Cup of Coffee: June 28, 2024

Good morning!

Today we talk about the next round of All-Star voting, we learn just how damn soft the umpires are, we hear that Missouri wants to try to keep the Royals, we hear from Eric Kay, the man convicted of supplying the drugs that killed Tyler Skaggs, and we have a sit-down with Dr. Neal ElAttrache.

In Other Stuff: I didn’t watch the debate, we learn that a couple of nepo babies have paired up, we see one of the many ways RFK Jr. is weird, and we learn how the universe eats your body after you die.

And That Happened 

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Marlins 7, Phillies 4: All that really matters here is that Bryce Harper strained his hamstring while making the final out of the game down at first base, after which he limped off the field. After the game all he could say was that it hurt and that he’s getting imaging today. But that’s not all: Kyle Schwarber — playing in the outfield for only the third time this year — felt tightness in his groin while making an awkward throw in the top of the ninth. He too will get imaging today. Losing to the Marlins only cost one game in the standings but it was way bigger than that overall.

Twins 13, Diamondbacks 6: That was a butt-kicking. Byron Buxton hit a three-run homer and Manuel Margot, Royce Lewis, and José Miranda each knocked in two. The scary news: Carlos Correa was drilled on the right forearm by a 94-mph fastball and left the game but X-rays came back negative and he’s officially day-to-day, as are we all. The Twins take the series and win for the fourth time in five games.

Cubs 5, Giants 3: Nico Hoerner hit a two-run homer and Seiya Suzuki tripled in a run to give Chicago a 3-0 lead in the third. The Giants came back in the sixth with three runs of their own due to a ground rule double, a wild pitch, and an infield single. On to extras they went. Well, one extra. That’s because Ian Happ homered-in the Manfred Man and that was that.

[Editor: Does one “homer-in” a runner? I’ve seen “doubled-in a run” but not “homered-in a run.”]

Sure. Why not?

White Sox 1, Atlanta 0: Shitty teams tend not to win 1-0 games but I suppose when you play nearly 2,500 of them a year almost everything is gonna happen once. This particular shitty team, the White Sox, had five pitchers combine for a three-hit shutout. They needed to do that because the opposing guy, former Sox pitcher Chris Sale, was fantastic, allowing just one run over seven innings while striking out 11. That one run was a Luis Robert Jr. homer in the first inning that, quite miraculously, held up.

Orioles 11, Rangers 2: Corbin Burnes continues to dominate, allowing just one run while scattering nine hits over seven innings. Heston Kjerstad homered and drove in three and Cedric Mullins, Adley Rustchman, and Colton Cowser all went deep as the O’s routed the Rangers. Texas has lost four in a row.

Blue Jays 9, Yankees 2: The Yankees have lost four in a row as well. Seven of eight in fact. George Springer was the big stick here, going 3-for-3 and hitting two three-run homers while Vlad Guerrero doubled in a run early and hit a solo homer late. José Berríos allowed two runs on two hits over seven.

Reds 11, Cardinals 4: Spencer Steer homered, Elly De La Cruz had three hits, and Jonathan India had two hits which, per the AP gamer, I learned made for a nine-game hitting streak. I feel like if I was the editor at the AP I’d demand that only hitting streaks in double digits be mentioned. Lucky for me I’m not, though, because I don’t have much to say about this game otherwise so having that little nine-game hitting streak factoid was pretty useful as far as filling out the word count goes.

Royals 2, Guardians 1: Michael Wacha and Ben Lively dueled but Wacha, who allowed one run while pitching into the sixth, prevailed. Both Royals runs came in the sixth via a Maikel Garcia RBI triple and a sac fly from Vinnie Pasquantino that scored Garcia.

Angels 5, Tigers 0: Davis Daniel — which sounds like a name you make up when you’re 16 and the cops roll up on you smoking a joint with your friends — made his first big league start and all he did was pitch four-hit ball over eight shutout innings while striking out eight. Welcome to the rotation, my man. Luis Rengifo hit a two-run homer in the fifth and Miguel Sanó and Willie Calhoun — two guys who I routinely forget are on the Angels — also went deep. The Halos have won four in a row.

The Daily Briefing

Your All-Star Finalists

We’re now on to Part II of the two-part All-Star voting. Part I has ended with Aaron Judge and Bryce Harper leading their respective leagues in overall voting, so they’re automatically All-Star starters. The next phase features the top two Phase 1 vote-getters at each position except for the outfield facing off. The outfield gets the top-6 in the NL and top-4 in the AL since Judge was automatically selected. I’m not sure why it’s not top 5, actually, and I can’t find an adult to ask.

American League Finalists

Catcher

• Adley Rutschman, Baltimore Orioles
• Salvador Perez, Kansas City Royals

 First Base

• Ryan Mountcastle, Baltimore Orioles
• Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Toronto Blue Jays

Second Base

• Jose Altuve, Houston Astros.
• Marcus Semien, Texas Rangers

 Third Base

• José Ramírez, Cleveland Guardians
• Jordan Westburg, Baltimore Orioles

 Shortstop

• Gunnar Henderson, Baltimore Orioles
• Bobby Witt Jr., Kansas City Royals

 Designated Hitter

• Yordan Alvarez, Houston Astros
• Ryan O’Hearn, Baltimore Orioles

 Outfield

• Juan Soto, New York Yankees
• Steven Kwan, Cleveland Guardians
• Anthony Santander, Baltimore Orioles
• Kyle Tucker, Houston Astros 

National League Finalists 

Catcher

• William Contreras, Milwaukee Brewers
• J.T. Realmuto, Philadelphia Phillies

 Second Base

• Ketel Marte, Arizona Diamondbacks
• Luis Arraez, San Diego Padres

 Third Base

• Alec Bohm, Philadelphia Phillies
• Manny Machado, San Diego Padres

Shortstop

• Mookie Betts, Los Angeles Dodgers
• Trea Turner, Philadelphia Phillies

Designated Hitter

• Shohei Ohtani, Los Angeles Dodgers
• Kyle Schwarber, Philadelphia Phillies 

Outfield

• Jurickson Profar, San Diego Padres
• Christian Yelich, Milwaukee Brewers
• Teoscar Hernández, Los Angeles Dodgers
• Fernando Tatis Jr., San Diego Padres
• Brandon Marsh, Philadelphia Phillies
• Nick Castellanos, Philadelphia Phillies

Voting for the second round begins Sunday.

How soft are MLB umps? Even softer than you imagine

A lot of umpires have thin skin. How thin? So thin that Major League Baseball is bending over backwards to keep their feelings from being hurt. Here’s the deal, via Evan Drellich of The Athletic:

• For a few years now players have had iPads in the dugout they can use to look at their previous at bats. Those iPads feature the broadcast feed, complete with the strike zone box we’ve all grown used to seeing on broadcasts.
• The umpires didn’t like that the players have the strike zone box, because it shows players when umps make bad calls, after which the players have been known to let the umps know about it. So, the umpires demanded that Major League Baseball get rid of the strike zone box. Which it did.
• Problem! The presence of those iPads and their contents is something that was collectively bargained. Players have a right to see that stuff. So the MLBPA filed a grievance against the league to have the strike zone box restored. The league knew it was in the wrong and settled the grievance, so the strike zone box will be back as of today.
• Except! Because the umps remain thin-skinned babies about it, MLB has decided that players who use a dugout tablet to “embarrass, denigrate, or question the impartiality or ability of an umpire” will be fined between $2,500 and $7,500 for a first-time violation, with progressive discipline from there. They remain subject to ejection as they always have, but those fines are much larger than they used to be.

It’s pretty remarkable that umps whining is so important to Major League Baseball that they busted ass to placate them without taking even a moment to consider if doing so violated any of its own rules or its agreement with the players. I’d love to know Tony Reagins’ or Morgan Sword’s or Rob Manfred’s thought process on that.

Missouri wants to try to keep the Royals 

Mere days after the State of Kansas passed a bill to built a ballpark for the Royals and a stadium for Kansas City’s NFL team, Missouri Governor Mike Parson said yesterday that he expects the state to put together “an aid plan” by the end of the year to try to keep the teams in the state. Parson:

"We're going to make sure that we put the best business deal we can on the line . . . Look, I can't blame Kansas for trying. You know, if I was probably sitting there, I'd be doing the same thing. But at the end of the day, we're going to be competitive."

At least he’s acknowledging that it’s a “business deal,” because as we all know, the only people who will truly benefit from this are the businessmen who own the teams. As a matter of public policy it’s horseshit.

Whether it’s Kansas or Missouri I do wonder, when a state gets involved like this, how people nowhere near the stadiums yet still on the hook to pay for them feel about it. Like, what would people in St. Louis, 250 miles away, think about subsidizing the defending Super Bowl champs? What would people in Garden City, Kansas, 377 miles away, think about underwriting the Royals?

Eric Kay talks about Tyler Skaggs’ death

Monday marks the fifth anniversary of the death of Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs. To coincide with that, Sam Blum of The Athletic went to a federal prison in Englewood, Colorado to speak to the man who was held legally responsible for Skaggs’ death: former Angels front office employee Eric Kay, who was convicted of supplying the drugs which killed the young pitcher.

Kay is not an easy person to feel sympathy for. For one thing, yes, he did supply lots of drugs to lots of young ballplayers for many years, many of whom relied on him for guidance as a senior front office employee. His conviction does not appear to be a wrongful one, strictly speaking.

Then there were the infamous words Kay was caught on tape saying from a prison phone after his conviction but before his sentencing. Referring to the Skaggs family he said, “All they see are dollar signs. They may get more money with him dead than if he was playing, because he sucked.” Kay offers remorse for saying that, but he said it.

More broadly speaking, Kay’s focus in his discussions with Blum are on his own hardships and his difficulty dealing with prison and his estrangement from his family. Which, while understandable, isn’t exactly what most people want to hear. It’s certainly hard to balance that against the death of human being who would still be alive if not for Kay enabling his drug addiction. It’s also worth noting that Kay’s continued claim that he was not in the room when Skaggs took the drugs and began suffering from the effects of the Fentanyl in his system ring hollow based on the evidence at trial.

To the extent I do have sympathy for Kay it involves his sentence: a mandatory 20-year term with two years tacked on due to that phone call which seems unduly harsh. People who take more active roles in the deaths of others routinely serve less time for manslaughter, second degree murder, negligent homicide, or whatever. Our country has passed a lot of get-tough-on-drugs laws over the past 40 years and most of them have been more about politics than about fairly addressing the crime in question. Hardly any of them or the people responsible for their passage seem to understand or care about drug addiction and its effect on people and they take the discretion to consider such things away from judges and juries. Not good in my view.

I have greater sympathy for Kay based on his receiving what sounds like truly horrible legal representation. His lawyer, Blum reports, yelled and belittled Kay for considering what now looks like a pretty sweet plea deal — no more than ten years in a low-security federal prison camp with the chance to shave a lot off that sentence via behavior — and told him he’d not show up for his hearings if Kay took the deal. I cannot say if the counsel Kay received was truly ineffective as a matter of law — we’re only hearing one side of it, that side is pretty self-pitying, and most claims of ineffective assistance of counsel fail — but it’s also the case that Kay, an addict himself whose mental toughness in the face of adversity was manifestly and profoundly lacking, needed better support and needed someone to urge him to take that deal at the time. It’s a pretty crappy situation for him, even if it’s all ultimately of his own making.

The only thing that can said for certain is that there are a lot of victims in all of this. Skaggs and his survivors, most obviously. But Kay’s ex-wife, his three sons — one of whom is still a minor — and his family are victims here as well. Kay himself comes last on the list, but his life too is ruined in ways that it didn’t have to be if things had broke differently. Both before Skaggs’ death and after.

Meet Dr. Neal ElAttrache

It used to be that a ballplayer with a bum elbow would, per almost every news report on the matter, “pay a visit to Dr. James Andrews.” Andrews, however, is in his 80s now and recently announced his retirement. The main man in Tommy John surgery these days — and in just about every other sort of orthopedic surgery — is Dr. Neal ElAttrache, who apprenticed under TJ surgery inventor Frank Jobe and for whom Andrews was an important mentor. The New Yorker did a profile on him recently in case you wanna know what makes the guy tick.

There are all kinds of good bits in the profile. One of which involves Ringo Starr, who had bone spurs in his shoulders fixed by ElAttrache over 20 years ago. Starr talks about how he was in the office and ElAttrache was doing the intake forms himself, and asked “name?” to one of the most famous and recognizable people on planet Earth.

A more recent anecdote, however, gets at how far ElAttrache has come in the past 20 years, how great his stature now is, and just how much his patients trust him and thank him for what he’s done for them. It comes in the course of his consult with Luis Patiño of the San Diego Padres, who had Tommy John surgery last month:

Patiño wore ripped jeans and shiny Jordans. He sat on an examination bench, eyes wide, swinging his legs off the edge. ElAttrache walked in wearing a white coat over a blue blazer . . . He pulled up MRI scans on a computer and talked Patiño through the images. ElAttrache saw damage at the top of the ulnar collateral ligament, or U.C.L., a two-inch band that holds the upper and lower arm together. ElAttrache prefers to avoid surgery. They discussed Patiño’s pitching repertoire. Then Patiño removed his shirt so that ElAttrache could test his range of motion. Below his right shoulder, Patiño had a tattoo that said “TRUST NO ONE.” ElAttrache later told me, “His tattoo may say that, but I promise you, by the time I operate on him, I could tell him I’m going to do whatever crazy thing I’d want to do and he’ll let me do it.”

That might come off as arrogant, but based on the profile it seems like ElAttrache has earned that stance. His clients, including huge celebrities like Starr, Leonardo DiCaprio, Keanu Reeves, Travis Scott, Charlize Theron, Cameron Diaz and, of course, top-flight athletes like Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Kobe Bryant and almost every baseball player with an owie over the past decade or two, sing his praises and place the utmost trust in him, both before and after he treats them. As the article notes, they all meet him when they’re at low points and when they have legitimate concern for their careers. Given his success rate, you understand why they trust him.

There is a bit of a showboat element to the guy. He and others in the article all talk about how he’s attracted to the stars and the stardom. He lives in a big mansion in Benedict Canyon and lives the celebrity life himself to some degree. This passage, for example — “ElAttrache likes to host patients and friends at his house near Benedict Canyon, above Beverly Hills, for Cuban cigars and Pappy Van Winkle bourbon” — is particularly cringey. But it’s hard to argue with his results. And with how important he is to the modern sports landscape.

Other Stuff

At the outset, allow me to say that no, I did not watch the debate. I was out with a friend last night specifically in order to avoid it all because I didn’t want or need that sort of anxiety in my life. Yes, I heard it went pretty terribly for Biden but that’s all I know. I got home on the late side and made the decision to look at no news or analysis because, again, I wanted to sleep last night.

Whatever else happened last night, however, the following things did not change:

• One of the candidates, while certainly not ideal, let alone perfect, remains a generally decent and competent person by the historical standards of the position and intends to carry out his job in a lawful manner while respecting democratic norms;
• The other candidate is a convicted felon, a civilly adjudged rapist, and a corrupt narcissist who views public office as a means of enriching himself and punishing his enemies and who, if he does win, fully intends to allow the worst people this country has managed to produce to embark on an explicitly fascist policy agenda.

I would love a younger and healthier candidate to vote for than Joe Biden. But nothing about his demeanor or stability or whatever that proved lacking last night changes the above assessment. We deserve better, but we still must do whatever we can to avoid the worst. That’s about all I have to say about it.

Today in American Aristocracy

I don’t read gossip very often, but I stumbled on a piece about Bill Gates’ 21 year old daughter is dating Paul McCartney’s 25 year old grandson. I hope they get married because studies have shown married people do better financially than single people and I don’t like to see young kids suffering.

Mostly I’m interested in this because it presents all sorts of future opportunities to make Microsoft/Apple jokes.

Today in American Politics

Well, more like last week anyway, but I missed it: the New York Times reported that presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (I-BatShitLand) once lived with an emu that was so aggressive with his wife, the actor Cheryl Hines, had to carry around a shovel for protection.

The emu’s name was Toby and he lived in the backyard of RFK Jr.’s Malibu home. Toby, however, “took to charging at [Hines] violently” and did so so often that she “started carrying a shovel in self-defense whenever she stepped outside.” Hines told the Times that every morning she would wonder, “[i]s today going to be the day that I wake up and kill an emu in my backyard?” Thankfully, she never had to. Because Toby was eventually killed by a mountain lion.

In other news, RFK Jr. will indirectly determine who is the next President of the United States of America.

After you die, the universe eats your body

This Popular Mechanics story is from over two years ago, but that’s OK because it’s not news. It’s just information. Information of the most fascinating and morbid kind which I will read and recommend 10 out of 10 times.

It’s about what happens to our bodies after we die, courtesy of the folks at the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Research Facility, which is popularly known as “the body farm.” It, along with a sister facility in Texas, is where they study human decomposition by basically just throwing dead bodies out into a field and documenting what happens. You can donate your body to the body farm and, after you die, it will enjoy — at least I assume — a few days or weeks or even months out in the sun or under some leaves, or wrapped in a tarp, or in a shallow grave so that scientists can learn precisely what happens to us, thereby helping advance the cause of forensic science and murder investigations.

This particular article is about the scientists’ study of the necrobiome:

You may have heard of the microbiome, the 100 trillion or so microbes that live on and inside us. This is the necrobiome—the organisms that thrive on our bodies once we die. Necrobiome research is not for the faint of heart; it involves mapping in gory detail exactly which bacteria consume the dead, and how. That requires collecting a lot of samples from decomposing bodies—swabbing corpses’ noses, mouths, and even more intimate body parts at every stage of decay . . . “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” fails to capture the reality of our decay. Dust and ashes sound dead, inorganic, dry; the reality is a riot of wet, squishy biology. A dead body is actively consumed by a long line of creatures, from scavengers that peck and tear to wiggling worms and maggots to legions of steadily munching microbes.

Oh yeah, baby. That’s the good stuff. And to be clear: while there are gross parts of the article, it’s also really damn fascinating. At the very least anyone with an interest in true crime or murder mysteries or whatever should like it.

Have a great weekend everyone.

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