Cup of Coffee: June 12, 2025

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

Let's get at 'er.

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Mets 5, Nationals 0: David Peterson pitched a complete game shutout – baseball's second in as many nights – allowing just six hits and striking out six on 106 pitches. In the process he reduced his ERA to 2.79. He also leads the Mets in innings pitched. David Peterson: Ace Starter. Who knew? Brandon Nimmo homered twice. Juan Soto hit his second dinger in as many nights as he continues to use the month of June to shut everyone up.

Red Sox 4, Rays 3: Roman Anthony has gotten all the press this week but he's not the only Red Sox prospect doing newsworthy things. Boston’s number two prospect, Marcelo Mayer, hit two solo homers which, paired with solo shots by Jarren Duran and Abraham Toro, accounted for all the Sox' runs. Walker Buehler, meanwhile, got back on track, holding the Rays to three runs over seven innings, striking out seven and walking one. 

Phillies 7, Cubs 2: Jesús Luzardo has had a couple of clunker outings of late but he was back to form here, allowing one run on five hits and striking out ten over six innings. And the one run came only after Nick Castellanos failed to run down a foul ball that was pretty catchable and would've gotten Luzardo out of a jam. Good show against a great lineup. Alec Bohm hit a solo homer, singled in two runs, and knocked in another on a groundout for a four-RBI afternoon. Kyle Schwarber homered as well. Philly takes two of three from Chicago.

Twins 6, Rangers 2: The Rangers led 2-0 in the third inning and had runners on first and second with two outs when Marcus Semien lined one into the gap. Byron Buxton raced over, however, and made a diving backhanded catch, saving two runs. Then, in the bottom half of the inning, Buxton hit a 479-foot homer with two men on to put the Twins ahead. It was the second longest homer in the bigs this year, behind only Mike Trout’s 484-footer on April 19. Minnesota never trailed after that, so hooray for the Byron Buxton show.

Blue Jays 5, Cardinals 2: Ernie Clement homered but he also hurt his leg so a mixed bag of a day for ol' Ernie. Spencer Turnbull got the win, which is a hell of a bit of information for me because I had no idea Spencer Turnbull was on the Blue Jays now.

Looking back, I think I missed Turnbull signing with the Jays because it happened the day I flew over to the UK with my parents and I was basically out of communication with the world that day. I did watch a bad movie on the flight, though, so it wasn't a total loss. Also: I really feel like getting back in an airplane right now except this time one that never lands because it just keeps getting refueled on the fly and we all live on it, sorta like Snowpiercer, but less dire. I suppose we'd need food replicators or something. I dunno, I haven't really thought this out. I'm just sorta flailing lately and I keep coming up with unrealistic escapist ideas. If I get a good one, well, you just won't hear from me because I'll have put it in action and the concept of escaping at least implies some element of secrecy and stuff, so mum's the word. Cardinals have lost four in a row.

Pirates 5, Marlins 2: Andrew McCutchen hit a three-run homer and Bailey Falter didn't falter, tossing five and a third innings of one-run ball. McCutchen's bomb was his 241st as a Pittsburgh Pirate, moving him past Roberto Clemente into third place on the franchise’s all-time list. Willie Stargell (475) and Ralph Kiner (301) are ahead of McCutchen. Pretty good company.

Guardians 11, Reds 2: José Ramírez doubled in a run in the first and Carlos Santana hit a grand slam in the third. After that it was off to the races. Things really got out of hand when the Guardians had five straight hits to open their four-run sixth inning which gave them a nine-run lead. Lane Thomas' three-run shot did most of that damage. Cleveland finally takes a game from the Reds.

Atlanta 6, Brewers 2: Spencer Schwellenbach pitched a complete game, allowing just two runs on five hits while Michael Harris II and Ronald Acuña Jr. each hit a two-run homer. I'm gonna guess that teams which have had a pitcher toss a complete game while two batters hit two-run homers have won way more games than they've lost over the course of baseball history.

Diamondbacks 5, Mariners 2: Seattle took a 2-0 lead into the sixth inning at which point Eugenio Suárez hit a go-ahead grand slam into the, um, stands. Pavin Smith hit a homer later that inning. Eduardo Rodríguez pitched into the seventh giving up just the two. The Snakes sweep the three-game set. The Mariners have lost eight of nine.

Angels 6, Athletics 5: Brent Rooker hit two homers. The problem was that in between the two homers the Angels put up a six-run sixth inning. The way it went down: Taylor Ward got plunked with the bases loaded, Jorge Soler knocked in a couple with a single, Travis d'Arnaud hit a sac fly, and Jo Adell hit a two-run homer. Athletics starter JP Sears got ejected during all of that. Best part: he was already out of the game. Carrying anger with you is bad, JP. You should keep your issues drawn, but it's always darkest before the dawn, so shake it out. Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out.

Dodgers 5, Padres 2: The Dodgers used a position player for nearly three innings on Tuesday. Yesterday they trotted eight pitchers out there and they did the job despite the Padres having a number of scoring opportunities. Teoscar Hernández broke a sixth-inning tie with a three-run homer. Michael Conforto also went deep and Will Smith singled in a run in the ninth. Dodges take the series two games to one.

Orioles 10, Tigers 1: It was pretty close until the O's put up a seven-run eighth inning in which Jordan Westburg hit a three-run homer, Cedric Mullins doubled in a run and scored on a wild pitch, and Ryan O'Hearn hit a two-run single. Zach Eflin allowed one run over six and two-thirds.

Yankees 6, Royals 3: Clarke Schmidt tossed six shutout innings and New York put up a five-run second behind him, with a Paul Goldschmidt two-run single taking care of 40% of those runs. Austin Wells doubled in another run, Ben Rice singled one in, and Anthony Volpe hit a run-scoring grounder. Aaron Judge homered in the seventh for run number six. The Yankees go for the sweep this evening.

Astros 10, White Sox 2: As the photo up at the top of today's newsletter shows, Pope Leo XIV donned a Sox cap in St. Peter's Square yesterday. As you know by now, yes, the Pope roots for the Chicago White Sox, but even His Holiness' best wishes couldn't help them last night. A Christian did achieve glory here, however, as Christian Walker hit a two-run homer and doubled in two more runs. Isaac Paredes knocked in a couple more. Houston collected 15 hits in all.

Know what would be a funny bit? If one of the other cardinals or bishops showed up in Avignon wearing a Cubs hat.

Giants 10, Rockies 7: This is one of those west coast games where I actually stayed up the night before watching it while I was following box scores and flipping between a couple of other games and stuff rather than wait until the next morning to recap it. Mostly because when I tuned in to it the Rockies were leading by three runs and it was getting late in the game and I was curious as to how they'd blow it. Thanks for not disappointing me, fellas. The Giants plated four in the eighth, including a two-run double from Mike Yastrzemski, and three more in the ninth with Yastrzemski singing in another. Willy Adames was responsible for San Francisco's first three runs with a sac fly and a two-run jack. The Giants have now won seven in a row. Colorado has dropped five straight.

Republicans 13, Democrats 2: And now a recap of yesterday's annual Congressional Baseball Game, provided to us by DC Ghostwriter, who wrote a guest post about the game back in April 25th's newsletter:

Democrats had their chance to blow the game open, loading the bases with 2 outs in the top of the 1st. Pete Aguilar ripped a ground ball down the third base line, but somehow Republican August Pfluger fell down/dove for the catch and got the out at third. Chris Deluzio started on the bump for the Dems and had a tough time finding the zone all night. He also cost Democrats a few runs on a PFP error and when he whiffed on a catch from first baseman Gil Cisneros when he ran to cover first. Deluzio redeemed himself somewhat by hitting a triple and scoring a run in the 2nd. The wheels came off in the 4th inning when Pete Aguilar came on in relief. While Pete made several web gems (relatively, on one play it looked like he leaped a whole 3 inches off the ground), he did not find the same success on the mound. Pete pounded the zone, but he was throwing meatballs and Republicans teed off. The highlight of the game was the incredibly loud chorus of boos when Joni Ernst came in to pinch run.

Sadly no word of Mike Johnson getting in this game and getting one planted in his ear, but I suppose there's always next year.

Thanks, DC Ghostwriter!

The Daily Briefing

Jackson Jobe to have TJ surgery

Tigers right-hander Jackson Jobe left his start against the Giants on May 28 after feeling discomfort in his elbow. He was placed on the 15-day injured list with a Grade 1 right flexor strain. Now, the Tigers announced yesterday, he's going under the knife. It's Tommy John surgery, sadly.

Jobe, one of baseball's top prospects entering the season, was 4-1 with a 4.22 ERA(95 ERA+) with 39 strikeouts and 27 walks in 49 innings across 10 starts this year.

The Athletics' MLB Player Poll is out

Each year The Athletic polls players on a number of random topics and reports the results. This year's edition came out yesterday and, as always, it's rather fun and even a bit juicy in some places.

Among the questions are which manager, besides their own, would players most want to play for. Bruce Bochy got the most votes there. To the extent any players explained their answers, it seems like they were simply counting the rings more than anything else.

They also asked which manager they'd least like to play for. Very few players actually responded to that one but Bud Black and Oli Marmol tied with five votes a piece. Black was still managing Colorado at the time the question was asked, and the player who did explain his answer said it was because the Rockies suck. The reason behind one of the votes for Marmol:

“I don’t really know many managers. I’m trying to think of someone in our division, just so I can say someone. Who is the Cardinals’ guy? … Yeah. Just put him down.”

I'm gonna start spreading the rumor that this was Pete Crow-Armstrong. No reason. I just find it satisfying to type "Pete Crow-Armstrong." Something about my right finger bouncing up from the "o" to the hyphen while my left finger hits the W a moment before. Why no, I never learned to touch-type. Why do you ask?

Another question was which organizations have the best reputation among players. You will not be shocked to learn that the Dodgers and Yankees are at the top and the Angels, Pirates, Marlins, Rockies, White Sox, and Athletics make up the bottom of the list. Based on the narrative responses, a lot of that is about paying players, but a great deal of it is about disliking widespread organization dysfunction and incompetence, hating cheapness – the Marlins apparently feed their players Subway subs sometimes – and the lack of any obvious desire to win. Imagine that.

There are many other good questions and answers in the article. It's one of a handful of recurring pieces the Athletic runs that I think make it worth the subscription price.

Bob Costas rips modern media for bending to Trump and distorting reality

I got to know Bob Costas a bit when I worked at NBC. At times there was a bit of tension there – he and I have some very different opinions about certain topics in baseball – but he was generous to me with his time and his advice in ways he never had to be and he and I still, occasionally, talk on the phone about stuff. I can't say I know Costas really well or anything, but I have gotten to know him enough to know that what he had to say at an awards banquet on Monday about Donald Trump and modern media does not surprise me one bit.

Costas was accepting a lifetime achievement Mirror Award at a ceremony at the Edison Ballroom in New York and he used his platform, speaking in front of hundreds of influential journalists and journalism academics, to excoriate corporate media for bowing to Donald Trump and for creating a false reality which normalizes his tyranny. He specifically called out ABC News, CBS News, and CNN for caving in to Trump's bullying, paying him millions in bogus legal settlements that were essentially extortion payments and distorting their coverage in a way that obscures reality and serves Trump, either out of fear or because of business interests.

This windup was particularly on-point:

But if the answer to that is MAGA media, if the answer to that is Donald Trump’s view of the world, which is only through a prism of what benefits him, there are no higher ideals. There are no principles at work other than what benefits him. I’ll stay with where we are without correction if the correction is what Donald Trump represents.

And what also has happened here is that, because he is the president, to a certain extent, who he is and what he does, and what is done in his name, has been normalized so that responsible journalists have to pretend that there’s always two sides to this. There really isn’t two sides to much of what Donald Trump represents.

If someone says – and the idea that you have to find somebody who will not just defend Donald Trump, but valorize it, even on CNN or wherever else, just in the name of being balanced– look, if someone is contending that the Earth is flat, in order to appear objective, you are not required to say, “Well, maybe it might be oblong.” No, it’s not.

Certain things are just true. And regrettably, something that’s true in America right now is that the President of the United States has absolutely no regard, and in fact has contempt, for basic American principles and basic common decency.

And again, and I’ve heard this on occasion. “I used to love Bob Costas, but then when he turned political…” And of course, when I did that, every good thing I did for 40 years was washed away. Now I suck. You know what? If that’s what you think, and that’s how you think, and you think it in defense of that guy, I wear that as a badge of honor.

Good for Bob for saying that. Would that more people who are in a position to do so say such things.

Other Stuff

Beyond parody

From the Paper of Record:

Imagine being well-educated enough and experienced enough to get a job as an editor at one of the most prestigious newspapers in the world only to watch the President of the United States commit an illegal, militarized authoritarian takeover and think that the story to be told here is one about polls and the political strategizing of the party that is completely out of power. Imagine being so blind, so shallow, and so complicit as this. It's absolutely gobsmacking.

Personally, if I was in charge of a massively influential newspaper I'd be spending less time couching a would-be dictator's abuses of power in the framework of conventional politics and would be spending more time talking about how extraordinary, how lawless, and how dangerous this moment truly is and what's truly at stake. But that's just me. I guess I'm just built different.

Actual parody

This is a thing I saw on Bluesky yesterday that I cannot unsee so I'm gonna make you see it now: a 27-minute YouTube video of a "Star Trek: The Next Generation" porn parody that has all of the porn edited out and a new intro credits sequence added so it's just like a "Star Trek: The Next Generation" fan flick. And yes, I assure you that the embedded video is 100% safe for work and G-rated:

There's a lot that can be said about this, but I want to offer some thoughts:

• I'm not exactly a connoisseur of pornography, but this strikes me as a profoundly high-budgeted production as far as these things go;
• Captain Porn Luc Picard here is, actually, wonderfully cast? One might even argue that he did a better job in this porn parody than a couple of other Star Trek captains have done in the legit franchise;
• While it's pretty obvious from context that she does not keep it on all that often, it's hilarious to me that the uniform the porn version of Counselor Troi wears is less revealing than some of the outfits they put the actual Marina Sirtis in on the original show; and
• The story here is arguably better than a few actual "Star Trek: TNG" episodes. It's actually a direct sequel to the classic third season episode "Yesterday's Enterprise," and they logically and somewhat cleverly expanded on that story. Whoever wrote it is obviously intimately familiar with TNG canon and lore and they made damn sure they got even the littlest stuff right. Things like the time jump, alt-universe Tasha Yar not knowing Worf or Troi, the perpetually problematic handling of the character Leah Brahms, the fish tank in Picard's ready room, using "tachyons" as a deus ex machina, and Worf being essentially useless as an actual security officer. There's even an in-universe callback to the two-part episode "Redemption" for purposes of establishing a bit of technobabble that was wholly unnecessary yet admirably accurate.

Apologies for my phrasing here, but there was no reason whatsoever that anyone ever had to go this hard on a Star Trek porn spoof. Yet they did it. I, quite sincerely, tip my cap to the entire cast and crew for their genuine commitment to honoring the Star Trek source material. I likewise applaud the makers of this porn parody for doing a much, much better job of respecting the intelligence of their audience than the producers of a good number of mainstream Hollywood franchises ever do.

From Trek to Wars

It's been nearly a month since I finished watching "Andor" and I still can't stop thinking about how damn good it was. Which is why I gobbled up this feature story about its titular star, Diego Luna, at Vulture. It's a fantastic profile which goes a long damn way of explaining how the folks behind "Andor" got things so damn right and avoided the sorts of missteps that even the best and most ambitious sci-fi properties tend to make.

Key among them was simply casting and, more importantly, empowering Luna himself to serve as an actual hands-on producer who truly led the production in countless ways. Creator Tony Gilroy cites Luna's father, who worked in film production in Mexico for allowing Luna to grow up behind a camera and in and around movie sets. I feel like this bit, however, speaks much more specifically to how and why Luna inhabited the character of a freedom fighter so damn well:

Luna is reluctant to identify specific contributions he made to Andor, insisting instead that “everyone is indispensable.” That mentality feels shaped by his father’s tutelage, and perhaps by his time as a teenager volunteering with an Indigenous-rights movement organized by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in 1994. 

This is a factoid I'll remember the next time Jared Leto or whoever the hell other method actor talks up what they did to prepare for a role.

Yeah, feeling pretty good about things

Moving the platform of this newsletter twice in the space of ten months was suboptimal to say the least. But folks, I do not at all regret moving off of Substack:

A private business choosing not to platform and amplify the voices of Nazis is not "censorship" any more than a bar owner choosing not to serve Nazis drinks is censorship. And, as the old story about bars goes, if you let Nazis come in and drink at your bar, Nazis will recognize your bar as safe and comfortable and then, the next thing you know, you're running a Nazi bar.

Personally speaking, I didn't like giving 10% of my income to continue drinking at what has become a Nazi bar, and I hope anyone who continues to do so reconsiders it as soon as possible.

Well look at that

Looks like someone did some Googling and figured out what Alexei Navalny, Alexander Litvinenko, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Boris Nemtsov and countless others have in common.

In related news:

Based on his tweet I can tell that Elon Musk is a bit nervous himself, but I have seen a lot of spy movies and I've read a lot of spy books and I can assure him that absolutely nothing bad has ever happened to anyone who "knows too much." So relax, Elon! Have some tea and hold this umbrella while standing next to that open window over there!

Brian Wilson: 1942-2025

This piece is adapted from something I wrote eight years ago, but I think it stands up now more than ever.

On April 21, 2017 I saw Brian Wilson's “Pet Sounds: The Final Performances” tour at the Palace Theater in Columbus, Ohio. Given his history of mental illness, drug abuse and then, as he was approaching 75 years-old, his physical decline, it was amazing enough that Wilson was touring. But he was and he went on stage that night and turned in one of the most moving performances I've ever experienced. Most of what made it moving, however, existed just beneath the surface and had very little to do with the specific technical or artistic aspects of the show.

To be sure, Wilson's voice was still recognizably Wilson's voice. He wasn't like Bob Dylan or Tom Waits or someone who has had to become a fundamentally different kind of singer than he once was due to ravaged vocal cords. He displayed more or less the same old tone and timbre of 1960s Brian Wilson. No, he didn't tear into the second verse of “I’m waiting for the day” with the same aggressive edge that so evident on the album version of that song and he didn’t sustain notes like he did when he was young, but he was still unmistakably Brian Wilson.

But it was not Wilson's voice that set the night apart. It was the mere act of him being on that stage singing those songs despite everything I and everyone else in that room knew about his life and his experiences which elevated his performance above that of his increasingly vanishing contemporaries and vanishingly few peers.

I don’t begrudge The Rolling Stones, The Who, or Paul McCartney going out on the road and playing concerts into their 80s. They’re legends. People love them and their music. They put on great shows and, of course, they’re more than entitled to make money off of the art they created. But there has always been something . . . off about it to me. There has always been something off about Mick Jagger singing about how he can’t get no satisfaction when we know that he’s rarely had anything but satisfaction for the past 50 or 60 years of his life. There’s something silly about Roger Daltrey singing that he hopes he dies before he gets old when he’s already old. There’s something downright creepy about a wrinkly-faced Paul McCartney telling us that we know what he means about that girl who’s just 17.

One might think that this problem would've been even greater for Wilson doing “Pet Sounds,” actually. It's an album about young romance and that time in a young person's life when love transforms from crushes and butterflies in one’s stomach to something bigger. Something that, inevitably, brings about one’s first feelings of melancholy. "Pet Sounds" is an album which evokes emotions common to anyone who has ever experienced love, but those feelings tend to be unique to a certain time and place in our lives that we will never again recapture. That’s not the stuff one would expect to wear well when sung by a 70-something year old man over 50 years after he wrote the words. Despite his age, however, there was something poignant about Wilson singing from the point of view of his younger self that night that is absent or even off-putting when his peers do it.

We tend to expect art to stand on its own, without the audience bringing their own knowledge about the artist with them, but that was impossible when it cam to Brian Wilson. Anyone who cares about him or his music knows what his life was like at the time “Pet Sounds” was recorded. We know how much more difficult his life would become in the two decades-plus after it came out and how damaged Wilson came out on the other end due to his self abuse and abuse at the hands of others. Jagger, McCartney and Daltrey have all had their personal ups and downs but compared to Wilson they’ve lived pretty happy and contented lives. In light of this, their taking to the road seems like a pleasant but somewhat superfluous and undoubtedly commercial act.

Wilson didn’t have the same sort of happy and contended second and third public acts as those guys. He never got the chance to connect with his old songs and his old fans in the same way they have. And given that his former bandmates Mike Love and Bruce Johnston had long toured as The Beach Boys, playing the band's biggest hits in theaters, state fairs and other venues with relatively low ticket prices, a lot of Wilson's old fans might not have even cared too much about seeing him anymore. As such, Wilson’s act of singing his old songs — especially the "Pet Sounds" songs, which were never as commercially successful as the stuff Love and Johnston perform — seemed more personal to him. More important and significant.

I was likely projecting to some degree – carrying in baggage that he likely wished I hadn't – but as Wilson sang through “Pet Sounds” that night it seemed to me as if he was reaching back through time for something that, for years, was just out of his reach. Something he didn’t get to fully enjoy and explore at the time and something he could finally enjoy and explore in that setting. Something necessary. It was a great show for me, but I couldn't help but feel that it was a rewarding and perhaps necessary act for Wilson to play these songs. Necessary in ways it’s simply not necessary for his peers to play their old songs.

This may have been most evident in the opening and closing of the show when, as a warmup/encore, prior to and after playing the "Pet Sounds" songs, he played some of the more popular Beach Boys songs like “Help me Rhonda” and “California Girls,” with his old bandmate Al Jardine doing an admirable job with the Mike Love vocals. They were perfectly fine renditions, but they were somewhat rote. The crowd stood, cheered and sang along, but Wilson seemed to be going through the motions with them to some degree. The big hits didn't seem particularly important to Wilson. 

The “Pet Sounds” songs, which were played in order, in their entirety after an intermission, felt more moving and stirring. And not just because they’re better songs. It was because, with the possible exceptions of “Wouldn’t it be Nice?” a lot of people in the theater didn’t know all the words them. And even if they did, they weren't exactly jukebox singalongs. Because of that those songs provided an opportunity for Wilson to sing and perform for us in ways that McCartney and the Stones can’t without resorting to obscure R&B covers due to the ubiquity of their catalogues. People know “Pet Sounds,” of course, but it’s not back-of-their-hand stuff like “Maybe I’m Amazed” or “Brown Sugar.” As a result, Wilson was reacquainting many in the crowd with those songs just as he was revisiting them himself.

The net effect of it was stirring. Stirring in and of itself, yes, but also stirring because the man singing the songs was, in 2017, still there. Against all odds, in spite of all of his experiences, and despite the loss of his two bandmate brothers and so many other people, he was still there. He was there reaching back for something one got the sense that he loved and needed just as much if not more than any of us did.

It was a special night. Brian Wilson was a special person. May he now find the peace that, for so much of his life, eluded him.

Love & mercy everyone. Love & mercy.