Cup of Coffee: May 26, 2025

Good morning!

It's Memorial Day and, while it sounds decidedly not right to wish you a happy one, I do hope you have a meaningful one, however you define it.

Despite the holiday it's a mostly normal newsletter today, but rather than risk getting annoyed and frustrated about the state of the world on a holiday, the bulk of Other Stuff is devoted to a guest post about getting obsessed with APBA baseball while touring and performing with a blues rock outfit. No, it was not written by John Mayall as he's been dead for ten months, but I think you'll like it all the same.

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Tigers 5, Guardians 0: Everyone knows what a Maddux is by now: a shutout in which the pitcher requires fewer than 100 pitches. Yesterday reigning Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal pulled that off against the Guardians, requiring only 94 pitches to get 'er done. He still, quite obviously, had a lot left in the tank too as his final pitch of the game was clocked at 102.6 m.p.h. That came on a strikeout. In fact he struck out 13 batters during his complete game, which is hard to get one's head around in a Maddux given that strikeouts generally increase a hurler's pitch count. Regardless, that's the most strikeouts any pitcher has recorded while accomplishing the feat since people been keeping track of pitch counts. Good show, Skubal.

In other news, Zach McKinstry hit a two-run homer and Detroit avoided a four-game sweep, which makes Skubal's outing, in addition to being a Maddux, some real big league stopper stuff too.

Brewers 6, Pirates 5: With Milwaukee up 3-0 in the bottom of the third Oneil Cruz came up and, first-pitch swinging on a 92 m.p.h. fastball from Logan Henderson, launched that ball out of the park and into the river faster than I've ever seen a ball leave a ballpark. And the numbers bore it out: Cruz hit that ball at 122.9 m.p.h. which was the hardest ball ever hit in the Statcast Era:

It used to be that all the fastest-hit balls were worm-burner grounders from guys like Giancarlo Stanton, but this was the Tsar Bomba of blasts. Mercy.

That said: the Pirates still lost. Milwaukee blew a 3-0 lead and trailed 5-3 heading into the eighth but Caleb Durbin and Brice Turang hit back-to-back RBI doubles in the eighth inning to push Milwaukee back over. The sides split the four-game set. 

Giants 3, Nationals 2: Robbie Ray allowed one run on three hits and struck out seven and didn't walk a soul over six innings, pushing his record to 7-0 and lowering his ERA to 2.56. Sam Huff homered for San Francisco. When I saw "Huff" in the box score, though, I had Aubrey flashbacks. [shudder].

Orioles 5, Red Sox 1: Ryan O’Hearn and Dylan Carlson each hit solo homers to help the O's salvage a split of a rainy and sometimes kinda messy four-game series. Baltimore starter Dean Kremer allowed seven hits, all singles, in five and a third but no runs came of it. Baltimore catcher Adley Rutschman left the game after taking a hard foul off the mask. Red Sox prospect Marcelo Mayer, called up Saturday, got his first two career hits, a single and a double. More on him in the Alex Bregman item down in the Daily Briefing.

Cubs 11, Reds 8: Cincinnati led 8-3 after five innings but the Cubs scored the final eight runs of the game to win it in comeback fashion. Seiya Suzuki and Reese McGuire were big parts of the comeback, homering in the eighth inning. Nico Hoerner and Pete Crow-Armstrong drove in two runs each. Chicago takes two of three and has won four straight series. Cincinnati has dropped four of five.

Rays 13, Blue Jays 0: The Jays won a game 14-0 against the Padres last week so now they know how that kind of a shellacking feels. Brandon Lowe homered for the third straight game. Curtis Mead homered as well. Tampa Bay sent 11 batters to the plate against three pitchers in the bottom of the fifth. Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?

Royals 2, Twins 1: Kris Bubic (7 IP 2 H, 1 ER, 9K) and Bailey Ober (6.2 IP, 7 H, 1 ER) had a heck of a duel but neither figured in the decision as it was tied at one at the end of regulation. Kansas City prevailed in tenth when Maikel García singled and the Manfred Man scored thanks to a Twins error. Taylor Clarke shut down Minnesota in the bottom half. With the win the Royals avoid being swept in three.

Astros 5, Mariners 3: Seattle managed an early 3-0 lead but the Astros clawed back in part because of Christian Walker's RBI single in the third. The game was tied at three when Walker struck again, and in much bigger fashion, in the bottom of the ninth, hitting a walkoff two-run homer to give Houston the game and the series win.

Rangers 5, White Sox 4: Jake Burger homered in the second and, after falling behind 3-2, the Rangers rallied in the ninth thanks to a plunking, a Burger double that put two runners on, an error by Chicago infielder Lenyn Sosa, which tied things up, and then a two-run double by Adolis García. The Sox got one back in the bottom half but one was not enough. Texas avoids being swept and ends their six-game losing streak.

Cardinals 4, Diamondbacks 3: Eugenio Suárez gave Arizona an early 2-0 lead but an RBI single from Iván Herrera and an homer from Masyn Winn tied things back up by the third. After the Snakes went back up 3-2 in the sixth Herrera tied it back up with a sac fly and then Victor Scott II singled in the go-ahead run in the seventh and the St. Louis pen held that lead. The Cards sweep the three-game set.

Athletics 5, Phillies 4: Jacob Wilson homered and Logan Davidson hit a two-run double for an early 3-0 lead. Lawrence Butler tripled in a fourth run and Willie MacIver, making his big league debut, singled in the go-ahead run in the eighth inning. The A's end their 11-game losing streak and the Phillies end their nine-game winning streak. It happens.

Marlins 3, Angels 0: Edward Cabrera struck out ten batters over five and two-thirds shutout innings and three reliever finished off the three-hitter with 15 damn strikeouts in all. Miami takes two of three.

Padres 5, Atlanta 3: Gavin Sheets homered in the sixth, Jake Cronenworth hit a go-ahead homer in the seventh, and Manny Machado homered in the eighth as the Padres took two of three. Ronald Acuña Jr. came back this series, homered on Friday, homered on Saturday, and had a double and a walk here, so I think he's OK.

Yankees 5, Rockies 4: J.C. Escarra had three hits including an RBI double in the second and an RBI single in the eighth. Aaron Judge had two hits, including a tie-breaking double in the fifth. There was a two-hour rain delay here but even the rains can't save the Rockies.

Mets 3, Dodgers 1: Shohei Ohtani hit a solo homer in the top of the first but Pete Alonso hit a two-run job in the bottom half. Juan Soto grounding into a fielder's choice in the third provided insurance. The Dodgers committed four errors. The Mets win two of three.

The Daily Briefing

Alex Bregman is going to be out for a good while

Alex Bregman left Boston's Friday night win over Baltimore in the bottom of the fifth inning with right quad tightness. When I read about it on Saturday morning no one suggested it was super serious but that changed Saturday afternoon when the club announced that Bregman was going on the injured list and, per Alex Cora, “He’s going to be out for a while."

Specifically, Cora called it a "significant injury" and said it's comparable to the quad injury Bregman suffered in 2021 while playing for the Astros which caused him to miss two and a half months of the season and resulted in him playing in only 91 games that year. Something similar would be a big loss for Boston as Bregman has been a big bat for the Sox this season. He's hitting .299/.385/.553 (159 OPS+) and 11 homers and 17 doubles while playing his usual solid third base.

The first option out of the gate to take Bregman's place is top prospect Marcelo Mayer, who the Sox called up over the weekend. He's primarily been a shortstop in the minors but he's played a few games at third. Cora gave Mayer the start in the nightcap of Saturday's doubleheader against the Orioles. He went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts in that contest. He had a better Sunday, going 2-for-4 and scoring a run. The Sox will obviously give him every opportunity to show that he can at least attempt to fill Bregman's shoes.

One person who won't be considered at third base is Rafael Devers. When a reporter asked Cora if returning Devers to his old position was an option, he immediately said "no" and added, "he’s the best DH in the American League right now. If he keeps doing this, he’s going to be in the All-Star Game as a DH, he’s going to win a Silver Slugger as a DH. So where we're at right now, this is where we’re going . . . we feel very comfortable with Raffy Devers as the DH.” Given all the controversy with the position change in spring training and the not-great press that arose amid speculation that Devers might move to first base in the wake of Triston Casas' injury, I get why the club doesn't wanna go there.

Kevin Pillar, Hunter Renfroe got DFA'd

Fourth outfielder extraordinaire Kevin Pillar strongly considered retiring last winter before deciding to return for the 2025 campaign when the Texas Rangers came calling. Now the Texas Rangers are hanging up on him, having DFA'd the 36 year-old veteran over the weekend. They made the move to make room on the 40-man roster for top prospect Alejandro Osuna, who just got called up in the wake of Joc Pederson hitting the IL due to a broken hand.

Pillar has hit a mere .209/.209/.265 over 43 plate appearances and had an IL stint due to a bad back. In the likely event that he clears waivers, he can either choose to accept a minor league assignment or reject it and become a free agent. All things considered, however, it seems most likely that this is the end of the line for a guy who, at one time, had a strong claim to the title of best defensive outfielder in baseball.

Another notable name who got DFA'd over the weekend: Hunter Renfroe of the Royals. Kansas City signed him to a two-year $13 million deal last year with a player option, Renfroe was disappointing in 2024, predictably exercised his player option, and has really stunk up the joint this year, batting .182/.241/.242 (37 OPS+) with no homers. It was good deal for him, of course, but it was also time for the Royals to appreciate that he's a sunk cost and give his plate appearances to someone who might be able to do something with them.

Oh, Noah

Have you been wondering what Noah Syndergaard has been up to in the nearly two years since he last pitched? Wonder no more! He's been out there cheering for RFK Jr.'s homicidal healthcare agenda!

The "MAHA report" which Syndergaard refers here was released the other day in response to a Trump executive order to healthcare officials to examine illness and disease among children. It, surprise surprise, focuses on a bunch of RFK Jr.'s non-scientifically-based obsessions including vaccines, which he wrongfully and maliciously believes to be harmful, ultra-processed foods, water fluoridation, and “overmedicalization” of children's healthcare. Meanwhile it omits the most common causes of chronic disease and death in children, such as smoking and alcohol use. It also fails to acknowledge that the Trump administration is taking a meat axe to all manner of medical and preventative care programs and is now poised to rip healthcare coverage away from tens of millions of people, including children, which will lead to sharply negative health outcomes for everyone. Best just to focus on the fluoride and vaccines I suppose.

It's all incredibly toxic stuff which no one with half a brain could possibly agree with let alone endorse. But I suppose Syndergaard – who once credited a major juice regimen as a means of avoiding injury just before he began experiencing constant major injuries basically every year – is just a different kind of thinker.

He is, however, no longer a pitcher. I assumed it was because his injuries just sapped his effectiveness but now I'm wondering if they were actually surmountable injuries that Syndergaard foolishly treated that with crystals and probiotic enemas and stuff.

Fox paid people to pour milk on themselves at baseball games to promote the Indy 500

At two different games on Saturday – Orioles-Red Sox at Fenway and Dodgers-Mets in New York – Fox cameras caught baseball fans in the stands pouring milk all over themselves in celebration:

Given that (a) Fox broadcast the Indy 500 yesterday; (b) the fans in question each had Indy 500 shirts on; and (c) no one carries a full-ass jug of milk with them at baseball games, it's plainly obvious that these were staged promotions for Fox's Indy 500 coverage. If you have any doubt about that, just listen how quickly the announcers pivot to Indy 500 promotional patter as these putatively spontaneous events – perfectly framed in camera shots were clearly planned ahead of time – go down.

Fox, however, tried to pass these off, both in real time and later on social media promotions, as if they were just a crazy things that spontaneously happened! Like when actors D.J. Cotrona and Olivia Wilde – stars of the short-lived but heavily-promoted Fox show "Skin" – showed up in the stands at the World Series in 2023.

His father is the district attorney! And he's pouring milk all over himself! Bah Gawd!

Other Stuff

Self-proclaimed "Scots-Irish" J.D. Vance may not be Irish

Take it from me, a guy who has spent a lot of time doing genealogy: genealogy can be hard. There are a lot of reasons it can be hard, but one of the hardest parts of it is that you can't always rely on what you find in common databases like Ancestry or what have you. This is because people tend to get lazy and fudge things once they get a few generations back, creating mistakes upon which others, later, mistakenly rely and upon which they make assumptions.

It's not usually random fudging either. Like, if there's a choice between being related to Joe Schmoe, a yeoman farmer from Podunkashire and Sir Joesph Schmoesph, First Earl of Strivershire, amateur genealogists almost always pick the latter because it makes them feel better and more important. Alternatively, if someone has a self-identity wrapped up in a certain social class or profession or whatever, and they encounter one of the frequent ambiguities one finds in records from before the 19th century, they're way more likely to err on the side of the ambiguity which confirms with their self identity. In such a case one is far more likely to assume that the ancestor in question was the Joe Schmoe who came to America to escape religious persecution or flee some sort of controversy which, in hindsight, makes them look like a rebel as opposed to it being the Joe Schmoe who got a great gig brokering slaves or working as an apprentice rent collector or something.

I mention all of that because our Vice President and my Personal Nemesis, J.D. Vance, has long claimed to come from Scots-Irish stock. That's not necessarily a wild or crazy assumption on Vance's part given where his extended family is from, but it's also the case that that identity dovetails nicely with the story he told about himself which made him famous in which he comes from poor nothingness and, through hard work and determination, stuck it to the elites. And, it turns, out, it may very well be wrong. From the London Times:

JD Vance takes pride in declaring himself to be a “Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart” but a trawl of genealogy records has found no evidence linking the US vice-president to Ireland.

In an attempt to link Vance to Ulster, a DUP minister commissioned researchers to dig into the ancestral past of the controversial Republican Party politician. A glossy 24-page dossier titled “The Family Footsteps of JD Vance” was produced, but researchers admitted they had “not established a conclusive family link” to Northern Ireland.

God knows that my genealogical research led to many surprises and upset some assumptions I had that were passed down to me, so I'm not gonna accuse Vance of outright fraud here (there are many, many other reasons he's a fraud). But it's always fun to encounter yet another instance in which Vance is wrong about something, so I read this with no small amount of pleasure.

Southwest is about to suck

A while back I shared a short bit about how Southwest Airlines was ditching its free bags policy and is adopting all manner of other measures to make it, essentially, the same as every other airline. Charging for bags, yes, but also charging for extra legroom via the introduction of a "basic economy," a tiered class system, and getting rid of open seating and all-general boarding. They've even joined the airport lounge game, at least sorta. These changes have been initiated by a private equity company, Elliott Capital, which has purchased a substantial stake in Southwest and has pressured its executives to find new revenue streams.

Over the weekend the Chron ran an editorial by a once-loyal Southwest customer who laments the transformation of an airline which once provided what, in her words, was an egalitarian airline experience into a soulless revenue-maximizing enterprise like all the others:

Southwest was profitable last year, and has been making money hand over fist just the way it was. So what was the problem? For Elliott and Southwest's new board, the inefficiency was clear: the airline was not doing enough to shake its customers down until every last cent fell out of their pockets. The Southwest Airlines of Herb Kelleher's day is gone. There is no long-term vision, nobody with heart in the pilot's seat. Just a blaring jet engine fueled by short-term gain.

There was never really a time when businesses were truly let alone uniformly benevolent, But there used to be at least a few companies which took a longer view and which understood that customer goodwill was an extraordinarily valuable thing that, sometimes, was worth paying for in various ways. These days, however, it's a complete sucker's bet to expect corporations to forego even a single penny in the interests of providing better customer experiences and cultivating greater customer loyalty.

There's simply no room, it seems, for a little grace, kindness, or humanity in the commercial context. Everything is maximally monetized and maximally dehumanized and it really sucks.

Metafandom in a Touring Band

By Bill Pollak, p/k/a Billy Price

When I read Craig’s book Rethinking Fandom, the chapter “Embrace Metafandom” reminded me of my experiences in the 1980s. I was singing with and leading a band at that time called Billy Price and the Keystone Rhythm Band—my professional name was and is Billy Price—and we were a touring blues-rock band that also played a lot of soul and rhythm & blues. We aspired at that time to achieve success that stylistically similar bands such as Huey Lewis and the News, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, George Thorogood and the Destroyers, and the Robert Cray Band did, but never quite got there. 

We did, however, play a lot of gigs. Because one of my band members, sax player Eric Leeds (who later played with James Brown and toured and recorded with Prince), kept track of every gig he played with us during the three years he was in the band, I can quantify how busy we were:

My first gig with the KRB was Jan.2, 1979. My last was Dec. 8, 1982. Between those dates we played 981 gigs.

1979: 252 gigs

1980: 259 gigs

1981: 249 gigs

1982: I played 221 gigs; there were 9 more scheduled that Don Aliquo played instead of me, so 230 gigs for the year.

After Leeds left the band, we continued to perform at roughly this same level until around 1988, when we broke up. Most of these shows were in or near Pittsburgh where we lived and could sleep in our own beds, but a large percentage were on the road, mostly along the east coast, as far midwest as Chicago, and as far south as Houston and New Orleans. 

We traveled in a Dodge Ram van equipped with captain’s chairs. Our drummer, Dave Dodd, almost always drove. The shows we played were the easy part; the challenge of this nomadic life was finding a way to maintain sanity between shows. Before we discovered metafandom as the solution to this problem, some guys tried to read, which was difficult to impossible; others played cards, or talked about this or that, or listened to music, or just drank to knock themselves out. 

Other than our driver/drummer, we were all baseball fans, and baseball peppered a lot of the chatter in the van. A couple of us were Pirates fans, but there were also a Dodgers fan, a Braves fan, and a couple of Phillies fans who had grown up in Eastern Pennsylvania. I had adopted the Pirates as my team when I moved to Pittsburgh from New Jersey in the early 1970s. Feelings ran high for the Pirates and Phillies fans in 1978, the year before the Pirates won the Series, as the Pirates came out of nowhere to take the Phillies to the final weekend of the year in a four-game do-or-die series at Three Rivers Stadium before falling short. Several of us were in the crowd for those amazing games that make me wistful for the Pirates–Phillies rivalry when they were in the same division and both good, and for meaningful baseball in Pittsburgh before the execrable current regime took over. 

One fateful day, I had the idea to bring on the road with me a board game I had played when I was a kid, APBA Baseball, to see if I could interest any of the guys in playing it during our long van rides from show to show, to kill time. When I was in high school, my brother and I had experienced the addictive nature of APBA, and I spent more time than I’m comfortable admitting playing solitaire APBA when I should have been studying in high school or doing something more edifying. I’ve since learned that Strat-O-Matic is the more popular and maybe better version of this kind of reality-based baseball board game, but for us it was always APBA.

I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly my bandmates took to APBA, and in short order, we set up a league, which we dubbed the Casey Stengel Memorial APBA League (CSMAL), and played a full 160-game schedule. The first couple of seasons, we began with intact teams—the ’76 Reds, ’77 Phillies, ’77 Dodgers, ’77 Pirates, ’77 Royals, and ’74 A’s—but over time the personnel on these teams morphed as a result of frequent trades, in which we overindulged.

Our second season ended in high drama. It came down to the final game of the season, which was won by keyboardist Steve Binsberger’s ’77 Phillies. But a couple of weeks later, while tabulating final-season stats, I discovered that Steve had used an ineligible reliever in that last game and, in my role as commissioner, I declared a forfeit and awarded the crown to Leeds’s ’76 Reds. After the controversy had died down a bit and Steve reluctantly accepted his punishment, on a subsequent gig in Philly, the dance floor was full as we set the crowd afire with “Hold Back the Night.” After the first chorus, I held back the band and cued them to STOP mid-song. I looked back at Steve and said slowly into the mike, “Say it ain't so, Steve…say it ain't so!” before cuing the band back in as if nothing were amiss. I’m sure those in the crowd who were in sufficient control of their faculties to have noticed must have wondered what it was that they had just witnessed.

Speaking of controversies, the bitterest and most contentious interpersonal squabble among band members that I ever had to deal with as a band leader during those years was between Steve and our bass player, Tom Valentine. We were staying in a hotel in Falls Church, Va., and we were heading out to a nearby Chinese restaurant for dinner. Steve and Val had a game to play, so they stayed back in the hotel and said they would catch up with us after they finished their game. At some point during that game, one of the managers rolled a 66 (red die–white die combo) on the dice, resulting in a game-winning homer on the player’s card. But the other manager claimed that one die had rolled off the game board and that therefore the roll had to be done over. I can’t recall how we resolved this, but I do recall that at no other time during the years of that band did I have two band members who were angrier at each other over anything. They didn’t speak again for several weeks.

We baffled another audience one night in Morgantown, West Virginia. By this time, we had evolved from intact teams and begun to assemble teams from scratch by means of a universal draft, apart from one manager who opted to play the 1953 Dodgers. We named the teams after our hometowns—mine was the Bayonne Bombers, named for Bayonne, N.J., where my father grew up. At that time, we had a song in our repertoire called “Runaway People,” originally recorded by Dyke & the Blazers. The song had Dyke rap-singing about his hometown: “Mr. B, Mr. U, Mr. F-F-A, Mr. L, Mr. O, Mr. Buff-a-lo,” and I used this song as a means of introducing the band to the audience. I’d ask each guy where they were from and then do a variation of Dyke’s rap-singing as they would try to stump me with hard-to-spell “hometowns” from night to night, such as Albuquerque, Reykjavik, or Kalamazoo. We decided to conduct the first round of the draft for the fourth season of the CSMAL onstage in Morgantown during our performance of Runaway People. Band members that night claimed to hail from Baylor, Mass.; Morgan, W. Va.; Carlton, Ks., Stargell, Miss.; and Schmidt, Mich.

Eventually we got to the point where we could run off games in 15–20 minutes and took advantage of any place we could to play games, including green rooms at venues. We played a supper club in Greensburg, Pa., one night that was owned and operated by people in flashy suits whose primary incomes did not come from their nightclubs. They had a nice back room there where we would convene  before shows and on breaks to run a game or two. Having seen us enter that room, one of the club’s owners came in one night to investigate what we were doing in his green room. The clicking of the dice must have aroused his suspicions. Upon learning the truth, he exited the green room shaking his head and muttering, “You guys are frickin’ out of your minds.”

It's not an exaggeration to say that, over time, the APBA league became more important to many of us than the band and the music, which may partially explain why the names Huey Lewis and Robert Cray are more familiar to you than Billy Price. We played Tipitina’s in New Orleans one night, and after our sound check, we ran into some guys from a NOLA-based band called the Radiators at the bar. We struck up a conversation with them over drinks, shared stories about life on the road, and learned that when they traveled, they played Strat-O-Matic.

We played four or five full seasons before the band broke up in the late 1980s. With a new son, I decided that it was past time for me to find a way to support my family that was more reliable and lucrative than traveling around in a van playing music and APBA (not necessarily in that order of priority). So I got an advanced writing degree and began working full-time at a research institute operated by Carnegie Mellon University. I worked there for about 25 years in various communications roles and relegated my singing and recording activities to evenings and weekends before retiring and returning to singing, writing songs, and recording full time about five years ago (see billyprice.com).

While in grad school at CMU, I took an introductory programming course and befriended the instructor, who turned out to be a Pirates and baseball fan like me. At some point, one of us mentioned APBA, and I learned that Jacobo participated in a play-by-mail APBA league with some Pittsburgh lawyers and other guys throughout the country. I couldn’t resist his offer to join the league and adopt a team, but I learned quickly that my academic workload and family responsibilities weren’t going to allow me to continue; so I ended up transferring the team to one of my old sax players, Jim Emminger, the Braves fan in our league and manager of the Binghamton Bongos. Today, 37 years later, Jim and Jacobo still manage teams in that league.

Have a great day everyone.