Cup of Coffee: June 16, 2026

Good morning!

Spain was held to 0-0 draw by Cape Verde in the World Cup yesterday. Spain, for those who don't know, is ranked number two behind only Argentina in international football coming into this tournament. Cape Verde is 64th. Which means that that result is sorta like the Biloxi Shuckers of the Southern League taking the Dodgers to extra innings and having the game called for darkness? Actually, maybe it's worse than that because football results are probably far less variable on a game-by-game basis than baseball games are. However you wanna quantify it, it was a huge upset. Maybe not as big as Saudi Arabia’s beating Argentina 1-0 in group play four years ago, but still pretty big.

For as much as I hate everything about the politics, administration, and hosting of the World Cup, I can't quit the action, man. It's really damn good.

And for as shit as we've been as a country of late, it's good to remember that when America is at its best it is still the envy of the world.

Anyway, let's get on with our day.

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Cubs 5, Rockies 4: This was a wild one. Pete Crow-Armstrong hit for the cycle and he rather hilariously got picked off of first base following his single in the seventh. In related news, it was Pride Night at Wrigley last night and the Chicago Tribue's Meghan Montemurro snagged this photo of the scoreboard:

For a little while, though, it appeared as though even a cycle and a very enthusiastic cheering section wasn't going to be enough to put the Cubs over. That was thanks to the Rockies' Cole Carrigg, who drew a bases-loaded walk in the sixth to tie the game at one and then, with Chicago up 3-1 in the eighth, smacked a three-run homer to give Colorado the lead. Chicago got one back in the bottom half on a Crow-Armstrong sac fly. Then, in the ninth, Seiya Suzuki walked and made it to third on an error, after which Nico Hoerner walked to load the bases. Pedro Ramírez drove him in with a single to tie things up and keep the bases loaded and then Matt Shaw drew a five-pitch walkoff walk. Whew.

Reds 12, Mets 0: The Knicks may be able to overcome a big early deficit but the Mets ain't the Knicks. Here it was 9-0 after two and at that point you may as well catch up on those shows you're hate-watching out of a feeling of obligation. Eugenio Suárez provided the muscle here, hitting a two-run homer in the first and a grand slam in the second. JJ Bleday hit a three-run homer of his own and drove one in via a bases-loaded walk.

Phillies 7, Marlins 0: Zack Wheeler tossed six shutout innings while allowing just two hits and striking out nine. Outfielder Gabriel Rincones Jr. homered. It was only his second big league game and that dinger was his first career hit, so that's pretty spiffy. J.T. Realmuto also went deep, but he's been around awhile so no one cares. The youngins are still cute.

Nationals 7, Royals 3: Washington was down 3-2 but a 5-run fifth changed everything. Luis García Jr. knocked in the go-ahead run with a single and Dylan Crews hit a three-run homer that inning. Washington has won seven of 10 and at 38-35 they are three games over .500 for the first time since their World Series-winning year of 2019.

Cardinals 3, Padres 0: A one-hit complete game shutout for Dustin May. It wasn't quite a Maddux, but he only needed 101 pitches and that's pretty damn good. May struck out nine and walked one and that was a big reason this game ended in a cool two hours and eight minutes. The runs came on a two-run double from Jimmy Crooks and an RBI double from Alec Burleson.

Twins 4, Rangers 2: Josh Bell's three-run homer in the first was, in fact but in hindsight, enough to win it, but Byron Buxton hit a solo shot in the sixth to make sure. Minnesota's starter, Mike Paredes, didn't go five and gave up a two-run shot to Joc Pederson, but four Twins relievers contributed four and a third one-hit innings to keep things under control.

Tigers 9, Astros 3: Colt Keith hit three homers and got hit by a pitch with the bases loaded to account for six of the Tigers' nine runs last night. Kevin McGonigle and Spencer Torkelson also homered. Dillon Dingler scored on a passed ball. It was a bullpen game for Detroit and six guys scattered seven hits and struck out ten.

Diamondbacks 4, Angels 3: Both starters, Arizona's Ryne Nelson and L.A.'s Walbert Urena, each went seven innings but the former allowed just two runs while scattering nine hits and the latter surrendered four, though just three were earned. Pavin Smith homered and Geraldo Perdomo doubled one in. Gabriel Moreno and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. each singled one in.

Athletics 11, Pirates 2: The A's brought some of that Las Vegas offense back north to Sacramento with them. At least Nick Kurtz did, as he homered twice and drove in five. Jeff McNeil contributed four RBI with a homer of his own and a couple of RBI singles.

Dodgers 4, Rays 3: Tampa Bay took an early 3-0 lead but a three-run homer from Kyle Tucker tied it up in the second and a solo shot from Miguel Rojas in the seventh decided it.

The Daily Briefing

The Giants' bigot pitchers get a warning

Yesterday I said, with a great deal of certainty, that Major League Baseball wouldn't do anything to punish those San Francisco Giants pitchers who put the Bible verses on their hats in order to mount a bigoted protest against Pride Day. Well, MLB didn't exactly bring the hammer down, but they at least did something. From Outsports:

Major League Baseball issued a response to three San Francisco Giants pitchers who wrote Biblical inscriptions on the team’s Pride caps: You’ve been warned.

“The writing on the cap violates our rules and consistent with normal practice we have warned the players about future violations,” Pat Courtney, MLB’s chief communications officer, told Outsports in a statement.

I'd like to think that the warning is being widely communicated around the league in such a way that in the future punishment, and not just warnings, would be leveled in the event someone else tries to pull this. I doubt that's the case – I figure the league will just issue serial warnings if need be – but it'd be cool.

So I'll take this. I think the fact that it just went completely unacknowledged when Kershaw did it last year was what was grinding my gears the most. That felt like league validation almost. Communicating that these players acted unacceptably, even if communicated weakly, is an improvement.

Brewers call up Cooper Pratt

Cooper Pratt, the 21-year-old shortstop who the Milwaukee Brewers signed to an eight-year contract in April, is going to be called up from Triple-A Nashville and will make his big league debut against the Guardians this evening. They'll likely place Luis Rengifo on the injured list or possibly just DFA him to make room. Pratt is expected to play shortstop long term, which means that Joey Ortiz, who has been the Brewers primary shortstop this year but who played a full season at third in 2024, will shift to third where Rengifo has been.

Pratt, 21, was Milwaukee's sixth-round pick in the 2023 MLB Draft, but he received an above-slot bonus of $1.35 million in order to dissuade him from going to college and reentering the draft at a later date. He had not played a game above Class AA until this season, and his bat isn't exactly world-beating yet – he has a .735 OPS in 58 games at Nashville in 2026 – but he has shown himself to be an outstanding defensive player and the club obviously considers him their shortstop of the future.

Spencer Strider shut down

Atlanta has the best record in baseball so far this year. One wonders, however, how much better that record would be if not for injuries to key players. Such as starter Spencer Strider who is once again banged up.

This time the club is shutting Strider down for four weeks due to inflammation in his right elbow. After that period he'll get another MRI and the doctors will reassess. But even if that MRI is clean he'll need to ramp-up again, so Strider is going to miss a minimum of, what, seven weeks? Two months? Somewhere in there. See you in August at the earliest, my man.

All this comes after Strider was pulled from last Friday's game against the Mets when his fastball velocity dipped to 88 mph an he allowed six hits and seven earned runs in three innings, including three homers. He's usually up in the mid to high 90s. And, you know, isn't giving up seven runs in three innings, so, yeah, something ain't right.

Strider underwent Tommy John surgery in 2019 and had an internal brace procedure performed on his elbow in April 2024. Now we're under elbow surgery watch once again. He's only made eight starts this year after suffering a strained left oblique, so it's just been one damn thing after another for him. His 20-win season back in 2023 feels like a million years ago.

Here's a cool T-shirt you should buy

A couple of years ago I shared a cool Pride t-shirt from la Liga Nacional Puertorriqueña, which is an Out of the Park Baseball league alternate universe. The idea is that in this alternate universe Puerto Rico became an independent nation in 1868, la Liga began play in 1871, and it soon became its world's best baseball league. The people behind the league have made and sold t-shirts and other merch with the alternate universe teams on it. It's a lot of fun.

For each of the past three years la Liga has put out a Pride design. I bought and still frequently wear the one from the 2024 collection, which you can see here. There are two 2025 designs. And now the 2026 model is available as well:

"Orgullo" is "Pride" in Spanish, by the way.

Proceeds from sales of these shirts – plus an extra $1 from the supplier, Threadless – goes to TransLifeline, which is a peer support and crisis hotline which offers phone support to transgender people.

Like I said, I own one of these, and it's a quality shirt. One of the nice things is that you can buy it as a classic, a regular shirt, an extra soft, or a tri-blend, so if you're picky about your t-shirts you have some choices. I got the tri-blend and it's held up to over two years worth of washes and hasn't shrunk or frayed or faded any of that.

Anyway, check out la Liga Nacional Puertorriqueña. It's a great idea that, for Pride month, is doing stuff for a great cause.

Other Stuff

Puffy Shoulders

So far the World Cup kits seem to be behaving, but earlier this year, during friendlies and qualifiers and things, the Nike-designed kits for national teams had an issue. Pointy shoulders:

The little black lines there first made me think that the pointed shoulders were by design, but apparently not. Nike says they had a quality control/design issue that has caused those little shoulder bumps to show up on several teams' kits. Since there was no time to redesign and manufacture new kits once the problem was discovered, Nike has given each of the teams detailed instructions on how to steam each jersey in order to make the shoulders lay down.

Again, from what I've seen so far in the tournament that seems to have solved the problem, but it is sorta embarrassing that it's a problem to begin with. Why might the problem have happened? Well . . .

Still, it stands as a rare miss for Nike, which boasted about the design process of the shirts, stressing the use of “computational design” and “a highly specialised, stitch-specific knitting process to help athletes stay cool”.

That computational process was driven by performance data and incorporated elements of AI to work alongside the company’s designers as they crafted the kits.

To be fair to the AI engines designing these things, humans have a head start of literally thousands of years of making clothes whereas AI has only been doing it for a few years, so there will be kinks.

[Editor: Maybe they should just have the humans do this?]

That's crazy talk. Haven't you heard? AI is the future and resisting it is inevitable. You hear it all the time so it must be true.

Great Moments in Emergency Preparedness

It was late at night when my mom had her stroke a couple of weeks ago. She was out on her recliner doing whatever she does late at night and my dad was dead asleep. She realized she was having a stroke when she tried to stand up but, instead, crumpled to the ground and couldn't get back up. She attempted to get my dad's attention, but he sleeps like the dead and he couldn't hear her. She also has very, very severe benign essential tremors in both hands, which makes using her cell phone almost impossible anymore, so her efforts to call either his phone or anyone else's were unsuccessful. Eventually she did manage to wake him up, he called 9-1-1, then called me, and it all ended up being OK eventually.

That's a scenario I'd been worrying about for some time. Usually my worry is that something happens to my dad and my mom can't call 9-1-1 – indeed that happened once last year and she actually went next door and got the neighbor to call – but it's obviously a problem for both of them. It's enough of a problem that I had recently started the "maybe you two should move to a senior apartment connected to an assisted living place. . . " conversation. That hasn't been met with hostility, exactly, but it's something they're not really ready for so I've mostly dropped it.

I have, however, insisted that they get some sort of medic-alert tech. Buttons and/or wearables that would allow my mom to call emergency services even when her tremors are at their worst, be it for herself or my dad. They've agreed with me that that's essential, and so my dad ordered the whole setup when my mom was in the hospital.

Unfortunately the delivery of their new devices has been delayed, which is frustrating. But my dad is a clever guy and a good problem-solver, so this was sitting on the table next to my mom's recliner when I went over to their house the other day:

I can just see it now: my mom believes she's having another stroke, she grabs the airhorn, blasts it, it gives my dad a heart attack, and they both end up shuffling off to the Great Beyond. On one level that'd be a tragedy, obviously, but on another level it'd be a hell of a story.

Anyway, here's hoping the medic-alert stuff shows up today.

Guest Post: Dee Zurek

In March I learned that I was one of the 380,000 American women who will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year. It was discovered on my annual mammogram in February. I have no family history of any type of cancer, which for some strange reason gave me the idea that I had some cloak of immunity. I just expected that like every other year, I would get the letter the next day in the patient portal that said “You’re fine. See you next year.”

When I didn’t get anything for a week I thought somebody fell down on the job. But then I got the call ten days later saying they needed me to come back in for another look at my left breast. I was sure the tech had just not gotten it into the right position, so I was pretty confident when I went in.  They did the 3D imaging and asked me to stick around in case they needed to do an ultrasound. They did two – one by the radiology tech and then one by the radiologist himself. When he turned the screen around to show me the image, I could see this spot with very irregular edges and thought to myself “That’s no cyst.”  He explained that it was highly suspicious for cancer and that I would need a biopsy, which was scheduled for three days later. Four days after that the biopsy report dropped into my patient portal (never check your test results at 4:00 AM when you KNOW no one can get back to you to explain them until four hours later) with a bunch of numbers and words I googled frantically and still wasn’t sure what they all meant. I knew that the radiologist said it didn’t look like there was any lymph node involvement, and I was hanging everything I had on that possibility. But the biopsy did confirm that it was cancer, and further tests would pinpoint exactly what kind of cancer it was. 

I then made a decision.  After informing my family privately I put it out on Facebook, because I didn’t want to tell this story 152 times. And the response I got was overwhelming. So many of my female friends whom I had NO idea had gone through this offered support. Local folks told me what surgeon I wanted, and I was able to get an appointment with him (along with the oncologist and radiologist) in a week.  I am very lucky – I live five minutes from a world-class cancer center and was immediately assigned a nurse coordinator who took control of all my appointments and gave me her cell phone number to call any time I had questions.

The oncologist spent an hour explaining everything and taking notes for me and at the end of the appointment gave me his notes to take with me. The surgeon gave me information about recurrence rates from different procedures and let me make the decision about what I wanted. The radiologist gave a very thorough explanation about what to expect from that part of the treatment. After three hours I left with a plan in place, confident that these people had done this thousands of times and they knew what they were doing. I had a diagnosis of triple positive breast cancer, which means my particular type is sensitive to both estrogen and progesterone and a protein called HERS-2, and those three factors determined my course of treatment. Once treated, it has a ridiculously low recurrence rate so I have an excellent prognosis.  

On April 13 I had a lumpectomy with the removal of three lymph nodes for testing and a port-o-cath placed in my chest for chemo. The tumor itself was 1.5cm --- very small, very early and all margins were clear, as were all three lymph nodes. The pathology report from the surgery just confirmed everything from the biopsy, and I was relieved there were no surprises. 

So – I started chemo therapy along with Herceptin, which is a drug that blocks the HERS -2 protein on May 5^th and will continue once a week for 12 weeks, ending the chemo on July 21. . After that I will have radiation and once every 3 weeks I will get an infusion of Herceptin for nine more months. And I will take hormone blockers for five years, though at age 72, I’m not sure just how many hormones are still knocking around in my body. 

None of this – NONE of this – was on my Bingo card, which is why it’s so important to get those screenings done. Mammograms, PSA tests, colonoscopies – they all save lives. And another reason I am incredibly lucky is that I have insurance. I cannot imagine going through all this with the added burden of worrying about how I was going to pay for it all. Single payer NOW, dammit. 

Everyone tells me I have a great attitude and frankly I can’t figure out why. Maybe it’s because I am older and G-d knows younger women have a lot harder row to hoe, juggling kids and careers and dealing with what are usually tougher and trickier cancers. But I think the matter-of-fact approach of everyone I’ve dealt with has been a big factor – “This is what you have and this is how we are going to fix it” was very reassuring. That and the fact there was no swell of dramatic music like in the soap operas when I got my diagnosis.

As far as side effects from the drugs, well, yes, I did start shedding my hair after the third chemo session and after the fourth I called my hair stylist and said “It’s time”.  I got this lovely buzz cut that makes me look like Curly Howard but damn, it feels good on these hot summer days. And the little buzzed hairs have already started falling out as evidenced by the lint roller I use on my head instead of a brush, so I imagine I will be smooth as a baby’s tuchus in another couple weeks.  I’m kinda loving La Vida Calva. I do have a lot of fatigue, though, and everything just takes more time. And there’s the occasional nausea but I have drugs and they work wonders. Before every infusion they give me steroids, which also help with the side effects but alas, will keep me out of the Hall of Fame. I also need to mask up again and I can’t believe we actually did this for such a long period of time. Or at least those of us with common sense did. 

So I’m spending my summer being lazy, quilting when I feel up to it and watching the Tigers (please, boys, do it for the old lady with cancer!) and being very grateful for science and an incredibly supportive community of friends. I wish I could say this whole thing has changed my attitude and I value every day more but meh – it’s just what it is and I’ve always erred more on the side of optimism. When the radiologist was injecting the dye into my lymph nodes prior to surgery, he said “Did you feel that at all? You didn’t even flinch!” and I said “I come from peasant stock. We don’t flinch.”

Damn straight. 

Have a great day everyone.