Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Positive thinking is a powerful thing. Or at least regression to the mean is.

You’ll see Andre Burakovsky’s goal being referred to as a goal of the year candidate, because A) it was very pretty, and B) hockey writers have a distinct lack of pithy descriptors for really good goals. It’s sort of silly, because there’s no actual official “goal of the year” award! But at least it makes more sense…Read more...

Replace those socks that got eaten by a dog or lost under the bed during this one-day sale from Amazon. Pick up dress socks, crew socks, no-shows, and more styles in a ton of different colors and patterns for 40% off. But these prices will disappear quicker than your new favorite pair of socks to the dryer.

For the bulk of the first half, tonight’s NCAA men’s basketball championship was Michigan’s game—not by more than a few points, not convincingly, but it was. With six minutes remaining, though, Donte DiVincenzo hit a three to deliver Villanova its first lead since the opening seconds, and then he sewed up the rest of…Read more...

This isn’t as iconic an entry into the genre of unexpected inside-the-park home runs as, say, this Prince Fielder gem or this Jhonny Peralta one, but it’s still pretty dang good: Edwin Encarnacion tonight, with his first inside-the-parker in more than a decade, thanks to a little defensive fuck-up by left fielder…Read more...

Not everything about the Houston Astros’ pregame celebration today went exactly as planned—they probably would have preferred a little less wind for the unveiling of their World Series banner—but the first pitch was legitimately touching. Former first base coach Rich Dauer did the honors, five months after he was…Read more...

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The Overwatch League’s stage playoffs are expanding again, this time adding another team to the mix and removing the first-round bye for the top-seeded team in the league.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Muffet McGraw’s husband Matt clearly knows the drill by now. He beamed as he watched his wife of 40 years hold court with reporters after the greatest coaching win of her career. She wore a black dress that she’d bought especially for what turned out to be her second national championship, her…Read more...

The Detroit Tigers had an Opening Day walk-off win taken away from them Friday when what looked to be a safe, 10th-inning slide into home from Nicholas Castellanos was overturned on review. If you believe Tigers manager Ron Gardenhire, MLB admitted the call was botched.Read more...

Dele Alli scored twice in Tottenham’s 3-1 victory over Chelsea this weekend. His first goal was a beaut, but as Chris Applegate noted on Twitter, even more gorgeous than the goal itself were the photos, featuring the home Chelsea crowd’s reaction. So many scowls. So many impolite hand gestures. Truly art at its finest.Read more...

Grizzly bears, dogs, and even cockroaches fart. Do sea anemones? Nope. As for spiders, no one knows.

Oskar Svendsen was the next big thing. The baby-faced Norwegian was just 18 years old when he was tabbed as cycling’s next great prodigy at the 2012 World Championships; maybe he’d follow in Thor Hushovd’s footsteps and win bushels of Tour de France stages for Norway, or, who knows, maybe even become his country’s…Read more...

Boban Marjanovic has been working on his craft. Yesterday he was seen bopping in an adorable huddle with new friend DeAndre Jordan and old friend Tobias Harris, who accompanied him from Detroit to Los Angeles in the January trade.

On Friday afternoon, news leaked that Twitch had cut more than 25 jobs, mostly from Twitch Studios, an in-house production group, and the company’s community and marketing teams. The laid-off employees—some of whom had been with Twitch since its inception—were reportedly told that the company had overhired and needed…Read more...

Today ESPN announced the official launch date (April 12) of its new subscription streaming service, called ESPN+. In addition to studio shows and an on-demand library, ESPN+’s main draw is “thousands of live sports events,” which according to the release includes MLB, NHL, and MLS games, as well as rugby, cricket,…Read more...

After an 18-year NHL career spent entirely together (not to mention several seasons with MODO in Sweden), Henrik and Daniel Sedin have jointly announced their plans to retire at the end of the season in a letter published on the Canucks website. With the Canucks out of the playoff picture, that means this Saturday…Read more...

Josh “Eqo” Corona of the Philadelphia Fusion is in hot water with his team and maybe the Overwatch League after making a slant-eye gesture about Korean players during an Overwatch stream last weekend.Read more...

Jim Mora, who once went on the radio to gush his interest in one head coaching job while he still had another, thinks Josh Rosen’s “concentration level” and “focus” might be a concern for NFL teams because Rosen [slaps forehead] is “a millennial.”Read more...

Ruddy UFC czar Dana White did not need to formally announce that he’d never book another fight between Tony Ferguson and Khabib Nurmagomedov again for MMA fans to come to terms with the idea of never seeing the UFC lightweight division’s two best and most interesting fighters ever actually meet in the octagon. The UFC…Read more...

Listen. I want you to know that I endured probably close to 45 seconds of deep internal conflict over whether to form this blog around a groan-inducing forced parallel between the sudden restoration of the Denver Nuggets’ playoff hopes and the Easter story of Christ’s resurrection from death. And the conclusion was…Read more...

The Oakland Raiders released punter Marquette King on Friday. King, a one-time All-Pro, had signed a five-year extension in the 2016 offseason. The team cleared $2.9 million in cap space by releasing him, but it sounded like this move wasn’t completely for salary reasons. According to reports, new head coach Jon…Read more...

Just like $2.5 trillion worth of companies around the world, the company publishing the story you are now reading is owned by private equity firms. Most people have little idea what the private equity industry actually does. The truth is terrifying.Read more...

Yihong Peng, older brother of League of Legends superstar Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng, was arrested and charged with the murder of his mother and assault of his father on Saturday in San Juan Capistrano, California. According to a statement by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, Peng’s 59-year-old mother Wei Ping…Read more...

Bryce Harper hit the dick off two baseballs during yesterday’s 6-5 win over the Reds, and the second dinger was a particular source of embarrassment for one of the Cincinnati fans in attendance.

Lionel Messi came on as a substitute in the 58th minute of Barcelona’s match against Sevilla on Saturday with express orders not to run around too much. He obeyed, meandered around for the better part of his 30-minute cameo, before picking his moment and bursting forth from out of nowhere to score the game-tying goal…Read more...

Jon Rothstein is a real person. He was born in a town at the very outermost edge of what could be called exurban New York City and has covered sports for a living virtually from the moment he graduated from Ithaca College. Rothstein won a Dream Job contest at New York’s ESPN sports radio station, 1050 AM, back in…Read more...

Twins pitcher José Berrios was dealing yesterday. When he faced Baltimore catcher Chance Sisco in the ninth inning of Sunday’s game, Berrios had a 7-0 lead and had given up just one hit in the game.Read more...

The following video, which depicts Macclesfield’s game-winning stoppage time goal against Woking, is an object lesson on why you must always be alert and focused for literally every second of every game, even when an outcome seems guaranteed, especially when playing on a bog of a pitch in rain-soaked England:Read more...

Sunday brought most American baseball fans their first good look at what kind of pitcher Angels two-way prospect Shohei Ohtani might be. What they saw was pretty fuckin’ good.

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Notre Dame’s final play wasn’t called for Arike Ogunbowale. After hitting the winning three in Friday’s semifinal win over UConn, the Notre Dame junior guard had an off shooting night against Mississippi State, and when the Irish inbounded the ball in a tie game with three seconds left, the play was designed to go to…Read more...

The best unpaid basketball players in the country compete for our amusement tonight in San Antonio, and Amazon’s marking the occasion with a one-day basketball sale.

For a while, it looked like today’s National Championship game would be an anticlimactic finale after both semifinals went to overtime on Friday. Mississippi State led Notre Dame 30-17 at the half, holding the Irish to just three points in the second quarter. But Notre Dame fought back and gave us another instant…Read more...

The 76ers pulled away from a sleepy and defeated Hornets team Sunday afternoon, sans Joel Embiid, behind more excellent two-way play from young Ben Simmons. It was Philly’s 10th straight win, and second straight without Embiid. Sure, the Embiid-less wins have come over Eastern Conference non-playoff teams, but still:…Read more...

Cloud9 has secured a neat 3-0 at the end of its match yesterday against Out of Style in the Rocket League championship series. Mariano “Squishy” Arruda was not content to let the game end at the zero, however, and caught the ball at just the last second for a game of keepie uppie.Read more...

The Mariners lost at home yesterday to the Indians. This would be a happier story if they’d won, although I feel no particular way about the Mariners. But this is Ichiro doing a cool and heroic thing on a baseball diamond in the majors in 2018—had it been part of a win, it would’ve been that much sweeter. Here we have…Read more...

The Blue Jays struck a blow for the little guy Saturday and snatched a game from their series against the Yankees, 5-3. That alone is worth a fist pump, but get a load of this truly badass sequence from Blue Jays center fielder Kevin Pillar, from the bottom of the 8th inning, with the Jays up a run:Read more...

Saturday night the Heat had one of those really grinding losses, in Brooklyn. It wasn’t quite mutually dissatisfactory, if only because the Nets aren’t tanking, and so are still positioned to enjoy victories, but it was for sure a game the Heat were supposed to win: Miami is now in the 8th seed in the Eastern…Read more...

The top two teams in the Eastern Conference met last night. You may have missed it: first of all, the men’s Final Four was last night; second of all, you might’ve simply sagged into the position, literally weeks ago, that the top of the Eastern Conference was settled. It’s not! The Celtics came into Saturday night…Read more...

Gabe Kapler, new manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, is having a weird time. It’s too early to call it a hard time, and probably too early for any firm pronouncements about his fit as a manager, but things are for sure going in strange directions. Through three games Kapler has already spent more time defending his…Read more...

If it’s about that time to start taking care of your lawn again, this GreenWorks cordless blower and trimmer bundle can help get you started. Today’s price is $13 less than usual, and the lowest price we’ve ever seen. Just note, this deal does not come with a battery, but fortunately, the battery is listed for just …Read more...

The Vegas Golden Knights continue to make fools of us here at Deadspin, but it was Martin Jones who was on the losing end of the April Fools’ joke tonight as William Karlsson made an unassisted, shorthanded, between-the-legs goal to put the Sin City shockers up 3-2 on San Jose. Seriously, look at this shit:

Patrick McCaw left tonight’s game against Sacramento on a stretcher after the Warriors guard fell hard to the floor after being undercut by Vince Carter on a play that left Golden State coach Steve Kerr angrily cursing at the veteran Kings star.Read more...

For a good 30-plus minutes Saturday night it looked like the unlikely tournament run of 11th-seed Loyola-Chicago would live on. The Ramblers had a seven-point lead at halftime; that lead would grow to 10 points early in the second half, and stood as high as eight points at the 11:25 mark. From that point on the…Read more...

Grant Hill learned today he’d be the newest member of the Basketball Hall of Fame. But whatever pride he might have felt at that honor dissipated, for a moment, as he saw Michigan’s Moe Wagner hurtling through the air toward him.Read more...

For exclusive videos, pictures, and more, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Send us your confidential tips at tips@deadspin.com, call our confidential tips hotline at (347) 746-8471, contact our writers directly, or use our anonymous SecureDrop system.Read more...

In the fourth inning of today’s game between Concordia University Chicago and Edgewood, CUC catcher Justin Rodriguez rifled a throw to second to pick off a runner who’d strayed far from the base. Pitcher Keaton Conner ducked to get out of the way, but the throw was low, and it caught Conner square on the top of his…Read more...