Yesterday, the Philadelphia Phillies' spring training was dogged with absences, which, while relatively small in number, were significant in total WAR and name recognition value. While Shohei Ohtani was spiritually throwing 14 pitches in a Dodgers uniform, the Phillies' first full-squad workout took place without Bryce Harper and Aaron Nola, who were out with food poisoning, and Trea Turner, who was out with a new baby.
The absence of Harper and, by extension, Nola, would not have been particularly notable if not for Harper's new TikTok content, in which he revealed, in an iced vanilla latte–making video, that he and his family preferred drinking raw milk—though in the video he used Maple Hill, which is not only pasteurized but ultra-pasteurized. Here is a series of possibly unrelated facts. Pasteurization is the simple process of treating food products to mild heat in order to neutralize microorganisms and enzymes that cause disease. Raw milk accordingly comes with an increased risk of carrying germs like E. coli and salmonella. Nola, who is TikTok-less, has yet to go on record declaring his allegiance, or lack thereof, to raw milk. The actual cause of Harper and Nola's food poisoning is unknown. Harper's TikTok also revealed a knowledge of an involved matcha-making process, complete with sieve and whisk.
While I am sympathetic to the idea that milk, like drink orders at coffee shops, can only carry so many adjectives before it becomes unwieldy, this does not bar me from walking to the grocery store and picking up a gallon of milk that is not only homogenized and pasteurized, but is also calcium-enriched, two-percent, and contains lactase. The two-percent is due to my roommate's milk habits, the lactase is because I am lactose intolerant, and the calcium-enriched portion is because, well, in for a penny, in for a pound. No matter the unholiness of five-characteristic milk to the human spirit, my human body was not built to consume milk at all. With that in mind, one must make do with one's lot in life, though one really should not drink raw milk.
Whatever the market odds on the Philadelphia Phillies as the source of first recently recorded human-to-human transmission of H5 bird flu, the fear has been proven unfounded. Bryce Harper returned to spring training today. Whew! The Phillies are back, baby!
