Cup of Coffee: September 3, 2026

Good morning! And welcome to Free Thursday!

At the outset I wanted to tell you that Jay Wigley and I have selected our three winners of a copy of Jay's book, How Retrosheet Saved Baseball History following Tuesday's little "name your favorite book" and "tell us your favorite thing about Dolly Parton" sweepstakes thingy. They are:

• Vince Galloro, favorite book: Rickey, by Howard Bryant;
• Illinibob, favorite book: The Sound and the Fury, by William Falukner; and
• Sarah, favorite book: Kindred by Octavia Butler or Anne of Green Gables by  L. M. Montgomery

Thanks everyone for entering. Mostly because it got us all talking about books, philanthropy, and basic human kindness and decency and, boy howdy, was that a breath of fresh damn air in these awful times. I cannot tell you how lucky I feel to have a community of readers like you all. When the world finally crumbles into madness, I feel like the few thousand of us should make plans to escape to a little remote island and set up a smart, funny, and humane utopia to ride out the end times.

I'll be in contact with the three winners sometime today to set up logistics for the book delivery.

And now, on with our day.

And That Happened

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Reds 7, Padres 3: The Padres were spotted an early 3-0 lead but Juan Brito hit a three-run homer and Hector Rodríguez hit a solo shot to put Cincinnati up 4-3 in the second. Reds pitchers didn't allow another run after that while JJ Bleday hit a two-run homer and Matt McLain hit a sac fly. Reds take the series two games to one. Also: Padres catcher Ethan Salas made his major league debut. In so doing, the barely 20 year-old prospect became the youngest player to catch in an MLB game since Pudge Rodriguez, who caught for the Rangers at age 19 back in 1991.

Atlanta 9, Nationals 0: Due to a rain delay that knocked Atlanta starter Grant Holmes out after three scoreless, hitless innings it became an impromptu bullpen game. The bullpen was up to the task, however, handling the final six innings and giving up just two hits in the process. The game was scoreless until the sixth when Sean Murphy hit a three-run jack and Ronald Acuña Jr. added a three-run shot of his own in the seventh. Austin Riley singled in two more in the eighth and Murphy struck again with an RBI single in the ninth. The sides split the two-game set. Remember when we used to have lots of two-game sets? We don't have that many anymore.

Athletics 9, Rangers 2: Henry Bolte hit two homers, two-run shots in both the third and fourth and  Zack Gelof, Jonah Heim and Alika Williams also went deep for West Sacramento. Jacob Lopez continued his recent string of good pitching, allowing two runs over six innings to pick up the win. The A's avoid the sweep.

Rockies 6, Orioles 5: Tied after regulation, Baltimore took a 5-3 lead in the 11th on RBI singles by Sam Basallo and Blaze Alexander, but Colorado rallied with TJ Rumfield singling in the Manfred Man, Adael Amador reaching on an automatic double, and then Brett Sullivan singling them both in to walk the game off. Baltimore blew a great start from Trevor Rogers, who struck out 11 in six and two-thirds.

Diamondbacks 1, Phillies 0: Quite the pitching battle for the first seven innings as Andrew Painter blanked the Snakes on just two hits, but Arizona unloaded the bullpen and seven little Diamondbacks combined for a three hit shutout. James McCann's solo homer in the eighth was the only run of the game.

Mariners 8, Red Sox 3: Seattle had two four-run innings. Jhonny Pereda had a two-run single. Julio Rodríguez, Josh Naylor, Dominic Canzone and Randy Arozarena each had an RBI. Some bad Boston defense aided the cause.

Mets 10, Rays 4: It was already 3-0 in the third when Brett Baty hit a three-run double which pretty much sealed things. Still, Nicholas Morabito hit a three-run double of his own a few innings later and Juan Soto capped the scoring with a dinger.

Giants 5, Pirates 4: It was close all game and then went to extras. The Giants plated two in the top of the tenth with Bryce Eldridge doubling home the Manfred Man after which Turner Hill, who already had one RBI on his ledger, hit a sac fly to make it a 5-3 game. The Pirates got one back in their half but that was it.

Blue Jays 11, Guardians 0: Dylan Cease tossed six innings of shuout ball and three relievers each put up a goose egg to close it out. A big night for Vlad Guerrero Jr., who hit a three-run homer, doubled in a run, and singled in a run. Not sure where he's been all year but he was there last night.

Astros 2, White Sox 0: Astros starter Hayden Wesneski was fantastic, giving up just one hit over seven shutout frames and it ended up being a three-hit shutout after a couple of relievers finished it off. Wesneski was matched for much of the way by Sox starter Davis Martin, who held Houston scoreless into the sixth. Nelson Velázquez's two-run single in the eighth was the difference.

Tigers 11, Twins 6: It was tied at five in regulation, the sides failed to plate a run in the tenth and they traded a run each in the eleventh. But the Tigers went nuts in the twelfth with Spencer Torkelson hitting a two-run homer and, after Detroit loaded the bases, Javier Báez cleared them with a double for a five-run inning. Earlier rookie John Peck drove in three and Hao-Yu Lee, Riley Greene and Max Clark added RBI. It was the first time Detroit had scored more than two runs in their last seven games.

Marlins 9, Royals 6: The Marlins built a 2-0 lead in the top of the first but then the Royals plated five, after which Miami began a comeback. Kyle Stowers’ solo homer in the third inning and, after Kansas City added a sixth run in the fourth, the Fish scored six unanswer runs and five Marlins relievers held the Royals scoreless over the final four and a third. Heriberto Hernández hit two RBI doubles and Javier Sanoja and Jakob Marsee went deep.

Brewers 9. Cubs 5: Jacob Misiorowski proved to be mortal, allowing five runs on five hits in four innings, but the lineup bailed him out. Jackson Chourio homered, William Contreras hit a tiebreaking RBI single in the fourth, and Milwaukee piled on three more runs late. Alex Bregman stayed hot, homering and driving in four runs for the Cubs, but they're now nine back of the Brewers in the Central and are one game back of Philadelphia for the top NL Wild Card.

Yankees 6, Angels 3: It was a 1-1 game through nine, thanks to fantastic starts from Cam Schlittler (8 IP, 2 H, 1 ER) and Reid Detmers (7 IP, 6 H, 1 ER). But like the Tigers, the Yankees had a five-run inning in extras, with theirs came in the tenth. All five of those runs came on singles, with Austin Wells knocking in the Manfred Man and another runner for the first two and Cody Bellinger, Trent Grisham and Ben Rice plating one each. The Yankees take two of three.

Cardinals 8, Dodgers 6: The Cards only scored three runs in the tenth, so they were really not up to extra innings par last night. The first one came on  Thomas Saggese's go-ahead singling in of the Manfred Man. Joshua Báez then doubled in two.  Shohei Ohtani struck out four consecutive times in this one. After the game Roberts said that Ohtani is obviously physically ailing – "He's not close to optimal" – Roberts said – and said that he plans to have a conversation with the training staff to about where Ohtani is at right now. Los Angles has lost six of eight games.  

The Daily Briefing

Players talk anonymously about salary caps, lockouts, and the labor negotiations

ESPN talked with several MLB players about the current labor negotiations, granting them anonymity so they could speak freely. They posed the following questions to them, with the answers of a handful published in response to each one:

• How open are you to a salary cap?
• Would you be open to a salary cap if the league shows it can help you individually make more money?
• Will there be a lengthy lockout that impacts the 2027 season?
• How many 2027 games will be missed?
• What one topic is most important to you during these labor negotiations?
• How often do conversations about labor come up in the clubhouse?
• How confident are you in the MLBPA after recent leadership changes? and
• How does the state of labor negotiations compare to this point in 2021?

For the most part the players ESPN spoke to sound pretty informed and pretty much on the same page. There was one guy who actually said, yeah, his position on the salary cap might change if he knew he'd, personally, make more money, but he was an exception. Overall there seemed to be a pretty good understanding among respondents that everyone's in it together and a deal that is bad for most but good for a few is not anything the players want.

I think it's also worth noting how positive the players sound about the MLBPA's leadership, with specific shoutouts to Executive Director Bruce Meyer and Deputy Executive Director/chief negotiator Matt Nussbaum. There were some who wondered how the players would take to the leadership shifting in the wake of the Tony Clark scandal – and five years ago there was some sense that, perhaps, the rank and file were not on the same page as the brass – but it sounds like, if anything, the players are more positive about union leadership than they were before. It's something of a gut feeling on my part, but I think the fact that Meyer is a lawyer who has hashed out details at the bargaining table gives him a lot of credibility in the role that Clark, who seemed more like a relationships guy, may not have had.

[Editor: Given the nature of his scandal, maybe we shouldn't call Clark a "relationships guy?"]

OK, fair.

Anyway, it's a good article if you're wondering where the players' heads are at as we move closer to the CBA deadline in December.

Speaking of salary caps . . .

This isn't baseball, but just under a year ago Pablo Torre reported that then-Los Angeles Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard was given a bogus, no-show endorsement gig from a company with ties to Clippers owner Steve Ballmer in a scheme to circumvent the NBA's salary cap rules. Yesterday, after a long investigation, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver brought the hammer down.

After stating the the league, "found a pattern of misconduct and multiple significant rules violations by the Clippers organization, a prior offender of the salary cap circumvention rules," Silver announced the punishment:

• The Clippers must forfeit five first-round draft picks, one in each in the 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032, and 2033 NBA drafts, and the team has been fined $30 million;
• Clippers owner Steve Ballmer is suspended from all league and team activities for one year, Clippers President of business operations Gillian Zucker is suspended without pay for one year, and Clippers President of basketball operations Lawrence Frank is suspended without pay for six months; and
• Kawhi Leonard has received a fine of $700,000.

Based on how severe this discipline is compared to, basically, any other scandal I can recall in my entire lifetime of following professional sports, I think it's fair to conclude that leagues take it way, way more seriously when you mess with their money than when you mess with the actual game. Or when you harass or abuse people or commit actual crimes, including super violent ones.

Someone should ask the baseball owners if they really wanna get into this whole salary cap business. Seems bad!

MLB Attendance poised to go up for the fourth straight season

The good news for MLB: per Front Office Sports, the league is basically assured of a fourth straight increase in annual attendance. As of the end of August, MLB has had total attendance of 61.09 million, and a per-game average of 29,524. That's up by 0.9% from 2025.

The OK, gotta smile a bit at this good news part: the Rays’ move back into Tropicana Field after playing in a minor league facility all of last year has accounted for 519,372 of those increased tickets sold, which exceeds the overall league increase by 721. So in practical terms it's less about greater enthusiasm for baseball across the board this year than it is about there simply being more available tickets to Rays games because they're no longer playing in a spring training facility.

Still, four years of increases with an effectively flat year at the end is better than a lot of stretches Major League Baseball has enjoyed and/or endured. Indeed, per Front Office Sports baseball has not seen four straight years of attendance gains, even tiny ones, since 2004–07, so this is not necessarily a common occurrence.

Just in time for the owners to sap fan enthusiasm by mounting a lockout!

Rays owner claims new stadium will allow them to dramatically raise payroll

Last week the Tampa and Hillsborough County, Florida governments agreed to use a couple billion in taxpayer dollars to fund a Rays new ballpark. Now the Rays owner, Patrick Zalupski, is talking big about team payroll. From the Tampa Bay Times:

“We believe with the new ballpark and the new development around the ballpark we should be able to drive into the top-15 circle, maybe even top 10. Tampa’s the No. 11 media market in the country, with 3 1/2 million residents. There’s nothing holding it back.”

With the caveat that the ballpark won't be online until the 2029 season at the earliest, I suppose it's easy to talk big like this now. And given that the battle to get the stadium subsidies approved was not an easy one, there are still a lot of hard feelings in the bay area so he has an incentive to stay stuff like this in an effort to smooth things over. Which is to say, let's see what happens in a couple of years time before we go congratulating the Rays' visionary new ownership group.

In other news: between multiple $4 billion team sales and the owner of one of the perpetually lowest-payroll franchises in the game saying he's gonna spend like a drunken sailor, Rob Manfred is doing a terrible job of ensuring message discipline during labor negotiations. You're supposed to cry poor, owners, and you're totally messing that up!

I did not know that

On Tuesday night two rookies, Yohandy Morales and Lazaro Montes, hit home runs in their major league debuts. I learned yesterday that those two were the 14th and 15th players to hit homers in their big league debuts this season. That's a new record. The previous record was 13, in 2022.

Others of note this year were Joshua Báez, who had that historic three-homer debut for the Cardinals on August 15. On Opening Day this year JJ Wetherholt of the Cardinals, Carson Benge of the Mets, Munetaka Murakami of the White Sox and Chase DeLauter of the Guardians all went deep in their first-ever games. Though maybe we give an asterisk to DeLauter, who debuted in the postseason last year.

The kids are alright.

Other Stuff

Quote of the Day: "wait, you mean me too?"

Milo Yiannopoulos rose to prominence prior to the 2016 election as an editor for Brietbart, where he routinely platformed white nationalists and misogynists while engaging in a coordinated campaign of harassment of women and minorities on social media. While he seemed like an outlier extremist to most people at first, it turned out that he was part of the vanguard of what would prove to be a fascist takeover of the American political system. Yiannopoulos, along with other so-called "alt-right" personalities somehow enthralled the mainstream media, who did not understand – or did not care – that he was the hateful tip of a hateful iceberg.

After Trump's first election Yiannopoulos became embroiled in a controversy in which he seemed to advocate for the sexual abuse of children. The Republican Party had not yet fully embraced sexual predation of minors at the time, at least publicly, so there was some performative de-platforming of the guy. But it was only temporary, as he soon took positions working for Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and, later, Kanye West, among others. Like a lot of large right wing pieces of shit, the guy could never really be flushed and he has spent the past several years happily grifting his way through the hellish American political media landscape. Among the hundreds of over-the-top, pro-Trump things he has said over the years was this, which he posted on Twitter just over a month ago:

“[California] needs ICE checkpoints at supermarket entrances, gas stations, strip malls, intersections and government buildings, with on the spot deportation for anyone who can’t prove they are in the US legally”

Then last week Yiannopoulos, who happens to be a British citizen, was arrested by ICE agents in New Orleans because he had overstayed his visa and failed to show up for a hearing in front of an immigration judge. He was put in a detention center but, unlike a lot of people in his situation, he was quickly repatriated to his homeland and within days of his arrest found his way onto television with Piers Morgan.

Now, after spening well over a decade serving as a mouthpiece and agitator for right-wing hate, Yiannopoulos is shocked and appalled at the Trump Regime's anti-immigrant tactics. Here was Yiannopoulos on Piers Mogran's show on Tuesday, after saying that he was "really, really terrified" while in ICE custody:

"If I had any clue that anything remotely like this was even possible, I would have never gotten involved in supporting Trump in the first place."

Gee, if only there were literal signs:

None of these assholes considers any of the hateful and destructive things they support to be a problem until it is turned on them personally. It's an entire political movement of egotists, narcissists, and downright psychopaths who think everything for which they advocate is some sort of abstraction when it involves the other 8.3 billion people in the world but is suddenly deadly serious if they are affected. They lack even a shred of personal empathy for anyone besides themselves.

"Mr. Beast has died of dysentery"

From the Verge, we learn that Google is teaming up with YouTuber Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson on some sort of survival challenge/ad campaign in which he will use Google products, most notably its AI chatbot, Gemini, for wilderness survival advice:

First up on September 5 is a new MrBeast video following Jimmy and his crew as they attempt to survive some of the most extreme and treacherous climates on Earth. Teams will race to navigate three of the planet’s most unforgiving landscapes — the jungle, the desert, and the Arctic — using Gemini to help them identify dangers, survive brutal weather changes, and stay one step ahead.

Gemini: "You're right – my mistake – you should only play dead when a brown bear is near you, not a black bear. Against black bears you must fight back. Thank you for correcting me. I'll make a note of it. Now, may I suggest the nearest Level 1 trauma centers? Or calculate the probability of your making it out of this canyon with only one arm and rapid blood loss? How else can I help you today?"

Honestly, though, I don't even need to make up fanciful Gemini responses when this report was published literally two days ago:

Three novice climbers were rescued from Mount Shasta on Sunday after becoming lost, running low on supplies and spending an unplanned night in Mud Creek Canyon, the U.S. Forest Service - Shasta-Trinity National Forest (USFS) said . . . The USFS said the climbers told them they had used an artificial intelligence platform, YouTube videos and AllTrails to plan the trip. They said they relied on AI to decide what food to bring and how much food and water they would need.

The group said it packed supplies for an eight-hour climb, not its roughly 16-hour ascent. The climbers said AI recommended simple carbohydrates instead of fats because fats “take too long to digest.”

“We relied too much on AI rather than our own critical thinking,” the group told rangers.

Good luck, Mr. Beast. Feel free to just go into this adventure blind. AI will clearly save you.

Oh, is that what happened?

For several years people have randomly informed me of various goings on at NBC. I sorta don't care because I bear my former employer no ill will and it all feels like ancient history to me now, but sometimes the stuff I hear makes me laugh.

Like yesterday, when I was informed that NBC's official page about the history of the Tonight Show characterizes Conan O'Brien's tenure as its host thusly:

O’Brien hosted from 2009-2010, departing to start his talk show Conan on TBS. He currently hosts the popular podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.

Oh, is that why he departed NBC? Because there was a can't-miss opportunity to leave the most storied late night talk show in television history for a gig on basic cable? It had nothing to do with NBC brass and Jay Leno fucking him over in the most hilariously craven, cowardly, and public way possible? I cannot believe I got that so mixed up!

It's also confusing to me because I worked at NBC at the time and once, during the peak of that whole fiasco, I was in New York, at Rockefeller Center, visiting my bosses' boss and I was told that under no circumstances was I to make any jokes about the Conan/Leno thing. Indeed, I was told to not even mention it, because, in the words of someone who worked at 30 Rock, "everyone's hands have blood on them" and "no one has a sense of humor about this." Which is weird given that it was, apparently, just about Conan happily deciding to move on over to TBS!

Obviously Conan came out of it OK, as he and his staff got something like a $45 million buyout and since then he's basically done whatever the hell he wants to and seems to be having a lot of fun doing it. But it was still a crappy way to treat someone. And the fact that NBC has been unable to craft a better euphemistic way to describe that for its webpage in the past 16 years is sorta puzzling.

At least until you realize that, in 2020, a bunch of their best writers just happened to leave the company to pursue wonderful opportunities in independent media, so who's left to write it?

Have a great day everyone.