarlo Stanton.
Bad news here: Home plate umpire Nick Mahrley was carted off the field after being struck in the chin/side of his head by the barrel of a broken bat during a Giancarlo Stanton at bat. After undergoing tests, Mahrley was diagnosed with a concussion. He’ll be sitting out at least his next scheduled series, but based on how it looked on the field, this is a pretty OK outcome.
Blue Jays 8, Angels 2: Kevin Gausman struck out ten over seven, allowing just one run, Alejandro Kirk hit two-run home run and drew a bases-loaded walk, and Addison Barger had a two-run shot of his own. Jays complete the sweep. Indeed, they won all seven games against the Angels this season.
Marlins 7, Cubs 2: Connor Norby homered, doubled and singled, Jesús Sánchez also went deep and Jonah Bride had two hits as the Marlins snap a five-game losing streak. Norby, by the way, came over in a trade at the deadline from Baltimore. He was called up a week ago and has had at least one extra-base hit in all six games he’s played. Trevor Rogers, the guy the O’s acquired for him in order to help ‘em win now was just sent down last week. You can’t predict baseball, Suzyn.
Guardians 4, Rangers 2: Jhonkensy Noel homered. He does that a lot. Indeed, this was his 12th homer in the 41 games he’s played since he debuted on June 26. Matthew Boyd allowed one over six to pick up his first win in over a year. Guardians take two of three.
Tigers 9, White Sox 4: Andy Ibáñez homered and had three RBI and Colt Keith had three hits and three RBI as the Tigers handed the White Sox their 100th loss of the season. Only one team in MLB history — the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics — have ever reached 100 losses in fewer games. They did it in 130 games. The White Sox have done it in 131.
Phillies 11, Royals 3: Kyle Schwarber had two hits and three RBI, Alec Bohm drove in three, and Nick Castellanos hit a two-run homer. Garrett Stubbs went 4-for-4. Philly had 16 hits in all. They rattled off 18 hits in Saturday’s 11-2 win and took two of three in the series.
Cardinals 3, Twins 2: With the Cards trailing in the ninth, Lars Nootbaar hit a two-run single to help seal it. Victor Scott II homered earlier in the game. St. Louis took two of three and has won four of five overall.
Athletics 4, Brewers 3: The Athletics scored all four of their runs in the fourth. They weren’t exciting runs: three consecutive singles to open the inning, a bases-loaded walk, a Seth Brown RBI single, and two sac flies.meanwhile Joey Estes cooled off what had been hot Brewer bats, allowing two while pitching into the sixth to help Oakland avoid the sweep.
Padres 3, Mets 2: José Quintana held the Pads scoreless into the seventh, protecting a two-run lead that came via solo shots from Mark Vientos and J.D. Martinez. San Diego tied things up with a Jurickson Profar two-run homer in the eighth before Jackson Merrill took Edwin Díaz deep for a walkoff solo homer to give the Padres the series split.
Mariners 4, Giants 3: Dan Wilson wins his first series as the M’s manager, taking this one to give Seattle two of three. RBI singles from Cal Raleigh and Josh Rojas. A nice start from Bryan Woo (7 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, 7K).
Dodgers 3, Rays 1: Gavin Stone allowed one run while pitching seven while Kiké Hernández hit a solo homer in the fifth and Mookie Betts gave the Dodgers the lead with a two-run shot in the eighth. The Dodgers take two of three from Tampa Bay and have won six of seven. They’re maintaining a three-game lead over Arizona.
Astros 6, Orioles 3: Alex Bregman’s 7th inning homer broke a 3-3 tie, Yainer Díaz immediately followed that up with a homer of his own, and an eighth inning sac fly added some insurance. The sides split the four-game set.
The Daily Briefing
Shohei Ohtani joins 40/40 club in style
On Friday night Shohei Ohtani hit a walkoff grand slam to help the Dodgers beat the Rays. Earlier in the game he stole a base. Both the dinger and the steal were his 40th on the season, making him just the sixth player in baseball history to become a member of the 40/40 club.
Ohtani joined that club in his 126th game of the season, which makes him the fastest player to 40/40 of all time. By a long shot. The previous record for the quickest to the 40/40 club was Alfonso Soriano of the Washington Nationals in 2006 who got there in his 147th game. The others:
- Jose Canseco, 1988 Athletics: 151st game
- Ronald Acuña Jr., 2023 Atlanta: 152nd game
- Alex Rodriguez, 1998 Mariners: 153rd game
- Barry Bonds, 1996 Giants: 158th game
Acuña and Canseco each won the MVP Award in the year they went 40/40. Ohtani seems pretty certain to become the third 40/40/MVP in baseball history.
Or maybe something more grand than that. I say that because Ohtani homered again on Saturday to give him 41 __________. For reference, he hit 12 home runs in 27 games in June. He stole 19 bases in the space of 20 games from August 1 through August 23. So let’s be real here: with 31 team games left, Ohtani has an actual chance to become the first 50/50 player in baseball history.
Danny Jansen to play for two different teams in the same game today
On August 4, 1982 Joel Youngblood was the starting centerfielder for the New York Mets in a day game at Wrigley Field — they were all day games at Wrigley Field then — against the Cubs. In the second inning of that game Youngblood hit a two-run single off of Fergie Jenkins. While on deck in the third inning he was called back to the dugout and was informed he had been traded to the Montreal Expos. Youngblood left the ballpark, got his stuff from his hotel room, went back to the park because he had forgotten his glove, and then got on a 6:05 PM flight from O’Hare to Philadelphia, where the Expos were facing the Phillies in a night game. Youngblood got to Veterans Stadium in the sixth inning, soon after which Expos manager Jim Fanning called on Youngblood to pinch hit against Steve Carlton. Youngblood reached on an infield single, becoming the first player to get a base hit for two different teams on the same day. The fact that it came against two future Hall of Famers is just icing on the cake.
Danny Jansen of the Boston Red Sox is not going to do anything quite as difficult today, but he will make history when he catches in the continuation of the Red Sox game against the Blue Jays that was suspended due to weather back in late June. At the time of that suspended game Jansen was on the Blue Jays — he was traded to Boston on July 27 — and was playing in that game. Which means that Jansen will appear in the same game, technically speaking, for both teams. When that happens he will be the first player in MLB history to have done such a thing.
Even better: at the time the game was suspended, Jansen was batting for Toronto. They will pick up the game with his slot in the batting order, filled by a pinch-hitter, at the plate. Which means that Jansen will hit and catch in the same plate appearance. That, obviously, has also never been done.
Though I gotta say, neither Youngblood’s nor Jansen’s feat stands as the single most impressive one-game feat for a player. That still belongs to Bugs Bunny, who routinely threw and caught the same pitch while facing the Gas House Gorillas in a 1946 contest:
Even better, in that same game he threw an immaculate inning with a single pitch. There really has never been a better baseball player than Bugs Bunny. Though I suppose it’s possible that Ohtani might pull off something like that one day.
Ok Derek
Derek Jeter was at Yankee Stadium over the weekend. He talked to the press and he played the hits:
If that’s what truly motivated Jeter during his 20 year career — 15 years of which, if he’s actually being honest here, he considers abject failures — then good for him. As I’ve often noted, athletes are wired differently than you and me, they seek and find motivation in all manner of ways, and I am not in any position to question their mindset.
But I sure as hell hope no fans take the whole “anything short of a championship is a failure” thing as gospel, man. Partially because that whole “anything short of a championship is unacceptable” jazz was a George Steinbrenner-invented marketing gimmick back in 1990s, and that remains the case even if someone like Jeter bought into it. Mostly because treating 162 games of baseball over six+ months as mere prelude and considering it to be a failure to not emerge victorious from an increasingly contrived postseason tournament is a great way to be miserable, basically always.
Sports are to be enjoyed. Maybe we should make a point to simply enjoy them. Maybe players should too!
Woman shot during Chicago White Sox game last summer sues team
A little over a year ago two women were hit by gunfire at an Oakland Athletics-Chicago White Sox game at Guaranteed Rate Field, with each of them sustaining minor injuries. Even now a lot of questions remain about the incident. No one knows who fired the shots or how or from where, though at the time police officials strongly implied that they had dismissed the possibility that the shots came from outside the ballpark.
We’ll probably get more clarity on all of that pretty soon, because one of the women sued the White Sox last week:
According to the law firm of John J. Malm and Associates, the woman, referred to as Jane Doe, accused the team of "negligence and recklessness" and not enforcing its "No Firearms" policy after a gun was brought into the ballpark and went off during the game — hitting two women on Aug. 25, 2023 . . . "The defendants had a duty to protect attendees from foreseeable dangers, including firearms," attorney John Malm said. "Our client, an innocent attendee, suffered serious injuries as a result of the failure to take proper security measures, we believe."
There were a lot of rumors at the time that one of the women hit — and it’s unclear if it’s the one suing or the other one — smuggled a gun into the park and accidentally shot herself, with the other being collateral damage. The law firm representing this woman denied that their client had done so but has left it otherwise vague.
It certainly seems implausible that the shot came from outside the park, but I suppose we should never say never.
Players in Japan pushing for earlier free agency
Players in the Japanese league, NPB, do have free agency but it’s different than what U.S.-based players have. Players are eligible for purely domestic free agency — the ability to go from one NPB team to another — after either seven or eight years of service time, depending on whether they were drafted out of high school or college. Players can become international free agents, able to sign in the United States, after nine years of service time. If they do so beforehand, it’s because their team agreed to post them.
As Even Drellich of The Athletic reported last week, the Japan Professional Baseball Players Association is trying to lower both of those numbers to six years. Not via negotiation, however. Via a lawsuit:
To get it done, the JPBPA is preparing a legal challenge to the league’s reserve system on antitrust grounds. Tak Yamazaki, outside counsel to the Japan Professional Baseball Players Association, said he could not specify exactly when the action will be brought, but that it would be this year.
“It will happen soon,” Yamazaki said.
Enabling all of this is a change in Japanese law back in 2019 which made it clear that the country’s antitrust laws applied to sports, which they had not previously. It’s sort of the opposite of Major League Baseball which, infamously, is singularly exempt from such laws.
The NPB owners can see the writing on the wall with this, it seems, and are offering to reduce the time to domestic free agency but they aren’t budging on international free agency. That’s likely because they don’t want to imperil the lucrative posting system which currently allows players to go to the U.S. before nine years as long as the team gets a big payout.
Of course, some Japanese players have made a point to avoid the NPB entirely — a noted Japanese high school slugger named Rintaro Sasaki recently chose to play college ball in the United States rather than enter the NPB draft — and Japanese owners may want to strike a deal that avoids such things in the future.
Another sports league has eliminated the draft in its entirety
Sticking with non-MLB labor news, the National Women’s Soccer League and and the NWSL Players Association have done something far more radical than merely fiddle with service time. They’ve agreed to eliminate the draft altogether.
There are a couple of things going on with women’s soccer inspiring this.
For one thing, the league is hotter than hell right now. Attendance is soaring and its players and clubs have entered into lucrative new marketing and media agreements. Major corporate players are getting interested and purchasing clubs, and the move is in some ways about giving the best, most high-profile players the opportunity to play for the top teams in the top markets. But it’s also a reflection of international competition. There are major women’s soccer leagues all over the world, and the NWSL wants to incentivize players to stay in America rather than head over to Europe or to Asia or South America.
It’s amazing what American capitalists will do when they’re not insulated from actual market forces. Well, at least some of them, as the NWSL still has a salary cap, but you know what I mean.
Other Stuff
Frank Guridy’s The Stadium: An American History of Politics, Protest, and Play
Some of you may recall that, back in 2020 and 2021, I and a group of some other writers did a pandemic-reaction podcast series called “Say it Ain’t Contagious.” In the podcast we talked primarily about the intersection of baseball, politics, and culture. One of the participants in that podcast was Columbia University History Professor Frank Guridy.
Guridy has a new book out that just about every Cup of Coffee subscriber will want to read. The book is called The Stadium: An American History of Politics, Protest, and Play and it is a fantastically researched, ambitious, and insightful social history of sports stadiums and arenas and how they both reflect and impact society at large.
As Guridy writes in The Stadium, sports venues are, for better or for worse, America’s public squares and he writes about how what has played out in them tells you a great deal about American society and America’s priorities. About how a stadium’s use as a place for a political rally shows the connections and the parallels between sports fandom and political allegiance and spectacle. About how stadiums have served as places where institutional racism, sexism, and homophobia have been reinforced but how, eventually, they came to be places where such things were protested and have been transformed into places where diversity and equality can be celebrated. About how, in recent years, stadiums have become playgrounds for the rich and symbols of America’s wealth gap and class system. About how they are symbols of corporate wealth and power that are, once again, becoming exclusionary spaces rather than public gathering places.
Guridy obviously touches on my favorite hobby horse — public funding of stadiums which enriches the already wealthy owners of sports teams — but while I just do drive-bys with that sort of thing, this is proper history and social commentary. It’s a serious book for folks who take both sports and the way in which sports and society come together seriously.
Maybe reporters should be talking about this?
Yesterday Media Matters reported that Donald Trump promoted a social media account that is filled with extremist content, including claims that “Jews have been capitalizing on [N-words] for thousands of years,” “Adolf Hitler was right,” and that the Holocaust was “the Holohoax. 6 Million never happened.” The account also wrote: “I'm a proud White Nationalist” and “Make Anti-Semitism Great Again.”
Again, a former U.S. president, who stands a non-trivial chance of becoming its next president, endorsed this account and put it in front of his millions of followers. This is the sort of thing that major news outlets should be hammering for multiple days in a row, like we know they can and how they often do with other candidates, their acts, statements, and endorsements.
I mean, we had weeks and weeks of coverage about Joe Biden being old, days and days of coverage about Kamala Harris’ exact racial background, and days and days of coverage of both Tim Walz’s military record and the precise IVF procedures he and his wife undertook over 20 years ago. One would think that the New York Times or Washington Post might devote even a single article to the fact that, literally this past weekend, Trump platformed and amplified someone who spews the most vile forms of hate imaginable.
But nah. Trump always seems to get a free pass.
Hey: a writer writes
The other day I talked about the dangers involved in sharing too much of your life in your writing. Someone probably should’ve told that to a fellow from Michigan named Nathan Thornsbury, who was arrested last week for participating in the January 6th insurrection.
How did Thornsbury get caught so long after the insurrection? Because he wrote a damn book about it:
A Marine Corps veteran who self-published a book about the Capitol riot was arrested Thursday for allegedly joining the mob effort to knock down police barricades on Jan. 6 . . . According to charging documents, the FBI’s Flint office received a tip identifying Thornsberry as the man behind a self-published book about the Capitol riot. The book, titled “January 6: A Patriot’s Story,” is described on Amazon as an “eyewitness account of the events of January 6th, 2021.”
According to investigators, Thornsberry self-published the book under the name “Nathaniel Matthews.” In charging documents, investigators said biographical details in the “About the Author” section match Thornsberry’s own and a subpoena of Amazon records revealed the “Nathaniel Matthews” author account was registered to an individual named Nathan Thornsberry with the same phone number as the one associated with Thornsberry’s Facebook account.
Not surprisingly, when the FBI looked at actual footage from the insurrection, they found that Thornsberry was not the passive observer the narrator of his book was. He was pushing against metal barriers and forcing the police back while shouting “BRING IT!” He has now been charged with two felony counts of civil disorder and assaulting, resisting or impeding police along with some misdemeanor charges.
If I were the judge I would add 100 hours of community service to any sentence I give to him, with those 100 hours consisting of watching this video on repeat 36,000 times.
Oasis is getting back together
The Times reported over the weekend that some pretty well-founded industry rumors have the band Oasis getting back together. The buzz is that they’ll be playing a series of shows in 2025, including a 12-night Wembley Stadium engagement that would surpass Taylor Swift’s record of eight consecutive shows set this year and multiple outdoor shows at Manchester’s huge Heaton Park. There’s talk of festival appearances as well.
Oasis broke up in 2009 amidst great acrimony between band leader Noel Gallagher and his brother, singer Liam Gallagher. Of course acrimony between the two had been a part of things since before the band even formed, because you know how brothers can be sometimes. They just managed it until they decided not to manage it anymore and for the past 15 years they’ve generally despised each other.
That all seems to have thawed a bit in the last year, with each of the Gallaghers saying some (relatively) kind words about the other in the press. Also helping: the fact that Noel Gallagher and his wife split up last year. His ex reportedly hated Liam, which didn’t help matters previously. More significant, I think, is the fact that Noel was ordered to pay her an eight-figure divorce settlement and that sort of thing has a way of focusing one’s mind on more commercial endeavors.
We got all but official confirmation of all of this yesterday. First, Liam Gallagher posted this:
I never did like that word FORMER8:24 AM • Aug 25, 20249.91K Likes 734 Retweets 1.1K Replies
The only way the word “former” applies to him is “former Oasis lead singer,” so yeah, I figure this is actually happening. Which is a good thing. Then in the afternoon Oasis’ Twitter account posted the date August 27 and “8AM” which obviously means that that’s when the official announcement will come. Set your alarms for 3AM tomorrow morning, American east coasters.
For what it’s worth, the Calcaterra household tends to lean more sharply into Blur fandom than Oasis fandom, but I don’t subscribe to the extremely 1990s notion that one must choose sides between those bands. Oasis has a ton of bangers and millions of fans who have been wanting to see a reunion for a long damn time, so good for them that it appears they’ll get to. Even if they’ll probably have to take out a second mortgage to afford a ticket.
All that being said, I will not be making a point to go over to England to see Oasis. That’s not because of my preference for Blur, however. That’s because I’m really not keen on being showered with giant cups full of urine by a bunch of 50-somethings who (a) can’t hold it like they could back when they were 20-somethings; but (b) don’t want to lose their place on the floor to go to the bathroom. Which is a thing that the security guys at Co-Op Arena in Manchester told us routinely happens at Liam Gallagher solo shows, so I can only imagine how bad it will be at a proper Oasis reunion. Hell, some people did that at one of the James shows I went to in June and James fans are about the least-aggressive/obnoxious people on the planet.
Anyway, I’d accept a luxury box seat at Wembley or access to the VIP section at Heaton Park if anyone has an in, but I imagine that having GA tickets for an Oasis show in the UK is like being Master when he was lowered into the pigs by Aunty in “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.” No offense to the pigs, of course. They can’t help what they are.
Have a great day everyone.
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