Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Here is one hell of an own goal, from Geoffrey Kondogbia of Inter Milan:Read more...

With a surprise showing of skill and, at one point, a miracle, the bottom-ranked team in the European League Championship Series will not end the summer winless.

Here is create-a-player-with-a-99-in-vertical Derrick Jones Jr. of the Phoenix Suns rudely leaping over a puny mortal in a particularly vicious entry in the Drive-By Dunk Challenge:Read more...

The NL East played a little role-player musical chairs Friday: the Phillies, owners of the worst record in all of baseball, sent outfielder Howie Kendrick to the Nationals for 21-year-old lefty pitching prospect McKenzie Mills; and the Mets, currently 13.5 games back of the Nationals in the division and nine games out…Read more...

Friday night Shaq released a LaVar Ball diss track on TMZ. It would almost be worth losing Friday nights altogether if it meant you could bundle everything in that sentence up and hurl it into the garbage, forever. You cannot! And so the Shaquille O’Neal-LaVar Ball beef now has a soundtrack.

Cardinals first baseman Luke Voit sent a fastball from Diamondbacks pitcher Robbie Ray directly back where it came from in the second inning of tonight’s game. Voit’s line drive (measured at 108 miles per hour) zipped straight at Ray’s dome, sending him sprawling to the dirt. His teammates and Voit immediately…Read more...

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. Have a great weekend and keep checking back.Read more...

Having only won a single game in their last 13, culminating in three straight losses to the Chicago Cubs, the Chicago White Sox are struggling to attract fans to the ballpark. Perhaps having intuited that a .111-hitting Yoan Moncada, Alen Hanson, David Holmberg, and Whothefuckis Thatguy aren’t going to draw in even…Read more...

Roger Goodell’s tenure as commissioner of the NFL has been marked by his eagerness to remind everyone he’s in charge when it comes to player discipline. From Bountygate to Ray Rice to Adrian Peterson to Ballghazi, Goodell has been there to announce to the rest of the world that he’s got this.Read more...

Fresh off being tagged by a record-tying number of dingers Thursday against the Nationals, the Milwaukee Brewers—losers in nine of their last 11 games—return home hoping to avoid a serious ass-kicking at the hands of the red-hot Chicago Cubs, who come into town leading the division for the first time since May.Read more...

At this point, 24 years after it held its very first event, the UFC is no longer a rough-and-tumble spectacle with fighters who scrap in the hospital after their official bout and champions who shit on featured sponsors in the octagon. After being sold for $4 billion last year, the promotion has continued to try and…Read more...

Fans often go to the Twitter accounts of soccer teams to watch video of someone scoring. That’s nothing surprising. But when followers of Scottish Premiership club Inverness Caledonian Thistle looked at the team Twitter account’s list of favorited tweets, they saw an entirely different sort of scoring.Read more...

There’s not much happening besides baseball right now, but that’s okay. It’s a great sport because every single pitch is an opportunity to see a new, weird thing.Read more...

The LaVar Ball circus continued yesterday, this time with some not-so-thinly-veiled misogyny taking a spot in the center ring.

How mad does an All-Star catcher have to be to air out his manager on Instagram? Yadier Molina, definitely mad online, gave Mike Matheny the business after Matheny barely stopped himself from calling Molina tired—or maybe old, depending on how generous you’re feeling at the moment.

The NFL has given the National Institutes of Health less than half of the $30 million they promised for concussion research five years ago, and after repeatedly trying to influence how their “unrestricted gift” was used, the league is letting their agreement expire with no plans to finish paying up.Read more...

I’ve never seen Conor McGregor fight. I don’t watch or care about MMA. That’s not a statement about, or condemnation of, McGregor or MMA; it speaks only to my own preferences and biases.

Some people are fans of the San Francisco 49ers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the San Francisco 49ers. This 2017 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

The Rays and Mariners made a weird trade this morning, completing an exchange of right-handed relievers that they seem to think will help them both capture the playoff spot for which they are directly competing. The Rays will send Erasmo Ramirez back to Seattle and will get Steve Cishek in return.Read more...

Welcome to NeyWatch, a series in which we catch up with the daily, often contradictory updates on the hottest story of the summer.Read more...

The Blue Jays ran into one hell of an Ump Show during their game against the Oakland A’s yesterday. Over the course of a few pitches, home plate umpire Will Little managed to eject manager John Gibbons, pitcher Marcus Stroman, and catcher Russell Martin.

Tameka Butt capitalized on a Becky Sauerbrunn mistake to score the only goal of Australia’s first-ever win against the USWNT in 27 tries. Her 67th-minute score last night in Seattle, after what announcer Ian Darke referred to as “dithering defending,” gave her side (ranked seventh by FIFA) a historic result and proved…Read more...

At the 2017 European Speedrunner Assembly, a relay had 70 different people collecting a star each in Super Mario 64. It was pandemonium, and it was one of the most entertaining Mario runs I’ve ever seen.

When discussing Rickey Henderson’s Hall-of-Fame prospects, Bill James once wrote that “if you could split him in two, you’d have two Hall of Famers.” It’s a seemingly hyperbolic quip from one of sports’ most precise thinkers. So it’s probably worth a closer look.

Kyrie Irving wants out of Cleveland, for whatever reason, and he’s apparently doing everything in his power to hasten the exit process. According to The Athletic’s Jason Lloyd (subscribe here), the Cavs’ front office has been unable to get in touch with Irving since news of his trade demand broke.

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A portable kamado grill, a one-day graphics tablet sale, and Civilization VI lead off Friday’s best deals from around the web.Read more...

Over the winter, Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez became just the second catcher ever to be elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. (Johnny Bench was the other.) It was well deserved: Over 21 seasons in the big leagues, Pudge was, amont other things, a 14-time All Star, a 13-time Gold Glove winner, a seven-time Silver…Read more...

Yu Darvish’s worst career start sure sounds like it’ll be his last-ever start in a Rangers uniform. Multiple reports have Texas, struggling since the All-Star break, ready, willing, and able to move Darvish to a contender by Monday’s trade deadline.

Our readers have bought thousands of Char-Griller’s Acorn Kamado grills, but if you’re only cooking for a small group, or want a portable version for tailgate, the Jr. version is down to an all-time low $91 right now.

Egyptian Cotton is one of the softest things you can sleep on, but it comes at a price. Amazon is thankfully helping you out there with their sale on Egyptian Cotton sheets from Thread Spread’s Hotel Collection. Get a set for $43-$52, depending on the size (queen sets are only $45!), with your choice from a bunch of…Read more...

Stone Cold! Stone Cold! Stone Cold!Read more...

Just before midnight tonight, Sports Illustrated published a story about Chip Kelly being considered for the head coaching position left open at Ole Miss after Hugh Freeze’s resignation last week. One problem—the report that their story was based on was fabricated, courtesy of a fake Pat Forde account on Twitter.Read more...

The Yankees defeated the Rays in 11 innings tonight thanks to a walk-off home run from Brett Gardner, allowing them to go up two and a half games over their surprisingly competitive division-mates. Time to celebrate! Unfortunately for Aaron Judge, this celebration involved him chipping his front tooth on someone…Read more...

A homeless West Virginia man stole nearly $4,000 of stuff from the locker room of the Class-A West Virginia Power this morning. He took his mugshot in a hitting coach’s jersey, which he was wearing when he was arrested.Read more...

LeBron James is in Las Vegas today, taking a break from the twisted soap opera of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ offseason and watching his son LeBron James, Jr. play in an AAU tournament. Just like any other dad watching his son play some ball! Right down to a slightly overbearing need to make sure that the score is…Read more...

Mets first baseman Lucas Duda was traded to the Tampa Bay Rays today in exchange for reliever Drew Smith. The Mets are nine games out of the second wild card spot, so it makes sense for them to be sellers before the trade deadline.

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. I let my husband pick today.Read more...

After a frustrating rookie season in which he appeared in just one game for Buffalo, Cardale Jones has been traded to the Los Angeles Chargers in exchange for a draft pick. As ESPN’s Adam Schefter told Mike and Mike this morning, the quarterback wasn’t exactly sad to hear the news:Read more...

Anthony Scaramucci, a finance guy or something who doesn’t seem to understand anything about being a press flack, called the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza last night and ethered every one of his White House enemies in one of the greatest and most surreal interviews in American political history. Here are his best lines,…Read more...

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These days I watch my toddler nephews and nieces watch YouTube videos of adults unboxing and playing with toys for children, and wonder what level of the brain meme I’m living on. Sometimes I poke and probe—what could be interesting about this? Why is watching this more fun than playing with the very good, actual toys…Read more...

Lamar Odom has a heartbreaker of an essay out at the Players Tribune today, wherein he discusses the tragedies of his personal life and gets into the thornier aspects of his cocaine addictionRead more...

Welcome to NeyWatch, a series in which we catch up with the daily, often contradictory updates on the hottest story of the summer.Read more...

Eric Hosmer was an invincible monster on Wednesday night. In a 16-2 drubbing of the failing Detroit Tigers, Hosmer provided five runs, five hits, and six RBI, most of which came from a demoralizing seventh-inning grand slam that stretched the lead out to 13-1. He even stole a base for only the fifth time all year. And…Read more...

If you merely scanned today’s Darren Rovell ESPN article on a new survey of NFL fans, you might be forgiven for coming away believing that fans are leaving in droves, turned off by the national anthem protests inspired by Colin Kaepernick. If you bothered to actually read the damn thing, you know this isn’t close to…Read more...

The Vietnam stuff really did happen; he really did the Vietnam stuff. Shattered and crumpled and beat to shit, starving, John McCain really did decline an arbitrary offer of early release from foreign torture prison; he really did choose what turned out to be four more years of torture and suffering and misery over…Read more...

The Gold Cup is a shitty tournament. It’s the championship of CONCACAF, a garbage confederation with two consistently pretty good teams mixed in with a bunch of flotsam of varying quality. It’s normally contested by the participating countries’ B or C teams, since no one cares all that much about winning it. It’s…Read more...

During new White House flack Anthony Scaramucci’s introductory press conference, he bragged that his famously exercise-averse and bulbous boss was in fact a sports genius, capable of throwing “a dead spiral through a tire,” “swishing foul shots” in a suit, and sinking, uh, three-foot putts.

It’s a good day to be a Nationals fan and a very, very bad day to be a Brewers pitcher. The Nationals hit eight home runs in their first four innings today; five of those home runs were off Michael Blazek in the span of six at-bats in the bottom of the third.Read more...