Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

“Fandom”—the participatory community that grows out of a piece of media—has come to dominate pop culture. Fandom is not simply being a fan of something. Fandom is performing being a fan by creating transformative works, collecting knowledge, cosplaying, attending conventions, and, ever-increasingly, being vocal…Read more...

A discounted ThermoWorks Thermapen Mk4, the 1st Generation Echo Show, and an Acer Gear Gold Box lead off Thursday’s best deals from around the web.

Laura Cusick and her husband Richard loved baseball. They loved it so much for so long that it became a part of their marriage. When they had kids, they taught them to love the game, too: to root for the home team (the Braves), and learn the players names, and to stretch in the seventh inning. They were a baseball…Read more...

Some MLB managers might believe that, when the team is down 8-2 and the bullpen is drained, it’s time to give up and send out a position player to pitch. Not Dave Roberts, though. When he and his Dodgers found themselves in that exact situation at the tail end of their series against the Diamondbacks on Wednesday…Read more...

Any self-respecting student of insane Machiavellian gambits should be familiar with the Madman Theory, Richard Nixon’s self-invented strategy for winning the war in Vietnam. The theory, as recounted by Nixon chief of staff H.R. Haldeman after he got out of jail for his role in Watergate, went like this:

Mets pitcher Jason Vargas had one of his best starts of the season last night, holding the Phillies to just three hits and two earned runs through 6.1 innings while striking out 10. The Mets still lost the game, of course, but Vargas’s strong start apparently left him feeling a bit sassy. In the locker room after the…Read more...

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Last Thursday, a “sewer blockage” in the town of Melrose, Massachusetts, had city workers scrambling to restore flow across the town’s entire system. The blockage was eventually cleared, but not before it created what one affected resident described as a “tornado of poop” in her bathroom, after raw sewage exploded…Read more...

They didn’t have the luxury of superstar pitcher Kumar Rocker on the mound tonight, but Vanderbilt didn’t need him for even a moment in their winner-take-all game against Michigan on Wednesday night. With a dull but decisive 8-2 victory, the Commodores completed a comeback from a 1-0 series deficit, won the national…Read more...

Wayne Rooney has done some cool stuff with D.C. United, in Major League Soccer. He did a lovely free kick goal. He virtually single-handedly dragged the United to the MLS playoffs. An insane two-way highlight from last August was rightly hailed as maybe the best MLS highlight ever. I hereby submit that the goal…Read more...

Having previously bragged about his intention to look into such a thing, our sleazy doofus of a president has taken the first formal step toward instituting a policy that would allow service academy athletes to defer their military service obligations in order to pursue careers in professional sports. This was an…Read more...

The day you’ve all been waiting for is here. Kind of. Well, probably not. That’s tomorrow night. But hey, you’re here so you might as well stick around!

Just when the Yankees were starting to enjoy the return of slugger Giancarlo Stanton, just when he’d started to look like the middle-of-the-lineup force of old, just when the sight of him looming over the plate like a comic book monster started to lose its weird nostalgic charm, the universe has stepped in and yanked…Read more...

Nothing was done to that GIF above. Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, the HBO show covering all things sports and/or Bryant Gumbel, had a segment on Barstool Sports in last night’s episode, and there’s site founder Dave Portnoy quivering as he’s interviewed by Soledad O’Brien. He’s one followup question away from…Read more...

The Egyptian national soccer team, currently competing in the African Cup of Nations, announced today that they have booted midfielder Amr Warda out of their AFCON squad after several women revealed evidence of Warda being a DM-sliding, unsolicited dick pic-sending creep.Read more...

I didn’t watch the Tigers lose 5-3 to the Rangers on Tuesday night—I was paying attention, instead, to the local baseball team that was actually trying to win. But a tweet from the Tigers’ broadcasters caught my eye in the middle of the Michigan-Vanderbilt game. I assumed, at first glance, that Miguel Cabrera had hit…Read more...

By now, hecklers should know better than to mess with Reds first baseman Joey Votto. There are enough documented instances of him clowning opposing fans (and Cincinnati’s own) that the best strategy is to just let him be. One Angels fan at Tuesday night’s game chose not to do that, and although it’s unclear what the…Read more...

On May 29, a two-year-old girl was struck by a foul ball during a game between the Cubs and Astros in Houston. In the first update about the child’s condition since then, an attorney representing her family revealed today that she suffered a fractured skull when she was struck by the ball.

In the second leg of their promotion playoff final against Alvarado, players from third-tier Argentine soccer club San Jorge de Tucumán decided to protest what they considered two unfair first-half red cards by sitting down in the middle of the field and refusing to move or play. This lasted about ten minutes before…Read more...

Apologies in advance for presenting the unsuspecting reader with any portion of any conversation between Colin Cowherd and Enes Kanter, as nobody’s day necessarily needed that. But here is their exchange today on the subject of Zion Williamson:

This is a scintillating idea that I have previously put forward, with much more clarity and much less stammering, in blog form.Read more...

Well before Donald Trump farted out some tweets in her general direction this morning, Megan Rapinoe made it perfectly clear where she stood. In a May profile at Yahoo Sports, the soccer player described herself as a “a walking protest when it comes to the Trump administration.”Read more...

Months of pre-tournament preparation, weeks of controversy and VAR and stress, days of hand-wringing—they’ve all led us here. Since the Women’s World Cup draw back in December, the United States and France, the two best teams in the world, have been on a collision course that unfortunately all but guaranteed that the…Read more...

Kevin Durant has declined the one-year player option on his contract with the Golden State Warriors, which would have paid him $31.5 million next season. He’ll be an unrestricted free agent next week. ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski first reported the news on Twitter.Read more...

There are 12 teams across the Big Four leagues named after birds, and to be honest, it’s a pretty raw deal for the birds. The teams get, for free: an entire graphic identity based around attractive and charismatic wildlife to put on shirts and hats and stuff to sell for a ton of money. The birds, each a marvel of…Read more...

Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest and likely most disappointing son, really loves Instagram. His feed is full of tribute pictures of his father, racist or otherwise bigoted right-wing memes, and the occasional selfie. And it’s in the latter category that a pattern emerges: observe enough photos of Trump Jr. and…Read more...

In the hopefully not-too-distant future, everything will just plug straight into USB-C, and all will be good with the world. Until then, if you own a laptop or tablet that only has USB-C ports, you’re probably going to need a hub to plug in old flash drives, hard drives, monitors, and other legacy peripherals.

Wayne Farris, better known as The Honky Tonk Man, demanded Seagram’s Extra Smooth Vodka. It was 2007, and the man who made his name touring the wrestling territories and eventually the WWE with an indestructibly greasy pompadour, a Memphis jumpsuit, and a frequently weaponized acoustic guitar was getting ready to sit…Read more...

Kotaku The Human Cost Of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 | Gizmodo This Is How You’re Being Manipulated | Jalopnik American Car Companies Still Aren’t Making the Most American Cars | Lifehacker The Best iOS 13 Tricks You Haven’t Tried Yet | The Takeout Ask The Salty Waitress: How can I report an employer who’s skimming tips?Read more...

On Tuesday, a clip went viral of U.S. Women’s National Team star forward Megan Rapinoe informing a reporter that she would not be “going to the fucking White House,” should the USWNT win the World Cup. You knew right then and there that somehow, eventually, we would get a Tweet.Read more...

According to Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer, who got his number from someone else, there is around $474 million in available cap space to be flung about the NBA this summer, more than the last two seasons combined, and his conclusion from the resultant analysis is that the most important thing a team can have in these…Read more...

The last time we checked in on freshman Vanderbilt pitcher Kumar Rocker, he had just vanquished the vile Duke Blue Devils with a 19-strikeout no-hitter that also featured some well-earned shit-talking. That start saved Vanderbilt from postseason elimination, and now they are facing off against Michigan in a three-game…Read more...

Usually we only get to hear the juicy stories behind NFL Draft machinations when someone wants to brag, about finding a hidden gem or putting one over on another team, but in all cases, it involves a successful pick. Well, this is not that, but it’s also sort of that, in the sense that Jack Del Rio wants to brag that…Read more...

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It was an extremely unimpressive night for the Cincinnati Reds, who suffered a 5–1 loss against the Angels in Anaheim. They gave up their first run of the night on a leadoff inside-the-park dinger to Tommy La Stella, and they gave up the final run of the night when Wilfredo Tovar scored from second base on a Shohei…Read more...

It is now late June, which means if you can’t at least feign excitement about a leadoff inside-the-park home run in an interleague baseball game, you are staring down a summer of relatively slim pickings, VAR-marred World Cup soccer notwithstanding. Please, before you reduce yourself to hunting for Bears OTA updates,…Read more...

I don’t know why Javy Baez (or whoever’s giving him signals) would have so much faith that a pitcher making only his third plate appearance in the major leagues would be able to hold up his end of the suicide squeeze, but the overconfidence of Baez and the pure stupidity of Willson Contreras over on second combined to…Read more...

If there’s one thing a top-heavy Western Conference contender built on the ball-dominant shot-creation of two ornery superstars locked in an “unsalvageable” personality conflict needs, it is an infusion of noted mature adult in the room and agreeable teammate Jimmy Butler. Thankfully, that is exactly what the Rockets…Read more...

An exhilarating World Cup round of 16 rematch between the Netherlands and Japan got decided in favor of the Dutch in the 90th minute, thanks to a penalty kick converted by forward Lieke Martens. The PK gave the Dutch a 2-1 win over the same team that kicked them out of the 2015 World Cup, and it put them in the…Read more...

To err is human; to forgive, divine.

There is something about a mustache that disorients a person. It is a grooming decision first and foremost, but also and in a broader sense it is a choice. Growing a bunch of hair on your upper lip and then getting like marinara sauce and old bits of cake in it is, at bottom, a decision that you make for yourself—for…Read more...

Today, we’re talking about bathroom boogers, Law & Order, forgettable football teams, office beers, and more.

NBA free-agency opens on July 1, and if the rumors and anonymous reports are to be believed, at least one big star already has his destination picked out: Kyrie Irving, on his way out of Boston, has his eyes on the Brooklyn Nets. For the Nets, signing Irving—particularly if it’s done with an eye toward adding Kevin…Read more...

Despite what our lovely commentariat might believe, we here at Deadspin do not have a quota of anti-VAR posts to hit. If it feels that way during the Women’s World Cup, it’s only because FIFA, through the kind of casually negligent behavior that typifies its treatment of the women’s game, has put its referees in an…Read more...

Warriors veteran Andre Iguodala is currently out promoting his new book, and this morning he stopped by the Breakfast Club to chat about everyone’s least favorite ESPN NBA commentator, Mark Jackson. Jackson coached the Warriors for three seasons until he was fired in 2014, one year before Steph Curry won MVP and…Read more...

Markelle Fultz, the former No. 1 pick banished from Philadelphia in favor of sunny and commercialized Central Florida, has had a quiet few months of rehabilitation. After Fultz finished up some shoulder work in California and crashed his new teammates’ party on the way to the playoffs, it seemed like he would maybe,…Read more...

What happened to James Harden and the Houston Rockets? This time last year, Harden was receiving his coronation as the league’s MVP and the Rockets were seen as the only real challengers to the Warriors’ dynasty, which they very nearly ended through an almost religious adherence to what we’ve devotionally named…Read more...

The idea, which is not an unreasonable one on its face, is to “get it right.” The less inspiring extension of that is “to avoid something horribly embarrassing.” There are examples that spring to mind when it comes to justifying VAR’s existence—the people in charge are probably thinking of moments in the vein of…Read more...

Some NFL players will tell you the league is like prison—prison with paychecks. Each well-paid inmate has a reputation for violence, and every day on the yard, someone gets shanked. Every week, a few guys get released and a few guppies show up. The guys who leave feel a sense of relief, but they soon realize they’re…Read more...