Cup of Coffee: September 3, 2024

Good morning!

Yesterday was a federal holiday and usually on federal holidays we have a full slate of games. But nope. Eight teams had the day off. I’d like to say that this was MLB’s attempt to recognize that (a) players are labor; and (b) Labor Day should, at least partially, be recognized by giving the workers a day off, but we all know better than that. MLB and its owners would sooner crush organized labor and abolish Labor Day than to recognize it in even the slightest way, so it was business as usual as far as the league was concerned. Not that that’s new or anything.

We still have a full newsletter today, however. Recaps of the 11 games which did go down, an item about how math is probably keeping a Yankees prospect down on the farm, the Astros’ strange handling of Kyle Tucker’s injury, and we hear from a parent of a kid deeply involved in youth sports who tells us how big of an outlay that whole deal really is.

In Other Stuff we have a Newsletter Update, The Economist uses a word that I don’t think means what they think it means, a suspected Russian agent has been neutralized, and I talk a bit about naked game shows.

And That Happened 

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Brewers 9, Cardinals 3: It was Willy Adames’ birthday yesterday so he hit a three-run home run. And since this is the fifth straight game in which he has homered, I can only assume he’s the sort of guy who celebrates “birthday weekends” or “birthday months.” I’m a bit skeptical of anyone over the age of ten who does that, but if it makes him hit dingers I’m not gonna judge. Do what works. Jackson Chourio hit a grand slam and Rhys Hoskins also homered. Chourio’s and Hoskins’ birthdays are both in March. Look out spring training pitchers. The Brewers have won six of seven.

Orioles 13, White Sox 3: Gunnar Henderson and Cedric Mullins each homered and each drove in three. Austin Slater drove in three without a homer. Emmanuel River knocked in two and Adley Rutschman and Anthony Santander each had one. Corbin Burnes got his 13th win. Chris Flexen got his 14th loss. What’s more, it’s the 20th straight Chris Flexen start that the White Sox have lost. They also lost their 11th straight and, really, it’s getting hard to watch, even by just looking at the box scores.

Guardians 4, Royals 2: Guardians starter Gavin Williams was fantastic, allowing just one run on one hit over seven while Lane Thomas and Josh Naylor each hit two-run shots. Things are not going the way the Royals need them to be going. Six straight losses. This one came without Matt Quatraro in the dugout due to his having to deal with a personal matter. Kansas City is now 4.5 out in the Central, but their lead for the third Wild Card is still fairly comfortable. At least for now.

Reds 5, Astros 3: Santiago Espinal hit a bloop single that drove in two runs in the fifth to break a 2-2 tie, Ty France had four hits and Amed Rosario had two hits and drove in a run. Cincinnati snaps Houston’s five-game winning streak.

Dodgers 11, Diamondbacks 6: Freddie Freeman had a few days off with a broken finger and the rest seemed to do him good, as he’s had four homers in his four games back, including two in this one. Freeman drove in five runs in all, Teoscar Hernández went 5-for-5, and Shohei Ohtani stole three bases, which puts him in the 44-46 club. Which, sure, that’s a thing. The Dodgers take three of four from the Dbacks, who had been breathing down their neck. Now the Dodgers are back to a five-game lead.

Padres 3, Tigers 0: Joe Musgrove handled the first six innings of this shutout and three relievers handled the rest in this six-hitter. Luis Arraez singled in two runs and Manny Machado singled in the third. Fernando Tatis was activated from the 60-day injured list and went 0-for-4, but he’s back.

Twins 5, Rays 4: Trevor Larnach hit a three-run homer and Brooks Lee hit a solo shot. Simeon Woods Richardson did not have a great start but five relievers pitched five and a third innings of one-run ball. The Twins remain three and a half behind Cleveland and they moved a game ahead of Kansas City for the AL’s second Wild Card spot.

Athletics 5, Mariners 4: Shea Langeliers hit a three-run homer in the fourth and led off the ninth inning with a walkoff solo homer, so he can have tomorrow off as far as I’m concerned. Seattle lost its third straight. You can’t let the Angels and A’s beat you like a rented mule and expect to make any progress in the playoff race, man. I mean, they’re 69-69 now. That’s not very nice!

Mets 4, Red Sox 1: Luis Severino allowed one run on six hits over seven, Brandon Nimmo and Luis Torrens doubled in runs, and Francisco Lindor singled in Torrens. Lindor really deserves credit for Nimmo’s RBI, because that guy hauled ass around the bases to score on that one. The Mets have won five straight and are just a half game back of Atlanta for the third Wild Card.

Pirates 5, Cubs 3: Bryan Reynolds and Andrew McCutchen homered during Pittsburgh's four-run eighth which cooled off the Cubs, ended their six-game winning streak, and dropped them to three and a half behind Atlanta.

Also: I saw a tweet from last night that said this was the first game “in which the Cubs were up 3-0 or better in the eighth inning or later at Wrigley only to blow the lead all in one inning and lose the game since Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS against the Marlins.” Which is so completely contorted a factoid that whoever it was who came up with it had to have sat down specifically to make it result in a reference to that game. That’s some A-grade haterade, man. Respect.

Yankees 8, Rangers 4: Gleyber Torres went 3-for-5 and doubled in a couple, Aaron Judge doubled in one as well, Anthony Rizzo — remember him? — doubled in two, Giancarlo Stanton homered, and Jazz Chisholm Jr. singled in one and scored on a wild pitch. Gerrit Cole allowed one over six and struck out nine but left the game with a right calf cramp. The Yankees don’t seem too concerned.

The Daily Briefing

Rookie Math

The Yankees surprised some people by not calling up top prospect Jasson Domínguez when rosters expanded on Sunday. They enraged some more people when they were asked about the reasons why and Brian Cashman and Aaron Boone both talked about how it was important to keep Alex Verdugo in the lineup despite the fact he has basically sucked all year. Which, yeah, I get that.

Brian Hoch of MLB dot com’s article yesterday reported on Boone’s thoughts regarding Verdugo:

Boone said that Verdugo is “capable” offensively and that he believes the outfielder has “been a little unlucky this year” at the plate.

“You scratch underneath and it is in line with what he’s done most of his career, as far as contact quality,” Boone said. “He can really defend in left. If he can get it going, talking about [adding] length to the lineup, he certainly can provide that.”

Cashman has been on that same page, recently saying that there was “no lane” for Domínguez, implying that he’s blocked by Verdugo.

Of course, Hoch dropped this item in his article too:

Another piece of the behind-the-scenes calculus could involve Domínguez’s rookie status. Domínguez will retain that status for 2025, provided he does not exceed 130 career at-bats (he has 35 right now). Keeping him a rookie in '25 may permit the Yankees to net a Draft pick after the first round in '26 if Domínguez wins the 2025 AL Rookie of the Year Award.

The word “could” in that first sentence is doing a lot of work here. Indeed, when you do the math, it seems like this is exactly the reason why the Yankees have yet to call up Domínguez.

When this article dropped yesterday morning, Domínguez was 95 at bats short of losing his rookie status this year. Also as of yesterday morning the Yankees had exactly 25 games left. Both Cashman and Boone said that if Domínguez was on the club they’d want him playing every day. If he was on the club as of yesterday morning and he did play every day, he’d need to average 3.8 at bats per game over those 25 games to burn his rookie status. As of yesterday morning the man he’d be replacing, Verdugo, had 499 at bats in 131 games. Which is exactly . . . 3.8 at bats per game.

So, yeah, I suspect that the rookie status thing is what’s keeping the Yankees from calling up Domínguez. Those concerns will be all but eliminated after another game or two, as it’ll be close to impossible for him to get enough at bats in the remaining schedule to get to 130. If Verdugo hits a bit they’ll keep the status quo. But if he doesn’t — and he probably won’t because he’s Alex Verdugo — I suspect that Domínguez will be up in pretty short order, what with the rookie status pressure being off.

The Astros were lying about Kyle Tucker’s injury for some reason

Kyle Tucker of the Astros has not played since fouling a ball off his right leg on June 3. The club has said for the past three months that Tucker had a “deep bone bruise” or a “shin contusion.” Chandler Rome of The Athletic reported yesterday, however, that that wasn’t true: Tucker suffered a fractured shin on that foul ball. Given that Astros GM Dana Brown was still calling it a “bone bruise” when asked about it on Saturday but, yesterday, admitted that it was, in fact, a fracture, it’s pretty clear that someone inside leaked the truth to Rome and Brown had to come clean.

The question I have is why. Why in the hell would the Astros lie about this for three months? I honestly cannot see the percentage here. It’s not like this is hockey or football or something and they needed to be concerned about the opposition targeting Tucker’s shins. If anyone has any ideas please share, but it seems super weird to me.

In any event, as Rome reports, Tucker is taking live batting practice and doing defensive drills and will likely be activated very soon, so none of this really matters all that much. But it’s still friggin’ weird.

More on youth sports 

Yesterday morning’s item about private equity coming for youth sports touched briefly on how involved and, above all else, how crazy expensive youth sports have become for its participants and their families. Yesterday afternoon a friend emailed me in response to give some insight on what it takes to keep up with that whole deal, at least if one’s child plays at anything approaching an advanced level.

For context, the person writing this is a partner in a major law firm who lives in the Midwest:

I have a son in travel lacrosse. He is on two travel teams, and also does various recruiting and training events. These things are nearly REQUIRED for my son or any other player to be a “recruitable” athlete.*

I would estimate that this last year, 9/1/23-8/31/24, we spent at least $20,000 on lacrosse. I would say that puts me in the middle of the pack for the two travel teams my son plays on. Of course all of that is after tax, so let’s say that required at least $35,000 in pre-tax income. So in order to make this happen, we needed pre-tax income of an amount sufficient to be in a position to choose to spend car- or rent-sized money on what is clearly, obviously, unquestionably a sixteenth-tier inessential luxury. 

And of course, since this year involved something like ten travel weekends, we needed, on top of the money and among other things, (1) at least one job that supports mobility and flexibility; and (2) at least one parent who could stay home and keep the trains running on time.

 And so, you can see the selection bias at play here. 

The “recruitable” athletes are pretty damn homogenous, demographically.  And not just by race/ethnicity, but more so by socioeconomic status. I am a partner in a global law firm, and my fellow parents are nearly exclusively your various lawyers, accountants, bankers, medical/IT/etc professionals and business executives and owners. You see precious few truly middle class folks. One travel dad friend is a firefighter, but that’s all that immediately comes to mind. 

All of this exacerbates the societal effects of wealth inequality: in a micro sense, my son interacts almost exclusively with kids from similar backgrounds to his. That’s not great for him.  And in a macro sense it’s nearly impossible for kids without my resources to even have a shot at the highest levels of competition. And that’s to say nothing of college scholarships, which of course are needed the most by the families that cannot afford the pursuit of them.  That’s not great for anybody.

We do some things, absolutely not enough, to help in our small part.  At the local (read: least expensive, and therefore least-generous) level, we anonymously sponsor some fees for my kids’ organizations, so that at least the local fees can be less of an impediment for less-advantaged kids to get started. And when my son is done playing, we plan to “endow” — this is so gross — his position training coach with a “scholarship” (yuck) that is intended for less-advantaged kids to get the sort of positional work that is a near-essential for getting on the travel teams in the first place.

But it’s not enough – it can’t be enough. Fixing this would require a top-down reimagining of what and who the kid sports industrial complex is for.

* You (or your readers) may choose not to believe me, but we’re not in this for the college scholarship; we’re not dumb, and therefore we would not spend $20k to save less money than that.  It truly is irreplaceable times with, and experiences for, my son.  I cherish every dumb Residence Inn, every sticky Taco Bell, every finicky rental car.  This is literally WHY I do what I do for a living.  But that doesn’t mean I am deluded about the machine I am feeding, or the choices I make in feeding it.

Neither of my kids were interested in sports past, like, age 6 soccer. I’ve always thought of that as a fairly neutral thing. If they had wanted to play sports, sure, I would’ve supported them in those pursuits, but they didn’t and I was totally fine with that because it was their choice. But man, the more I learn about what youth sports are like these days — and how vastly different they are from what I experienced in the 80s — I have to say I dodged a damn bullet.  

Other Stuff

Newsletter Business

Just giving you all an update as to where things stand with the possible migration of this newsletter to another platform.

Yesterday I had a long conversation with the folks at Ghost about my issues with Beehiiv and my priorities with respect to the newsletter. It was a pretty encouraging conversation. Ghost seems to have the functionality we want and, overall, it is way better-geared toward editorial publishing while a lot of the issues we’ve had with Beehiiv seem to be a function of it being better-suited to marketing and sales newsletters and things.

Some random observations and comments:

• If I do decide to switch to Ghost, such a change would not happen until at least November. Ghost’s migration process is a deliberate one and it will likely mean that the newsletter goes dark for a week or more. This is not ideal of course, but if it has to happen better for it to happen after the World Series is over and before the Winter Meetings;
• While there will always be some deliverability hiccups with newsletters — and while the more I have researched the matter, the more it seems that Comcast’s issues affect more than just Beehiiv newsletters — Ghost has fewer delivery failures and I believe the failure rate would be less of a problem there than it is here;
• Subscribers would have a standard username/password login experience at Ghost as opposed to the email login function of Beehiiv. This, in turn, would give subscribers a better connection to their account and subscription information and would make it easier for you to look at past newsletters, the archives, and things like that. I think a big problem with Beehiiv’s interface is that no one ever really goes to the website so when there are issues subscribers feel sort of lost at sea. Cup of Coffee at Ghost would be a right-proper website which, frankly, works better for this newsletter’s particular demographic;
• If I switch I will probably be using my personal domain, Craigcalcaterra.com. I don’t own Cup of Coffee dot com and whoever it is who does wants $20K for it and, well, no. I do own a “dot social” version of it, but that’s pretty janky and the guys at Ghost and I believe it would lead to delivery problems. While Craigcalcaterra.com doesn’t have a sender reputation yet because I’ve never used it to send email, it has been around for like 15 years with actual content and it’s been indexed by Google and stuff a billion times, so it makes some sense;
• Bonus, at least for me: if I do use Craigcalcaterra.com I will likely migrate all of the current personal blog content from Wordpress to the Ghost site so all of my writing will be in one place. That probably doesn’t matter to any of you but I sort of like that from a web hygiene perspective.

The next step in this is for me to look at a number of Ghost sites/newsletters to see what writers/creators are doing with it, what they’re not doing with it, how robust their comments sections are, and things like that. After I spend a little time farting around with that I’ll feel more comfortable making a decision about moving things over.

Just keepin’ y’all in the loop. As always, if anyone has some particular insight into this — particularly Ghost-hosted newsletters/websites — by all means reach out and let me know your thoughts.

Actually . . .

Seen in The Economist:

Know what? I’m pretty sure this territory is charted. Like, really, really, horrifically charted in the finest of historical detail. There are books about it and everything.

Between this and the U.S. political media pretending that Donald Trump is some sort of new, unknown candidate whose positions are hard to figure as opposed to a former President of the Damn United States of America with an actual track record, journalism schools really need to think about making “Object Permanence 101” a required course.

The really, really cold war

From the Washington Post:

A beluga whale suspected of being a Russian intelligence asset — before winning the hearts of Norwegian fishermen with his toothy grin — was found dead over the weekend. The mammal, affectionately known as “Hvaldimir,” was estimated to be 14 to 17 years old . . . Researchers speculated that the harness Hvaldimir was initially discovered wearing could have carried weapons or cameras, raising suspicions that he was a remnant of a Russian navy program that was purportedly seeking to train aquatic mammals as spies. Moscow’s Defense Ministry has denied such a program exists but once published an ad offering $24,000 for five bottlenose dolphins.

I am just going to assume that this is viral marketing for Season 4 of “Slow Horses,” which drops tomorrow. There’s gonna be a scene in which Jackson Lamb and his team are standing over the whale’s body, at which point Lamb says “Now THAT was a good agent. Why he popped his clogs but I'm stuck with you lot I have NO idea."

Naked Game Shows

A few years ago Allison and I began watching the British gameshow “Gogglebox.” I think I’ve talked about it before, but the entire premise of the show is that normal people and families have a camera put on top of their TV in their living rooms which records them watching TV shows, to which they react with humor or surprise or disdain or whatever. It sounds like it could never work — and an American attempt at replicating it did not work — but it’s wildly popular and many of the normal folks who participate in the show have become minor celebrities themselves. It’s great fun, and anyone who watches it for a while (a) realizes just how many damn cop shows there are on British TV; and (b) starts to have favorite Gogglebox families.

“Gogglebox” is for Allison and me what reruns of “The Office” or “The Simpsons” is for a lot of people. Something we turn on when we don’t want to think and we just want to laugh, usually before bed. Here we watch it on demand via a VPN which we use to log in to the Channel 4 website. When we travel over there it’s usually on broadcast TV at about 9 or 10pm which makes it the absolute BEST show to help you stay awake in your hotel room on that first night to keep you awake and to help you beat jetlag.

When we first encountered “Gogglebox” we liked it so much that we wondered if any other British game shows were suitable for the same purpose. That’s when we found “Naked Attraction.”

“Naked Attraction,” also on Channel 4, is a dating show with a twist. The premise: a fully-clothed person chooses a match from six naked people, standing up on the stage. The naked people are initially hidden but, slowly, over a series of rounds, the naked people’s bodies are revealed, from the feet-up. And yes, the participants are FULLY revealed. It’s a broadcast network game show which shows you full frontal nudity, whether you want it or not. To its credit, the show does not only feature fit-and-trim young folks. Indeed, it does not USUALLY feature fit-and-trim young folks. There are all sorts of body types and all ages on the show, with a bit older and a good bit saggy being the norm, not the exception. Again, whether you want it or not.

While we, obviously, had an immediate fascination with the show, Allison and I pretty quickly decided that we did not need it in our lives. I don’t know if that makes us prudes or body-shamers or something, but if not wanting to see some 48 year-old truck driver’s bits and pieces experiencing the inevitable, sad shrinkage occasioned by what is no doubt a powerful TV studio air-conditioning unit is wrong, we really don’t want to be right. Now if we ever watch it it’s only to show it to someone else for shock value. And yes, every American’s reaction to it is the same: “Wait, this is on regular TV?!” Yep, it sure is. Oh, and there is now-cancelled American version hiding out on a streaming service someplace, but as far as I can tell no one really watches it except to condemn it for being immoral. 

I mention all of that because a new British TV show is taking things to the next level. It’s called “Dating Naked UK”:

The show follows 10 singles seeking romance while living au naturel in a tropical setting. Contestants face challenges as new arrivals join, potentially disrupting existing relationships. Each episode includes dates and an elimination round dubbed the “Dumping Ground.” “This show contains full nudity without any blurring or pixelation,” the platform said.

This is something of reboot of a show which actually did air in the U.S. roughly ten years ago, except the U.S. version pixilated all of the nudity for viewers, it resulted in some lawsuits and stuff, and as far as I can remember, no one really watched it or even talked about it all that much. This new version, in contrast, is all out there with no pixilation. Just naked folks trying to get with other naked folks in what is being described as a cross between “Love Island” and “Naked Attraction.” And based on a story I read of it yesterday, they got it all figured out:

Naturally, we had a lot of questions. What happens when the men get a bit excited? What do the women do when it’s that time of the month? Was it not really awkward living with strangers without any clothes on? ‘That’s what’s really messed up about this whole situation,’ Rylan jokes, ‘it just became normal. The first time I saw them all I went “I have to get this out the way” and I just did a sweep [of their bits and bobs] and they all burst out laughing and from that moment on it was fine.’

From the first episode alone, what’s striking is just how comfortable the daters all seem with each other. To answer the tampon query, the women were all offered modesty pants in the event of their period starting and none of them decided to wear any. ‘That’s a massive testament to the crew,’ Rylan boasts, ‘for making them feel so looked after. For me as the host, that’s probably one of the biggest things I’m proud of.’ As for the men, they were encouraged to take ten minutes ‘down time’ if they got an erection – something that happened quite a lot.

Look, I’m happy for them. And happy for anyone who watches and enjoys this show. But this show strongly suggests to me that there are some very real limits to the British, um, culture I am willing to consume. And it makes me miss gameshows like “Sale of the Century” and “Card Sharks.” That was the stuff, by gum.

Have a great day everyone.

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