Cup of Coffee: May 22, 2025

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

If you're a weekly reader rather than a daily reader, know that we do this every day. Subscriptions cost less per month than the price of an Applebee's margarita. I feel like it's impossible to frame that level of value any more effectively, so I'll move on now, but know that I'm always here!

At the outset today, allow me to state that, while I know the context and while I understand the importance of the NFL in American culture, I cannot take a headline like "Sources: Tempers flare in tense tush push debate" seriously. We just live in an incredibly ridiculous time. I cannot believe the sorts of people we've placed in political power nor can I believe the institutions we've decided that will have the greatest cultural power. If you need me I'll be on a continuing search for existential dignity.

In the meantime . . .

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Twins 6, Guardians 5; Guardians 5, Twins 1: The first part of this not quite doubleheader was the continuation of Monday night's suspended game. The Twins led when it was suspended and led entering the top of the ninth before Cleveland plated three to tie things up. In the bottom half Kody Clemens, knowing that absolutely no one wanted extra innings in a suspended game from two days ago, hit a walk-off RBI double to give it to Minnesota. In the actually scheduled game Gavin Williams outdueled Chris Paddack while Carlos Santana went deep. Thanks to the rain the rubber match in this series will happen in September.

Pirates 3, Reds 1:  Andrew Heaney and four Pirates relievers combined on a four-hitter. Three runs was enough to win here but it's worth noting that Pittsburgh has not as many as five runs since April 22 – that's 26 games – which ties a major league record.

Cubs 2, Marlins 1: Kyle Tucker drove in both of Chicago's runs, homering in the first and singling in the eighth. Cade Horton allowed one run while working into the sixth and the pen shut it down thereafter. The Cubs take two of three. They've won seven of nine overall. Of course all nine of those games came against the Marlins and the White Sox so, yeah, I'd hope so. Their next 12 games come against the Reds, Rockies, and Nationals, so easy street continues. Of course they had one of the toughest schedules to start with – 24 of their first 27 games were against the Dodgers, Padres, Giants, DBacks, and Phillies, with a Japan trip in there to boot – so it’s balancing out. It always balances out in baseball.

Rays 8, Astros 4: Yandy Díaz hit a three-run homer while Lowes Brandon and Josh went back-to-back, and Curtis Mead went deep as well. All four homers were hit off Hunter Brown who had allowed just two homers in his nine previous starts combined. Sometimes it ain't your day.

Orioles 8, Brewers 4:  Adley Rutschman hit a three-run homer in a four-run outburst in the 11th inning to end Baltimore's eight-game losing streak. That gives Tony Mansolino earned his first win since taking over as Orioles interim manager, oh, three or four weeks ago it feels at this point.

Tigers 5, Cardinals 1: The Tigers went with a bullpen game and it worked out nicely, with six pitchers holding St. Louis to one run on five hits. The bottom five batters in Detroit's lineup each had one RBI. They've won ten of 15.

Mariners 6, White Sox 5: Julio Rodríguez hit a three-run homer in the first but it turned into a back and forth kind of game, with the Sox taking the lead by the fourth. Cal Raleigh homered in the fifth to tie it back up, the Sox took the lead again in the seventh, but then Leody Taveras hit a two-run shot in the eighth to ice it for the M's. Seattle has won five of six. Chicago has lost six of seven.

Royals 8, Giants 4:  Salvador Perez had three hits including a two-run homer while Bobby Witt Jr. and Maikel Garcia each had two hits and two RBI to give Kansas City the series win. Matt Chapman, Patrick Bailey and Heliot Ramos homered for San Francisco in a losing cause.

Mets 5, Red Sox 1: Tylor Megll struck out ten guys and only gave up one run but he couldn't make it a full five innings so he didn't get the win if you care about such things. Brett Baty drove in three on a couple of RBI singles. Francisco Lindor had a pair of hits, including a solo homer. The Mets snap their three-game skid. 

Yankees 4, Rangers 3: Texas led 3-1 behind a strong Jacob deGrom start but Cody Bellinger homered in the seventh to make it a one-run game, Aaron Judge singled home a run to tie things up in the bottom of the eighth and Jasson Domínguez took a 2-0 pitch over the right field wall in the bottom of the ninth for the walkoff win. Jake Burger hit two solo homers in a losing effort for Texas.

Blue Jays 14, Padres 0: Sometimes you just get your butt kicked I guess. The Jays racked up 12 runs between the seventh and eighth innings, with Daulton Varsho hitting a grand slam, Nathan Lukes hitting a two-run homer and Toronto hitters notching 12 more hits. When your team scores 14 runs you can try to pass off all manner of dogshit as far as pitching goes but Kevin Gausman went above and beyond, tossing seven shutout frames while striking out nine. Just a complete and total pantsing. The Padres have lost five in a row but none have looked as bad as this one.  

Phillies 9, Rockies 5: J.T. Realmuto hit a two-run homer and doubled in a run  while Trea Turner and Bryce Harper hit home runs to power Philly to its sixth straight win. Bryce Harper is collecting hits in buckets over the past week or so, having raised his average by 40 points since May 14.

Angels 10, Athletics 5: Logan O'Hoppe had a big game, hitting two homers, driving in three, and scoring three times. Zach Neto and Jo Adell also went deep. Taylor Ward had three hits, including a triple and double. Jorge Soler had three hits as well, with two doubles and two RBI. It was the sixth straight victory for the Halos.

Dodgers 3, Diamondbacks 1: All of the Dodgers runs came on Teoscar Hernández's three-run blast in the sixth. It was only L.A.'s second hit of the game to that point, as Corbin Burnes had largely quieted their bats, but it handed Burnes the L. Dustin May, meanwhile, allowed just one run over six while striking out eight and the pen blanked the Dbacks for the final three.

Atlanta vs. Nationals – POSTPONED:

🎶 Hoverin' by my suitcase
Tryin' to find a warm place to spend the night
Heavy rain's fallin'
Seems I hear your voice callin' "it's all right"A rainy night in Georgia
A rainy night in Georgia
Lord, I believe it's rainin' all over the world
I feel like it's rainin' all over the world 🎶

Yeah, I know this game was supposed to be played in Washington, not Georgia, but there aren't a lot of songs about rain in the District of Columbia.

The Daily Briefing

Jared Jones to have elbow surgery

While Paul Skenes was, obviously, the Pirates' and, indeed, all of baseball's best rookie last year, Pittsburgh had another rookie pitcher who showed a hell of a lot of promise in 2024. That was Jared Jones who posted a 4.14 ERA (101 ERA+) and an excellent strikeout-to-walk ratio in 22 starts. While that wasn't award worthy or anything it did suggest that the Pirates would have more than just one solid young pitcher as they attempted to return to competitiveness.

This season started out badly, however, as Jones suffered an elbow injury during spring training. It was diagnosed as a UCL sprain and rehab, rather than surgery, was recommended. He suffered setbacks as he ramped up his throwing program recently, however, and now the decision has been made for him to go under the knife.

The club did not say whether or not it was Tommy John surgery, an internal brace procedure, or something else, but they did say he is done for 2025. If it's Tommy John he's likely gonna be out for at least half of 2026 as well. A bad break, man.

Man faces criminal charges related to Kavan Markwood's fall from PNC Park stands

A man has been charged with providing alcohol to Kavan Markwood, the 20 year-old man who fell from the outfield stands, severely injuring himself, at a Pittsburgh Pirates game on April 30. Ethan Kirkwood, 21, of McKeesport, Pennsylvania, was arrested Tuesday on misdemeanor alcohol charges.

According to the criminal complaint obtained by WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh, Kirkwood said he bought alcohol for Markwood at the ballpark. Surveillance video from PNC Park corroborated that, showing Kirkwood buying two 24-ounce beers before another video, obtained minutes later, shows Kirkwood and Markwood together, each with one beer in their hands. Security cameras also showed Kirkwood disposing of his and possibly Markwood's beers in the trash before he jumped over a railing and onto the field to help his friend following the fall. The Athletic reports that Kirkwood has had several past run-ins with law enforcement over alcohol-related incidents, pleading guilty in two separate public drunkenness cases from 2023.

So, yeah, that guy's in some trouble.

Other Stuff

George Wendt contained multitudes

The death of George Wendt, quite understandably, led to countless memories of his time on "Cheers." But it also led to stories about Wendt's serious indie cred, about which I had absolutely NO idea until yesterday.

I first saw this in a story shared by movie maker Kier-La Janisse, who was once a film programmer at Alamo Draft House and who was assigned to chaperone Wendt around Austin during a visit he made there once upon a time. The assignment, sadly, was going to cause her to miss a show by the seminal proto-punk band Rocket from the Tombs who had reformed and who were playing on town. Only she soon found out that Wendt was friends with David Thomas, more famously of Pere Ubu, but also of Rocket, which led to her and Wendt going to the show with backstage access and stuff.

Later yesterday a friend hipped me to the fact that in 2003 Wendt was part of the cast of Thomas’s improvised opera Mirror Man, which has featured all kinds of other hip and respected pop and indie rock figures including Van Dyke Parks, Linda Thompson, Frank Black, Syd Straw, the poet Bob Holman, Scottish singer/songwriter Jackie Leven, Peter Hammill, Yo La Tengo's Georgia Hubley, James' trumpeter Andy Diagram, and others.

Between that and a bunch of other "oh yeah, Wendt was big into The Minutemen" testimonials which have floated around since yesterday I'm definitely seeing Wendt in a totally different light. I mean, it's cool enough to have been Norm. But to actually be cool independently of that? That's the good stuff.

Quote of the Day: Donald Trump

Yesterday the president said this while speaking to the press:

"The G7 used to be the G8 but brilliantly they threw Russia out. Would have been a lot better if Russia was in . . . If Russia was in you probably wouldn't have this war."

Russia, it should be noted, was kicked out of the G8 in direct response to it invading Ukraine in 2014 so, no, I do not think that its membership in the club would serve as a deterrent to its armed aggression against its neighbor.

It's probably also worth noting that Trump, while sitting alongside South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, espoused the virulently racist white supremacist conspiracy theory of "white genocide" and falsely accused Ramaphosa of perpetrating it in his country. That's right, just in passing, during a meeting with a world leader, Trump said the sort of thing that, until 2016, would've immediately and conclusively ended anyone's political career and rendered them a pariah

Now it's just another thing, I guess. Because Trump's rule is explicitly premised on white nationalism, his supporters are all for it, and the media has lost its way so badly that it now just reflexively normalizes anything that power espouses as a benign policy choice or statement of principles.

Absolute loser shit

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Democratic mega-donors are debating plans to spend tens of millions of dollars on a range of influencer plans to "find the liberal Joe Rogan." To that end they've put together pitch decks, they're holding investor meetings, and they're circulating internal documents. One of the Democratic operatives to which the Times spoke "has a spreadsheet showing 26 different proposals."

All of which is the most wrongheaded loser shit imaginable, for a host of reasons.

One reason is that a bunch of consultants and operatives cannot focus group their way into something anyone will accept as authentic. And whatever you think of Joe Rogan – however much baloney he credulously spews – the appeal and reach of his podcast comes from an authentic place.

People were not presented with Rogan as some sort of authority and expected to like him and follow him. They liked Rogan from his standup and his hosting of "Fear Factor" and other things and began listening to his podcast slowly over time. However dumb Rogan's podcast can be, it built its audience organically, with his voice and his vision as the appeal. It wasn't something that first appeared on "a spreadsheet showing 26 different proposals" written by political operatives in the same way network executives might write in a hip new character to a long-running but stagnating TV show. You can't Poochie your way to political and social relevance, but it seems that Democrats are trying.

Just as important is the specific nature of Rogan's appeal which, going back years, is essentially anti-establishment.

Yes, Rogan is a pretty important tool in the box of the authoritarian regime these days, but his audience flocks to him because he has historically presented a message of mistrust and skepticism of authority. Which is, again, genuine even if it is rooted in deep ignorance and is often disingenuous. It comes from the same place, dispositionally speaking, as vaccine skepticism and a kneejerk rejection of governmental authority which was already extant in right wing and Republican circles and which he was able to focus and magnify. I mean, it was no accident that Rogan's massive first deal with Spotify – the deal which elevated Rogan to a completely new level – was signed in the spring of 2020 when the pandemic raged, misinformation flourished, and no one seemed to be in any real control. A dumb confident voice ain't super inspiring, but to a certain sort of person it's more inspiring than incoherence or intellectually-informed meekness and equivocation.

Which is to say, the political right did not create Joe Rogan or provide Joe Rogan with talking points to help it achieve its political ends. The political right followed Joe Rogan's lead, however incoherent it could be, adopted and leaned into his vibes, and shaped its leadership style and its agenda in response to him and people like him. It did so in the same way it did in response to Donald Trump, also a media figure who came to prominence in spite of the Republican Party's intentions and control, when he rose as a political figure in 2015. It did so previously in response to Rush Limbaugh and Fox News figures. Right-wing media does not react to or follow the diktats of the Republican Party. It defines the positions and the rhetoric of the Republican Party, which the latter than goes out and effectively employs to its political ends.

Democrats have never understood this. Liberal and even progressive media almost always approach things from a reactive, defensive posture, often litigating GOP-set narratives rather than creating their own. They take their cues from late night monologues and blog culture which, by their nature, react to what is happening and tries to either mock or dismantle what it is seeing with humor or logic. Which, however entertaining that can be is not the stuff of political inspiration and mobilization and does little if anything to advance an affirmative political agenda.

All of that is before you get to the part of it where those who challenge entrenched, institutional Democratic power are punished for doing so, while Republicans routinely cast aside their elites and their leaders who are no longer perceived to be in step with the masses and the louder voices who speak for them, like Rogan. You cannot get your "Joe Rogan of the left" if you are reflexively dismissive and hostile to populist appeals because Joe Rogan and other right wing influencers are, essentially, populists who Republican elites work through, not against.

Rather than embark on a doomed effort to synthetically engineer some sort of Joe Rogan-style populism of the left, I'd much prefer Democrats with money to burn to odo things in the media space which would more effectively counter the ignorant propaganda in which the political right has so long marinated. Rather than responding to shouters with shouters I'd rather they do what they can to fund effective and vigorous traditional media efforts which have atrophied or even completely disappeared over the past decade or two.

Take those tens of millions of dollars you want to spend, Democratic operatives, and fund a bunch of investigative reporters and local news outlets, the sort of which used to produce actual information rather than New York Times-style stenography and both-sidesism. Do it without the expectation that the media you underwrite will make a profit and without the expectation that it will do what it is told. Maybe that would make those who fund and plan Democratic initiatives nervous, but I assure you, nothing would help balance the slanted media environment faster or more effectively than strong and bold truths convincingly communicated and effectively amplified by those in positions of power.

But fine. If those Democratic operatives think that's dumb and would still rather just dump money on some "Joe Rogan of the left," I'll make them a deal: you give me $25 million dollars, I'll create the roughly 375,000 Cup of Coffee newsletter subscriptions that would buy, you distribute those subscriptions to people who each have, say, 250 friends and followers, and I'll vow to write things that will mobilize that network of 93 million people into an unbeatable electoral block which will usher in perpetual Democratic control across all levels of government and civil society.

Hey, if you guys want to engage in fantasy I can too. DM me if you need bank routing numbers.

On a related note . . .

Yesterday we got a great reminder of the pitfalls of Democratic leadership turning on its fresher, younger, and more forceful voices. That came upon the news of the death of Virginia Congressman Gerry Connolly who died yesterday at 75 after a lengthy, public cancer battle. I mean no disrespect to the dead here, and do not mean to upset those who mourn him, but the final chapter of Connolly's professional life provides an object lesson in just how lost the leadership of the Democratic Party truly is.

Back in December, as the Democrats were choosing committee assignments for the new Congress, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bid to become the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee. It's an important committee for the policing of the executive branch and it's particularly important to an opposition party. Democrats in 2025 have little actual power so they HAVE to be able to steer the agenda, informally or otherwise, by vigorously highlighting the legal, ethical, and moral breaches of the administration.

You need a clear and energetic ranking member in that role to do that and, while I appreciate that Ocasio-Cortez has her detractors, there is no Member of Congress who is more capable of clearly and energetically highlighting the excesses of power than AOC. She has done that, and done it effectively, since the day she emerged as a serious candidate for office and she has only gotten better at it over time. Whatever else you can say about her, it's impossible to deny that she has a forceful voice and an unmatched talent for cutting to the quick in such a way that would've made her a perfect choice for the Oversight Committee position.

So of course Democratic leadership denied her that role, giving it instead to Gerry Connolly because (a) he had seniority; and (b) he had no history, like AOC, of taking public issue with leadership. This despite the fact that he was in his mid-70s and been given a serious and, as it turned out, terminal cancer diagnosis prior to the vote. When questioned about the move, another Virginia Representative, Don Beyer, infamously said "Gerry's a young 74, cancer notwithstanding." It would've been a darkly hilarious thing to say if it wasn't such a transparent lie in service of protecting the prerogatives of senior leadership at the expense of effective governance.

Connolly was the sixth House Democrat to die in office in a little over a year, following Raúl Grijalva, Sylvester Turner, Bill Pascrell, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Donald Payne Jr.. Four of them died of cancer that they were openly battling. Since November 2022, eight sitting members of Congress have died in office due to old age or disease and all of them were Democrats. A couple of those vacant seats are now being held open by Republican governors who refuse to hold replacement elections in an effort to further hamstring the Democratic minority. Indeed, those vacancies have directly contributed to Republicans' ability to force-through a massively destructive budget bill which will immiserate millions. These deaths, and the many aging and increasingly inactive elderly members of the Democratic caucus, are sapping the party of numbers, strength and vitality, every bit of which is needed to fend off the lawless authoritarianism which has been unleashed by the right.

There's a prevailing ethos in the Democratic Party that leadership is infallible and must be obeyed and that those who hold seats and the reins of power shall do so for as long as they wish by virtue of some sort of god-given entitlement. An ethos in which anyone who dares challenge that state of affairs, no matter how valid and well-intentioned such challenges are, is considered an impetuous upstart who must be put in their place. An ethos in which, no matter how much better off both the party and the country would be if new voices and new ideas were allowed to emerge, none shall be allowed to emerge unless and until the party elders permit it. And they never, ever seem to permit it. To the contrary, it's the ethos which has ensured that the manifestly feckless and incompetent – and wildly unpopular outside of their core constituencies – Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are the faces of the historically unpopular Democratic Party, with there being no hope of changing that it seems.

The leadership of the Democratic Party claims to want a greater reach and to cultivate a greater vitality for it and its message. Rather than trying to achieve such a thing via boneheaded gambits such as "finding the liberal Joe Rogan," it should stop handing power to tired or sick old hands simply because they've been around a long time and have been loyal to the bosses. It should try engaging with, amplifying, and elevating the many people on the left who are younger, more vital, more energetic, and who would thus be more effective messengers and leaders than those who hold those positions now. I mean, if a bunch of Democratic operatives and donors are sitting around a room wondering how to connect to younger voters and their first idea isn't "get younger leaders" what in the hell are we even doing?

I'm sad that Gerry Connolly died because he seemed like a decent and well-intentioned person and because cancer sucks and absolutely no one deserves it. But the business of fighting fascism and preserving whatever is left of our Constitutional Order does not allow for sentimentality or the extending of professional courtesies such as gold watch committee chairmanships. It does not allow for the sidelining of those who can make a real difference. Rather, it's high time that the Democrats acknowledge these people and put them in a position to help both them and the country at large right the ship.

Gateway drugs for fine cinema

The first lines in an article about the 1982 film version of the musical "Annie":

There are a lot of arguments as to what constitutes a Gen-Xer and when the proper cutoff dates are, but a pretty good rule of thumb is that you’re one of us if your first John Huston movie was Annie. (Your first Robert Altman movie being Popeye is also an acceptable metric.)

True and true. Though, being honest, I had no idea who directed those movies at the time nor did I know who they were even when I first encountered "The Maltese Falcon" and "M*A*S*H" as a teenager. Later, when I actually began to learn about both Golden Age and New Hollywood cinema, I realized that genuine auteurs helmed a couple of kiddie musicals I watched on repeat on HBO when I was ten and it sorta blew my mind.

I tried to rewatch "Popeye" several years ago, when I was deep, deep into a Robert Altman kick, but I couldn't get through it. It's just not a good movie. I've not seen "Annie" since I was a kid, but I remember it mostly fondly. Indeed, I still remember most of the words to most of the songs for some damn reason. It's no classic, I'm sure, but I suspect that it holds up better than "Popeye." If for no other reason than its cast was full of stone cold assassins like Albert Finney, Bernadette Peters, Tim Curry and, especially, Carol Burnett who chewed up every scene in which she appeared.

It almost makes me want to watch it again.

Have a great day everyone.