CINCINNATI (AP) — The Milwaukee Brewers set a single-season franchise record with their 14th straight victory Saturday. And, in keeping with recent form, it wasn't easy.
The major league-leading Brewers rallied for the second straight game and beat the Cincinnati Reds 6-5 in 11 innings. This Milwaukee club set a new benchmark — so far — for consecutive victories, surpassing the 1987 team that opened that season by winning its first 13 games.
The Brewers will look to add to their streak in the series finale against division rival Cincinnati on Sunday.
Milwaukee's overall record for consecutive wins is 16 games, from 1986-87, when they won their last three games in 1986 and their first 13 in 1987.
On Friday night, the Brewers' run appeared to be in jeopardy before they rallied from seven runs down through two innings by scoring nine unanswered runs in beating the Reds 10-8.
Milwaukee looked to be in trouble again Saturday, but showed its resilience — for the second time in 24 hours — with the big blow being a pinch-hit, three-run homer in the 11th by Andrew Monasterio.
“It's an amazing feeling,” said Monasterio, who wears the No. 14. “I wasn’t ready for like 14 to 14. ... That’s amazing.”
Monasterio was seemingly prepped for his showstopping and streak-extending moment.
“(Manager) Pat Murphy asked me to be ready three or four times,” the 28-year-old infielder said. "That was the fifth time he asked me to be ready during the game. He asked me in the seventh, ‘Are you ready for a big moment?’ I said, ‘Of course, yeah.’ But I didn’t know it was going to happen like this.”
Milwaukee starter Quinn Priester said his under-11-year-old team went 49-0 and called that fun.
“But not as fun as this,” he said.
Priester said the Brewers have been making the most of every chance provided by opponents.
“We’ve just been giving ourselves every opportunity, and then certainly when we get extra opportunities, we seem to take advantage every single time,” he said. "You get your opportunity, it’s time to go in and make a big swing, make a big pitch. When guys are getting their opportunities, we’re not timid, that’s for sure.”
The Brewers jumped to an early lead when Brice Turang doubled in a run in the second inning. The Reds got solo homers from Ke’Bryan Hayes and Spencer Steer in the sixth for a 2-1 lead.
As it turned out, the Reds helped Milwaukee keep its winning streak alive as the Brewers scored on a throwing error by Cincinnati shortstop Elly De La Cruz in the ninth to tie the game at 2-all. And, the Brewers went ahead in the 10th when Anthony Seigler scored on an error by left fielder Jake Fraley.
Cincinnati battled back in the bottom of the 10th and tied it at 3-all on an RBI double by Hayes.
Ultimately, the Reds provided the Brewers with too many chances to continue their winning ways as Monasterio belted a three-run shot in the 11th — just his second of the season after his first on July 3 against the New York Mets.
The Reds pushed back again in the bottom half, cutting the deficit with a sacrifice fly by Santiago Espinal and trimming their deficit to a run on Noelvi Marte's ninth homer of the year.
But Milwaukee prevailed when reliever Nick Mears got Matt McLain to fly out to the warning track in right-center, ending the game and extending the streak.
Milwaukee is now 34 games over .500 at 78-44 and boasts a nine-game lead in the NL Central over the Chicago Cubs. In the National League, the Brewers are eight games better than the East Division-leading Philadelphia Phillies (70-53).
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Quinn Priester delivers a pitch in the first inning of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds, Saturday, Aug. 16, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Michael Swensen)
Milwaukee Brewers Andruw Monasterio (14) and Sal Frelick (10) celebrate after Monasterio's home run in extra innings of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds, Saturday, Aug. 16, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Michael Swensen)
Milwaukee Brewers Andruw Monasterio, center, and Caleb Durbin (21) celebrate after Monasterio's home run in extra innings of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds, Saturday, Aug. 16, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Michael Swensen)
BEIJING (AP) — In China, the names of things are often either ornately poetic or jarringly direct. A new, wildly popular app among young Chinese people is definitively the latter.
It's called, simply, “Are You Dead?"
In a vast country whose young people are increasingly on the move, the new, one-button app — which has taken the country by digital storm this month — is essentially exactly what it says it is. People who live alone in far-off cities and may be at risk — or just perceived as such by friends or relatives — can push an outsized green circle on their phone screens and send proof of life over the network to a friend or loved one. The cost: 8 yuan (about $1.10).
It's simple and straightforward — essentially a 21st-century Chinese digital version of those American pendants with an alert button on them for senior citizens that gave birth to the famed TV commercial: “I've fallen, and I can't get up!”
Developed by three young people in their 20s, “Are You Dead?” became the most downloaded paid app on the Apple App Store in China last week, according to local media reports. It is also becoming a top download in places as diverse as Singapore and the Netherlands, Britain and India and the United States — in line with the developers' attitude that loneliness and safety aren't just Chinese issues.
“Every country has young people who move to big cities to chase their dreams,” Ian Lü, 29, one of the app's developers, said Thursday.
Lü, who worked and lived alone in the southern city of Shenzhen for five years, experienced such loneliness himself. He said the need for a frictionless check-in is especially strong among introverts. “It's unrealistic,” he said, “to message people every day just to tell them you're still alive.”
Against the backdrop of modern and increasingly frenetic Chinese life, the market for the app is understandable.
Traditionally, Chinese families have tended to live together or at least in close proximity across generations — something embedded deep in the nation's culture until recent years. That has changed in the last few decades with urbanization and rapid economic growth that have sent many Chinese to join what is effectively a diaspora within their own nation — and taken hundreds of millions far from parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles.
Today, the country has more than 100 million households with only one person, according to an annual report from the National Bureau of Statistics of China in 2024.
Consider Chen Xingyu, 32, who has lived on her own for years in Kunming, the capital of southern China’s Yunnan province. “It is new and funny. The name ’Are You Dead?' is very interesting,” Chen said.
Chen, a “lying flat” practitioner who has rejected the grueling, fast-paced career of many in her age group, would try the app but worries about data security. “Assuming many who want to try are women users, if information of such detail about users gets leaked, that’d be terrible,” she said.
Yuan Sangsang, a Shanghai designer, has been living on her own for a decade and describes herself as a “single cow and horse.” She's not hoping the app will save her life — only help her relatives in the event that she does, in fact, expire alone.
"I just don’t want to die with no dignity, like the body gets rotten and smelly before it is found," said Yuan, 38. “That would be unfair for the ones who have to deal with it.”
While such an app might at first seem best suited to elderly people — regardless of their smartphone literacy — all reports indicate that “Are You Dead?” is being snapped up by younger people as the wry equivalent of a social media check-in.
“Some netizens say that the 'Are you dead?' greeting feels like a carefree joke between close friends — both heartfelt and gives a sense of unguarded ease,” the business website Yicai, the Chinese Business Network, said in a commentary. ""It likely explains why so many young people unanimously like this app."
The commentary, by writer He Tao, went further in analyzing the cultural landscape. He wrote that the app's immediate success “serves as a darkly humorous social metaphor, reminding us to pay attention to the living conditions and inner world of contemporary young people. Those who downloaded it clearly need more than just a functional security measure; they crave a signal of being seen and understood.”
Death is a taboo subject in Chinese culture, and the word itself is shunned to the point where many buildings in China have no fourth floor because the word for “four” and the word for “death” sound the same — “si.” Lü acknowledged that the app's name sparked public pressure.
“Death is an issue every one of us has to face,” he said. “Only when you truly understand death do you start thinking about how long you can exist in this world, and how you want to realize the value of your life.”
A few days ago, though, the developers said on their official account on China’s Weibo social platform that they’d pivot to a new name. Their choice: the more cryptic “Demumu,” which they said they hoped could "serve more solo dwellers globally.”
Then, a twist: Late Wednesday, the app team posted on its Weibo account that workshopping the name Demumu didn’t turn out “as well as expected.” The app team is offering a reward for whoever offers a new name that will be picked this weekend. Lü said more than 10,000 people have weighed in.
The reward for the new moniker: $96 — or, in China, 666 yuan.
Fu Ting reported from Washington. AP researcher Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed.
The app Are You Dead? is seen on a smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A woman looks at her smartphone in a cafe in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A woman looks at her smartphone outside a restaurant in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A man looks down near his smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A man reacts while holding his smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
