Cup of Coffee: October 29, 2026

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

And congratulations to your 2026 World Series Champion Milwaukee Brewers!

And That Happened

Brewers 4, Rays 1: This game went nine innings but it ended in the top of the sixth. Drew Rasmussen did his gutsy best on short rest and held the Brewers to one run over four, but he wasn't going to be able to give Kevin Cash any more than that. Once you look at the Rays' pitcher usage over the previous couple of games you knew that it was thin gruel behind him. The Brewers have a lineup with no easy outs while the Rays have four guys and a prayer. The Brewers have arms after arms and the Rays, well, thin gruel. Tampa Bay stole one in Game Four but it was only a matter of time.

Cooper Pratt, who had hits in four straight at bats on Tuesday night, had hits in his first two at bats here. He drove in Brice Turang with a single in the second and then singled and scored in the fifth. He didn't get a hit in his next plate appearance but he did drive a run with a foul out down the right field line to make it 4-0 Milwaukee. The kid was a menace all Series long. His future is so bright the rest of the league had better get some shades.

Jacob Misiorowski did something he hadn't done all postseason: he went more than five innings. It ended up being only five and two-thirds due to leg cramps, but those were shutout innings in which he allowed just two hits. It was good enough for the win in the World Series clincher. And he's gonna win the Cy Young Award next month too. He's gotta a bright future himself.

After that it was the Brewers bullpen doing what the Brewers bullpen has been doing all month long. JoJo Romero got the last out of the sixth and the first out of the seventh. Abner Uribe took things to the eighth. Trevor Megill, fresh after throwing just five pitches in Game Four, needed just ten pitches to set Tampa Bay down 1-2-3 in the eighth. The first out of which came on a fantastic Jackson Chourio catch on a ball slicing down the left field line. He came back out for the ninth, got an out, gave up a double to Liam Hicks, struck out Jonny DeLuca, but then let Chandler Simpson of all people double in Hicks to end the shutout. Richie Palacios then pinch-hit his way into 4-3 groundout and that was that. Ballgame. Series. Season.

The Milwaukee Brewers were baseball's best team from March through September. They were baseball's best team in the Division Series and the NLCS as well. Then they buzzed the hell through the best team in the American League in five games. In this age of 12 playoff teams and postseasons which play out more like tournaments than anything else, the 2026 major league baseball season ended with the crowning of an undisputed champ.

Congratulations to the Milwaukee Brewers on the franchise's first ever World Series title. They're baseball's best now and, given how bright that future looks, maybe for a good many years.

The Daily Briefing

World Series MVP William Contreras: "I am the best catcher in the world"

They could've picked a number of guys to be World Series MVP without creating too much of a fuss. One of them was Brewers catcher William Contreras. Who did, in fact, win. An created a fuss. But a fun one. Here's what he said after the game:

"I don't want to offend any of the other catchers in the league. The last thing I want to do is offend any of them. But sitting up here today, champion of the world, I feel like I'm the best catcher in the league. Again, that's no disrespect to any of them. That's the last thing I want to do. But today I feel like I'm the best catcher in the world."

Some will probably get cranky about that kind of sentiment but beats the hell out of "all I wanted to do was help the ballclub" false modesty.

Contreras hit .381 in the Series, threw out four would-be base stealers, and won a most impressive 10 of 13 ABS appeals. He hit a run-scoring double in the decisive sixth inning of Game Five.

Reminder: Mark Teixeira is about to become a Congressman

I had somehow forgotten that 14-year MLB veteran Mark Teixeira is running for Congress in Texas. It's a safe Republican seat so he's a lock to win it.

The thing that reminded me: yesterday afternoon my wife got a text from the Mark Teixeira for Congress campaign, asking her if they can be assured of her support:

I love the "Tex" in his signature block. It's perfect for a guy who was born and raised in Maryland, went to college in Georgia, and has only lived in Texas (a) between 2003 and 2007 when he played for the Rangers; and (b) for the past two years after moving from Greenwich, Connecticut, where he lived for something like 15 years and about which he once said "I'll never leave." Hell, he doesn't even live in his district now, which is in northern San Antonio. He lives in Austin, which is over an hour away. He says he'll move to San Antonio if he wins, but I sorta doubt he will (by law Members of Congress only have to live in the state, not the specific district they represent).

Anyway, apart from the fact that (a) Allison hasn't lived in Texas for 14 years; (b) she was obviously never, ever a Republican; and (c) she fucking hated Mark Teixeira when he was a player, it's a fine bit of political targeting on the part of the Teixeira campaign. Good to see how on it the Texas GOP data juggernaut is this cycle.

Jorge Posada says he doesn't feel welcome in Yankee Land

Yankees legend Jorge Posada was on Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman's New York Post podcast the other day and told them that he doesn't believe the Yankees want him around. This came in response to them asking Posada if he felt like he could help the team in some capacity. Posada:

“I mean, I could, but I don’t think they want me there, to tell you the truth. I don’t feel welcome when I go there, you know? Even in spring training, I don’t feel like — I’m just like, I don’t know, like, I don’t feel welcome. I don’t feel like they want me there, so I don’t go.”

Posada didn't cite a specific incident that made him feel that way and Heyman and Sherman didn't really press him.

Whether it's the Yankees shunning Posada, or Posada having an unrealistic idea of what "welcoming" a former player is is hard to say. Feels, though, like this is the sort of thing that should make someone with the Yankees reach out to him in order to smooth things over because there's no percentage in well-loved former player who was part of four World Series championship teams feeling this way regardless of the reason.

Mark Walter says he's keeping the Dodgers "no matter what"

Los Angels Dodgers owner Mark Walter has been under investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan and the Securities and Exchange Commission for the past year, following whistleblower allegations regarding various flavors of fraud regarding his businesses. Within weeks of the probe becoming public in July, Walter, quite surprisingly, sold his still pretty damn new controlling interest in the Los Angeles Lakers, his stake in Chelsea Football Club, and he is reportedly looking to sell the WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks. This all smacks of panic, likely born of a need for some immediate liquidity to fight charges or pay back investors, or

Some (hi, I'm "some") have speculated that the Dodgers could be next. However, in his first public comments since July, Walter told Jack Harris of the California Post that he's "keeping the team, no matter what." His full comments:

“We’re going to keep the team no matter what. We’re going to be winning for 10 years or more. I think our commitment to do so will be just like it has been in the past. And, you know, we don’t win every year, but we’re going to try to . . . I certainly hope we can look forward to winning another World Series next year under my ownership. And I think we’re just trying to win consistently, and do so for not just next season, but for the next decade and decades beyond that.”

I'd like to think that a billionaire who just liquidated billions more in assest would have enough to fend off whatever he's trying to fend off, but who knows. The finances of these types of dudes are a totally different beast than yours or mine. Like, I'm pretty sure Mark Walter has never turned his eyes away after making an ATM withdrawal because he didn't want to see how dangerously low his balance is. That said, some of these guys are so complicatedly leveraged that if anything goes awry the whole house of cards comes down, so who knows?

Other Stuff

ICE is being used as Trump's secret police

A report from WIRED dropped yesterday which reveals that not only is ICE busy terrorizing immigrants and protestors, it's serving as Trump's secret police as he seeks to stamp out any and all dissent:

Attorneys for 15 Minnesota residents facing federal conspiracy charges have obtained evidence of a sweeping, possibly unconstitutional spying operation carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement against left-wing social movements in Minnesota and beyond.The high-profile Minnesota 15 prosecution makes clear that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), flush with federal funds and newly hired personnel, is now President Donald Trump’s primary tool against dissent, with a powerful array of post-9/11 investigative authorities brought to bear against everyday Americans organizing their communities.Nothing of this scale has been seen in the United States, experts say, since the federal government’s counterinsurgency against the New Left and the anti-war movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

WIRED explains that this work, which has absolutely nothing to do with immigration enforcement, was authorized by something called National Security Presidential Memorandum 7. That's a document which the administration published following Charlie Kirk’s assassination which instructs federal law enforcement to use every tool available against organizations and people who criticize the administration's policies and who espouse "anti-Christian" ideas, which it insanely characterizes as "indicators of terrorism."

This all echoes the FBI’s infamous Counterintelligence Program, or COINTELPRO, which illegal surveilled, infiltrated, and blackmailed civil rights and anti-war movements from the 1950s through the early 1970s. The stuff that led to "enemies lists" and far, far worse. Well, we're doing it all over again.

America: safe haven for fascist criminals

Flávio Bolsonaro lost the presidential election in Brazil earlier this week. It's pretty obvious that the only reason he ran was to keep himself out of prison via presidential immunity due to a truly impressive number of criminal charges he's facing in Brazil for corruption, money laundering and tax evasion. But he lost, and while he was making big noise about the election being stolen and vowing to fight and fight and fight he was actually fleeing across the border to Argentina and then hopping a flight to Miami because Trump granted him a visa.

Can I tell you how much I love that my country has become the go-to refuge for fascist criminal fugitives? How much I love that we welcome the evil and the corrupt here with open arms while terrorizing honest, hard-working people who came here legally, throwing them into prison camps and then renditioning them to places where they stand a good chance of being killed? All while turning our backs on genuinely desperate asylum seekers, refugees and ordinary immigrants from other countries (unless they're white)? America has always done really bad things to marginalized people while coddling the evil-but-wealthy, but we've never done it this openly and obviously. We used to at least have the decency to pretend we were better than that.

Whatever. Like his father, I suspect that Bolsonaro will spend a couple of months in Florida, realize that in many important respects life in Florida is worse than decades of house arrest in Brazil, and go scurrying back. If he doesn't, however, the next Dem president should, on Day One, cancel this jackwagon's visa and put him on a flight to Brasilia just for the fuck-you value of it. I wouldn't make a big deal out of it because most people here probably don't care, but it'd only take about three seconds to sign the paper while walking into one of the inauguration balls. In addition to being immensely satisfying it'd send a strong signal to evil shitheads everywhere that they don't have the backing of the United States anymore.

Shocker: Vivek Ramaswamy's odious ad isn't working

The other day we talked about that horrible ad by Ohio GOP gubernatorial hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy in which he got his opponents' estranged, elderly mother to rip her own daughter for having the audacity to be raped by her piece-of-shit stepfather when she was 10 years old. The stepfather who fled the state after being indicted and whom the mother stood by for the final 26 years of his life.

You're not gonna believe this, but the ad is backfiring:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy's ad featuring Democratic rival Amy Acton's estranged mother didn't win over voters, according to a new Suffolk University-USA TODAY Ohio poll.

If anything, the ad may have made voters view Ramaswamy less favorably, said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center . . . according to the new results, 54.2% had an unfavorable view of Ramaswamy, up from 52.2% in last month's poll. About 41% had an unfavorable view of Acton, which was the same as last month's poll.

There's also some fun behind-the-scenes stuff coming to light in the form of Jacqueline Sweet and Asawin Suebsaeng of Zeteo posting a deep dive into the ad and its provenance. If you're a regular reader of Friend-of-the-Newsletter, The Rooster, you know a lot of this stuff already, but the new report confirms a bunch of stuff he's been saying for a while. To wit:

• Ramaswamy wanted to hold the ad until the last minute so the Acton campaign and the media couldn't respond to it effectively, but once the Rooster – who Zeteo refers to as "an Ohio politics writer” – told the world about it when it was leaked to him they felt they had to run it, which led to this awful fallout and fellow Republicans jumping over each other to condemn Ramaswamy;
• It's almost certain that the ad constituted elder abuse, with sources telling Zeteo that Acton's mother had no idea what was going on and was barely holding it together during the production of the ad. Other things I've read have said that she's often been unhoused in recent years and it's implied that Ramaswamy's campaign paid her to say what they wanted her to say, but that may just be speculation;
• One of Ramaswamy top two advisors, each of whom are deeply ingrained in the Ohio right wing CHUD-o-sphere, produced the ad. His name is Ben Yoho. He's mentioned in the Zeteo story. The other top advisor, Jai Chabria, is conspicuously not mentioned, which makes The Rooster believe that he was the source of the Zeteo story, and that he ran to them in order to deflect the blame for the ad onto his colleague Yoho. I would be utterly shocked if that was not exactly what happened;
• To be sure, Chabria was totally behind the ad anyway. Indeed, per earlier reporting by The Rooster, he is the one who insisted that it be an official ad of the Ramaswamy campaign rather than having some super PAC run it, which would've given Ramaswamy plausible deniability and the chance to disavow it if it backfired. Why did Chabria insist on this? Because as the media consultant for the Ramaswamy campaign he gets a commission for placing official campaign ads but doesn't for super PAC ads. Immoral, greedy, AND backstabbing. The Republican trifecta!

I'm still not going to feel comfortable about this race until the results are actually in – Ohio has never failed to disappoint me – but for now this looks like the greatest self-inflicted wound in recent Ohio history. And that includes the time a sitting governor was convicted of four misdemeanor ethics charges for taking gifts from my corrupt client.

An email I got last night

This is an honest-to-God email I got last night. And yes, it is from a real person. His name and email address has been removed because I don't want anyone hassling him, but I did check him out to make sure he was legit and he is:

Hi Craig!

My name is ____, and I’m part of OpenAI’s Pro Community team. We’re building an invite-only community of advanced AI users across fields: people using tools like ChatGPT and Codex in innovative ways to build, work, and solve problems that would have been harder, slower, or impossible before.

I'm actually coming to Columbus in the coming weeks to meet with Pro Community members and came across your very rad writing :). It's a bit of a long shot, but I'm curious whether you're personally using OpenAI tools such as ChatGPT or Codex in any meaningful ways in your work and life. If so, I’d love to hop on a call sometime soon to learn more and see if there might be a good fit for the Pro Community!

Best,
____

I suppose it's good to hear that I have "very rad writing" but if he had actually read any of my "very rad writing" he'd know that I'm not a good target for this pitch.

I thought of several maximally hostile ways I could've responded to this but after thinking for a minute I decided that "honest but polite" was the way to go. This is what I sent him:

Hi ___,

I appreciate you reaching out, but as an writer who has had his work stolen by OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI companies I'm really not all that interested in working with any of them, and I don't use generative AI products for precisely that reason.

Craig

Being a mature adult sucks but sometimes you just gotta be a mature adult.

Another nifty Dylan re-working

The other day I shared the bootleg of Bob Dylan performing a radically-reworked version of the song "Trying to Get to Heaven" from the 1997 album "Time Out of Mind." That song has always been a great one, and I really dug the new arrangement. I apparently hadn't seen nothin' yet, because on Tuesday night Bob, still playing shows in Germany, unveiled an even more radical reworking of another song from that album: "Not Dark Yet."

In its original form "Not Dark Yet" is a dark, brooding, dirge-like six and a half minutes of mortality contemplation. The producer of the song, Daniel Lanois, once described it as "a civil war ballad" and that's not far off the mark. It also happens to be my favorite Bob Dylan song of all time. Longtime readers know that late in the season, when a ballclub's postseason chances are slipping away, I'll often say "It's not dark yet for [Team], but it's gettin' there." That's the refrain from every verse of this song, and I've been lifting it for decades.

I love "Not Dark Yet" so much that, if you had asked me a few days ago, I might've said that that's the one Dylan song for which I had no interest in hearing a rearrangement. But then Cupagentsia member and genuine Dylan scholar Terry Gans shot me this lovely gem from Tuesday night's Düsseldorf show:

If you had told me before I heard this that "Not Dark Yet" could be, I dunno, funky, I would've told you to have your head examined. But it works, dammit.

Someone musta slipped somethin' into Bob's cabernet before this tour, because he sounds more inspired than I've heard him be in several years. You love to see it. Well, hear it.

Have a great day everyone.