Ex-Ballplayers Offer Coffee's Answer to Chew Two former baseball players throw a curve at the consumer quest for caffeine. From our Business Unusual file.

Baseball players know that when times are tough, when you're really slumping with your mechanics at the plate, you just need to "grind it out."

Matt Canepa and Pat Pezet did just that through years and years of unsuccessful amateur and minor league baseball careers. In 2008, after wrapping up their amateur season to return to California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, to finish their degrees, the two men took the saying a step further.

One too-hot night while working on an economics project, they decided to skip out on brewing a pot of coffee in favor of doing what comes naturally to baseball players: They stuffed wads of grinds in their mouths.