Cup of Coffee: March 12, 2026

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

I just hired Mark De Rosa as my life coach. Things are going great.

The Daily Briefing

The WBC

The United States backed its way into to the quarterfinals of the World Baseball Classic thanks to Italy's win over Mexico last night, but they absolutely did not deserve it after the crap Team USA manager Mark De Rosa pulled on Tuesday night.

As you likely know before now, Team USA needed Italy to win that game over Mexico because of its own loss to Italy on Tuesday night, and that loss was greatly enabled by De Rosa's incompetence. He ran out a B-lineup against Italy and managed the pitching staff as if it were a spring training game in which getting everyone a little work was the goal. Oh, and he also spent part of Tuesday’s pregame media session talking about how he and his team drank and partied after beating Mexico the night before, leaving everyone "dragging" on Tuesday.

He did all of this because he thought that the U.S. team had already secured advancement to the WBC's knockout round when it actually hadn't. And we know that because he went on MLB Network on Tuesday afternoon and said so.

Specifically, De Rosa said "It's weird. We want to win this game, even though our ticket's punched to the quarterfinals." He also said, “I’m going to get some guys off their feet, no question about it. I’d like to get [Paul Goldschmidt] a start . . . I’d like to get Gunnar [Henderson] in there again.” That's how a coach talks about resting his regulars in the final week of a season when nothing is on the line. His failure to start Cal Raleigh, Bryce Harper, or Alex Bregman is in line with that sort of thinking as well. His in-game decisions also reflected his belief that the game didn't matter. Most notably his warming up the retired and totally cooked Clayton Kershaw in a bases-loaded situation late in the game despite the fact that the damn nigh unhittable Mason Miller had yet to be used. None of this would happen if a manager felt it was necessary for Team USA to win the game.

Because no one watches MLB Network's talk shows, most people weren't aware of De Rosa's comments at the time, but that video surfaced during the U.S. loss. That night Major League Baseball did its best to scrub the video from the Internet. Like, really. Per The Athletic, the league deleted the original links to the interview and, where the video still existed, they edited it to take out De Rosa's "our ticket's punched to the quarterfinals" remarks. The whole video eventually resurfaced, as all incriminating Internet evidence eventually does, thereby humiliating both De Rosa and Major League Baseball.

It makes sense that MLB would try to cover for De Rosa's blunder, as he's Rob Manfred's boy. His day job is to serve as an assistant to Manfred. Last year that job had him touring clubhouses alongside Manfred as the commissioner tried to sell players on a salary cap. During one of those visits the Phillies' Bryce Harper famously yelled at Manfred, after which De Rosa reportedly told Harper, “The commissioner’s a powerful guy, don’t fuck around with him." De Rosa later said that he was just joking, but Harper and the Phillies players didn't take it that way, and his explanation simply didn't pass the smell test.

De Rosa's comments from after Tuesday night's game, when he was presented with the knowledge that, actually, the U.S. needed to win that game to control its own destiny, did not pass the smell test either. He claimed that he went into Tuesday night's game knowing that his team needed to win and that he “misspoke” during his earlier interview with MLB Network. That's simply implausible, but it isn't actually any better, because even if that were true it means that De Rosa knowingly ran out a bad lineup in a game that mattered.

As you may have guessed by now, I don't care much for De Rosa, but there are a lot of guys I don't care for who manage to do their job competently. I don't lose any sleep over what happens in the WBC but I really did want Team USA to get eliminated after all that went down. I'm just really on a "the powerful could use to suffer some consequences once in a goddamn while" kick lately, and I figured that an international baseball tournament would be a good way for us to ease our way into that paradigm. Alas.

Andre Dawson's Hall of Fame plaque to be tweaked

Andre Dawson's Hall of Fame plaque features him wearing a Montreal Expos cap. That makes a lot of sense given that he spent over half of his career with the Expos and the vast, vast majority of his productivity came while he was with that club.

Dawson has never cared for that hat on his plaque because he left Montreal on bad terms and, immediately thereafter and in the decades since his retirement, he was embraced by the Chicago Cubs and their fans. He still considers himself a Cub, goes to Cubs spring training in Arizona, and talks lovingly about his association with that franchise.

Once upon a time the Hall of Fame allowed players to choose which cap appeared on their plaque, but they stopped that before Dawson's induction to head off some potential anti-historical shenanigans. Eventually they allowed players to choose a blank cap if there was bad blood or if no one team best represented them, but otherwise the cap decision is left up to a panel which ensures that the plaques accurately reflect baseball history. Dawson's induction took place after players could no longer choose but before the blank cap became an option, so the Expos cap is what he's wearing.

Now, however, that's gonna change. From the official statement of Hall of Fame Chairperson Jane Forbes Clark:

“The Hall of Fame Board of Directors voted unanimously to provide Andre Dawson with the option of having no logo on his Hall of Fame plaque, which will be recast to reflect his wishes. This decision gives Andre a choice that he would have taken if it had been available when he was elected in 2010, just four years prior to the formal implementation of that alternative.”

Dawson and the Hall had, apparently, been in conversation about this for more than two years. The new plaque, yet to be cast, will otherwise be identical to the one that's up now, and which you can see here.

I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand the Expos did Dawson dirty, colluding with the other clubs to kill Dawson's market when he hit free agency following the 1986 season which led him to taking a pay cut while in his prime. That Dawson went from a bad situation to a much better one – one upon which he looks back on fondly to this day – is a good thing and I totally understand why he'd prefer his plaque to not serve as a reminder of the dark times.

On the other hand the Expos, while still beloved by baseball fans of a certain age, no longer exist and Major League Baseball has more or less allowed their history to be erased. Getting rid of the Expos logo on Dawson's cap is just the latest example of that. We're pretty quickly approaching a time when the Expos will have no richer historic currency than the Louisville Colonels or Cleveland Spiders. Which is kind of a shame.

Josh Hader to begin the year on the IL

Astros closer Josh Hader will begin the 2026 season on the injured list. That per manager Joe Espada who told the press yesterday that while Hader is feeling good now, he simply has not had enough time to ramp-up for the season following both a biceps issue he's experienced this spring and after missing the final seven weeks of the 2025 season due to a capsule strain in his shoulder.

I suppose the good news is that this is just a ramp-up thing and not lingering effects from last year’s shoulder injury. And it's not like the Astros have no other good bullpen options. Indeed, righty Bryan Abreu, who will likely close games for Houston while Hader is on the IL, could close for a number of contending teams around the league.

Francisco Lindor "100% optimistic" he'll be ready for Opening Day

Meanwhile, in Port St. Lucie, Florida, another big name star is waxing more optimistic. That'd be Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor who said on Tuesday that he's "100% optimistic" he'll be ready for Opening Day after returning to action for the first time since undergoing surgery on his left hamate.

Lindor had the procedure on the hamate on February 11 and was expected to miss at least six weeks. Opening Day is six weeks and one day after that, so viva no complications I guess.

I suppose the thing to watch is his power. Hamate injuries often sap the power of players who sustain them for a good while after recovery. Lindor has hit 30 homers or more for the past three seasons and six times in the course of his career, so power is obviously a part of his game. Here's hoping he beats the odds on that score.

Other Stuff

Iran pulls out of the World Cup

This is not at all surprising, and I sure as hell don't blame them:

Iran cannot participate in the 2026 World Cup following airstrikes against the country by the United States and Israel, the Iranian sports minister said Wednesday.

"Given that this corrupt government assassinated our leader, under no circumstances can we participate in the World Cup," Ahmad Donyamali reportedly told Iranian state television.

Iran was supposed to play two group stage matches in Los Angeles in June, facing off against New Zealand and Belgium before playing Egypt in Seattle in their final group stage match.

Assuming this sticks, FIFA has broad discretion to name a replacement team or adjust the tournament in order to accommodate a withdrawal. They could make Iran's group a three-team instead of a four-team group and adjust the match schedule accordingly. Or they could also add a team to take Iran's place. Iraq still has a play-in option via some intercontinental playoff they're playing in Mexico at the end of March. If they lose that they could be named as replacement due to how they finished in Asian World Cup qualifying. If they win and get a spot on their own the United Arab Emirates, next in line via Asian qualifying, could take Iran's place. Of course even that playoff could be in jeopardy given airspace closures in the Middle East which could interfere with the Iraqi team even getting to Mexico in the next two weeks.

We live, as the saying goes, in interesting times. Which is a good synonym for "sucky times." Even more so given that it's the United States itself who has made these times "interesting."

The most pathetic sports column I've read in a while

As the basketball fans among you likely saw, on Tuesday night Bam Adebayo of the Miami Heat scored 83 points in a game against the lowly Washington Wizards. That's the second-highest point total in a single game in NBA history after Wilt Chamberlin's legendary 100-point performance back in 1962.

The previous second-highest total was achieved by Kobe Bryant, who scored 81 points against the Toronto Raptors on January 22, 2006. All records are meant to be broken and even all second place records are too, so kudos to Adebayo, right?

Not if you're Sam Amick of The Athletic. Yesterday he wrote an absolutely bonkers column about Adebayo's feat, the upshot of which is that Adebayo should've either taken himself out of the game or should've been taken out of the game before he could pass up Kobe's 81 points:

Maybe this reaction is rooted in nostalgia for Bryant’s storied night against the Toronto Raptors in Los Angeles on Jan. 22, 2006, or the even deeper reflection that comes because of his tragic passing 14 years after that game. By virtue of human nature, his death puts greater weight on every one of his most cherished feats and creates a sense that they should be handled with a certain kind of care. And judging by the reaction of some of the people from Bryant’s past, whom I was in touch with after Adebayo’s outing, this sentiment wasn’t unique.

He goes on to argue that Adebayo calling it quits right at 81, "would have masked all the messiness of this stat-chasing moment." As if Kobe Bryant didn't chase the living hell out of stats, including on that night 20 years ago. He chides Adebayo for chucking up a lot of shots, again, as if that wasn't one of Kobe Bryant's signature traits. He denigrates the achievement due to Adebayo taking a lot of free throws, as if he was the one with the whistle. He discounts those 83 points due to their coming against an awful Wizards team as if the 2005-06 Raptors were the Jordan-era Bulls. It's laughable.

Amick doesn't really have any other arguments, let alone cogent ones. He simply asserts that "Adebayo’s performance was a far cry from what Bryant did back then" and, while once again acknowledging that Adebayo had a good night, closes the column by saying, "If only he had called it a night just a little bit sooner."

I don't know if that column was meant to be rage bait or if Amick, like a hell of a lot of people out there, idolize Bryant. It's an idolization that has always perplexed me, given that for however good he was, he was a far-from-perfect basketball player and he was a genuinely piece of crap human being. There are, somehow, more hardcore Kobe Bryant fans today than there were when he was still alive. If you doubt that, go onto Twitter or most other well-trafficked forums and say something mildly disparaging of the guy and you'll have some of the worst jerks on the planet up your ass in a heartbeat.

There used to be a lot of baseball writers who wrote columns like that, particularly when it came to records. But they're all either out of a job or dead now. I do appreciate the 2007 throwback vibes, however.

When things are going well

Per the New York Times, Attorney General Pam Bondi has moved into secure housing on a Washington, D.C.-area military base. The Times, overly-credulously in my view, is repeating claims from the Justice Department that this move is the result of Bondi receiving threats from people angry over her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and undefined "threats from drug cartels."

Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, former Department of Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have been living in military base housing for over a year now. That seems to be a function of pure grift. Their predecessors lived in regular houses and condos like almost every other civil servant, but these un-indicted criminals have commandeered large homes on bases that were originally built for generals and admirals and their staffs. It goes hand-in-hand with their corrupt and decadent commandeering of public funds and facilities for their own personal luxury. I strongly suspect that all of this is about them not wanting to pay for anything and their desire to be treated with a greater sense of importance than they deserve rather than because their safety is at risk. I presume Bondi's situation is the same.

But even if there is truth to the claim that Bondi and the others retreated to military bases because of threats, it's probably worth asking why no one else who held their jobs before them had to seek shelter in such a fashion. Why no one else who served in their positions before them so enraged the populace that they could not live among the citizenry because they feared for their lives.

Whatever. If things go the way I want them to go all of these people will be spending years and years being housed in federal facilities once they're out of office anyway, so there's no real harm in getting a jump on things.

Speaking of prison . . .

Increasingly, it's looking like that's where Pete Hegseth belongs, as yesterday it was reported that, per our own military investigation, the United States has been confirmed to be responsible for the Tomahawk missile strike on an Iranian elementary school that killed at least 175 children. It happened, the U.S. military says, because the Defense Department was using outdated maps.

But we know that it's way, way worse than that. Per a Pro Publica report that came out on Tuesday we learned that last year Hegseth personally ordered that a Defense Department program that was aimed at reducing civilian harm during military operations be shut down. It was a civilian-staffed division called the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence. It was led by people who had experience working with the United Nations as war crimes investigators. Such an entity did not jibe, it would seem, with Hegseth's idiotic, juvenile fixation on making “lethality” a top priority. From Pro Publica:

Dismantling the fledgling harm-reduction effort, defense analysts say, is among several ways the Trump administration has reorganized national security around two principles: more aggression, less accountability.

Trump and his aides lowered the authorization level for lethal force, broadened target categories, inflated threat assessments and fired inspectors general, according to more than a dozen current and former national security personnel. Nearly all spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

The overarching civilian harm-reduction strategy, which is now basically mothballed, called for more in-depth planning before an attack, including real-time mapping of the civilian presence in a targeted area. Which is to say, even if we take the Defense Department at its word here and believe that the massacre of hundreds of children was due to a mere mapping failure, it's a failure that is directly attributable to Hegseth's reckless removal of civilian casualty safeguards.

The corrupt U.S. Supreme Court gave Donald Trump immunity for "official acts" which I presume include acts of war. Pete Hegseth doesn't have such immunity though, so Democrats should promise to prosecute his ass for this and throw him in prison the moment they're in a position to do so. Yeah, I realize that Trump would pardon him if such a threat were made, but I don't care. Make him do it in order to make sure the egregiousness of his crimes are not lost in the wash like so many other things done by this Regime.

Sunken treasure

I love it when there are news stories about things that don't seem like they should be happening in modern times. Here's a good example of that:

An Ohio scientist and treasure hunter who is accused of bilking some 160 investors out of millions of dollars in gold recovered from an 1857 shipwreck and refusing to tell anyone where he stashed the gold has been released from prison.

Honestly, when was the last time "someone won't reveal the location of the buried treasure" was a current event? Has to be the 18th century, right?

I actually know a lot about this case as it's gone on for decades and has a local angle to it. It involves the sinking of the SS Central America, which was a side-wheel steamer going from California to New York, laden with 21 tons of Gold Rush gold. It ran into a hurricane off the coast of the Carolinas and 425 of the 500+ souls on board relocated permanently to Davy Jones' locker. The gold on board sank to the bottom with them and was lost for more than a century.

In the late 1980s, an Ohio-born adventurer/seafarer named Tommy Thompson found the wreckage and put together a syndicate to retrieve the gold. Investors – many of which came from Columbus and a couple of whom were clients of the law firm I worked for – put money into the effort and were to be rewarded with a cut of the booty. It took several years, but Thompson eventually recovered an estimated $100–150 million worth of gold from the SS Central America wreckage, though even that was thought to be less than a third of what went down with the ship.

Not long after the gold was recovered, the lawsuits began. Insurance companies whose predecessor entities had insured the ship back in 1857 sued claiming they were entitled to a cut. That litigation lasted forever, but was finally resolved mostly in favor of Thompson and his syndicate. But then the syndicate members began suing Thompson, saying that they had not been paid their cut from the treasure. Thompson's employees and crew members also sued, saying they had not been paid. It was established at this time that Thompson did, indeed, have the treasure as several million dollars were found in offshore bank accounts which he controlled.

After several more years of litigation Thompson was ordered by a judge to cough up the money he owed people. Then something fun happened: Thompson disappeared. Just vanished. No one knew where he was for three years. He was eventually found to be hiding in Florida with a girlfriend. He was hauled back to court up here in Columbus and ordered to reveal where he stashed the gold and to pay what he owed. He refused and in 2015 my favorite Southern District of Oho judge threw him in jail for contempt. He sat in jail until literally last Wednesday, refusing to offer a peep about anything. They released him because he served his sentence for criminal contempt, not because he complied with any court orders.

In recent years Thompson has claimed he can't remember where the gold is, but no one believes him. He willingly spent 11 years in prison rather than give up the location and he now faces millions in court fines and civil judgments yet he continues to say nothing. Based on how he looked coming out of jail last week – he's 73, he's in a wheelchair, and he looks frail – it seems like he's going to take his secret to the grave.

I had some tangential involvement with all of this when I was a young lawyer, as the largest investor in Thompson's syndicate was the Dispatch Printing Company, which was my boss' biggest client back then (his biggest client now is Les Wexner, natch). I can't remember exactly what was going on with the case then, but I did some legal research and brief-drafting in some of the civil proceedings. This was years in advance of Thompson going on the lam so it wasn't nearly as sexy back then, even if I found practicing shipwreck law in the middle of farm country to be an oddly fascinating way to spend a week or two.

The case is even more fascinating now. I mean, I understand that fraud is bad and wrong and stuff, but large investors in sunken treasure syndicates are way down my empathy list these days. Meanwhile inscrutable, bearded weirdos who accept long prison beefs and stand willing to die over hidden gold are right the fuck up my alley. From what I remember from that old case, Thompson is kind of a dick, but I nonetheless hope that he figured out a way to launder that booty so thoroughly that a buccaneer could eat salamagundi, hardtack, and salted pork off of it and that his descendants will live their lives in opulence. Like a retired Dread Pirate Roberts in a palace in Patagonia, even.

'ave a great day, mateys.