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David Ortiz is used to swinging for the fences. However, the former Boston Red Sox slugger has traded his garden fence for a condo’s luxury amenities, having just agreed to buy a branded residence at ORA by Casa Tua, the New York Post reports.
Ortiz, who sold his Miami-area mansion for $10.6 million two years ago, is happy to put his money where his mouth is as Casa Tua is part of an upscale restaurant chain with locations in Miami, New York, Paris, and Aspen, Colorado. He recently posed for a photo at the building’s sales office with his broker, who promptly posted it on Instagram.
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Ortiz is spending far less on the condo than he sold his mansion for, purchasing a three-bedroom, three-bathroom luxury home featuring a library and a terrace in the 77-unit building where prices range from $3.25 million to $3.75 million, according to the Post.
Having spent 14 of his 20 seasons with the Boston Red Sox, where he won three World Series and the World Series MVP in 2013. Ortiz traded the Northeast’s chilly climes for the Florida sunshine when he retired in 2016.
Ortiz’s ex-wife, Tiffany, oversaw the construction and development of his former mansion, The Wall Street Journal reported, paying $1.5 million for the lot the same year that Ortiz retired. The couple owned multiple homes around the time they sold their former marital home in Miami in 2023, according to the Journal.
At the time of his retirement in 2016, Ortiz earned $22 million, according to Forbes, with $16 million of that amount representing his salary. He signed endorsement deals with multiple brands, including MasterCard (NYSE:MA), JetBlue (NASDAQ:JBLU), Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO), and Buffalo Wild Wings, while continuing to work with previously affiliated companies such as Dunkin’ Donuts, New Balance, and Marucci.
According to ESPN, Ortiz signed a one-year deal in 2015 that earned him $16 million, with team options for 2016 and 2017. However, he never played in the 2017 season. Ortiz earned over $160 million during his entire career, according to Sportskeeda.
Ortiz was severely shot and wounded in 2019 while at the Dial Bar and Lounge in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He had three surgeries. Eventually, 11 suspects were arrested. The Dominican Attorney General’s office stated that Ortiz had not been the intended target.
“It was crazy because you go from spending a whole day with your kids in a facility where your kids are having fun, and all of a sudden you’re in a hospital, not knowing what is going to end up happening to you,” Ortiz told WBZ-TV three months after the shooting. “You learn that your life can change in seconds, not only yours – your life and the people around you.”
Beyond the selfies between Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and the friendly conversations between the pair on stage, all is not well with Microsoft’s $13 billion AI investment. Over the past year, multiple reports have painted a picture of a Microsoft and OpenAI relationship that is straining under pressure.
As OpenAI battles for access to more compute power and less reliance on Microsoft, tensions have been rising during negotiations over the future of OpenAI’s business and its Microsoft partnership. Microsoft backed down on being the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI earlier this year, but OpenAI still needs Microsoft’s approval to convert part of its business to a for-profit company. That’s led to a potentially explosive outcome.
OpenAI executives have now reportedly considered accusing Microsoft of anticompetitive behavior, which could mean regulators look even more closely at the terms of Microsoft and OpenAI’s contract for potential violations of antitrust laws. The Wall Street Journal reports that OpenAI’s potential acquisition of AI coding tool Windsurf is at the heart of the latest standoff, as OpenAI wants Windsurf to be exempt from its existing contract with Microsoft.
If OpenAI does wage a public war against its biggest partner, Google will be grinning from ear to ear. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) opened an investigation into Microsoft last year under the Biden administration, and the Trump administration is reportedly pushing ahead with the antitrust probe — including looking at Microsoft’s AI investments and deal with OpenAI. Google already reportedly urged the FTC to kill Microsoft’s exclusive deal with OpenAI, so regulators will be keen to hear directly from OpenAI. It’s more than ironic given that Microsoft’s initial OpenAI investment was triggered by Google fears.
Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI is complicated, and the pair are intertwined both technologically and financially. While it’s been widely reported that OpenAI shares 20 percent of its revenues with Microsoft, there are additional revenue-sharing agreements in place, according to sources who are familiar with the arrangement.
Microsoft receives 20 percent of the revenue OpenAI earns for ChatGPT and the AI startup’s API platform, but Microsoft also invoices OpenAI for inferencing services. As Microsoft runs an Azure OpenAI service that offers OpenAI’s models directly to businesses, Microsoft also pays 20 percent of its revenue from this business directly to OpenAI.
Microsoft also has an unreported revenue share related to OpenAI’s impact on Bing and Microsoft Edge. If Microsoft’s search and news advertising revenue grows by 15 percent year-over-year, Microsoft then pays a 10 percent revenue share to OpenAI. This revenue sharing deal scales up to 20 percent, depending on year-on-year growth.
These complicated revenue-sharing agreements show how difficult it will be for OpenAI to break from this partnership. Microsoft’s multibillion-dollar investments also entitle it to up to 49 percent of the profit generated by OpenAI’s for-profit arm. Given OpenAI is far from profitability and Microsoft has a share of OpenAI’s losses, the software giant is still years away from seeing those profit returns.
But OpenAI is trying to convince Microsoft to give up its entitlement to future profits in return for a stake in the reshaped OpenAI business. The Information reports that this could give Microsoft an approximately 33 percent stake, if it’s willing to give up the capped share of profits. Microsoft’s OpenAI contract also includes a clause that means it will relinquish its rights to OpenAI revenue and its AI models when the startup achieves AGI. This is also reportedly linked to OpenAI’s profits.
While OpenAI is keen to get access to more compute and a better deal, Microsoft has also been hedging its bets on OpenAI over the past 18 months.
The trouble all started when the OpenAI board fired Altman in November 2023. This immediately hit Microsoft’s stock price and had executives working overtime during a holiday period to try and salvage the situation. Even Nadella was directly involved in the discussions, and he announced that Microsoft would be hiring Altman, OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman, and others “to lead a new advanced AI research team.”
The OpenAI board quickly backed down, and Altman was reinstated as CEO, but sources familiar with Microsoft’s AI efforts tell me that this messy incident shook the company’s confidence in OpenAI.
Nadella has been pushing Microsoft’s AI teams to move quickly on hosting OpenAI alternative models as part of its Azure AI Foundry business. Microsoft doesn’t have to share revenues from this business with OpenAI, as it’s set up as a way for developers to get access to a variety of AI models from different AI labs.
Engineers worked through the night to get DeepSeek’s R1 model ready for Azure AI Foundry earlier this year, something that Nadella pushed for. He also pushed for Microsoft to host xAI’s Grok 3 models recently, in a bid to be seen as the key host for popular or emerging AI models. Microsoft is in a race to build what it calls an AI “agent factory,” and it needs the best models to achieve this.
Microsoft might even create its own AI models to replace OpenAI ones. Mustafa Suleyman, the Google DeepMind cofounder who is now CEO of Microsoft AI, is overseeing Microsoft’s long-term efforts to replace OpenAI models. That’s a complicated project that’s not close to fruition yet, and Microsoft seems to be making more progress with small language models like Phi that can even run locally on Copilot Plus PCs.
Both Azure AI Foundry and Microsoft’s AI model experimentation are clearly a hedge against OpenAI, especially as the pair are increasingly on a path to competing for the same customers. Microsoft even listed OpenAI as a direct competitor for the first time last year, just months after OpenAI released GPT-4o, a faster model that it made free to all ChatGPT users. At the time, I wrote that OpenAI’s GPT-4o release surprised some people at Microsoft, because it undermined Microsoft’s own paid AI services on Azure, including speech and translation features.
OpenAI also sells ChatGPT Team and Enterprise to businesses, while Microsoft is trying to get businesses to buy Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses for its own AI efforts. During an internal town hall meeting earlier this year, Nadella said that he wants Microsoft to take inspiration from OpenAI so that its future cloud work “will look like ChatGPT.”
Whatever happens next in Microsoft’s complicated relationship with OpenAI, I fully expect Microsoft to continue aggressively striking deals that embrace rival AI models. As Nadella has proven time and time again since becoming CEO more than a decade ago, he loves a good partnership.
Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox has an AMD chip inside and is ‘not locked to a single store.’ A week after I wrote in Notepad that the Xbox Ally handhelds are a teaser for the next-gen Xbox console, Microsoft has confirmed its next Xbox is “not locked to a single store,” just like Windows isn’t. In fact, Xbox president Sarah Bond even says Microsoft wants to ensure “Windows is the number one platform for gaming.” Notice the focus on Windows as the top platform for gaming, not Xbox as we know it today. As I’ve been writing for years, Xbox and Windows are moving a lot closer together.
Microsoft should change its Copilot advertising, watchdog says. The BBB National Programs’ National Advertising Division (NAD) has recommended that Microsoft discontinue or modify some of its Copilot claims. NAD has reviewed Microsoft’s Copilot advertising and criticized its productivity claims and confusing use of Copilot branding. Microsoft says it disagrees with those conclusions, but that it “will follow NAD’s recommendations for clarifying its claims.”
Call of Duty: WWII and a trio of Warcraft games head to Game Pass. It’s a strong month for Game Pass, with the addition of Warcraft I: Remastered, Warcraft II: Remastered, Warcraft III: Reforged, and Call of Duty: WWII. These titles join the recently released FBC: Firebreak and the Rematch soccer game that’s launching tomorrow on Game Pass.
Microsoft accidentally swapped Windows 11’s startup sound with Vista’s. Microsoft has mistakenly replaced Windows 11’s boot sound — in test versions of the OS — with the startup chime from Windows Vista. The change came in the same week that Microsoft made it clear it thinks Apple’s new Liquid Glass design bears some resemblance to its Aero Glass look in Windows Vista. Conspiracy theories aside, it’s likely an innocent bug that has appeared in early Windows 11 builds before.
Microsoft’s Windows Hello facial recognition no longer works in the dark. I’ve noticed that Windows Hello face unlock on my Surface Laptop hasn’t been working as consistently in recent months, and it appears I’m not alone. Microsoft quietly made a change to Windows Hello in April, in order to fix a vulnerability with Windows Hello spoofing. It means that Windows Hello facial recognition no longer works reliably in a dark room. I sure hope Microsoft can return this functionality in a future update, though.
Microsoft has started testing its AI agent in the Windows 11 Settings app. A new AI agent has started appearing in test versions of Windows 11, which allows you to more naturally find settings. For example, you can type “my mouse pointer is too small” and immediately get offered suggestions on how to resize it. I expect we’ll see a lot more AI agents like this in Windows in the coming months.
Security researchers found a zero-click vulnerability in Microsoft 365 Copilot. The first zero-click AI vulnerability has been discovered in Microsoft 365 Copilot. Security researchers at Aim Labs found that attackers could “automatically exfiltrate sensitive and proprietary information” from Microsoft 365 Copilot without users even having to do anything. Microsoft has fixed the flaw, which allowed attackers to send a malicious prompt injection disguised as a normal email that would instruct Copilot to pull sensitive information from a user’s account.
Microsoft announces cloud data protection plans for Europe. Microsoft says that any data stored in its European cloud data centers will now stay in Europe. It’s part of a new set of commitments from Microsoft to reassure European businesses that their data won’t be moved into US data centers and beyond the reach of European laws.
Microsoft appears at the Nasdaq closing bell. Microsoft joined the Nasdaq’s closing bell ceremony last week. The appearance was part of a partnership between the pair for Nasdaq’s Boardvantage portal on Microsoft Azure. Asha Sharma, Microsoft’s head of AI platform products, says the company’s Foundry services have helped contribute to a “25 percent reduction in board-prep time, returning hundreds of hours to boards annually.”
Microsoft is talking to developers about Xbox handhelds. Pay close attention to how Microsoft presents its future Xbox platform plans to developers, because it really needs to get them on board. A new page has appeared on Microsoft’s Game Dev portal that encourages developers to “deliver seamless cross-device gameplay so players can access the games they love — anytime, anywhere, on any device.” Microsoft says this work is all about “delivering a consistent, approachable experience anywhere — across handheld, console, PC, cloud, and more.” The devil, as always, will be in the details of how Microsoft expects developers to build “Xbox” games in the future.
Another Microsoft employee resigns with a mass email over Israeli government contracts. Microsoft employee Maryam Shalaby resigned this week and sent an email to thousands of colleagues, protesting the company’s contracts with the Israeli government. Shalaby, a software engineer based in Egypt, says, “Microsoft needs to absolve itself from all partnerships and relations with the Israeli government and Israeli forces before it becomes permanently stamped with the ‘genocide enabler’ label, smearing its ethical and public image.”
I’m always keen to hear from readers, so please drop a comment here, or you can reach me at notepad@theverge.com if you want to discuss anything else. If you’ve heard about any of Microsoft’s secret projects, you can reach me via email at notepad@theverge.com or speak to me confidentially on the Signal messaging app, where I’m tomwarren.01. I’m also tomwarren on Telegram, if you’d prefer to chat there.
Jesse joined ESPN Chicago in September 2009 and covers MLB for ESPN.com.
CHICAGO — One of Matt Armstrong’s earliest memories of his son on an athletic field came not on a baseball diamond, but on the gridiron. When Pete Crow-Armstrong was 7, Matt was the head coach of his flag football team in Southern California. Former major league player and manager Gabe Kapler, who also had a son on the team, was Matt’s assistant.
“I think he was my defensive coordinator,” Matt said.
One day after practice, Kapler was throwing a football around to some of the kids.
“There was a moment when Pete ran this crossing route, like 5 yards up, and then he cut and Gabe whipped the ball to him,” Matt said. “He extended his hands and caught it out in front of him and flew up the field. And Gabe looks at me and says, ‘You know that’s not normal, right?'”
Fast forward about 16 years, and Pete Crow-Armstrong continues to do things that don’t seem normal — although now it’s while manning center field for the Chicago Cubs and batting in the middle of one of the best lineups in Major League Baseball.
The 23-year-old also flashes speed few players possess (his 23 stolen bases rank third in baseball) while providing more power (19 home runs) than his 6-foot, 184-pound frame might suggest. He’s burst onto the scene this season, helping the Cubs into first place in the National League Central. His latest heroics include an improbable diving catch to preserve a one-run lead Tuesday against the Milwaukee Brewers and a laser off Wrigley Field’s right-field scoreboard just a few minutes later that registered at 111.5 mph off the bat. The two moments led to 38,000 fans chanting, “M-V-P! M-V-P!”
Crow-Armstrong’s infectious personality is also a huge part of his appeal for a fan base starving for a star and a league always trying to sell its game. He has garnered the most All-Star votes of any National League outfielder and fourth most among all players — behind only Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman. He connects with the young and old in the stands at Wrigley as well as inside the Cubs’ clubhouse.
He might be the complete package.
“He’s incredibly kind and genuine and full of energy and good with kids,” teammate Dansby Swanson said. “Just seeing him with players or coaches’ kids. He’s so kindhearted and fun towards them.
“Energy is attractive. He’s full of it.”
WHEN YOU TALK to anyone who has known Crow-Armstrong for a while, they’ll tell you the same thing: He’s always been like this. Full of energy and exuberance.
“Always in motion,” his mom, Ashley Crow, said. “And just completely game for anything. He just loves [baseball]. He’s loved it as early as 3.”
Even before turning 3, Crow-Armstrong was hitting baseballs. A T-ball set from an aunt came as a gift for his second birthday — but quickly became obsolete.
“Within a week he had abandoned the tee entirely,” Matt recalled. “He wanted us to throw to him.”
Matt and Ashley were working actors at the time. Both appeared on the television show “Heroes,” and Ashley had played the mom from the movie “Little Big League,” in which her character’s 12-year-old son takes over the Minnesota Twins. But there’s really no line to be drawn from their acting days to their son’s emerging stardom, even with all three ending up in the entertainment industry.
“Everyone expects this Hollywood answer to this question,” Crow-Armstrong told ESPN recently. “Nah, I was outside every day playing ball. Minimal screen time. I went to set once or twice, but other than that I was in the backyard. We had a big backyard.”
Said Ashley: “That backyard was his home. He would wake up in the morning and head right to the backyard.”
Soon, PCA — as he’s commonly known — would join Sherman Oaks Little League, where Detroit Tigers pitcher Jack Flaherty once played. In fact, Flaherty umpired some of Crow-Armstrong’s games.
“He’s a good kid,” Flaherty said before facing Crow-Armstrong recently. “Always has been.”
Flaherty was asked how he planned to get the hot-hitting third-year player out.
“I’m going to hit him,” Flaherty deadpanned.
Crow-Armstrong went 1-for-3 off Flaherty, but the ball stayed in the ballpark, a victory for pitchers these days. Power wasn’t his trademark growing up anyway. His legs were.
“He’s always run the bases like someone is chasing him,” childhood friend and Cubs minor leaguer Drew Bowser said. “He just kept getting better and better and better. What you’re seeing is not surprising. At least not to me.”
Bowser hit the first home run off PCA, the pitcher. They were 7 years old.
“Oh, I remember it,” Crow-Armstrong said. “Only gave up three home runs in my Little League career and he was one of them. His mom has a video of it.”
Bowser added: “He just stood there and looked at it. I would have been crying.”
As with many kids, it was a time when Crow-Armstrong fell in love with the game. He was asked what comes to mind when he considers his early memories of baseball.
“It’s kind of a corny cinema in a way,” he said. “The dads are drinking beer and all the kids are playing whiffle ball and throwing the football on the field after hours. Just being kids.
“I found so much of myself on a baseball field.”
Eventually, Crow-Armstrong would join the famed Harvard-Westlake high school that Flaherty, New York Yankees pitcher Max Fried and Boston Red Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito had attended. They were all older, but Crow-Armstrong felt their presence.
“They definitely shaped Harvard-Westlake’s baseball program to set it up to get players like myself and make it a baseball recruitment,” Crow-Armstrong said. “I had no business going to Harvard-Westlake, financially or academically. Those guys built that program up.”
The coach at Harvard-Westlake, Jared Halpert, likes to tell a story that illustrates the confidence of his former student.
During a fall league game, the teams were tied heading into the final inning. Crow-Armstrong was in the on-deck circle.
“Being a coach, I told him to stay within himself and that we don’t need anything special,” Halpert recalled in a phone interview. “Just get a good swing off.
“He told me to get away from him — it may have been more colorful — he was going to end the game. First or second pitch he hit a ball over a house in right field.”
Crow-Armstrong remembered that moment: “I think I was nice about it, but yeah I told him, ‘I got this.'”
Many of Halpert’s former players who are now in the big leagues commonly return to the high school to hang out with the current team, including Crow-Armstrong.
“There’s a little bit of a reserve by them,” Halpert said. “No one wants to get out there and compete with the high school kids. Nothing to gain. But Pete just doesn’t care about that. He’s out there every day when he comes back here. He’s taking reps and getting after it with these high school kids. He doesn’t care how he looks.
“When you talk about little kids playing baseball, this is the epitome of that. It’s a business, but this kid is in love with the game. That’s what he’s showing everybody right now.”
LOOKING BACK NOW, Jed Hoyer, the Cubs’ president of baseball operations, feels fortunate. A shoulder injury — along with the COVID pandemic — might be the reason Crow-Armstrong is currently manning center field for Hoyer’s team and not the New York Mets.
After a successful career at Harvard-Westlake, PCA was drafted 19th by the Mets in 2020. He began his pro career the following season but lasted only six games due to a shoulder injury which required surgery. It was during his recovery that summer when he was traded to the Cubs in a deal headlined by shortstop Javier Baez.
“That year, we had a bunch of rentals and other executives were not willing to talk about their top prospects at Double-A and above,” Hoyer said. “So we dipped down to Single-A.”
Chicago was in the midst of stripping apart its championship core from the previous decade, and Hoyer had a lot on his plate. Along with the Baez deal, he traded stars Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo, hoping he would find a good prospect or two in return. PCA has been the best of them.
“Honestly, we were fortunate he was hurt,” Hoyer said. “Out of sight, out of mind a little bit.”
Crow-Armstrong summed it up this way: “When you’re hurt in the minor leagues, nobody gives a s—. It gave me quiet time to get healthy and go work on my s—.”
Crow-Armstrong worked his way up the Cubs system, hitting 20 home runs and stealing 37 bases in 2023, but it was his defense that opened eyes. Scouts said he was major-league-ready in the field and the team would eventually agree, bringing him up in 2023 for a 13-game taste of the big leagues.
He didn’t get a hit.
Then last year, Crow-Armstrong’s struggles continued during his first full season with the Cubs, but he eventually figured things out at the plate over the course of the last month, hitting .284 in his final 31 games. Still, the vibe he gave off was about defense and stealing bases.
The same could have been said of PCA early this season — until he arrived in his hometown for a series against the Los Angeles Dodgers in mid-April. He was hitting .200 with no home runs after the first game.
Over the course of that series, he found his rhythm at the plate — and everything changed.
“I got back on time,” Crow-Armstrong said. “I was late [to hitting balls] all year leading up to that.”
Since April 13, Crow-Armstrong has a .959 OPS, including all 19 of his home runs and 17 of his stolen bases. And he became an RBI machine, moving up from seventh in the order to hitting leadoff in some games and cleanup in others. With runners in scoring position, he’s hitting .342 and is tied for the league lead with eight home runs.
Crow-Armstrong has also played a near-flawless center field, tracking down balls with a burst of energy, stealing sure hits off the bat while daring baserunners to test his arm. Like his power, his arm strength is also deceiving, ranking ninth among center fielders. And he leads all outfielders in defensive runs saved.
“He’s playing at as high a level that I’ve seen a center fielder play,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said this week. “We’re 70 games in but how he’s playing it, it’s as good as I’ve seen.”
His offensive and defensive contributions have him surprisinglyahead of Ohtani in fWAR, leading all NL players.
“You don’t know what his ceiling is,” Cincinnati Reds manager Terry Francona said recently, shaking his head.
Francona’s team has been the recipient of the full Crow-Armstrong experience this season, which includes a game-changing grand slam, 10 RBIs and three stolen bases over the course of six games against the Reds.
“He can do it all,” Francona said. “I hear people say he doesn’t walk and everything, but that’s probably how he’s a good hitter. He’s aggressive. He can beat you with his legs. He can hit the ball out of the ballpark. He can go get the ball in center. He can bunt.
“S—, I hope he does bunt next time against us.”
What’s made Crow-Armstrong stand out more than anything is his ability to hit pitches nobody has any business hitting. According to ESPN Research, he has hit a pitch the second furthest from the strike zone for a home run this season (8.1 inches above the edge of the strike zone) and the lowest pitch for a home run (5.8 inches below the zone).
“Off the plate, in,” veteran teammate Justin Turner said. “Off the plate, away. A 100 mph on the black away against Hunter Greene. The heater 8 inches above the zone against Andrew Heaney. The slider in Milwaukee that almost bounced. The stuff up and in.”
Crow-Armstrong does have a 43% chase rate, second highest among qualified hitters, but has nine extra base hits on pitches outside the zone. He’s a free swinger, with only 14 walks, but continues to do damage on pitcher’s pitches. The comp heard most in the Cubs’ clubhouse when it comes to his bad-ball hitting is Rafael Devers.
“The power in all zones is crazy,” Turner said. “Usually, power guys have a sweet spot. He really doesn’t have a sweet spot. When he’s on time and ready to go, it doesn’t matter where it’s at. He has a chance to drive it out of the yard.”
Said Reds reliever Brent Suter with a shrug: “He’s hitting the ones he’s supposed to hit and hitting the ones he’s not supposed to hit.”
Cubs assistant hitting coach John Mallee has always been a proponent of hitting the ball in the air. He helped coach the 2016 Cubs to a World Series title, which included an MVP award for former Cub Bryant, but he likens PCA to another hitter of his from more than a decade ago.
“I worked with Jose Altuve in Houston,” Mallee said. “He always profiled as a bigger guy, meaning he hit the ball harder than you would think as a smaller player. Pete also profiles as a big guy, but he’s a little guy [frame-wise] with speed.
“Why would you want to hit it on the ground? They stand where you hit it for the most part. He naturally gets it in the air.”
SPEED AND POWER are what makes Crow-Armstrong stand out on the field, and now they’ve helped make him one of the most popular players in Chicago, regardless of sport.
His jerseys already litter Wrigley Field and, according to league data, he’s a hit on social media, too, ranking sixth among all players in follower growth percentage on Instagram this season. For a league in search of superstars, MLB sees Crow-Armstrong as the next big thing.
“We are huge fans of PCA on and off the field,” said EJ Aguado, MLB vice president of player engagement and celebrity relations. “He’s one of the great personalities in the game, and his on-field performance speaks for itself. We’ve been engaged with Pete for some time, going back to his minor league days. We’re also in touch with his team at CAA and the Cubs on some cool upcoming projects to showcase the amazing season he’s having and who he is off the field — stay tuned.”
His charisma and sense of fun was developed at an early age. His dad believes being an only child made him more comfortable around adults, while his mom thinks team sports was his outlet to grow into such a fan favorite.
“He always makes time for people, especially kids,” catcher Carson Kelly said. “True professional but has that kid in him. It’s why the younger generation probably gravitates towards him.”
PCA said: “That’s who I’m here for, kids. I definitely have some kid in me. It’s fun being Uncle Pete. And it’s the coolest feeling when Matt Boyd says his son is cheering me on when he’s watching TV. Or Carson Kelly’s kids.”
The fact it extends to the field is all the better.
“The way he celebrates his teammates,” left fielder Ian Happ said. “You see him after a walk-off running out as the first one out there.
“We have pretty opposite personalities. That makes it fun. Watching him play, there is something about the excitement. It’s good for me to see on a daily basis.”
As everything swirls around him, Crow-Armstrong maintains his daily routine. He’s recently started hitting off a tee — perhaps for the first time since he was a 2-year-old using his aunt’s birthday gift — then joins teammates on the infield, taking grounders and helping them turn double plays during pregame practice. Then it’s a word or two for a stadium employee or a couple of young fans whose eyes light up when he walks up to them. Watching his day unfold brings back his mom’s observation: always in motion.
When the game starts, the grass in center field, and the left side of the batter’s box, become his domain. He transforms into PCA.
“It’s just super special I get to do this every day,” Crow-Armstrong said, standing near the Cubs’ dugout. “I know that sounds cliché. All of us are replaceable. People’s careers as fans go on a lot longer than us as players. This is my space and that’s my center field, but it’s also theirs. It was theirs first.”
Bobby Flay remembers his late friend for more than just her cooking.
After Food Network host Anne Burrell was founddead at her New York home on June 17, Flay spoke out to share his treasured memories with the late chef.
“Worst Cooks in America was the funnest show on TV,” he wrote on his Instagram Story June 18. “All of your co-hosts (me included) were just alongside for the Anne Burrell ride.”
But the 55-year-old impacted him in ways beyond the kitchen.
“The greatest gift I got from AB,” Flay continued, “was turning me on to a world of Maine Coon Cats (including Nacho)… a gift that I’ll have forever.”
He accompanied the tribute with a smiling photo of Burrell hugging her two cats, which inspired Flay’s love for the felines.
In fact, just a day before Burrell’s passing, Flay had shared an update on his fur baby in honor of Father’s Day.
“The recipe for Made by Nacho: Take one chef, add lifelong cat obsession, simmer for decades,” he wrote on Instagram. “This is what cat-dad-since-forever looks like.”
O’Brien made it three from three in juvenile sprints this week with 8-13 favourite Charles Darwin a clear victor of the Norfolk Stakes.
The winner broke sharply from the stalls and Moore was in control from thereon, sending his mount clear in the final furlong to beat runner-up Wise Approach by two and a quarter lengths.
“He’s a big, powerful, strong horse. He really looks like a four-year-old racing against two-year-olds,” said O’Brien.
O’Brien and Moore combined again to win the Ribblesdale Stakes with 7-1 chance Garden Of Eden.
Stablemate Island Hopping set a strong gallop and as he faded, Moore was well positioned to take advantage.
The jockey had looked set to grind out victory on Serious Contender in the King George V Stakes, but 3-1 favourite Merchant swooped late to win.
Tom Marquand came with a driving run on his mount to triumph for trainer William Haggas and owners Highclere Racing.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has endorsed Democrat Rebecca Cooke in her attempt for a rematch against Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) in a battleground Wisconsin district.
Sanders said in a statement, first reported by NBC News, that he’s supporting Cooke to represent Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District because she will “stand up for working families and take on the greed of powerful special interests.”
“Rebecca is a working-class fighter who developed her populist roots in rural Western Wisconsin,” the senator continued. “A daughter of farmers, a waitress and a small business owner — she’s lived through failed policies from Washington elites and is ready to deliver tangible outcomes that working people will actually feel.”
Cooke previously ran for the House seat twice, losing the Democratic nomination in 2022 before winning the primary last year. Democrats eyed Van Orden’s seat as a possible pickup opportunity and she lost to him narrowly by less than 3 points.
She’s now seeking to face him again in what the party hopes will be a stronger year for their prospects in 2026.
Cooke said she’s “honored” to receive Sanders’s endorsement, calling him a “champion for the working class.”
“He’s spent his career fighting for the same values that drive our campaign here in Wisconsin’s Third District: putting people over politics, taking on corporate greed, and building a future that works for everyone—not just the wealthy and well-connected,” she said.
Cooke faces a couple primary opponents but has notched a wide range of Democratic endorsements from progressives and moderates. That includes support from the Blue Dog PAC, which backs moderate Democrats, and EMILYs List.
BPCE Equipment Solutions has lost its Chief Commercial Officer Florence Roussel Pollet just four months into the role, as the asset finance executive departs to join BNP Paribas Leasing Solutions.
Effective from June 16, Roussel-Pollet was appointed President of CNH Industrial Capital Europe, the joint venture between CNH Industrial, IVECO Group, and BNP Paribas Leasing Solutions, and joins the Executive Committee of BNP’s Equipment & Logistics Solutions International Business Line.
Her appointment follows the promotion of Mariusz Tarasiuk to CEO of BNP Paribas Leasing Solutions’ DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). Roussel-Pollet is now tasked with leading a key partnership that underpins financing for CNH and Iveco’s machinery and vehicles across Europe.
The move marks a return to familiar ground for Roussel-Pollet, who built her career at Société Générale Equipment Finance (SGEF) from 2001, rising to global commercial leadership before joining BPCE in early 2025. Her time at BPCE coincided with the group’s acquisition of SGEF from Société Générale, which exited the asset finance space in 2023 as part of a strategic divestment.
“This role represents an excellent opportunity to leverage our strategic partnership and drive sustainable growth across our core markets,” said Roussel-Pollet, adding that she was “thrilled to be joining BNP Paribas Leasing Solutions” and eager to deliver “innovative financing solutions” to CNH and IVECO customers.
Operating under the CNH Capital and IVECO CAPITAL brands, CNH Industrial Capital Europe offers a range of custom financing solutions—including hire purchase, finance leases, and operating leases—in markets such as France, Germany, Italy, the UK, and Spain. These services are critical to the commercial success of CNH and Iveco Group, supporting their industrial vehicle and machinery sales.
Jean-Michel Boyer, Head of the Equipment & Logistics Solutions business line at BNP Paribas Leasing Solutions, praised the hire: “Florence’s extensive background in structured finance, international leasing, and commercial strategy will be instrumental in strengthening our strategic partnership with CNH and Iveco Group.”
Roussel-Pollet’s quick departure from BPCE will raise eyebrows in the French banking sector. She had been appointed CCO of BPCE Equipment Solutions in early 2025 following the group’s purchase of SGEF. In that role, she oversaw global sales across 14 entities and managed operations in the US, Brazil, China, and Hong Kong.
The SGEF sale marked Société Générale’s broader move to simplify its business model and exit non-core sectors like equipment finance. BPCE rebranded the acquired business as BPCE Equipment Solutions, hoping to build scale in leasing and structured finance.
“BPCE COO Roussel-Pollet exits after four months to join BNP Paribas Leasing Solutions” was originally created and published by Leasing Life, a GlobalData owned brand.
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With FBC: Firebreak, Remedy Entertainment has entered the world of the first-person co-op shooter. Set in its Control universe — specifically the site of the first game, the brutalist nightmare office called the Oldest House — players control a member of the titular three-person team of the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC), tasked with addressing various containment breaches. Unfortunately, all the aspects that make Remedy’s worlds so intriguing are completely absent in this bare-bones co-op shooter, which offers nothing for either longtime fans or those invested in existing shooters.
Players in Firebreak are like firefighters or disaster responders, with each member occupying a different role: mechanic, water carrier, electrician. Across five recurring levels, teams must work to stop the spread of corruption, called the Hiss (a mysterious red entity that turns people into raging zombies and other types of creatures). Objectives vary from destroying Post-it notes to fixing fans, all while being assailed by swarms of various nightmare monsters.
Control, the central foundation of Remedy’s wider connected universe that also includes Alan Wake, is at its core weird. It’s how Remedy developers have described it — to me and others — allowing for fluctuations between the terrifying, the quirky, the odd, and the hilarious. The Bureau itself is a government agency tasked with containing bizarre items and reacting to huge and strange world events: for example, a traffic light that, when it flashes red, sends people to different locations, or a fridge that eats people if you stop looking at it.
In Remedy’s universe, FBC workers document, monitor, and research these sorts of items with the gray-faced enthusiasm of every bored researcher. The number of times the toy duck teleports needs to be logged as much as how many coffee filters need to be replaced in the break room.
That stone-faced reaction to the weird is only mildly present in Firebreak, with brief interactions with mission provider Hank Wilder, the security chief, detailing bizarre tasks in a slight monotone. Even player character barks demonstrate this. One of the player voice options is called “Pencil Pusher,” who, when receiving friendly fire, screams that such actions “violate office policy.” Health restoration involves characters huddling in a shower together; you can fix equipment by hitting it with a wrench.
As someone obsessed with Control, I was eagerly anticipating a return — particularly in the shoes of ordinary personnel, rather than the almost godlike head of the agency, Jesse Faden (who you play in Control). But that sense of unease that plays off the quirkiness is not here. The Oldest House and its enemies feel like little more than an aesthetic, or even a kind of mod, for a generic co-op shooter. There is no sense of progression, no overarching goal to which you are working. Levels and tasks repeat. There aren’t even creepy big-level bosses, like the terrors in Control, except in one area.
You will have seen all the game has to offer within a few hours, since each level has only three or four stages (with each successive stage in the same level taking you further in), and some stages can be completed within three to four minutes. As an example, one stage involves destroying replicating Post-it notes. Once you have destroyed a sufficient number, you rush back to the elevator as a horde descends. The second stage requires the same objective, only this time you gain access to a second area to destroy more notes. The third stage repeats this, only you go further in and face a boss. All end with rushing back.
While the game offers modifiers — such as harder enemies and corrupting anomalies that can slightly keep you on your toes — the core aspect wears out quickly. I do not feel I am making any headway in clearing out an entire level, since once cleared, there’s no indicator our team made any difference. The only incentive is to obtain better gear. At least the game doesn’t push microtransactions and is quite generous in its rewards, especially on harder difficulties.
Image: Remedy Entertainment
You also level up various roles independently: playing mainly as the mechanic, you will have to start from scratch if you switch to, for example, the electrician role. These roles do feel distinct, as you are given different gear and abilities. The mechanic can almost instantly repair broken equipment, a very useful skill given how many broken machines there are. But the game is filled with various hazards, such as fire and gunk, which the water soaker character — with their water cannon — can negate.
Shooting feels good, but guns are standard: shotguns, machine guns, pistols. Don’t expect weird weapons like the Service Weapon from Control. This is meat-and-potatoes destruction.
That’s precisely what disappointed me: ordinary workers in a world where fridges eat people is what made me love Control, and the idea of being able to play one of the lowly workers was exciting. Yet that charm is largely absent. I barely felt part of the FBC and it didn’t seem like I was containing anything.
In Control, you would clear rooms and see the game world change permanently. Obviously a co-op shooter can’t do things in the exact same way. But why not tie something like this to the host player? If I have to see the same level three times, progressing further each level, why not show some permanent change from a previous run? There’s no indication the world is reacting to the Firebreak team’s efforts.
In reality, Firebreak feels like one of the multiplayer modes that used to be tacked on to big-budget single-player games (think Mass Effect 3, for example). If players don’t feel like they’re making a difference as part of a team trying to stop an outbreak, why should we bother? The levels are akin to hero-shooter arenas, devoid of the deep lore of a Remedy game. At least with hero shooters, playing against other people keeps play constantly fresh. This felt like it was stale within a few hours, an avocado of a game.
I genuinely don’t know who Firebreak is for. Longtime fans of Control won’t find collectibles, environmental storytelling, or anything to even read. And those looking for meaningful multiplayer shooters have plenty of options already. This is a strange dim light for a studio that usually produces brilliance.
FBC: Firebreak is available now on the PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X / S. It’s also available for Game Pass and PlayStation Plus subscribers.
HE WAS A no-star recruit coming out of high school, landing at a small college before a sudden growth spurt. He didn’t register on NBA scouts’ radars until a couple of years later, as success didn’t come immediately even at that level, and then zoomed up the draft boards into the lottery late in the process.
This once unheralded prospect just kept getting better and better after arriving in the NBA, establishing himself as a do-it-all co-star, a perfect complement to an MVP who led the league in scoring. He earned his first All-Star appearance in his third season and hoisted the Larry O’Brien Trophy — for the first of several times — before hitting his prime.
It was a heck of a career path for Scottie Pippen, the Hall of Famer who won six titles as Michael Jordan’s superstar sidekick with the Chicago Bulls. More than a few decades later, Jalen Williams seems to be on a similar journey, a blossoming star thriving in the shadow of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
The Oklahoma City Thunder have a chance to clinch their first championship in Thursday’s Game 6 of the NBA Finals against the Indiana Pacers in large part because of Williams’ performance in the series. The 6-foot-6 Williams has done everything from serving as the primary defender on Pacers star power forward Pascal Siakam to running point while his scoring total has increased in each game, rising to a playoff-career-high 40 points in the Thunder’s pivotal Game 5 win.
Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams have put themselves in that sort of company with their production in this series. They have combined for 291 points in the Finals. According to ESPN Research, the only duos to score more points through five games in a Finals are Jordan and Pippen in 1993, LeBron James and Kyrie Irving in 2017 and Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant in 2017.
“He is pretty special,” Pippen told ESPN. “I’m enjoying watching him. I see a lot of me in him for sure. I see a guy rising to be one of the top players in this league. He’s definitely a player that is capable of being able to lead that franchise to multiple championships — him and Shai, of course.”
PIPPEN WAS IN the final years of his career with the Portland Trail Blazers by the time Williams, 24, was born. But Williams is enough of a basketball historian to be flattered by the comparison.
“I feel like a new-age Scottie maybe,” Williams told ESPN. “I’m not mad at that one at all. I like that. And then obviously Shai gets a little Jordan comparison, so that’s cool. It’s very cool. Any time you compared to somebody like that, you’re doing something right.”
Williams has done a lot of things right since arriving in Oklahoma City as the No. 12 pick in the 2022 draft, one of several selections the Thunder acquired from the LA Clippers along with Gilgeous-Alexander in the Paul George trade that poured the foundation for a potential dynasty.
Williams made an instant impact, finishing as the Rookie of the Year runner-up, and has continued to develop rapidly as the Thunder made double-digit win jumps in each of his first three seasons. He earned his first All-Star selection along with a third-team All-NBA spot and second-team All-Defensive nod this season.
Pippen’s résumé features seven All-Star and All-NBA selections, 10 All-Defensive honors, the six championship rings, a Hall of Fame induction and a spot on the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team. It’s extraordinarily high praise to put Williams in the same sentence at this point.
But Pippen doesn’t want to limit Williams to that particular comparison, pointing out that Williams’ potential is even higher because of his scoring ability in this pace-and-space era of the NBA. Williams averaged 21.6 points per game this season — more than Pippen averaged in all but one season of his career, which was 1993-94, when Jordan was on his retirement sabbatical.
“I don’t even want to put a cap on him to say that he’s going to be me,” Pippen said. “I see him being greater, if I can say that. Just because of where the game is today. They have offensive freedom. We didn’t have that. We mostly ran out of a system. These guys have the freedom to shoot 3-balls and things of that nature. Players that are playing in today’s game have a chance to be better than players in the past because of the ability to shoot the ball.
“If this kid continues to shoot the 3-ball the way that he shoots it, I’m not going to sit here and argue with nobody and say that you can compare us. Because you can’t. He wins.”
Williams proudly smirked as the media inquired about his progress as a playmaker in the wake of the Thunder’s Game 4 road win.
Thunder coach Mark Daigneault had used Williams as a point forward in that game, having him serve as Oklahoma City’s primary offensive initiator to ease the burden on Gilgeous-Alexander against the Pacers’ relentless, full-court defense. Williams, the second-youngest player in the league this season to average at least 20 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists per game, rose to the challenge. He scored 27 points, keeping the Thunder within striking distance, and set the table for Gilgeous-Alexander’s clutch brilliance as they beautifully executed the two-man game down the stretch of Oklahoma City’s comeback win.
It amused Williams that his performance in a point role could be considered a surprise.
“Well, I grew up short,” Williams said. “So I’ve always been a point guard.”
Williams insisted that the toughest adjustment he had to make in basketball was learning to play on the wing during his first couple of years at Santa Clara. He had sprouted four inches since his high school graduation, his second growth spurt in that range over the span of a few years. He didn’t register as a draft prospect until assuming a point forward role as a college junior, when he averaged 18.0 points and 4.2 assists per game, and then his stock shot up after an impressive showing at the NBA combine.
“I had all the guard skills,” Williams said. “Then when I grew, thank God they didn’t really go anywhere.”
Pippen had a similar ascent at Central Arkansas, where he stayed all four years before going fifth overall in the 1987 draft. Bulls general manager Jerry Krause bet on the talent of a rangy wing with ballhandling skills, floor vision and a 7-3 wing span.
Thunder GM Sam Presti had similar intrigue with Williams, who has a 7-2 wing span, a physical attribute that helped him fill in as Oklahoma City’s starting center during a stretch of the regular season when 7-footers Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein were injured. As versatile and impactful as Williams is defensively, his development with the ball in his hands has fueled his ascension into a star.
“When he started with us, and this has been our approach with most players, it’s not like we just hand them the ball,” Daigneault said. “We put them in the system first, and the guys that are really efficient in the system, they end up banging the door down and show you that they need more. He was in that category.
“We weren’t pushing every button for him, but he just kept showing the ability to take more of a load. His efficiency was not dropping off, and his impact wasn’t dropping off. If anything, it was increasing. Usually when those guys are doing that, they are declaring themselves, and he certainly declared himself.
“Now he is learning all the lessons to be learned in that role.”
WILLIAMS CREDITS THE Thunder’s culture for allowing him to cultivate his game while impacting winning. He isn’t focused on only his individual development, but Williams has worked to grow his game in ways that complement Gilgeous-Alexander, and benefit from the attention paid to the MVP.
As Oklahoma City fans know all too well, a collection of young stars does not guarantee future championship parades. The Thunder’s 2012 Finals team featured three future MVPs — Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden — and never returned to this stage.
But the circumstances surrounding the star trios from the two Oklahoma City’s Finals teams are starkly different. Harden, the Sixth Man of the Year then, wanted a leading role and a maximum contract and got both when he was traded to the Houston Rockets before the next season. Durant and Westbrook won a lot of games together, but they didn’t enhance each other’s games the way that Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams do.
There’s a clear pecking order for the Thunder now, and that’s fine with Williams and Holmgren, who rival executives around the league assume will agree to lucrative contract extensions this offseason.
“It’s very easy when you have a team that likes to do their role,” Williams said. “And I’m not saying that guys can’t branch out, but just when everybody kind of accepts that role for the better of their team … I know mine. When you just have guys that are willing to do that, it allows everybody to grow and get better.
“I’ve had that, and I think what I got good at was understanding how Shai likes to play and being able to patch my game into something that complements him a lot more and can take the load off of him. A lot of it is self-awareness and at the same time willingness. I don’t think everybody’s willing to sacrifice parts of their game to do that. And he does the same thing. He’ll sacrifice parts of his game to make the team better. He can come down and shoot every ball and I’d slap him on the butt and say, ‘Good shot.’ So for him to be able to trust us, too, goes a long way.”
Williams has boosted his scoring total in each of his three seasons, going from 14.1 points per game as a rookie to 19.1 in his second season and 21.6 this season. His assists totals — 3.3, 4.5, 5.1 — have also increased each season.
“‘Dub’ has made tremendous strides,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “He is one of the biggest reasons why we’re here. Him being able to shoulder what he does every night on both ends of the floor takes a lot of pressure off everyone else around him, including myself. He is a gamer. He is a winner. But he continues to get better in every situation. He is a Swiss Army knife, and he’s only getting better with every game he plays. I’m excited to see where he ends up.”
Pippen had that same sort of steady, significant improvement as the Bulls built toward becoming a dynasty that hung six championship banners in eight seasons. He increased his scoring and assists averages each year through the first five seasons of his career. And he warns that Williams should be expected to keep making large strides.
“When guys go through journeys like that, watch out because the sky’s the limit,” Pippen said. “He is going to be a great player because he still feels unwanted. He’s still got that chip on his shoulder that, ‘They don’t know what they missed out on.’
“It’s nothing you get rid of. It’s a part of you. It’s instilled in you for life. He’s making people think now that passed him up. In the future, you will see that he’ll continue to just get better. He’s going to always keep his knife sharp.”
Ryan Lochte is exiting the deep end when it comes to conversations about his marriage.
Two weeks after his wife Kayla Reid announced she had filed for divorce, the 12-time Olympic medalist shared he wouldn’t be engaging with claims about what led to the end of his marriage, including those from a supposed source close to the couple that alleged to People that Ryan had cheated on his wife.
“Kayla and I both wish to keep this matter private for many reasons, most importantly, to protect our children,” he told the outlet in response to the allegations, per a statement published June 18. “For that reason, I also won’t be commenting on this matter, or replying to allegations made by third parties.”
In addition, Ryan—who shares kids Caiden, 7, Liv, 6, and Georgia, 23 months, with Kayla—called their separation “a difficult and very personal time.”
Since the news of their divorce—which Kayla filed for in March, according to court documents obtained by People—more details have surfaced about the couple’s relationship, including that the Lochtes have allegedly accrued more than $270,000 in debt, according to documents obtained by Us Weekly.
