Cup of Coffee: May 20, 2024
Is Vegas gonna happen, Paul Skenes, the nationalization of TV rights, Nelson Cruz, the Premier League, expensive cologne, sunscreen truthers, and Disney's newest union
Good morning!
Today I wonder whether Las Vegas is ever gonna happen, marvel at Paul Skenes, contemplate the nationalization of TV rights, and talk about Nelson Cruz’s new job.
In Other Stuff we greet the end of the Premier League season, talk about what the New York Times talks about when it talks about trends, get introduced to sunscreen truthers, and a group of workers you often don’t think too much about have unionized.
And That Happened
Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:
Guardians 5, Twins 2: Cleveland held a 2-1 lead until Minnesota scored one on an error in the top of the ninth to tie things up. Will Brennan, no doubt knowing that the Twins had to travel to Washington for tonight’s game against the Nats, did them a favor by hitting a walkoff three-run homer in the bottom half. I didn’t look to see what Rocco Baldelli had to say afterward, but I can only assume it was a hearty thanks to Brennan for not causing the Twins’ flight to be delayed. At the very least I’m sure that makes up for the Twins losing six straight. Flying is such a hassle!
Royals 8, Athletics 4: The sweep. Vinnie Pasquantino hit a three-run triple, Bobby Witt Jr. went 2-for-3 with a double, a triple and two RBI, Maikel Garcia drove in two, and Salvador Perez had two hits and an RBI. All that was plenty for Brady Singer who allowed one over six while striking out nine. Kansas City has won eight of 11 games and are ten-games over .500. If you haven’t noticed, the Royals have passed the streaky Twins and sit in second place in the AL Central. How about that?
Phillies 11, Nationals 5: Alec Bohm homered and drove in five, Bryce Harper doubled and drove in a couple, Kody Clemens had a pair of doubles and two RBI, and Nick Castellanos had two run-scoring singles as Philly wins in a romp. They sweep the Nats and have the best record in the game. The Nats lost their fifth straight and their seventh in their last eight games on a nine-game road trip. I’d say it’d be nice to go home but there may be a mob waiting at the airport. After the game manager Dave Martinez said “We've got to keep our heads up. We have to keep going.” Well, yeah, or else you’ll forfeit the rest of their games and finish 20-142.
Blue Jays 5, Rays 2: Daniel Vogelbach homered and scored three times and Alek Manoah struck out seven over seven innings to help the Jays avoid the sweep. It was Manoah’s first win since last August. I’m trying to think if there’s anything I’m supposed to do as part of my job and general mission in life that I haven’t done since last August and the best I can come up with is plant flowers in the little planter in front of my house. In my defense, when I moved in last June there were already flowers in it and someone else watered them all summer, so I mistakenly thought that was just part of the deal of my little community here, but I’m guessing not. Anyway, I’ll probably plant some flowers there if none show up by next weekend. Manoah was probably smart not to just wait for a win to happen, though. Baseball is a lot harder and less forgiving than landscaping.
Red Sox 11, Cardinals 3: Rafael Devers hit a two-run homer in the sixth — it was his fifth straight game with a dinger — as the Sox ended their four-game skid. Tyler O’Neill homered in front of his former hometown fans. Jarren Duran hit an RBI triple. Nick Pivetta gave up one run on one hit in six innings while striking out eight.
Yankees 7, White Sox 2: Chicago opened up an early 2-0 lead but Aaron Judge and Jon Berti homered — Berti’s was a three-run blast — as the Yankees complete the sweep. New York has won seven in a row and 13 of 15 overall while boasting the AL’s best record. All of this without Gerrit Cole.
Orioles 6, Mariners 3: Gunnar Henderson homered again — he now has 15, which ties him for the lead in all of baseball — and Ryan O'Hearn went deep as well. Corbin Burnes allowed one run while scattering seven hits and striking out 11. Henderson homered in each of the three games of the series while going 5-for-12 with two walks and five RBI. He’s pretty good, ya know?
Mets 7, Marlins 3: Tyrone Taylor hit a two-run double and Harrison Bader hit a two-run single in the first to stake the Mets to an early 4-0 lead. New York added three more in the ninth via a two-run shot from Brandon Nimmo and a single from Brett Baty. The Mets bounced back after blowing a four-run lead in the ninth on Saturday to avoid a three-game sweep.
Astros 9, Brewers 4: Kyle Tucker hit two homers to join Gunnar Henderson in a tie for the league lead with 15. He also drove in four. Jose Altuve hit a leadoff homer in a pace-setting four-run first. Jake Meyers had three hits for Houston, which took two of three from the Brewers and are slowly climbing back toward .500 following a crap start.
Pirates 3, Cubs 2: Jack Suwinski homered and Mitch Keller pitched six solid innings, allowing two runs and two hits, as the Pirates take three of four from the Cubbies, who scored only 10 runs on 18 hits in the whole series.
Angels 4, Rangers 1: Angels starter José Soriano was excellent, allowing one run on five hits while pitching into the eighth. Kevin Pillar had a pinch-hit, tie-breaking two-run single in the seventh — it was his 1,000th career hit — and Luis Rengifo tripled home some insurance right after that. The Angels take two of three. The one they dropped on Saturday night was a lulu, though:
Ron Washington is channeling some higher power this season and it’s glorious to behold.
Giants 4, Rockies 1: According to Alex Pavlovic of NBC Bay Area, Giants starter Jordan Hicks threw up his pregame meal and the water he drank, leading to diminished velocity he demonstrated in this game. To try to make up for it he ate bananas and stroopwafels during the game to try and regain some energy. Which, as everyone knows, is part of the doctor-recommended BRAS diet (bananas, rice, applesauce, and stroopwafel) for people with digestive problems. Works every time. Worked well enough here, as Hicks went five innings and allowed just the one run to pick up his fourth win. Heliot Ramos homered. It’s not clear if he barfed or anything yesterday.
Dodgers 3, Reds 2: Andy Pages hit a two-run homer in the fourth and the Reds scored a couple on a Santiago Espinal double in the fifth and a bases-loaded walk in the seventh. L.A. held the Reds scoreless in the top of the tenth. Shohei Ohtani came up in the bottom half with two men on and two men out and singled home the Manfred Man for a walkoff win. It was Ohtani’s first walkoff as a Dodger and it gave L.A. the series, three games to one.
Diamondbacks 6, Tigers 4: It was tied at four in the seventh when Arizona got a couple. One on a Pavin Smith groundout with a big assist from some bad defense by the Tigers and another grounder from Blaze Alexander. Earlier Joc Pederson and Christian Walker each had a couple of RBI to help the Diamondbacks avoid the sweep.
Padres 9, Atlanta 1: The premise of the Atlanta season as it began was that while the pitching was questionable primarily due to injury, the team can bash its way to victory and still be OK. That held for a few weeks but it’s been an inoperative premise of late. As it was here, with Yu Darvish shutting Atlanta hitters out for seven — he now has a 25-inning scoreless streak going — and the club notching just four hits in all. The Padres offense had no such trouble, with Jake Cronenworth, Luis Campusano and Ha-Saeong Kim going deep. Jurickson Profar was 3-for-4 with a walk, two runs scored and an RBI. Luis Arraez was 2-for-4 with a walk, a run and a stolen base. He’s reached base in 23 straight games. The series isn’t over — they play again today due to Saturday’s postponement — but Atlanta has lost three straight and find themselves five back of the surging Phillies.
The Daily Briefing
How is Las Vegas ever going to happen?
On Friday the Las Vegas Stadium Authority had its monthly meeting. During the meeting the board — which local news characterized as “moving forward on the A’s plan” — merely “held a couple of votes on the park, one of which acknowledged that Major League Baseball team owners have given their blessing for the A’s to move to Las Vegas. The other recognized that the A’s themselves are committed to moving here.” Each of which have been long established ideas, so how that constitutes “moving forward” I have no idea.
But hey, there’s always next month, right? Wrong: the board canceled June’s meeting, with the board’s chairman saying that an every-other-month meeting schedule is working for now. This despite the fact that John Fisher and the A’s have still not presented a plan via which they will fund their $1.12 billion portion of the $1.5 billion stadium project.
The stadium board chairman was asked if he was sure Fisher was good for the money. He said "I think John's looking at options . . . I don't think it's necessarily out of need. I think it's so that the funding is the most efficient for the A's." He ultimately said that Fisher “has the ability” to fund the balance on his own, but it was all extremely hypothetical and makes it pretty clear that Fisher has made no promises and no one knows for certain that this is happening. They say they believe it because, politically, they are required to say they believe it, but there is no plan.
It’s clear what’s going on here. Fisher has yet to prove to anyone he’s going to be able to pull this off and, since there is no actual plan in place yet other than some empty words and some curiously detail-free architectural renderings, there’s no purpose for the stadium board to keep meeting. The board can put any face it wants on it, but nothing continues to happen.
It seems increasingly clear to me that the Athletics’ move to Las Vegas is not happening, at least under the conditions everyone involved said it was happening (i.e. Nevada paying $380 million, The A’s the rest, with the team beginning play there in 2028). As this continues to linger the plans, such as they are, will slide, and the more they slide the less likely the A’s are going to Vegas under any circumstances, let alone the ones currently assumed.
Which would be pretty damn embarrassing for Major League Baseball. Makes me wonder how long Rob Manfred can go along with the “everything is fine, it’s all going according to plan” script before having to actually step in and smack Fisher around a bit. Not that he’d ever do it publicly.
Paul Skenes was redonkulous on Friday
Pirates phenom Paul Skenes keeps making weekend starts so I can’t gush about him in the recaps, but when he turns in performances like he did on Friday I’m happy to gush about him here, in delayed fashion.
His second start, like his first, came against the Chicago Cubs. They did not have an easier time against him due to familiarity, however. Quite the opposite: six innings pitched, no hits, no runs, 11 strikeouts and only one walk. Also impressive: he recorded six groundouts against only one fly out while causing Cubs batters to whiff 22 times on 54 swings. He averaged 99.3 mph on his fastball. Because he’s young and green he’s on a pitch count so Derek Shelton pulled him after those six innings and an even 100 pitches, but it’s pretty damn clear that the kid deserves to be where he is.
Here are some highlights from his second big league appearance. My favorite was Ian Happ flinging his bat like 200 feet into the stands in his first plate appearance.
Nationalizing TV rights?
The NFL has a handful of big national TV deals which cover all of its teams, the money from which all of its teams split evenly. Major League Soccer has a unified deal with Apple TV that works basically the same way. Baseball, basketball, and hockey have national deals as well, but only for a handful of games, with a patchwork of local TV deals via which each team keeps what it kills, if you will, covering the majority.
What Evan Drellich’s latest article at The Athletic presupposes is: what if they didn’t?
Commissioner Rob Manfred and some of the sport’s owners are more seriously talking about nationalizing baseball’s TV rights than ever before. Not because of relocation, but because of cord-cutting, the failure of some traditional regional sports networks, and the simultaneous battle for streaming supremacy waged by Netflix, Amazon and other streamers that has left sports leagues and rights holders in a chaotic reformation.
Drellich immediately points out the many, many roadblocks to such a thing. Stuff like some teams like the Yankees and Dodgers making scads of money on their huge local deals which last into the 2030s while a number of the teams make a fraction of what they do, even if they can hold on to local deals which isn’t a given in light of the tumult of the cable/regional sports network model. Why would the Yankees or Dodgers agree to pool local revenues with the Rockies, for example? What would be in it for them?
It’s also worth noting that pooled national TV deals are easy when teams play 17 games a year like they do in the NFL, but when you have a 162-game inventory it’s hard to make such a model work. Everyone may tune in to a few games on Sunday and Monday but who, besides local diehards, are watching a three-game series between Washington and Miami on a given Tuesday-Thursday?
Which is to say: no, this is not happening any time soon. But as Drellich notes, the fact that Manfred even acknowledged that the topic is being kicked around, at least preliminarily, is notable. And no matter the case, the article is a good one for people wanting to get their brains around how the current TV landscape works, why baseball is different from the NFL, and stuff like that. Which are all topics I’ve found, in my experience, that non-hardcore fans ask about a lot.
Nelson Cruz named MLB special advisor
Nineteen-year MLB veteran Nelson Cruz has a new job: he has been tapped to fill the new role of special adviser for baseball operations, which includes his serving as a liaison between Major League Baseball and players in Latin American countries. Commissioner Manfred’s statement:
“Nelson Cruz is a respected voice in the game whose outstanding service to young people and those in need in the Dominican Republic earned him the Roberto Clemente Award. Nelson is passionate about growing the game and improving issues for players and our sport as a whole. He will be a resource to many people across our game, especially in the Dominican Republic.”
Cruz’s own statement:
“I’m extremely happy to join Major League Baseball. Since I signed out of the Dominican Republic as a teenager, I’ve cared deeply about the issues affecting that country, and the game as a whole. I’m excited to work with the Commissioner’s Office and the opportunity to work with young players by sharing what I have learned since I signed in 1998.”
I suppose it beats fishing or dabbling in real estate or whatever it is most retired big leaguers do. I’m curious to know what he’ll be doing means for important issues like MLB’s desire for an international draft or, for that matter, how it relates to the MLBPA’s role in representing minor leaguers, but since it’s a new job there’s really no way of knowing what, exactly, it is that he’ll be doing.
Other Stuff
The 2023-24 Premier League season ends
Unlike American sports, the English football season never truly ends — the FA Cup final is next weekend and two Premier League teams are playing exhibitions against one another in friggin’ Australia two friggin’ days from now — but the part of the 2023-24 season which actually counts ended yesterday. The title was still technically up in the air given that Manchester City had not formally clinched it, but with their 3-1 win against West Ham, City won its fourth consecutive Premier League title and sixth title in seven years, edging out Arsenal.
Part of me thinks that, given how I only began following English football three years ago — and given that I absolutely love the actual city of Manchester — I coulda just gone all-in as a City fan and I’d be oh-so-satisfied right about now. I realize, however, that I’ve never had front-running in my DNA and it never could’ve been an option. I know a couple of people who are City fans and have been for 15 or even 20 or more years and they remember when the club was a bottom-half or, before 2002, a second-level team sometimes. This unprecedented run of dominance is something they can and still do savor in ways a newcomer never could. And if I had even tried, what’s the future hold? They may stay dominant for several more years but, by definition, the only direction they can do is down. So yeah, I made the right choice.
As for that choice: not a great season for Brentford. I know that nothing, including staying in the top flight, is guaranteed for a non-Big Six club, and that Brentford is probably always going to be one of the weaker sisters of the top flight, at least financially. As a result, I am happy that they have lived to play another year in the Premiership. I’ll also say that the Ivan Toney suspension and the almost comical number of major injuries to key players eviscerated any margin for error the Bees had, making their late season-saving run of wins and draws something of a victory in and of itself. Still: 16th place and fewer than 40 points is not what ya want. Unlike the first two years of watching them my dominant mood while watching matches this season wasn’t “it’s just great to be here, and look how they’re exceeding expectations!” It was “how are they gonna blow this one late?” Which I suppose means my fandom has normalized and I’m no longer naive. Oh well.
That being said, I’m decades from becoming jaded like I sometimes am about baseball. Ivan Toney is gonna leave this summer, and that’s probably for the best. Yoane Wissa is a lot of fun. I’m excited to see what newcomer Igor Thiago is all about. And, while I’m still getting used to how short the offseason in soccer is, realizing yesterday that the new campaign begins on August 17 put a spring in my step.
It puts me in mind of the famous Rogers Hornsby quote: “People ask me what I do in summer when there's no English football. I'll tell you what I do: I quickly read everything I can so I’m not missing out because, Christ, the season is gonna start pretty damn quickly!”
Watching the trends
Over at the New York Times, reporter Callie Holtermann writes about a growing trend in which “teen and even tween boys with money to spare are growing obsessed with designer fragrances that cost hundreds of dollars.”
I don’t care about the substance of the piece, really. The article is a great example, however, of The Number One Rule of New York Times Trend Pieces: they’re almost always about rich or, at the very least, well-off/professional people. Indeed, every time I see the New York Times write a trend piece, I focus less on what the specific trend is and, instead, look for signs that the reporter looked only at what well-off people are doing, often because those people are social peers, friends of social peers, or because the story was more or less handed to them by an industry trying to boost its image in some way.
Normally it’s super easy, and this article is no exception. Even a quick skim of this article sets off all the alarms, and in some cases, the reporter basically admits that, to the extent this a trend, it’s only rich people doing it. Examples:
- The key graf of the intro explicitly states this is a rich kid trend when is says “[t]eenage boys have long turned to mists and sprays to drown out the first whiffs of puberty, but some even younger adolescents — whose parents have the cash, that is — are now becoming infatuated by designer colognes with price tags in the hundreds of dollars.” Wealthy people want and buy expensive things. This changes everything!
- The first interview is a mom from Westchester County, New York, which has the 47th highest median income of the country’s 3,143 counties. That’s not quite the top 1% of the country’s richest counties, but it only misses it by a little;
- I was momentarily tempted to delete the previous bullet point when a subsequent interview involved some kids from Oklahoma, but context suggests that they’re just rich kids from Oklahoma given that one kid is named “Bentley” and their father is said to have over 70 bottles of high-end fragrances of his own;
- A 14 year old kid named Logan from Chicago considers a nearly $300 bottle of Tom Ford’s Tobacco Vanille “his signature scent.” His mother offers a quote about how they have “limited funds” but the photo of Logan also shows him holding a bottle of Jean Paul Gaultier cologne while he wears a Vineyard Vines shirt which is preppy-wear that, based on my experience in an upscale suburb, is a pretty good sign that his parents are at the very least well-paid professional types.
I don’t want to act like this is the most serious problem facing journalism or society or anything because ultimately it’s a just a story about a bunch of kids wanting high-status goods and that’s pretty damn evergreen. But I nonetheless find it useful to read trend pieces critically. If for no other reason than because it is inevitable that various trends, especially among young people, will be lazily treated as applying to a much wider swath of folks than the trend really applies and will later be deployed to discount people’s opinions about all manner of other things. The new version of “we shouldn’t listen to young people’s complaints about the housing market because they spend all their money on avocado toast” or whatever.
A lot of people in the media do this kind of thing. The New York Times may be the worst offender, though.
Sunscreen truthers
Vaccine deniers are truly horrible and/or stupid people, but they’re not the only ones out there peddling potentially deadly misinformation. Would you believe that there are sunscreen deniers? From the Wall Street Journal:
A woman tilts her face toward the sun and closes her eyes.
“Do you wear sunscreen?” reads a caption in the video, which has more than one million views on X. No, the woman responds. A new caption appears: “There is no PROOF the sun causes cancer.”
The 15-second video is a glimmer of the anti-sunscreen sentiment emanating from some influencers and celebrities. Their claims, debunked by dermatologists and scientists in other videos, range from misconceptions that sunscreen itself causes cancer to conspiracies that sunscreen is a ploy by pharmaceutical companies to pad profits and sicken people.
It’s just amazing, really:
I checked out that Gubba Homestead person’s account — she’s the person in the video who the WSJ uses to peg the story above — and this is one of her more recent tweets:
I’m gonna use “NASA explanations don’t count” as a way to deflect when people tell me I’m wrong about something. Because that’ll make me laugh and, otherwise, all I want to do when I think about this is cry.
Anyway, my first impulse upon reading the article was to believe that this too was some sort of reality-skewing trend piece, but then I hit this part of it:
About a quarter of adults under 35 think drinking water can help ward off sunburns, and one in seven believes applying sunscreen daily can cause more damage than sun exposure, a recent survey conducted by the Orlando Health Cancer Institute found.
I’d like to think that survey is flawed somehow, and that the only people who truly believe that stuff are a thin slice of moonbat nutbars who also claim that pasteurization is a conspiracy and that RFK Jr. should be president. But even if this is just some weird fringe thing, anyone who believes it risks dying and/or killing other people so I’m not gonna be as blasé about it as I am high-end teen fragrances.
In closing: I am increasingly of the opinion that humanity made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place. Hell, maybe even the trees were a bad move and we never should have left the oceans.
Gawrsh!
The Los Angeles Times reported late Saturday night that Disneyland employees who portray costumed characters such as Mickey Mouse or Buzz Lightyear — or more human-looking characters like the various Disney Princesses — have voted to unionize with Actors’ Equity. The workers announced their intent to unionize back in February.
A thing I learned that I did not know before and I would never have guessed: these Disneyland workers were among the last of Disney workers to not be unionized already. The costumed workers at Walt Disney World in Florida already are, as are the custodians, ride operators, merchandise clerks and others at Disneyland in California.
I’m pro-union in every conceivable way and I applaud all workers, regardless of the sort of job they do, to unionize. Because if the capitalists who run everything can band together to screw us — and they do — there is every reason in the world for workers to band together to fight back and get the compensation, treatment, and dignity they deserve.
I say that so you’ll forgive me when I say that I found myself descending into a fit of unstoppable laughter when I imagined Goofy singing Pete Seeger’s “Solidarity Forever” or Paul Robeson’s “Joe Hill.”
🎶 Oh workers can you stand it?
Oh tell me how you can?
Will you be a lousy scab
Or will you be a man?
Ah-hyuck! 🎶
Have a great day everyone.
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