Cup of Coffee: June 26, 2025

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

And away we go.

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights, and dear GOD there were a lot of shutouts:

Brewers 4, Pirates 2: Paul Skenes vs. Brewers phenom Jacob Misiorowski. What a matchup! Not that it really lived up to the hype given that the Brewers sent nine men to the plate and scored four runs off of Skenes in the second inning. In Skenes' defense, Milwaukee batters did that without hitting a single ball 250 feet in the air. Two groundouts, a double and a single and, bam, a four-run hole. It happens. Misiorowski, meanwhile, went five innings, struck out eight, and didn't allow a run while surrendering just two hits. Three starts into his career he's 3-0 with a 1.13 ERA with 19 strikeouts in 16 innings. He ain't Paul Skenes yet, of course, but it's pretty rare when Paul Skenes isn't the nastiest guy on the mound in a game in which he appears. Not that they weren't both nasty. Misiorowski averaged 99.5 mph and Skenes averaged 98.5 on their fastballs. Which, per SportsRadar, was the highest combined fastball velocity by two starting pitchers in the same game since such things began being tracked in 2009.

Guardians 5, Blue Jays 4: Max Scherzer got the start and allowed three runs over five. Not the greatest, but he seemed healthy so that's something. This one went to extras and, in the tenth, José Ramírez hit a walk-off single to end things. The Blue Jays have alternated wins and losses for five games. Six more and they'll earn their YABA Dutch 200 patch.

[Editor: No one but weird kids from the early 1980s Midwest know what you're referencing there, Craig]

The whole comment thread is gonna be youth bowling war stories today. Mark my words.

White Sox 7, Diamondbacks 3: Lenyn Sosa went 3-for-4, homered twice, and drove in four and Andrew Benintendi went deep as well. Kyle Teel had three hits with an RBI and two runs scored. Sean Burke didn't allow any earned runs in five. The White Sox avoid being swept.

Angels 5, Red Sox 2: Yusei Kikuchi struck out 12 over seven and allowed two runs but neither were earned. Jo Adell homered and drove in another on a single. Travis d'Arnaud did the exact same thing. Twinsies. Boston got done got swept.

Padres 1, Nationals 0: Nick Pivetta was the star here handling seven innings of the blanking with ten Ks. Luis Arraez had an RBI single in the second for all of the game's scoring.

Rangers 7, Orioles 0: Jacob deGrom took a perfecto into the seventh and a no-hitter into the eighth, before gettin' lifted. Didn't matter, though, as the Orioles only managed that one hit in the whole dang game. Josh Jung homered and knocked in three. Jonah Heim went deep too. The O's have lost four of five and have been shut out eight times this year.

Athletics 3, Tigers 0: Yet another shutout, with Jacob Lopez going seven and allowing just three hits. He's allowed just one earned run over his last four starts. Nick Kurtz' three-run homer was all the scoring. Rubber match this afternoon.

Mets 7, Atlanta 3: Juan Soto homered twice – solo dongs in the fourth and seventh – and Ronny Mauricio also went deep. It was Soto's 27th career multi-homer game and his fifth in his last five games. Reports of his demise back in May were greatly exaggerated.

Yankees 7, Reds 1: Max Fried was on-point, allowing just one over seven while punching out seven. Not literally, though, as they'd probably arrest him for that kind of shit. He did win his tenth game of the year, though, and reduced his ERA to 1.92. Jazz Chisholm Jr. hit a two-run shot. Jasson Dominguez had four hits, two of which were doubles, stole two bases and scored twice. The Bombers avoid the sweep.

Twins 2, Mariners 0: Joe Ryan remains the best thing going for the Twins this year, striking out eight over six shutout innings and winning his eighth of the year. Kody Clemens homered and Willi Castro singled in a run. Minnesota will try to earn the split today.

Rays 3, Royals 0: Drew Rasmussen tossed five innings of two-hit ball and four relievers completed the three-hit shutout. There were not a lot of fireworks from the Rays' bats, with two runs scoring on a couple of bunts and one on a wild pitch, but a win's a win.

Cubs 8, Cardinals 0: Ian Happ hit a leadoff home run and drove in three, Reese McGuire and Kyle Tucker also homered, and Matthew Boyd gave up three hits in six scoreless innings to power yet another shutout last night. Chicago ends a three-game losing streak.

Astros 2, Phillies 0: Colton Gordon and four relievers combined to allow seven hits and ten strikeouts as the Astros shut out the Phillies for the second straight night. Zack Wheeler struck out eight over six innings of one-run baseball but it wasn't enough as he had no support while Isaac Paredes singled one in and Victor Caratini homered.

Dodgers 8, Rockies 1: Max Muncy had a grand slam and drove in six runs. Michael Conforto homered for a second straight game. Shohei Ohtani reached base four times, including a single, two walks and a catcher's interference call, so that's kind of a rando night. Yoshinobu Yamamoto got the start and allowed one hit over five scoreless innings but had to stop there because a long rain delay hit in the sixth knocking him out of the game. That rain directly helped L.A. too as, right before they called for the tarp, Muncy hit a two-run single that began as an infield popup that Rockies second baseman Thairo Estrada lost in the raindrops as he looked up, leading the ball hitting the ground next to the first baseman and staking the Dodgers to a 2-0 lead. I'm sure Colorado manager Warren Schaffer loved that timing.

Marlins 8, Giants 5: The Giants rallied for two runs in the bottom of the ninth to force extras but then the wheels fell off for them in the top of the tenth as the Marlins' Otto Lopez hit a go-ahead RBI single after which Heriberto Hernández hit a two-run double, advancing to third on the throw to the plate. Then up came Connor Norby who hit a sacrifice fly to cap the four-run inning that the Giants did not match. That's three wins in a row for Miami and four of five overall.

The Daily Briefing

White Sox fan taunts Ketel Marte about . . . his dead mother?!

There are always a few incidents involving bad fan behavior each season, but I'm struggling to think of one worse than this in recent years: a fan at Tuesday night's Diamondbacks-White Sox game in Chicago taunted Arizona's Ketel Marte about his mother, who died in a car crash seven years ago. From Nick Piecoro:

Arizona Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte broke down in tears on the field after a fan yelled derogatory comments about his deceased mother during the game here at Rate Field on Tuesday night, June 24.

Manager Torey Lovullo put his arm around Marte near the mound during a pitching change in the bottom of the seventh inning. Marte wiped tears from his eyes repeatedly during the half-inning . . . Marte’s mother, Elpidia Valdez, died in a car accident in the Dominican Republic in 2017, an accident that occurred not long after Marte had talked to her on the phone.

Security kicked the person out. It was later reported that it was a 22 year-old guy, though I haven't seen his identity revealed. The White Sox permanently banned him from their games as soon as his ass hit the pavement. Then yesterday afternoon MLB took the step to ban him from every park in the league for life. Which, good.

What in the hell is wrong with people?

Robert Suárez's suspension is reduced

Last week Padres reliever Robert Suárez was handed a three-game suspension for intentionally plunking Shohei Ohtani during the Padres' contentious series with the Dodgers. He appealed the suspension and it has been reduced to two games.

Suárez began serving it yesterday, the Padres are off today, and he'll complete the suspension tonight against the Reds in Cincinnati.

Because this is whose opinion we all want right now

From the Nazi bar that is Twitter:

John Rocker is nodding at the fact that he became a pariah when, in 1999, he gave an interview to Jeff Pearlman of Sports Illustrated in which he said he'd never play for a New York team because it's a "hectic, nerve-wracking city." He, of course, famously went on:

"Imagine having to take the 7 Train to the ballpark looking like you're riding through Beirut next to some kid with purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS, right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time, right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids . . . The biggest thing I don't like about New York are the foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?"

Imagine thinking that, with that history, anyone gives a rat's ass what you think about New York?

Not that Rocker was alone. There were all KINDS of people who routinely, and insanely ignorantly, use New York as a punching bag and who never, ever step foot near the place unless they're being quickly whisked in and whisked out of Fox News' studios who have Big Opinions about Zohran Mamdani's primary win. About how disastrous it will be and what it all means, primarily for their pet culture war obsessions which have absolutely nothing to do with the governance of New York City.

We've got a really big problem in this country with the nationalization of elections. With even local school board races turning into referenda on garbage that political consultants, cable news talking heads, and podcasters care a lot about. But the New York mayor's race has jacked that shit up to 1,000, with almost none of what is showing up on the news or social media having anything to do with New York and what a new mayor means for it and having everything to do with people's priors. Which in the case of Mandami, are largely about racism, islamophobia, and right wing grievance.

Other Stuff

"Get some guts and do something interesting. It's not that hard"

Journalist Ben Collins has served as CEO of The Onion since he and some co-investors bought the venerable satirical publication in early 2024. Since taking over he has helped restore The Onion's edge which, while always capable of cutting deeply, had lost some of its mojo during years of ownership by corporations which seemed not to really understand it.

In recent months The Onion has relaunched its print edition and has taken on the actual politics and the issues of the day in a more pointed, but still funny, manner than it had for several years. It has also engaged in what one could call actual activism, at least insofar as that is possible while still working with the tools of satire. For example, last Sunday it ran a full-page ad in the New York Times, in Onion editorial style, with the headline "Congress, Now More Than Ever, Our Nation Needs Your Cowardice." In a note at the bottom of the ad, The Onion revealed that print copies of the op-ed were being delivered to the actual lawmakers it went after in the piece.

Rolling Stone interviewed Collins recently and, among other "State of The Onion" type things and some commentary on the current political moment, Collins said something about the state of media right now that is so manifestly true that it shouldn't have to be said but which people who control TV, the newspapers, and news websites simply refuse to understand:

We have this incredible market advantage of not being beholden to anybody right now. And it's great for our bottom line . . . We're in a unique position, certainly. And other places have to learn from this – being afraid all the time and just constantly making transactional moves. How long can you survive like this? What is even the point of being alive if you're just gonna continue managing rot? And it seems like that's what 98 percent of people are doing in these media companies right now. I don't know, take a chance. Nobody likes what's happening. Especially if you're a journalism company or a media company, you're [meant to be] actually reflecting what people want or what people believe. So get some guts and do something interesting. It's not that hard.

Cup of Coffee is obviously not The Onion, but it's amazing how liberating, clarifying, and satisfying it is to be able to write about one's beat or the broader issues of the day without having to answer to corporate overlords or engage in some kind of fearful calculus about every damn thing one writes. Maybe that keeps The Onion, and Cup of Coffee, from being insane wealth-generators, but I'm guessing that, like me, Ben Collins sleeps pretty damn well at night knowing that his work isn't being compromised, that it actually stands for something, however small it may seem, and that it connects with actual people as opposed to investors or content algorithms or what have you.

That's a shame

From The Daily Beast:

President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan says he has received so much hate for his positions on immigration that he is unable to live safely with his family. In a podcast interview with the New York Post, Homan said that “I don’t see my family very much. My wife’s living separately from me right now.”

Wow, the guy who is ordering masked thugs to kidnap people off the street and send them to foreign gulags without process – separating parents from their children and husbands from their wives in the process – is unable to live with his family? What an injustice that is.

I'm walkin' here!

I talk a lot of crap about Ohio, but Columbus is actually an OK place. It's pretty easy to live here and stuff. And, while Columbus being situated in a state that is ruled by people who desperately want to challenge Mississippi in all of the quality of life rankings prevents it from being a progressive utopia, it's an educated and mostly humane and forward-looking kind of place with some decent restaurants and things. You could live in a lot of worse places.

One thing Columbus is not, however, is a walkable place. The footprint of this city is gigantic and was mostly built after cars became a big things and our mass transit pretty much sucks. Which makes the 614's placement on USA Today top-ten "most walkable cities for tourists" list frankly unhinged:

Below Columbus on the list include famously unwalkable places such as New York City (number 10), Washington D.C. (number 9), Chicago (number 7), and Boston (number 5).

There are, by my reckoning, three or perhaps four truly "walkable" neighborhoods in Columbus where tourists, to the extent they come here, might find themselves. My neighborhood, German Village, is actually one of them. But the thing about Columbus' walkable neighborhoods is that they're not really connected and you mostly have to drive to actually get to them. Just going by the examples mentioned in that blurb above – staying at the Hotel LeVeque and going to the Gateway Film Center up near OSU's campus – makes for a five-mile round-trip walk. To get from a legit touristy restaurant or bookstore in my neighborhood from the area around Ohio State and back would require an eight-mile walk, crossing multiple freeways.

I suppose you can stay in the Short North/Victorian Village area and not leave it, and I guess you could add downtown to that and count it as one place, but if you do that you're walking several miles to get to the sorts of things you might want to do. Even then, though, you'd have to be rather insane to think that the "tourism" opportunities in that distinct area outweigh the walkable tourism of basically every other place on this list.

I offer my kudos, I guess, to the Columbus visitors bureau for suckering USA Today like this. I offer my condolences, however, to anyone who reads this list and decides that, this year, they're coming to Columbus for their vacation and that, nah, they don't need to rent a car.

I suppose I've done dumber things

Yesterday afternoon my wife, who spends a shocking amount of her free time trying to figure out how to game airline points systems, promotions, travel perks, and the like, was alerted to an interesting promotion. It's from JetBlue, which in honor of its 25th birthday, is doing this thing where, if you fly to 25 unique JetBlue destinations between yesterday and the end of 2025, you get status, which JetBlue calls Mosaic Status, for 25 years.

That sounds rather insane, but once you read the fine print you discover that connections/layovers count, so you can string some of them together in a single, if inefficient and rather idiotic, itinerary. So like, JFK to Boston to Orlando, to Savanah or whatever counts as three on one fare. Based on Allison' back-of-the envelope figuring, you could probably pull it off in a small handful of multi-day itineraries. Sprinkle in a couple of airport hotel stays in there and one could probably do it all in a pretty compact amount of time for far less money than you might think. It actually made me consider doing it as a lark, at least for a few minutes.

Considerations:

Problem: That's a lot of time flying. People have lives, man.

Response: I don't have a life. All I need is Wifi, and all JetBlue flights have Wifi. I write this newsletter from my couch every day so why not write it from an airline seat for a few days? And I could probably sell a freelance article about it all. "How I went insane doing 25 flight segments in like ten days and got something I didn't even need out of it" or something. Life is about experiences, man.

Problem: JetBlue stopped servicing Columbus a couple of years ago, so (a) I couldn't even start here; and (b) what good is status for an airline that doesn't serve your city?

Response: A lot can happen in 25 years, including us moving or JetBlue getting purchased by another airline which, as is usually the case in the industry, honors the acquired airline's status designations. Also, the Columbus airport is pretty limited as it is, so we do a lot of flying out of Chicago, New York, Boston, Washington, and Detroit anyway, so we'd probably use it. And the status applies to various JetBlue airline partners, including Portugal's carrier, TAP Air, so if we decide to become expatriates it'll totally work.

Really, the biggest issue to all of this is that I'm a poor planner and I'm not very detail oriented, so in the likely case one of those dumb five-leg flights gets screwed up by weather, I'd have to call Allison to fix it all for me because I'd just get all flustered. She'd do it, but she'd judge me. But of course that would just add spice to the freelance article, right?

In other news, working from home, especially after you don't have your kids around to impose some responsibility on you, combined with some existential boredom and a decent recent splash of mild depression really messes with your brain and makes you think of dumbass things to do.

Have a great day everyone.