Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Of all the various factors that make Trea Turner so damn fun to watch, perhaps none is so impressive as his speed. He’s making that ridiculously, abundantly clear tonight.

If you’ve ever seen a youth official get jeered by a crowd after a close call and thought, “Why does anyone want to be a ref?” you’re not alone. Across the country, high school athletic associations are getting more desperate as they try to recruit qualified officials for their sporting events.Read more...

José Ramírez’s offensive breakout last year was much-needed for Cleveland, helping the team come within a few outs of a World Series title in a season they spent almost entirely without their most productive position player. It also didn’t seem particularly sustainable—a young player whose bat had never been his…Read more...

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. More of the same shit to come.Read more...

Have you been loving NBC’s amazing English Premier League coverage these past few years, as they’ve coupled smart and engaging studio and commentary teams with unparalleled access to the matches through multi-channel broadcasts and a streaming service that brought every single league game live to your computer or…Read more...

Baseball has been worse off ever since Vladimir Guerrero retired, as the game can always use more unrepentant oddballs who will hit singles off of pitches that bounced in the dirt and generally hack away with little thought of the consequences. Guerrero’s never coming back, but there’s a decent chance we’ll be seeing…Read more...

Two Vanderbilt players were shot Monday night while attempting to help a teammate retrieve his cell phone, which had been stolen hours earlier. Both players are expected to recover from their injuries; the phone, as of now, remains stolen.Read more...

io9 Star Wars Is All the Same Nowadays, and It’s Becoming a Problem | Jalopnik Why Putting Regular Gas Into A Car That Needs Premium Won’t Save You Any Money | Kotaku The Nintendo Switch Is Already A Great Way To Play Old Games | Lifehacker What to Know About Donating Your Body to Science |Read more...

The New York Times put out a lengthy report today detailing the past 10 years of the “New Yankee Stadium Community Benefits Fund,” a charity the team created after they caught heat for taking public park land to build its new coliseum in the South Bronx.Read more...

Only two things can stop the Utah-BYU college basketball rivalry: The most destructive war humanity’s ever witnessed, and a pasty guard sucker-punching another guard in garbage time.Read more...

Vince Young has tried a few comebacks in recent years, his latest ending on June 17 after being cut by the CFL’s Saskatchewan Roughriders following a torn hamstring. Near the end of that project, the quarterback had time to talk shit about former Titans head coach Jeff Fisher to Sports Illustrated.Read more...

He looked bad, then he looked fine, and then he looked exactly how you you would want to look when you are holding a racket and standing on blades of grass. Beating the world No. 66, 29, 134, and 38 is one thing—beating Alexander Zverev, maybe the only player in the field who currently seems destined to win five…Read more...

Time for your weekly edition of the Deadspin Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. Today, we’re talking spicy food, stoned reading, Oreos, and more.Read more...

To some degree, the politics of The “Progressive Liberal” Dan Richards align with those of the real Dan Richards. Given that this is pro wrestling, a big red sign displaying Is this a work? is always flashing, but Richards claims he leans hard left. “It’s not much of a stretch,” he says on the phone. When he tells me…Read more...

The Aspire Academy’s listed mission statement is to “develop well educated sports champions” and “foster Qatar society realizing a healthy, active lifestyle.” The Qatari government founded Aspire in 2003, building a state-of-the-art sports complex in Doha with the aim of identifying and training athletes from the tiny…Read more...

The NCAA is currently conducting an investigation of Baylor in regards to its football program’s recent sexual assault scandal, according to a recent legal filing from university lawyers.Read more...

GLOW, the new series from Netflix, explores in entertaining fashion a fascinating chapter in the history of women and pop culture. But while the real-life, glittery, campy Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling certainly popularized the idea of women in the ring, they weren’t the first.Read more...

Today brought the release of the 430-page report on World Cup corruption that FIFA fought to keep secret for nearly three years. One section of that report details the FIFA Ethics Committee’s investigation into potential corruption by the Russian bid committee that secured the 2018 World Cup. The report concludes that…Read more...

Nearly three years after it was completed, FIFA has at long last released in full the internal report on alleged corruption relating to the bids for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups that it had previously been so determined to keep secret. This didn’t happen from any change of heart on FIFA’s part, naturally; it’s only…Read more...

You might remember last month when orcas ate an enormous great white shark’s liver, Hannibal Lecter style, in South Africa. It seems the killer whales have decided, why stop there? Why not take the testicles and stomach, too?

We’ve got a fresh batch of videos featuring James Harrison doing wild shit in order to stay beefy, and these clips feature him hurling a medicine ball over a volleyball net with his pals.

Let’s say you’ve already upgraded to a good toothbrush; what’s the next step for cleaner teeth? Judging by the excellent user reviews, this 14-count box of Crest 3D Whitestrips is a great place to start. Just be sure to clip the $15 coupon before you check out to get the best price we’ve ever seen.Read more...

Like all ideas that sound good at the time but are actually quite scary, my journey to become a mermaid started with a PR email. It was an invite to try Aquamermaid—part actual workout, part childhood nostalgia fantasy for anyone who had practiced a hair flip in the shallow end of the town pool. I’ve never entertained…Read more...

Gabriel Jesus is the best young striker Brazil has produced in a startlingly long time. Obviously, this makes him a big deal back home. Brazilian funk artist MC Nego Blue was so impressed by Jesus’s talents that he penned an entire song, “É Gol” (translation: “It’s a Goal”), about the Manchester City man. And despite…Read more...

Mitch Evans is a guy with a pretty sweet gig. At 23, the New Zealander is a racing driver for one of the world’s most storied manufacturers, Jaguar, and he’s a key part of what the racing world hopes will be the next big thing—the electric series Formula E.Read more...

io9 Is Warner Bros. Really Considering a Live-Action Adaptation of Superman: Red Son? | Kotaku Star Fox 2 Programmer Is Surprised And Thrilled The Game Is Finally Coming Out | Foxtrot Alpha America’s Nuclear Weapons Labs Are Safety Nightmares | Lifehacker The No-Frills Way to Watermark Memos and Track Leaks |Read more...

I started playing Dota 2 when I was in college, something I wanted to do to distract me from what I thought I was supposed to do. (Everyone gets a Bachelor’s degree today, right?)

This year, the NBA decided to give out all of its regular-season awards at once, and to have them presented at an interminable awards show that aired last night, more than two months after the end of the regular season. This was all mostly annoying and unnecessary, but Russell Westbrook’s MVP acceptance speech ended…Read more...

Minor league baseball is probably America’s greatest invention. From last night’s Fort Wayne TinCaps game, here’s Jake the Diamond Dog, a Golden Retriever whose job it is to carry a basket of bottled water out to the umpires between innings:Read more...

Gerber is one of the most trusted names in multitools, and Amazon’s bundling a few of their popular products into one (relatively) affordable deal.

Yasiel Puig has a cannon for an arm. You know this. Everyone who has watched him knows this. Kole Calhoun, presumably, knows this—yet he found himself trying to go from first to third in the eighth inning tonight on a single hit to Puig, which meant that he found himself thrown out.Read more...

The Rangers gave Cole Hamels a very, very comfortable cushion of run support in his return from a two-month stint on the disabled list. Elvis Andrus hit two home runs, Adrian Beltre and Joey Gallo each added another, and Texas had a 9-2 lead after the top of the fourth inning.Read more...

Russell Westbrook—the first man to average a triple-double since Oscar Robertson, an insane human and statistical highlight reel, the player who single-handedly propelled the Oklahoma City Thunder into the playoffs—is the 2017 NBA MVP.Read more...

Has LaVar Ball’s heel act made his son a heel even in Los Angeles, or do wrestling fans in LA not know Lonzo Ball is member of the Lakers? Either way, Lonzo and LaVar Ball were both booed when they appeared on WWE Raw tonight.Read more...

The Bucks’ Malcolm Brogdon is the 2017 NBA Rookie of the Year, defeating 76ers teammates Joel Embiid and Dario Saric for the award.Read more...

Javier Báez showed off his range in the third inning against the Nationals tonight, leaping to snare a ball that seemingly was all but guaranteed to find the gap and become a hit. That he made it look so easy is just testament to how smooth a fielder he is:Read more...

The Nationals’ success this year has been possible only despite their bullpen, which has seemingly tried very hard to make victory impossible as one of the worst relief corps in baseball. Their front office’s latest attempt to change that should do very little—the reported signing of Francisco Rodriguez, who was cut…Read more...

Former tennis superstar and current cranky Knicks fan John McEnroe put his foot directly into his mouth this weekend when he spoke with NPR and praised Serena Williams as “incredible” and the “best female player ever,” before clarifying that she was not the best tennis player ever because “if she played the men’s…Read more...

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. Good night for a beer.Read more...

Nick Fairley had the best season of his career last year for the Saints, racking up 6.5 sacks in 16 starts and earning himself a new $28 million contract with New Orleans. However, the Saints placed him on the non-football injury list this afternoon after doctors evaluated the heart condition that Fairley has been…Read more...

Former Packers running back Ahman Green was arrested yesterday in Ledgeview, Wisc., on one count of physical abuse of a child and one count of disorderly conduct.Read more...

In news that hits hard in the Michigan basketball world but barely registers as a blip anywhere else, Wolverines assistant coach Billy Donlon (not Billy Donovan) has taken his talents to Northwestern, taking over a similar position with a longtime friend, head coach Chris Collins. Donlon’s departure is a blow to a…Read more...

When I take my mind back 10 years to the days and weeks right before and right after Chris Benoit murdered his wife and son, one thing in particular always jumps to the forefront of my thoughts.

Tonight, FS1 will broadcast all the hot 3-on-3 action that took place at the Nets’ arena in Brooklyn yesterday. The conceit of the Big 3 was pretty simple: Ice Cube rounded up a bunch of old NBA stars and had them play 3-on-3 hoops. The fact that they were all old really affected the quality of play.

A 23-year-old (presumably former) University of Missouri employee drove his Volkswagen Passat through a gate outside Mizzou Arena early Sunday morning. According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the driver then somehow managed to steer said car onto the basketball court inside the arena, causing roughly $100,000 in…Read more...

Kentucky-based Appalachian Mountain Wrestling has graced the world with the presence of “Progressive Liberal” Dan Richards. He definitely isn’t a face.Read more...

Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal published a report today about team chemistry issues that the San Francisco Giants are suffering through this season. The conclusion of the piece is that the Giants’ clubhouse culture is in rough shape because Mark Melancon annoys the rest of the bullpen and everyone else on the team is quiet…Read more...

Old-timers from Mexican soccer giants Club América and Pumas met for an exhibition game this weekend in Southern California. Fans who showed up were not treated to a full game, but they did get to witness an all-out brawl on the field between fans of the rival clubs during halftime.

Sunday’s UFC Fight Night 112 in Oklahoma City was a suitably silly affair, with Justine Kish getting decisioned after a rear naked choke plus an ensuing emergency defecation, hall-of-famer B.J. Penn getting embarrassed by an elderly German, and Johny Hendricks, the man who once stood toe-to-toe with Georges St-Pierre…Read more...