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| Monday, August 17, 2026 |
Issue #12
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by meme.app
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It's Monday. My new website, 16bucks.com, is live and in beta. Two games, both free, both daily, no signup. 16 Bucks is the one I promised you: 16 dollars, six NFL players, one boss from football history. Pick six, beat the boss. Map Shot is for a completely different kind of sicko: five sports moments a day, and you drop a pin on the globe where each one happened. Everyone gets the same board and the same questions, so these are group chat games: play, post your score, ruin a friendship. If you stream, put it on stream.
More games and more sports are coming soon, and I'm working on groups: expect a Morning Stew group in there by next Monday. It's day one, so go test both and tell me what breaks.
As for the actual sports: a Cardinals rookie just had the best first day in baseball history and the worst second day, Scottie Scheffler remembered who he is, and Chris Sale got ejected from a game he wasn't even playing in. Let's get into it.
— Stew
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The Greatest First Day in Baseball History
On Saturday at Wrigley, Cardinals rookie Joshua Báez saw his first pitch as a major leaguer and hit it 449 feet. Second at-bat: homer. Third at-bat: homer. Three at-bats into his career, Báez had three home runs, something nobody had ever done, not once, in more than 23,000 players. All three came off the same pitcher, Chicago's Matthew Boyd, who by the sixth inning must have felt like a man stuck in a recurring dream. Cardinals won 8-4.
There are no odds to quote you, because no sportsbook has ever thought to hang a number on “homers in his first three at-bats.” Before Saturday, only two players had ever even homered in their first two, and the last of them did it in 2000. Thirty members of the Báez family were in the Wrigley seats and stayed on the field for photos in the rain. Then on Sunday he went 0 for 5 with three strikeouts.
Cool stat: The three homers traveled a combined 1,199 feet, and the first, 449 feet on the literal first pitch of his career, was the third-longest debut homer ever measured. The only two longer belong to Jason Heyward and Aaron Judge, who needed more than one pitch to get to theirs.
So what: This wasn't a September curiosity call-up. The Cardinals were 61-61 and three and a half back of a Wild Card spot, and Báez led all of Triple-A in home runs. They called him up to win games right now, and he won them one by himself on day one. St. Louis took the series and the pennant race just got a new main character.
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The other Cardinals kept rolling, at a price. Arizona beat the Raiders 27-14, and its quarterbacks, Jacoby Brissett, Gardner Minshew, and Kedon Slovis, combined to go 25 of 29 for 201 yards and three touchdowns, one of them to Marvin Harrison Jr. Rookie Carson Beck, still nursing the rib injury from his Canton masterpiece, didn't even play. The bill: No. 3 overall pick Jeremiyah Love ran for 58 yards in his debut and left with a high ankle sprain, and rookie guard Chase Bisontis tore his MCL and is done for the year. The offense looks real. The injury list is getting long. [ESPN] |
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The Cowboys' defense, of all things, looked good. Dallas held Seattle to one touchdown in a 17-7 win, and in a joint practice against the Rams, linebacker Justin Barron intercepted three passes, one of them off Matthew Stafford. A year after the Micah Parsons trade, the defense might be the strength of the team, so the annual August panic had to relocate: special teams gave up a 52-yard punt return and fumbled through their own. Yes, it's preseason and it's backups. Dallas fans will take the sentence anyway. [Yahoo] |
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The Browns lost 34-10 and the quarterbacks were somehow the good news. Deshaun Watson played his first football since October 2024 and two Achilles surgeries and went 11 of 15 for 126 yards, the sharpest anyone in orange looked all night. Shedeur Sanders went 6 of 11 with an interception, mostly against backups. Cleveland's official depth chart lists the starter as “Deshaun Watson OR Shedeur Sanders,” a real document a professional football team published, and Sanders gets the start against Buffalo this week. The last year of Watson's fully guaranteed $230 million is riding on an OR. [CBS] |
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Scottie Scheffler is back, and it wasn't close. He won the FedEx St. Jude by eight shots, the biggest margin on Tour all year, ending a 203-day drought in which he finished second five times, which for normal golfers is called a career year. The best moment came Sunday, mid-blowout: his bunker shot ricocheted off a sprinkler head into the water, and he turned to his caddie and asked, “When is this going to stop happening?” The man was winning by eight. A ninth-place finish or better at the BMW this week makes him the all-time career money leader, passing Tiger Woods. He'll probably just win it. [PGA Tour] |
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Chris Sale got ejected from a game he was not playing in. Still hot about a balk call from the day before, Sale chirped the umpires from the Braves dugout before first pitch at Yankee Stadium and got tossed on the spot. Not in the lineup, not scheduled to pitch, gone anyway. The Braves won without him, which they were always going to do. His first ejection since 2019 and comfortably his most efficient. [ESPN] |
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And a Little League coach delivered the mound visit of the year. An ESPN hot mic at the regionals caught Arizona's coach telling his 12-year-old pitcher: “If you walk the next five guys, Jesus is still Lord. If you strike out the next five guys, guess what? Jesus is still Lord.” The kid gave up four runs and Hawaii won 5-2. The theology held. The fastball didn't. [OutKick] |
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Every preseason top 25 ever
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Programming note: the last issue promised 16Bucks would arrive in this very email, and it did, with a second game riding along. It's day one at 16bucks.com. Play both, post your scores in the group chat, and if something breaks, tell me. See you next Monday.
— Stew
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