Cup of Coffee: June 21, 2024
Rickwood Field, Reggie Jackson, a busy but mostly bad day for the Yankees, an unlikely contract killer, a guest post and the passing of Donald Sutherland
Good morning!
They played a pretty neat game at Rickwood Field in Birmingham last night, before which Reggie Jackson had something meaningful and moving to say. The Yankees had a busy day of (a) signing a reliever; (b) losing a top prospect to another bad injury; and (c) getting shellacked. Oh, and there’s a wild story coming out of England about an alleged former Brewers employee allegedly being a contract killer.
In Other Stuff we have a fun guest post and we say farewell to Donald Sutherland.
And That Happened
Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:
Cardinals 6, Giants 5: The Cardinals take the Negro Leagues Tribute Game at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama. Brendan Donovan hit a two-run homer and later doubled and hit an RBI single. Cards starter Andre Pallante worked into the sixth and got the win with a temporarily-tying three-run homer from Heliot Ramos being the only real damage. That homer came in a loss, but it was appropriate, I suppose, that the Giants center fielder had a highlight in a game that also served as a tribute to Willie Mays.
The game itself, of course, was secondary to the celebration of both Mays and the Negro Leaguers who played in the 114 year-old ballpark. In addition to Mays, who got his professional start in Rickwood, there were nods to Jackie Robinson, Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige and others, a small handful of whom are still alive and who were in attendance last night.
The visual flourishes, both on the field and in the Fox broadcast were excellent as well. The teams wore tribute uniforms, with the Giants’ livery inspired by the San Francisco Sea Lions, who played one season in the West Coast Negro Baseball League in 1946. The Cardinals uniform was an homage to the St. Louis Stars Negro Leagues team that played from 1906-31. And, as you can see in that photo above, Fox had some great moments, most notably in the fifth inning when the network went to a retro 1950s-style black and white broadcast complete with graphics and camera angles appropriate to the era. It was pretty fantastic:
Also fantastic was Reggie Jackson, who had some important words to say during the pregame broadcast which served as a reminder that the history tied up with Rickwood Field is not just the stuff which forms the basis for an evening of warm nostalgic fuzzies. More on that below down in the Daily Briefing.
Diamondbacks 5, Nationals 2: Christian Walker homered, Randal Grichuk drove in two, and starter Ryne Nelson allowed two runs on three hits over seven. “We’re closing in on .500, which isn’t the final destination,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said after the game. That’s right. The final destination is death, the fate from which none of us shall be spared; the fate which renders all that we do meaningless when judged against the grand scale of existence and the inevitability of oblivion. The Dbacks have won three of four.
Rays 7, Twins 6: Tampa Bay led 6-2 heading into the bottom of the ninth when the Twins rallied for four on a solo homer from Carlos Santana and a three-run shot from Jose Miranda. Jonny DeLuca singled home the Manfred Man in the tenth, however, and the Twins had no answer for it and that was that. Earlier in the game Royce Lewis homered. It was his ninth on the year despite the fact that the dude has only played in 15 games.
Astros 5, White Sox 3: Yordan Alvarez homered in the first and then a four-run seventh, in which Alvarez knocked in another run, decided this one. Alex Bregman added three hits and scored a run. Houston takes two of three.
Dodgers 5, Rockies 3: Shohei Ohtani led off the game with his fourth homer in the past five games — his 21st homer of the season — and Will Smith and Freddie Freeman hit back-to-back homers in the fourth.
Royals 3, Athletics 2: Freddy Fermin, who I’m gonna henceforth consider to be an Aldi-brand version of Freeman, homered twice and Bobby Witt Jr. hit a go-ahead homer in the eighth to help the Royals avoid the sweep.
Guardians 6, Mariners 3: Will Brennan hit two solo shots and doubled and Andrés Giménez hit a go-ahead two-run homer in the Guardians’ three-run fifth. Cleveland takes two of three.
Orioles 17, Yankees 5: Luis Gil got lit up for seven runs on eight hits in an inning and a third and things only got worse for the Yankees from there. Anthony Santander hit a three-run homer, Ryan O’Hearn drove in four runs, Cedric Mullins homered, Gunnar Henderson doubled twice and reached base four times and the hits just kept on coming. Worse than the blowout loss for the Yankees was Gleyber Torres leaving in the fifth inning because of tightness in his right groin. Bright side: Aaron Judge came back after a day off for that hit-by-pitch on Tuesday and hit his major league-leading 27th homer.
Padres 7, Brewers 6: In the first inning Milwaukee’s Brice Turang booted a ground ball that was tailor made for an inning-ending double-play but which resulted in just one out. That gave Manny Machado a chance to hit a three-run homer, which Jackson Merrill immediately followed with a solo shot to make it 4-1 Padres. The game would get closer again with the Brewers even tying it up thanks to a ninth inning rally, but then Jake Cronenworth walked it off with a homer in the bottom of the ninth. But for that first inning error there never would’ve been ninth inning heroics.
The Daily Briefing
Reggie Jackson brings the truth
Reggie Jackson joined the Fox MLB panel before the Cards-Giants game at Rickwood Field last night. During his appearance Jackson, who played 114 games for the Oakland Athletics’ Southern League affiliate in Birmingham in 1967, was asked by Alex Rodriguez about his feelings upon returning to Rickwood. Jackson did not lean into any feel-good sentiments that Major League Baseball or Fox likely wanted to hear from him. And he did not hold back.
"Coming back here is not easy," Jackson said. "The racism when I played here, the difficulty of going through different places where we traveled. Fortunately, I had a manager and I had players on the team that helped me get through it. But I wouldn't wish it on anybody." Jackson then described about how he would be called the n-word and would be denied service at restaurants and hotels.
Jackson then said, that if it wasn’t for his teammates and coaches with the Birmingham A’s, things would’ve gotten even worse:
"Fortunately, I had a manager, in Johnny McNamara, that . . . if I couldn't eat in the place, nobody would eat. We would get food to travel. If I couldn't stay in a hotel, they'd drive to the next hotel and find a place where I could stay. Had it not been for Rollie Fingers, Johnny McNamara, Dave Duncan, Joe and Sharon Rudi . . . I slept on their couch three, four nights a week for about a month and a half. Finally, they were threatened that they would burn our apartment complex down unless I got out."
Jackson said that without McNamara and his teammates, "I would've [gotten] killed here, because I would've beat someone's ass." Watch:
I embedded that video because it’s the only full-length, embeddable one I could find that focused on this part of his appearance, but it bleeps out the N-words Reggie used. They aired live on Fox, however and, given how prone baseball and baseball fans are to sanitize history and nostalgia, it was important that they did.
Listening to Jackson speak, I was struck by two thoughts.
First: though baseball didn’t put too fine a point on it, the game at Rickwood Field replaced the Field of Dreams Game in Iowa on the schedule as a special, small ballpark event. Though the reasons for skipping Iowa this year had more to do with business and logistics than anything else, kudos to Major League Baseball for moving away from the synthetic, sanitized version of history — if one can even call what was essentially a 1980s movie tribute version of baseball “history” — and embracing real history that actually matters.
Second: Jackson was not describing life in the Negro Leagues or during the heart of the Jim Crow era. What he described took place twenty years after baseball was integrated, over a decade after de jure segregation was outlawed, three years after the Civil Rights Act was passed, and two years after the Voting Rights Act was passed. It was a time when many who are reading these words were alive, some of whom were adults. Jackson himself was an active major leaguer into the late 1980s yet he faced the sort of bigotry and discrimination that many people in this country tend to casually assume was the stuff of ancient history if, indeed, they even acknowledge it ever happened.
And make no mistake, we’re at a point in American history where there are many people — including people in positions of power or who are seeking positions of power — who are actively trying to bring back the conditions Jackson described and who want to turn back the clock to before the Civil Rights Era began. Our Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act and multiple state legislatures have passed laws forbidding the teaching or even the discussion of racism, institutional or otherwise, in public schools and universities. Republican politicians and activists have their eyes set on eliminating anti-discrimination laws and have, as both a matter of policy and rhetoric, embraced the notion of returning Blacks and other minorities to the status of second class citizenship. And they have done so shamelessly.
Indeed, just two weeks ago, Byron Donalds, a sitting Republican Congressman who is actively seeking to become Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate, argued that things were better for Black people during the Jim Crow era:
“You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, more Black people were not just conservative — Black people have always been conservative-minded — but more Black people voted conservatively,” Donalds said. “And then HEW, Lyndon Johnson — you go down that road, and now we are where we are.”
Donalds didn’t get caught on a hot mic saying this. He said it before a crowd at a Trump campaign event in Philadelphia. And not a single Republican of consequence, let alone the man at the top of the Republican ticket, offered a word of criticism or pushback.
We’re living in a perilous time. A time when a large number of Americans want to erase the racial and social progress we have realized over the past 50-60 years. Those efforts cannot be stopped by our ignoring them. They must be actively fought, and the first step in doing so is by reminding people of what actually happened in those times and calling bullshit on those who wish to distort history.
In light of that, kudos to Reggie Jackson for not holding back on his account of his own personal history. Kudos to him for not contributing to the sanitization of history at large. It’s only through plain and straightforward words like his that we can keep others from dragging us back to the dark ages which so many fought and so many died to help us escape.
The Yankees sign a reliever
The New York Yankees signed lefty reliever Tim Hill yesterday. Hill was designated for assignment by the White Sox last Wednesday and was subsequently released after posting a 5.87 ERA and a 13/10 K/BB ratio across 23 innings in 27 appearances. That’s not great, that’s for sure, but the Yankees bullpen is banged up right now and we’re entering the part of the season where almost any fresh arms will do.
To make room on the 40-man roster, the Yankees have designated LHP Clayton Andrews for assignment.
Jasson Domínguez suffers another significant injury
Highly-touted Yankees outfield prospect Jasson Domínguez was called up for a cup of coffee at the end of last season and impressed, hitting four homers in eight games. Unfortunately, he tore his UCL during that brief stint and had to undergo Tommy John surgery in September. Domínguez rehabbed and was finally reinstated last week, yet now he has encountered another setback: a “significantly” strained oblique, which will cause him to miss eight more weeks of action.
Obviously the Yankees outfield is set at the moment with Juan Soto, Aaron Judge and Alex Verdugo, but having someone of Domínguez’s potential as depth was important given how injury prone the team’s DH, Giancarlo Stanton, is and how disastrous it might be if something happens to Soto or Judge. More specific to Domínguez, the time off with the UCL surgery combined with the oblique means that he’ll have missed almost an entire year of development, which is suboptimal to say the least.
How Rickwood Field came to be in its current state
As mentioned above, the Tribute to the Negro Leagues game between the Cardinals and the Giants went down last night, and it certainly gave Birmingham’s Rickwood Field, the oldest ballpark in the country, a chance to shine. But why is such an old park like Rickwood still standing anyway when every one of its contemporaries has been demolished?
Per this Anthony Castrovince article at MLB dot com from earlier in June which chronicles the history of the ballpark, we learn that we have some local entrepreneurs who thought they could sell Rickwood as a filming site for period baseball movies and commercials and director Ron Shelton — a minor league veteran who had played all over the south in the late 60s and early 70s — who was making the movie “Cobb” to thank.
It’s a fun read about just how close Rickwood Field came to its demise and how it was saved in order to shine anew.
Former Brewers employee alleged to be a contract killer, which, OK, sure, fine.
Aimee Betro is a 44-year-old Milwaukee Brewers employee from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, accused of being a “female assassin” who unsuccessfully tried to shoot a boutique owner in a Birmingham, England, contract killing attempt in 2019, according to Daily Mail and Birmingham Live . . . According to Birmingham Live, Betro was accused of being a “female assassin from America” who “tried to shoot a man in the street in Birmingham” in a “bungled murder plot.”
The story in The Daily Mail — which, yeah, take it with a grain of salt given that source — says that Betro traveled to Birmingham in 2019 to carry out a contract killing of a boutique clothing store owner on behalf of a father and son who owned a rival store. She allegedly walked up to the intended victim while disguised in a hijab, pointed the gun at his head, pulled the trigger, but the gun jammed. Betro went to the intended victim’s house the next day, fired some ineffectual shots, and then fled the scene and the country. This all came up in the trial of the father and son, Mohammed Nazir and Mohammed Aslam, who were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder earlier this month.
The Daily Mail says Betro is a former Brewers employee, and that she was fired for stealing the credit card information of ticket holders. There are also some identity theft allegations floating around from a few years ago. Again, none of this has been confirmed by anyone more trustworthy than the Daily Mail, but it is being reported.
Betro, the stories say, has been just living her life back in Wisconsin, posting on social media and telling friends that what went down at the trial back in Birmingham was all a big misunderstanding and that the facts being reported are wrong. Which, given that she hasn’t been arrested suggests that maybe that’s the case, but some other articles I found on this say that British authorities are looking for her. That said, if the story isn’t true, someone has to explain to me how a couple of boutique owners in Birmingham could come up with “yeah, the young woman who used to work for the Milwaukee Brewers did it” out of thin air. That’s just way too random to be bogus.
All I know for sure is that, if this is true, and an employee of a major league baseball team was moonlighting as a contract killer, it may be time for clubs to pay their office workers more because that is NOT OK.
Postscript on Greatest Living Ballplayer
I must admit, I made an egregious oversight with yesterday’s candidates for Greatest Living Ballplayer:
Given his longevity it would be silly not to assume that Bugs Bunny wasn’t using some sort of enhancement in order to continue to be an effective ballplayer, but it’s hard to argue that Bugs pasting pathetic palookas with his powerful paralyzing perfect pachyderms percussion pitch was anything but the height of dominance.
Though, to be fair, with a windup like that it was pretty easy to run on the guy.
Other Stuff
Guest Post: David Jay
I sell Cup of Coffee coffee mugs here. If you buy one, and send me a photo, you can write a guest post about anything you want. Today’s guest post is from David Jay. Take it away David!
About the time our trusty host took his big leap into writing about baseball full time, a window opened for me to do something similar.
I’d been contributing to a site covering the Padres’ minor league system in my spare time for a few years and got a freelance gig to cover the big-league squad as the local newspaper tried to figure out what it meant to move online. But the opportunity started to come into focus just as we were adjusting to life as parents and were getting ready for a cross-country move.
Perhaps with more focus, more courage, or more tenacity, I might have joined Craig in walking away from my “respectable” career track to descend full-time into the murky underworld of the online baseball cognoscenti. But I ultimately lacked at least one of those ingredients, and that window closed.
All these years later, I’m still enjoying writing about the minors in my spare time – but now I’m interviewing players who are younger than my kid! Trips to see the Padres’ various affiliates have also given me time to indulge in one of my other favorite pastimes: craft beer.
Visits to San Antonio taught me that there’s as much to be enjoyed in a pilgrimage to a destination brewery like Jester King as there is in finding the then still-unknown Weathered Souls.
When I head to Fort Wayne, it’s easy to build a travel itinerary that includes a stop in Munster to taste the whales at 3 Floyds. The quality beer revolution has spread so widely that there are now even options when the Arizona Complex League necessitates a trip to Phoenix.
Of late, I’ve been thinking about combining the things I enjoy about minor league baseball, fantastic breweries, and the Great American Roadtrip to put together a few tours next year. And if ever there’s a target demographic for such a thing, I’ve gotta figure it looks an awful lot like my fellow Cup of Coffee readers! So, I’m cashing in my guest post to invite you all to be my focus group.
Obviously, specific itineraries would have to wait until next season’s schedules are out, but I’ve mapped some pretty cool hypothetical routes around the Great Lakes, New England, and the Southeast.
The evenings would include some of my favorite baseball venues, focusing on minor league action while maybe mixing in a big league game. The days would feature visits to the region’s best breweries with a few fun surprises mixed in.
Recognizing that most of us have reached the stage when cushy seats and comfortable hotels are as important as the activities in our travel, good accommodations will be a given in all of this.
Based on my initial legwork, pricing would run between $2,500 and $3,500 for a five-day itinerary depending on specifics and what all of you test groupies help me come up with.
So, whaddaya think?
While I welcome any feedback, I’m especially curious about your thoughts on these questions:
- Would you want the baseball games to be focused on a specific league or organization, or offer a variety of experiences?
- Is including a big league stop in the mix appealing?
- Would adding in something like a collegiate summer league or Partner (nee independent) League game be appealing?
- Are high-profile destination breweries (think Toppling Goliath, Alchemist, Jester King) your jam, or would you want to be turned on to smaller places that specialize in a particular beer style? A mix of both?
- Have you had a special experience at a brewery beyond a tasting or a tour that has stood out to you?
- What would make you pull the trigger on taking a tour?
Feel free to provide feedback in the chat or email me at hopruntours@gmail.com.
Who knows, maybe a second window is cracking open all these years later!
Thanks, Dave!
Donald Sutherland: 1935-2024
Donald Sutherland, who starred in classics and near-classics such as “The Dirty Dozen,” “Kelly’s Heroes,” “M*A*S*H,” “Klute,” “Animal House,” “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” “Ordinary People,” “JFK,” and “The Hunger Games” franchise died yesterday after a long illness. He was 88.
I don’t have anything super insightful to say about Sutherland, really. I just liked him in just about everything he was in, even if the move itself wasn’t that good. He always brought something worthy to his roles. Often something a tad off-center — and, in some cases, a tad of gravitas — that elevated the material and made it memorable. Maybe the best example of that came in “JFK” where he did that extended riff on the park bench as “Mr. X,” outlining like a dozen conspiracy theories to an increasingly confused Kevin Costner. They were mostly batshit things straight from Oliver Stone’s id and the whole sequence was so removed from the action that it should’ve sunk the whole movie, but Sutherland’s delivery was so good and compelling it all kinda held together somehow. If there’s any justice in the world Stone picked up Sutherland’s dinner tabs for the last 33 years.
I’ve heard Sutherland referred to as “the best actor to never win a competitive Oscar.” That may be true, it may not be, I’m not sure. But he certainly has a strong case as Canada’s Greatest Actor. Him or Christopher Plummer are the finalists, I reckon. It’s also worth noting that Sutherland was on an NSA/CIA watchlist in the early 1970s because of his anti-war activities, and if that doesn’t speak to a strong character I don’t know what does.
Oh, and he was a baseball fan too. Sadly, the last baseball datapoint we have for him was his being disgusted at the Blue Jays’ performance in the Wild Card series last year:
“They didn’t hit the ball so well in clutch situations, the Blue Jays,” said Sutherland from his home in Quebec’s Eastern Townships . . . Sutherland was particularly disappointed when Toronto all-star first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was caught off second base by Minnesota pitcher Sonny Gray to end the fifth inning. All-star shortstop Bo Bichette, who led the Blue Jays with a .306 batting average, was at the plate when Guerrero was picked off with leadoff man George Springer on third.
“How can you have Vladdy caught off second base with a runner on third?” said the 88-year-old Sutherland, with a frustrated sigh. “I thought I would shoot myself.”
Relatable content, man. Relatable content.
Rest in peace Donald Sutherland.
Have a great weekend everyone.
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