Cup of Coffee: May 21, 2026

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

This is a very un-Craig sort of week in that I had/have scheduled evening plans for three damn nights in a row:

• On Tuesday night it was that "Heated Rivalry" trivia night I mentioned yesterday;
• Last night I was a pinch-hitter for a friend of Allison's who was supposed to be in town to go see Bruno Mars at Ohio Stadium with her but who couldn't make it for various life reasons, I know almost nothing about Bruno Mars beyond "Uptown Funk" and I don't really like "Uptown Funk," so I wasn't expecting much, but I was quite pleasantly surprised. Hell, I had a big dumb smile plastered on my face for most of the evening. It was a couple of hours of happy, joyous artists playing happy, joyous music for happy, joyous people. Everything sucks right now and sometimes the only thing to do is to just lose yourself in happy joyousness;
• Tonight I am seeing The Mountain Goats at a venue that is slightly smaller than Ohio Stadium. I love The Mountain Goats, I've seen them several times and I will continue to see them until they stop touring. I fully expect a couple of hours of literate, melancholy, and empathetic artists playing literate, melancholy, and empathetic music for literate, melancholy, and empathetic people. Everything sucks right now and sometimes the only thing to do is to just lean into the melancholic empathy.

Needless to say, that's a lot of goin' out for a guy who was born wearing a pilled-up cardigan sweater with a pocket full of Werther's Originals while holding a cup of tea and who shuts down like Hal 9000 singing "Daisy" after 10pm, but sometimes you gotta engage with the damn world.

Anyway: any unusual typos today are a function of fatigue. The usual ones are a function of me being me. Let's get on with the show.

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Rays 5, Orioles 3: The thing about the Rays is that they just invent guys like they're playing a baseball video game. Like, there's a "create player mode" and a big 3D printer in the Rays front office and it spits out things like "Hunter Feduccia" who then goes out and puts up a 2-for-3 and a homer against the Orioles on some random Wednesday afternoon. No one has ever met him. No one has seen him away from the ballpark. The more that I think about it, I think that the Rays are an AI creation or a money laundering operation or something. Richie Palacios –  who I know is a real guy because I saw him when he played for Cleveland – hit a go-ahead single and Jonathan Aranda –  also real because he was in the All-Star Game last year – tied the game 3-3 in the eighth inning with a two-run double. Most of this game was a simulation, however.

Reds 9, Phillies 4:  Nathaniel Lowe doubled twice and drove in three Spencer Steer had two hits and Sal Stewart went 4-for-5 with a homer. Reds catcher P.J. Higgins had two hits and drove in two runs, but he also threw a ball into center while trying to throw out a baserunner was called for catcher interference while allowing the Phillies to go 4-for-4 stealing bases, so it was a full day for that guy. Kyle Schwarber missed his third straight game with a stomach problem. I don't feel like stomach problems that last three days are super normal, but may I suggest a bowl of Grape Nuts? It'll cure what ails ya, Kyle. Reds take two of three.  

Twins 4, Astros 1: Joe Ryan allowed one run over six, striking out nine and retiring the last 16 batters he faced, while Victor Caratini – taking over the starting catcher job for Ryan Jeffers who is out for the next six to eight weeks with a broken wrist – hit a solo shot and Ryan Kreidler hit a three-run dinger.

Rangers 5, Rockies 4: Colorado took a 4-3 lead into the top of the ninth when Joc Pederson reached on catcher's interference – a lot of that going around lately – reached third base after a couple of singles and some station-to-station ball, and then scored on a passed ball. So yeah, rough day for catcher's yesterday. Texas then took the lead when Josh Jung singled home Justin Foscue, who may have also been created by a 3D printer, but I'm not sure. Texas takes two of three.

Diamondbacks 6, Giants 3:  Ketel Marte hit a two-run homer, Geraldo Perdom0 drove in three, and the other run scored on a groundout. Merrill Kelly was solid but nothing special and got the win. Tyler Mahle wasn't solid and wasn't special and got the loss. The Dbacks complete the three-game sweep and have won four in a row. The Giants need to clean house and start over.

Mariners 5, White Sox 4: It was tied at two heading into the bottom of the seventh when Jhonny Pereda hit a solo shot to lead off the inning, Julio Rodríguez doubled and then Randy Arozarena hit a two-run homer to make it 5-3. Randal Grichuk homered in the ninth to bring Chicago closer but Seattle takes two of three.

Atlanta 9, Marlins 1: Chris Sale was his usual dominant self, working seven innings, allowing just one run on four hits while striking out eight. And the Dominic Smithaissance continued apace, with our man hitting a triple/little league home run and a right and proper three-run homer as well.

Guardians 3, Tigers 2: Tanner Bibee held the Tigers to one run through eight and four Detroit pitchers held the Guardians scoreless through eight, but two singles, a bunt, and a groundout tied things at one and sent it to extra innings. But an Angel Martínez triple and a José Ramírez double put Cleveland ahead 3-1. Zach McKinstry singled home the Tigers' Manfred man in the bottom half but they couldn't do more. Detroit has lost five straight games and 13 of 15. Woof.

Nationals 8, Mets 4:CJ Abrams hit a three-run homer in the first inning off of Mets starter Zach Thornton, who was making his major league debut. Welcome to The Show, Meat. Jacob Young added a two-run shot in the eighth. Juan Soto homered twice for the Mets but he didn't have much help. Washington's Andrew Alvarez earned a rare four-inning save. Per the AP writeup it was the Nationals’ first four-inning save since the franchise relocated from Montreal in 2005.

Red Sox 4, Royals 3: Sal Perez homered in the first and Elias Díaz homered in the fifth to give Kansas City a 3-2 lead, but Jarren Duran's two-run shot in the seventh brought Boston back from behind. The Sox complete the three-game sweep.

Brewers 5, Cubs 0: The first of three later-in-the-evening shutouts, most of which was authored by Kyle Harrison, who struck out 11 and gave up just two hits over seven innings. DL Hall completed the final innings of the two-hitter, striking out two more guys. Three of Milwaukee's runs came in the second inning when, with two men on, David Hamilton hit a run-of-the-mill single to center field and Pete Crow-Armstrong, the best centerfielder on Planet Earth at the moment, let it go right under his glove, resulting in three runs scoring. Hamilton later scored on a wild pitch in the seventh. There sure were a hell of a lot of sloppy-ass scoring runs yesterday.

Pirates 7, Cardinals 0: The second of the evening's shutouts went down in St. Louis where the visiting Pirates got five scoreless innings from Carmen Mlodzinski and four relievers finished the five-hitter. Mlodzinski's already 27 so it's unlikely that he's gonna suddenly become the most feared pitcher in the league or anything, but on the off-chance he does we should call him The Mlidz. Or maybe The Mlodz? I dunno, we'll workshop it.

Dodgers 4, Padres 0: The third of last night's shutouts happened in San Diego, with Shohei Ohtani blanking the Pads for five and lowering his ERA to an absolutely insane 0.73 with 54 strikeouts in 45 innings. Oh, and he hit a home run as well, just in case we forgot who we were dealing with here.

Blue Jays 2, Yankees 1: Thanks to a bunch of rain this was the second-to-last game to end last night, and it was almost shutout number four. Trey Yesavage went six, striking out eight, and didn't give up a run on two hits. The Jays didn't score until the seventh, however, picking up their first run on an ABS-assisted bases-loaded walk to Andrés Giménez. Run number two came via a Vlad Guerrero Jr. sac fly. New York got one back in the bottom of the ninth but that was it.

Athletics vs. Angels: OK, so here's the deal: I got home from the Bruno Mars concert, recapped the eight night games besides this one, and just as I turned to this one I noticed that it had gone on to extra innings, tied at 5. It was a quarter after midnight at that point and I had a choice: wait an unspecified time for this one to end and recap it then, or just go to bed. I decided to just go to bed, figuring that the results of an Angels-Athletics game isn't as important to me as the extra sleep on a night that was already gonna be short on sleep to begin with. If you were looking forward to the recap of this game, my apologies. If you're an A's or Angels fan, I'm happy it turned out the way it did and/or I'm sorry that happened.

The Daily Briefing

Pete Crow-Armstrong got fined

I missed this yesterday, but Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong was fined an undisclosed amount of money stemming from an incident this past Sunday when he jawed back at a female fan who was heckling him for missing a catch during the fifth inning of the Cubs' loss to the White Sox at Rate Field.

Most of the stories didn't print what Crow-Armstrong said, but I can tell you, dear readers, that he said "S my effin D, B." Except he didn't say "S" he didn't say "effin," he didn't say "D," and he didn't say "B." He said it all in explicit terms that I won't use here because, while I am not averse to using profanity, I worry that the density of the profanity in that quote might trigger anti-spam protections in y'all's inboxes.

Crow-Armstrong said he regretted using vulgarity in the exchange. I'm guessing he more directly regrets that said profanity was picked up by open mics. But the guy is 24 years old so he grew up after cameras and mics became ubiqutous and his parents are actors, so he no doubt knew that he'd be heard, observed, and otherwise perceived in all the ways people are heard, observed, and otherwise perceived in the 21st century, so not a lot of sympathy there.

But hey, at least he avoided the Prime Cut slurs. Those top-shelf numbers that will get you fined and suspended. Best to keep it at a middle school level like this.

MLB's India initiative

Yesterday Major League Baseball announced an initiative to grow the game of baseball in India:

Mumbai, 20th May 2026: Major League Baseball today announced a partnership with RISE Worldwide Limited (“RISE”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited (“Reliance”), to support the growth of baseball in India. This collaboration will span marketing, social media, commercial initiatives, and culminate in the joint delivery of a live event in Mumbai in October 2026, aimed at bringing the excitement of baseball closer to Indian fans.

The partnership marks a significant step in MLB’s international expansion strategy and reinforces India’s growing importance as a key sports market with a young, highly engaged audience. Since opening its offices in New Delhi in 2019, MLB has been actively developing the game in India through grassroots programs like MLB First Pitch in schools, youth competitions such as the MLB Cup, and broadcasts of the MLB Postseason. The league has also introduced India-focused original content such as Indian Baseball Dreams, helping create greater awareness and engagement around the sport.

The partner MLB mentions, Reliance Industries Limited, is a gigantic Indian petrochemical conglomerate. It's the largest corporation of any kind in India and one of the largest corporations on Planet Earth. And, like all giant petrochemical companies, they have a considerable amount of red on their ledger in the form of human suffering and misery. Like, this appears in the very intro of its Wikipedia page:

The company has attracted controversy for reports of political corruption, cronyism, fraud, financial manipulation, and exploitation of its customers, Indian citizens, and natural resources.

That's the sort of thing that is usually relegated to a section titled "controversies" or something down below at best. And sometimes that stuff is seriously downplayed regardless because corporations themselves do what they can to scrub their Wikipedia pages. In the case of Reliance, however, their bad corporate acts appear to be so pervasive that it'd be misleading not to lead with it.

Whatever. I suppose that when you're in business like Major League Baseball is you do what's easiest, and that if you want to partner with ethical giant corporations your options are pretty limited. Still, I'd love it if MLB, just one time, did a single solitary thing that didn't have a penumbra of ickiness to it. Maybe someday!

As for baseball in India: I don't know much about it outside of the story of Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel who, back in 2008, won a pitching contest on a reality show that resulted in them signing minor league contracts with the Pittsburgh Pirates and having their story turned into the 2014 Jon Hamm vehicle "Million Dollar Arm." There has been some form of amateur baseball in India since the 1980s but it doesn't seem to be particularly developed. MLB has been sniffing around there since the late teens, though this initiative is by far the most serious thing they've done there.

Maybe MLB is assuming that because cricket is so huge there that there is an appetite for another bat-and-ball sport. Maybe it's just a "well, they have a billion people, and even if this gets no bigger than a niche of a niche of a niche there's a few million bucks in it for us" sort of deal. Maybe they're looking for a way to go into business with Reliance Industries Limited and this seemed to be the best way to get them to return their emails. Maybe they're just looking to sell caps and jerseys. I don't know and I don't think MLB would ever really say even if you asked them.

Other Stuff

If it ain't broke . . .

The first thing that Americans who are new to soccer notice is the clock. Unlike in the major North American sports, the clock in soccer counts up, not down. Also: it never stops. That's the case even if a guy gets injured and medics have to take the field. That's the case even if a giant brawl erupts stopping play for an extended period. That'd even be the case if aliens came down from the heavens beamed up a midfielder, 16 fans, announcer Peter Drury, and the kid who wipes the ball down when it gets wet.

Rather, when a pause in play occurs the referee simply keeps (general) track of the time and adds it on at the end of the half or the end of the game as stoppage time. This does take a game or two to get used to for new fans, but ultimately it makes sense. And it doesn't really matter if it's exact. The key considerations for soccer, above all else, are that (a) the game never truly stops; (b) both sides get a generally equal chance to complete their final offensive attacks; and (c) the 90-minutes + halftime + a bit of stoppage time at the end is sacrosanct. Implicit in all of that, of course, is that most sporting events could stand to trim some damn fat and everyone rather likes it that the whole affair is usually done in about two ours or so, halftime included.

Major League Soccer – a top-10 soccer league in the world only if you're erring on the side of generosity – wants to change that:

Major League Soccer has had discussions with the International Football Association Board, global football’s rule making body, about trialing the use of a stopped clock in matches . . . Paul Grafer, vice-president of competition for MLS, told the Guardian that reintroducing a stopped clock is “one thing that we often talk about” when discussing the future of the game.

“When are we going to move away from all of these stopgap procedures and see if we can address gamesmanship and match manipulation by having the referee have a [stopped] clock?” Grafer said. “We’re open to trials around the world, and working with Ifab.”

The MLS official talks the idea up as one aimed at combatting time-wasting by players, but I would bet a kidney and an organ or two to be named later that this is really about MLS wanting to create the opportunity for in-game television commercials, which are not a thing in soccer broadcasts.

They'd deny it if asked now – and it's not mentioned anywhere in the linked story – but it's not a real leap to go from "we're just exploring stopping the clock for efficiency purposes" to "OK, for set pieces it's 30 seconds, for player substitutions it's 60 seconds, and for injury situations it's 90 seconds" when it gets down to the brass tacks of implementation. They'll say it's about player safety or whatever, but we'll all know better.

I should be a better supporter of my local team but I don't actually watch many MLS matches, so this sort of thing wouldn't really impact my life. But based on the sentiment I've seen in various fan spaces, Reddit threads, and the like, if MLS added commercial breaks there would be a big, big exodus of serious American soccer fans, all of whom have European or South American rooting interests they enjoy that wouldn't mangle the product in such a way. And that'll be an even easier pivot once MLS switches from being a spring-to-fall league next year and thus plays on the same schedule as the rest of the world.

The United States does NOT negotiate with terrorists

Rather, we gratuitously pay them a huge amount of money on a no-haggle basis:

It's been a couple of days since all of this was announced and I'm still stunned at the brazen corruption of this. Nearly two billion dollars in taxpayer money is being given to violent terrorists who attempted to overthrow the U.S. government – people responsible for the deaths of several others via mob action – as "compensation." Several of these people are literal pedophiles and child molesters and abusers to boot. It's positively obscene.

The fact that the move, also completely gratuitously, purports to forever immunize the Trump family from tax audits is every bit as obscene. There was a time in this country – until January 2017 and then again from 2021 to 2025, weirdly enough – when U.S. presidents were audited every single year, as a matter of course, as a means of showing the American public that not even presidents are exempt from paying taxes and following the law. Now we have given a single family a license to cheat and steal.

My faith in American democracy surviving all of this was already hanging by a thread, but this entire episode on top of everything else is breaking my brain.

Barney Frank: 1940-2026

Barney Frank, the former U.S. representative from Massachusetts who made history as the first (voluntarily) openly gay member of Congress, died on Tuesday night at the age of 86.

Frank served in the House of Representatives from 1981 to 2013. His most significant legislative accomplishment was the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which he co-sponsored and which bolstered oversight of the financial sector in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. The law cracked down on lending practices and expanded consumer protections and, despite some rollbacks and the worst efforts of the Trump administration, it still provides greater protections to consumers than we had before it was on the books.

Frank was best known, however, for his visibility as a gay political leader and an advocate for gay rights. The Advocate summed up that part of his record thusly:

In 1987, at a time when few national politicians were openly gay, and the AIDS epidemic was devastating LGBTQ+ communities, Frank publicly came out, becoming the first member of Congress to voluntarily do so while in office. The decision transformed him into a symbol of a rapidly changing political era and helped push LGBTQ+ visibility deeper into mainstream American life.

Frank also became one of Congress’s most persistent advocates for federal LGBTQ+ civil rights protections. For years, he championed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, known as ENDA, legislation intended to ban workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and, later, gender identity.

That legacy, however, was massively complicated by what were, in my view, indefensible compromises he willingly made and for which he continued to advocate until his death.

In 2007 there were two versions of the aforementioned ENDA floating around Congress. One which protected the rights of trans persons and one which did not. Frank leant his support to the version which excluded gender identity protections. His reasoning: the bill wouldn't have enough support if it included protections for trans people. Because a lot of lawmakers were strongly inclined to take the lead of Congress' only gay member on the legislation out of either ignorance or political cowardice, that's the version that was advanced.

Frank and his supporters couched all of that in terms of pragmatism, but it's hard to see it as anything other than a betrayal. We've learned over and over again in recent years how there is no excuse for selling people out, punching down, or compromising one's own principles because even if you "win" by doing so you've harmed others in the process. And, most of the time, you don't even win, so you compromised and harmed people for nothing. I don't know what Frank's view of trans persons was in his heart of hearts so I can't say if he compromised his own principles, but he absolutely sold out trans persons and, in the end, ENDA failed anyway, so it was the worst of both worlds.

Frank left Congress a few years later but in the nearly 20 years since the ENDA debacle he never learned his lesson. Indeed, in a series of interviews he gave from hospice care just two weeks ago, Frank once again urged Democrats to back off on advocating for trans rights out of political expedience, arguing that debates around sports participation and various forms of political messaging that back the rights of trans persons to simply exist as full members of civil society were too polarizing. Despite all of his years of experience in politics – experience in which he usually proved pretty damn savvy at calling out the bad faith and mendaciousness of Republicans – he somehow still failed or refused to understand that such a political strategy is self-defeating, morally bankrupt, and plays right into the hands of hateful bigots. It is 100% certain that, the next time trans rights are on the table, people will point to Frank's dying admonition as a reason for not doing the right thing, with the implicit or explicit reasoning that, hey, if the most significant gay politician in American history said that it's too risky to go to bat for trans peope, who are we to question it?

I had a lot of respect for Barney Frank when he was in Congress. I think that he served as the sort of strong fighter for liberal and leftist causes in many, many areas that most Democrats, especially those in positions of leadership, simply refuse to advance. But the way he sold out the trans community, and continued to do so until his dying breath, was shameful.

Most of us don't know when we're going to die and, because of that, we are usually unable to spend our final days in a state of love, grace, and thankfulness that might bring us and others peace and comfort. Barney Frank knew his death was imminent and he spent his last public moments lecturing people about how supporting the most vulnerable among us is not worth doing if there are potential political costs for doing so. It's impossible for me to look beyond that sort of cynicism and cowardice. It colors everything about the guy for me.

Rest in peace Barney Frank. May others learn from your failures and strive to do better than you did.

Great Moments in Bookselling

We live in a time when writers and others in creative industries are genuinely concerned about AI companies stealing their work to train their AI models and having AI-generated content replacing authentic human art, thereby imperiling their livelihoods. Against that backdrop, the CEO of Barnes & Noble says "eh, who cares?"

We know this because the Today Show's Jenna Bush Hager asked him whether he would be willing to sell AI books in his stores. He said this:

“Yes, I have actually no problem selling any book, as long as it doesn’t masquerade or pretend to be something that it isn’t. And that it has an essential quality to it, and that the customer, the reader, wants it. So as long as an AI-written book says it’s an AI-written book and doesn’t pretend to be something else and isn’t ripping off somebody else, as long as that’s clearly stated and the customer wants to buy it, then we will stock them.”

The problem is that AI books, by definition, rip off somebody else. AI does not create original works. It mashes up the work of others and spits out a franken-product without attribution, credit, or compensation of any kind. In this AI books are no different than those ubiquitous Facebook posts which set forth stories about bands or movies or celebrities or historical events that are a product of web crawlers sucking up extant content written by others and turning it into bloodless, authorless content.

But assuming one doesn't care about that, why would anyone go to a Barnes & Noble to purchase an AI book anyway? Why not just create one for free at home? To be sure, I find the ethics to be the worst part of all of this, but it's also bad CEO-ing for the guy who runs a chain of bookstores to be promoting something that is actually pretty damn bad for bookstores. It's like McDonald's running commercials about how "you got hamburgers at home."

I'm also disappointed in the particular CEO in question here on a personal level. His name is James Daunt. He's British, and before he was Barnes & Nobel's CEO he was the CEO of British bookseller Waterstones. Before that, however, he was the founder of Daunt Books. I've spent loads of time in Daunt's original location on Marylebone High Street in London. It was there, while killing time a few years ago, that I got the bug to hike the Wainwright Coast to Coast thanks to a bunch of wonderful books I was flipping through in a section dedicated to English walking holidays. I left Daunt Books that day with an armful of new purchases, a nice project that kept me occupied for the next year and a half, and some wonderful memories as a result.

I'm not gonna let this guy's nonsense about AI books ruins that, but it has made me pretty grumpy.

Have a great day everyone.