Cup of Coffee: May 14, 2026

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Blue Jays 5, Rays 3: A 0-0 game until the seventh thanks to strong starts by Griffin Jax and Dylan Cease, but the Rays scored one in the seventh and the Jays scored one in the eighth and on they went into extra innings. A Yandy Díaz RBI single in the top of the 10th put Tampa Bay ahead. In the bottom half Vlad Guerrero Jr. and Kazuma Okamoto walked to load up the bases along with the Manfred Man, which brought up Daulton Varsho. Aaron Brooks got Varsho in a quick 0-2 hole but two balls and a foul ball later Brooks left one high in the zone and Varsho launched it over the left field wall for a walkoff grand slam. Such drama. Big fly. Wow.

Padres 3, Brewers 1: Jacob Misiorowski was dominant again, striking out ten batters in seven innings while dialing it up as high as 103 mph. The problem: his offense could only manage one run on a groundout, which left The Miz to leave with a no-decision. His leaving was a bit of a problem too, as Misiorowski came out for the eighth inning but left with a cramp in his right quadriceps after throwing one warmup pitch. He says he'll be alright but this is the second time he's had cramping issues of late, so worth watching. And maybe drink some more water or eat a banana, Jake. Milwaukee clung to that 1-0 lead heading into the top of the ninth when the Padres mounted a two-out rally off of Brewers reliever Abner Uribe. First Miguel Andújar singled, then Xander Bogaerts walked, and then Gavin Sheets hit a three-run homer and just like that it was 3-1. A stunned Brewers club then had Mason Miller to contend with. Luis Rengifo managed a leadoff single but the next three batters went down in order and that was the ballgame.

Nationals 8, Reds 7: There was a lot of early action as the sides combined for 11 runs in the first three innings. Tyler Stephenson's first inning grand slam was part of that as was a two-run homer from Keibert Ruiz. The Nationals tied things up at six in the fifth inning and then the action stopped for a while and it remained tied up until the top of the tenth. Daylen Lile homered in the Manfred Man in the top of the tenth to give the Nats a two-run lead. Then "home field advantage" bit the Reds in the ass.

With one out and the Manfred Man on second, Spencer Steer hit a long drive to left center that looked like it was going out and, yep, it wound up in a fan's glove. Except that fan's glove reached down and out into the field to grab it and was called for fan interference, making it an automatic double:

There was a really, really strong chance that that ball would've hit the yellow line anyway, making it a home run, so it seems like this fan cost his team the tying run. And of course the game ended two groundouts later. Now, to be fair: the Reds also blew a 5-0 lead, went 3-for-15 with runners in scoring position, left eight men on base and gave up eight total runs, so it's not all on this fan, but it's still rather brutal.

Orioles 7, Yankees 0: Kyle Bradish (6 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 7K) and three relievers tossed a combined one-hitter against a Yankees team that must've had early dinner reservations back home in New York. Adley Rutschman hit a two-run homer and a sac fly. Blaze Alexander singled in a couple. Baltimore takes two of three. This Yankees loss, however, was overshadowed by the fact that starter and ace Max Fried left the game after three innings due to what the team is calling "left elbow posterior soreness." There's an asshole/elbow joke buried in there somewhere, but I've got too many recaps to write to tease it out, so have at it. Anyway, Fried will undergo imaging today back in New York. Gulp.

Guardians 4, Angels 2: Parker Messick allowed two runs and four hits in six and two-thirds and Angel Martínez hit a leadoff homer as Cleveland completes the sweep. The Angels absolute hate going to Cleveland, man. Indeed, per the Elias folks the Guardians are 30-4 against the Angels at Progressive Field since 2015, which is the most dominant home record by any team against any other team in all of baseball.

Red Sox 3, Phillies 1: Trevor Story and Justin Crawford traded homers and it remained tied at one until the sixth when Ceddanne Rafaela hit a tie-breaking two-run jack. Sonny Gray went six and allowed just the Crawford homer. The Sox go for the split tonight.

Rockies 10, Pirates 4: The Rockies much prefer to face the Pirates when Paul Skenes is unavailable. Here Mitch Keller held them scoreless for the first four innings while the Pirates built up a 3-0 lead, but a six-run Rockies fifth changed everything. Mickey Moniak's three run homer was the big blow while Kyle Karros singled in a run, Jake McCarthy double in one, and Ezequiel Tovar singled in one of his own. Later Moniak would triple in two more runs for a five RBI night.

Mets 3, Tigers 2: Another extra innings game, this one forced by Bo Bichette's seventh inning RBI single. A one-out Manfred Man-scoring single by Carson Benge walked this one off for New York. Five and a third shutout innings from the Mets bullpen was the real star here, however. The Mets go for the sweep this afternoon.

Atlanta 4, Cubs 1: Knotted at one heading into the bottom of the eighth when Mike Yastrzemski came in to pinch hit and doubled in a run immediately after which Mauricio Dubón hit a two-run homer to make it a three-run game. Drake Baldwin hit a solo homer back in the fourth for Atlanta's first run. Four wins in a row for the Barves. They go for the sweep this evening.  

White Sox 6, Royals 5: Jarred Kelenic of all people had two hits and two RBI and Colson Montgomery had three hits including a homer. The Royals made it interesting late when Bobby Witt Jr. hit a two-run homer off Seranthony Domínguez with two outs in the ninth to make it a one-run game. Domínguez shook it off, however, and struck out pinch-hitter Jac Caglianone to lock it down. The White Sox have won four in a row and are at .500 11 days before Memorial Day. What's more, it's the first time they've been at .500 since they were 2-2 on March 31, 2025. How about that?

On a more negative note, a fan fell into the Kansas City bullpen in right field during the third inning, having gone over the rail somehow. The game was eventually stopped and the fan was taken out on a gurney and went to the hospital. There has been no official word on their condition, but players in the Royals clubhouse said after the game that they had heard the person was doing OK. Hope so.

Marlins 9, Twins 5: Liam Hicks and Leo Jiménez each drove in three runs and Owen Cassie hit a two-run shot. The highlight for the Twins: Josh Bell stole a base. Sarah Langs noted that it was Bell's first stolen base since September 27, 2018, which means that Bell went 978 games in between steals. Based on her research – and she is always right about this stuff – that's the longest streak by a batter in between two stolen bases since at least 1900. What an crazy sport this is sometimes. Like, how many variables are there in baseball games to where someone could go at least 126 years from doing something anyone as done before.

Astros 4, Mariners 3: The last of four extra innings games last night. This one saw the Mariners take a 2-0 lead on Luke Raley and J.P. Crawford home runs and the Astros take the lead on a homer from Christian Walker and a bases loaded walk and a sac fly from Jose Altuve. The Mariners tied it back up in the ninth on a bases loaded walk to Julio Rodríguez. Maybe I'm imagining things, but it feels like we've had a billion bases loaded walks so far this season. Anyway, Seattle was held scoreless in the top of the tenth but Zach Cole's third hit. of the night knocked in the Manfred Man in the bottom half to walk things off for Houston.

Rangers 6, Diamondbacks 5: And yet another walkoff, though this one came in regulation. Jake Burger's three-run homer in the fifth opened the scoring and the Dbacks got two of those back prior to the ninth inning. They then took the lead with three runs in the ninth via a Nolan Arenado double and a two-run single from Ildemaro Vargas which made it 5-3. Texas got up off the mat at that point and plated three runs of their own, with Ezequiel Durán doubling in one to make it 5-4, Burger knocking in one more with a single, and Danny Jansen walking things off with a two-out single on the first pitch he saw.

Athletics 6, Cardinals 2: Nick Kurtz's fifth inning grand slam made a 1-0 game a 4-1 game and Zack Gelof homered in the eighth to make it a four-run game. A's starter J.T. Ginn scattered nine hits over six innings, allowing just one run, unearned, to get the win. The rubber match goes down this afternoon.

Dodgers 4, Giants 0: Shohei Ohtani's offensive struggles have done nothing to negatively affect his pitching. Here he shut out the Giants for seven innings while allowing just four hits – all singles – and striking out eight.  In seven starts this season, Ohtani has allowed no earned runs four times, one earned run twice, and two earned runs once. His ERA is a sizzling 0.82. Santiago Espinal and Mookie Betts homered for LA, who will try to earn a split of this series tonight.

The Daily Briefing

Francisco Alvarez has a torn meniscus

The Mets placed Francisco Alvarez on the 10-day IL with a right meniscus tear yesterday. They called up Hayden Senger to take his place. For those counting, this is the third Mets player to suffer a meniscus tear this year, with Mike Tauchman and Jared Young preceding Alvarez.

The best case scenario for meniscus tear recovery is around 4-6 weeks, but it can be way longer depending on the severity and the type of surgery on which the doctors settle. And of course catchers put a hell of a lot more stress and strain on their menisci, so it's hard to say right now how much time Alvarez will miss.

Alvarez is hitting .241/.317/.393 (103 OPS+) with four homers this year, but he got off to a hot start and had been hitting far worse than that of late. Luis Torrens will now take over everyday catching duties with Senger serving as his backup.

The Tipping Pitches personality quiz

This is exactly what it sounds like. A personality quiz from the Tipping Pitches podcast folks that, in the end, is supposed to tell you what baseball team you should root for. I got the Cincinnati Reds. Which, sure, if I had to pick one of the two Ohio teams I'd probably pick them, but I don't ever think I'd ever actually choose the Reds as a rooting interest.

And no, there does not appear to be any actual methodology behind this quiz. Though it does inspire one to examine a number of very specific personal traits and preferences, and that's fun in and of itself.

Other Stuff

Donald Gibb: 1954-2026

One of the 1980s more identifiable character actors, Donald Gibb, died earlier this week. He was 71. While a specific cause of death was not given his family said he had been in poor health for some time.

The obituaries will likely all lead with Gibb's signature role as Ogre in the "Revenge of the Nerds" movies. The next thing people likely remember him for is the movie "Bloodsport," in which Gibb played Jean-Claude Van Damme's buddy Ray Jackson. To me, however, he will always be Leslie "Dr. Death" Krunchner in the scandalously overlooked HBO series "1st and Ten."

It's mostly forgotten now, but "1st and Ten" was one of HBO's first forays into series television. The value proposition was obvious: "Hey, we're HBO, so we can do a sitcom with boobs and swear words!" Which is largely why I watched it, of course, but in my defense I was 11 when it began airing. I watched almost every episode of that show, and I liked it a lot, even if I can't imagine it holds up very well these days. But it was, at the very least, ahead of its time. Indeed, for whatever problems "1st and Ten" had, I can't help but feel like it served as a sort of primordial prestige TV.

It was marketed as a broad comedy when it kicked off, and the first season had a lot of that kind of material, with Gibb's Dr. Death and his buddy, Mad Dog, played by the late Tony Longo, serving primarily as comic relief characters. But it eventually ventured into dramedy territory, with serialized storylines, flawed and occasionally even complex characters, and a bit of a gritty edge. It touched on a lot of sports topics such as drugs, scandals, body-and-brain-breaking injuries that didn't get talked about too much back then. I don't wanna oversell it – it was not some high-minded and critical exploration of the culture of football or the soul of America and it featured a lot of the sort of crass sexism, misogyny, racist humor, and homophobia one might expect from a 1980s production – but I remember it being a pretty entertaining and occasionally smart show. And that was the case despite the very significant role played by O.J. Simpson.

Also: they used USFL game footage for the in-game material. As a major USFL aficionado, that warmed my heart.

Rest in peace, Donald Gibb.

The Sad Wives of AI

Wired has a story about how wives, girlfriends, and partners of dudes who work in AI are upset because their men – and, yes, the world of AI workers is over 70% male – are super-obsessed with their work and make kicking ass at AI their entire personality. Often in completely desperate ways that causes damage to relationships:

Often it goes like this: He works in AI, and she does everything and anything else. Other times, it’s bleaker: He desperately wants to work in AI—or feels he must work in AI—and she wants him to do literally anything else . . . here’s a name for our ranks. I call us the sad wives of AI . . . Some of the sad wives are obscenely rich; others are struggling. But the more I talk to them, the more I hear the same lines, the same complaints, the same clichés. The hours. The obsession. The sense that missing this moment would mean, for their AI-pilled spouses, missing the most important technological shift of a lifetime. “They really want to ride the wave,” one AI wife says. Another: “He’s always depressed about something" . . .

. . . The story is older than Silicon Valley, of course. Every major technological boom has produced the same figure, the person who gives everything to the wave. During the industrial revolution, it was the factory worker. During the Gold Rush, it was the men who left their families and headed west. During the dotcom boom, it was the founders sleeping under their desks in SoMa. Now, it is the person who is building, building, always building—vibe coding at midnight, constantly upgrading their models—convinced that stopping for five minutes means missing everything. 

As that second paragraph notes, this isn't a new sort of phenomenon. In addition to the examples the writer cites I'd add in the way so many people went stock market crazy in the 1920s. You can see it reflected in news stories and even the novels of the period, which invariably featured some character, often cast as unhinged or ridiculous by the author, who lives and breathes the market because, well, everyone else is living and breathing the market.

Another example can be seen in the craze which surrounded the commercial rollout of automobiles around the turn of the 20th century. In the wake of the success of the Oldsmobile Curved Dash and the Ford Model T, a bunch of auto manufacturers – and way more would-be manufacturers – started up in a fury and crashed with a quickness, with a lot of people's lives destroyed in the wreckage. Indeed, one of my great-grandfathers was attached to what was basically a vaporware car company for a few years just after the turn of the century. I found a newspaper article about him pitching the Lima, Ohio city council to give him and his partner investment incentives to build a factory there that was never, ever, ever gonna happen if everyone was being honest with themselves. But because everyone had car mania, no one was being honest with themselves. By the 1910 census my great-grandfather was listed as working at the tool and die shop from which he'd retire in the 1940s. Based on little scraps of family lore I've uncovered I get the impression that he pretty seriously upended his family for a few years due to his chasing that boom in the same sorts of ways the subjects of the Wired story have upended their families while trying to take advantage of the AI craze.

The key thing here is that these stories, and the stories like my great-grandfather's, are stories about the people who were too late getting into the game. The real movers and shakers in any boom have mostly secured themselves and their positions before said boom gains any sort of cultural relevance and before the trend pieces like this one get written. If, at the height of the dotcom boom, you were working 80 hours a week to get FunnySocks.com off the ground, you were already a dead man. You just didn't know it yet. Jeff Bezos, however, had already entrenched himself enough to be able to weather the eventual, and inevitable, crash.

AI isn't going to go away, but situations like the one we find ourselves in now in which every other trend piece, cocktail party conversation, business plan, motivational speech, commencement speech, and sales pitch is about THE HOT THING have always served as harbingers of a boom's end. The people who are going to survive the crash have already deployed their parachutes. The sorts of people described in that Wired story – those guys staying up until 2AM because, dammit, they are NOT going to miss out! – will be the inevitable victims of rapid deceleration trauma.

Too bad they don't understand that. If they did, maybe they'd be able to enjoy relaxing evenings at home with their wives.

Grape-Nuts

I cannot for the life of me remember what inspired it, but the other day I posted about Grape-Nuts:

That kicked off a fun little thread with a lot of fun responses in which I explained how I eat a lot of breakfast cereal. How at any given time I have three or four boxes going, all of which are pretty boring and bland. Grape-Nuts is the alpha cereal in my life, but raisin bran – lowercase because I find the generic store brands to be better than Kellogg's or Post – is a close second. I also have, at all times, a couple of rotating taps going. At this particular moment they're Quaker Oatmeal Squares and the Aldi knockoff version of frosted mini-wheats (as is the case with store brand raisin bran, Aldi knockoffs are excellent, and they all cost like $2.99).

Other occasional visitors to my pantry include Life and some sort of granola-related thing, but that's usually just a once a year kind of deal. A few years ago, in an effort to cut back on my sugar consumption, I started eating cinnamon flavor Catalina Crunch, but I've ratcheted back on it because it's stupidly expensive and not good enough to be worth it. Costco sells it now and it's a bit cheaper that way, but I don't get to Costco much these days so it's only an occasional thing. I bought some last week for the first time in many months and I see that they've switched from referring to it as "keto-friendly" cereal on the packaging to "protein cereal" in order to ride the rather unhinged "protein everything" wave. Which is probably why I'm gonna stop buying it. As a Grape-Nuts Man, the last thing I want or need is to introduce fleeting trends into The Most Important Meal of the Day (i.e. eating a bowl of cereal on the couch at 5:47am). Basically, if it's a cereal that a Depression-era farmer wouldn't immediately recognize and appreciate, I don't really want it.

Those aren't the only cereals in the house. Allison is nowhere near as big a cereal eater as I am, and since she has celiac disease her options are limited, but we always have 1-2 varieties of Rice Chex. Cinnamon is a constant and either Strawberry or Blueberry Chex as well, depending on availability. She'll sometimes get Fruity Pebbles, which are gluten-free. I occasionally have a bowl of Chex, but I tend to avoid the Fruity Pebbles, as I've lost my taste for most sweet/fruity/marshmallowy/chocolatey cereals since the kids moved out. But not entirely, as each October I'll get a box or two of Count Chocula, but that's more about nostalgia than taste. For the most part I stick to my old man stuff. A lot of which is loaded with sugar and carbs too, but it's much easier to pretend that it isn't than it is to pretend that Cocoa Puffs or whatever are an important part of a balanced breakfast.

By the way: remember those old cereal ads, both on TV and in print, that showed kids sitting down at the table with a bowl of cereal, toast, fruit, maybe even some eggs, orange juice and a glass of milk? What the hell was up with that? Has anyone ever eaten that breakfast in their life? If so, they're psychopaths. I assume those ads existed because they knew cereal is basically garbage food and that only by showing all the other stuff could they make any nutritional claims. In reality we were always just eating Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs in front of the TV.

My love of Grape-Nuts is polarizing. Both of the women I married think I'm an insane person for loving them and refer to it as dog food or gravel. On many occasions I've been told to take my crunching elsewhere. But as real Grape-Nuts heads know, the crunch goes away after sufficient milk-soaking time and, unlike most other cereals, sogginess does not ruin Grape-Nuts, it merely transforms them into something different yet still satisfying and delicious. So stalling is always an option when the complaints arise.

Besides, it could be worse. My dad doesn't really eat much cereal anymore, but for years he too was a Grape-Nuts head and he'd eat those fuckers dry and – get this – without a spoon. Seriously, the guy would just pour some in a bowl and walk around the house doing little jobs and chores and occasionally dumping Grape-Nuts into his mouth like someone getting the crumbs from the bottom of a bag of Doritos. Sometimes he'd just shove his face in the blow and lick the stuff up like a dog eating its Alpo. I am deadly serious. How my mom didn't divorce him over that I have no idea.

Grape-Nuts are versatile, too. What other cereals can handle being eatem hot and cold? Cold oatmeal is a torture device. Try to heat up Lucky Charms and you're liable to have the EPA knocking on your door to declare your property a Superfund site. Grape-Nuts don't give a fuck, brother. Hot. Cold. Sprinkled on yogurt or ice cream. Cooked into protein bars. Turned into pie crust. You want your mind blown? Check this shit out.

The one thing I never considered is that Grape-Nuts might be cool. But maybe they are? Check out what what Nick Cave wrote in The Red Hand Files yesterday, in response to a question about his sleeping patterns:

I wake three hours later. I get up and go downstairs, where I read something soothing for half an hour or so - at the moment, The Owl – a Biography, The House at Pooh Corner or The Art of Bible Translation. Then I go back to bed, podcast-free, for another three hours (the second sleep). I wake around 6am from a mostly dreamless sleep, go back downstairs and eat a bowl of Grape Nuts (still). I meditate and pray . . .

I mean, Nick Cave is pretty cool, right? Of course it's also the case that Nick Cave is 68 years old, so I don't suppose I'm beating the old man allegations. Either way, I'm choosing to believe that Cave's meditation and prayer bring him closer to enlightenment and peace by virtue of being Grape-Nuts-powered. Crunchiness is next to godliness after all.

Sorry to get political in this space. I'll try write about less divisive things tomorrow.

The guy in that commercial was Euell Gibbons. You should read his Wikipedia page. He went from writing communist tracts in the 1930s to writing bestsellers in the 1960s about foraging food to appearing on talk shows and stuff as an avatar for healthy, back-to-nature eating. And then he up and died when his heart exploded at the age of 64. There's probably a lesson in there somewhere but I'm kinda hungry right now and it's preventing me from concentrating on it. Time to go get some Grape-Nuts.

Have a great day everyone.