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American wonderteen Christian Pulisic will begin his march to the 2019 Ballon d’Or this weekend when Borussia Dortmund open their Bundesliga season against RB Leipzig. It’s hard to believe that Pulisic is still only 19, since he’s already got two stellar seasons at Dortmund under his belt and is the constant subject…Read more...

The Nationals are now dead, much as they have died many times before this season, but this time it’ll really take, coming as it did at the humiliating hands of the Marlins. So it’s time for postmortems! Here’s a good Washington Post story containing the anecdote that’ll come to define this lost year, and, in keeping…Read more...

A very long time ago (2015), our old buddy Tom Scocca posited, convincingly, that there are eight distinct seasons. This part of the year, from August through mid-September, he calls “Yellow Summer,” and ranks as the fifth-best season, which seems fine. After all, it’s muggy and buzzy and gross outside; the air is…Read more...

Today over on ESPN, Jackie MacMullan has the first of what promises to be a multi-part series on mental health in the NBA. While it’s mostly a profile of Kevin Love, who shared his experiences with panic attacks earlier this year, it also features insights from Paul Pierce and Chris Bosh on their own mental health…Read more...

Some people are fans of the Seattle Seahawks. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Seattle Seahawks. This 2018 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

One of the leaders of the Irriducibili, Italian side Lazio’s biggest fan organization, sent out flyers telling women to “avoid their sacred space” before the team’s Serie A home opener against Napoli on Saturday. The flyer was intended to keep women out the first 10 rows of the club’s supporter’s section, saying that…Read more...

A floor seat at a basketball game has a powerful cultural weight. It helps that it’s the best and most exciting way to watch a basketball game, but it’s appeal goes beyond that. Those seats are where celebrities and investors go to see the game and be seen watching that game—a badge of wealth and prominence that’s…Read more...

Norma Rae was a lie.Read more...

After five months in charge at ESPN, company president Jimmy Pitaro got up in front of a bunch of reporters on Friday and revealed his big new vision for the network. Based on Piatro’s comments, ESPN will stride boldly into the future by sticking to sports and playing lapdog for the NFL.

The Athletic is committed to pulverizing newspapers, and it brought out the sledgehammer today. The site announced the launch of six new localized verticals plus additional football coverage in four cities in which it already had a presence:

The Phillies played a marquee game on national cable last night, so of course they lost, falling 8-2 to the Mets in the 2018 MLB Little League Classic in Williamsport and losing a chance to climb back into first in the NL East. The Phillies lost 3 of 5 in the series, bringing them to 5-8 against the Mets this season.…Read more...

Few things in life are as satisfying as stunting in the face of an opposing fan after your team does something good. One of the only things that is better is when an opposing fan preens in your face prematurely and you get to return the favor. This is why the following interactions from this weekend between two Ajax…Read more...

How and why ESPN shout-master Stephen A. Smith ended up sermonizing to the Syracuse football team doesn’t really matter. Whether he was invited to meet the team or just happened to stumble into a room with a bunch of football players in it, something like this was always going to be the result:

A strong block from Browns wide receiver Jarvis Landry in Friday’s preseason game against the Bills has some Buffalo players calling him out for his history of aggressive, damaging plays—especially against their team.Read more...

BOSTON — Simone Biles ascended to the top step of the podium a lot last night. Five times, to be exact. In only her second competition since the Olympic Games in Rio, Biles swept all five titles at the 2018 national championships. She placed first on vault, on uneven bars, on balance beam, in floor exercise, and of…Read more...

io9 Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder Might Actually be Married, and it’s All Dracula’s Fault | Jalopnik What Is The Dumbest Way You’ve Damaged Your Car? | Kotaku GTA V World Record Speedrun Is A Grueling, Fascinating Ten Hours | Lifehacker What’s Coming and Going From Netflix the Week of August 20, 2018 | The Takeout …Read more...

Two competing imperatives are in play here. The first is to avoid paying attention to preseason NFL games. They mean nothing, no result and no performance can be used to predict or extrapolate anything of value (and that some results and some performances do forerun regular-season success just proves the whole thing a…Read more...

BOSTON — Kerry Perry, the president and CEO of USA Gymnastics, finally faced the media at the 2018 national gymnastics championships today. Perry has appeared before two Senate subcommittee hearings and done a few of brief, very limited teleconferences with journalists, but this was her first, in-depth Q&A with…Read more...

It’s been a bad couple of years for the cover stars of major sports games. Big transfers of star players like Kyrie Irving, Neymar and LeBron James have left the marketing for NBA 2K18, PES 2018 and 2K19 in need of repairs, and we can now add FIFA 19 to the list as well.

The Nationals got smoked Sunday afternoon, at home, by the garbage Marlins. Jose Ureña‚—yes, that fucking guy—pitched a dominant two-hitter for his first career complete game. Ureña, by the way, on top of being a shithead, is bad! He came into the game with a 3–12 record, and a crummy 4.74 ERA, and an also crummy 4.18…Read more...

The Detroit News reported in May that disgraced former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State doctor Larry Nassar was assaulted by fellow inmates at the United States Penitentiary, Tucson, “within hours of being released into the general population,” according to his attorney. Now it appears that Nassar is being…Read more...

Folks, we’ve got another joint practice brawl, this time between the Colts and Ravens, at Colts training camp Saturday afternoon. The brawl appears to have started after Colts linebacker Antonio Morrison leveled Albert McClellan in a special teams drill, and McClellan jumped up ready to make war:Read more...

Updated: Sunday, August 19, 2018, 3:26 p.m. ET:Read more...

Indians outfielder Leonys Martín will be sent home Sunday, after spending more than a week in the Cleveland Clinic battling a life-threatening bacterial infection that compromised the function of several internal organs.Read more...

The Chicago White Sox invited Sister Mary Jo Sobieck of Marian Catholic High School to throw out the ceremonial first pitch for Saturday’s game against the Royals. She did some early hot-dogging with the slick little elbow trick you see above, but that was really just a preview. Her first pitch, thrown from the…Read more...

So how do the Dodgers—the team with the best run differential in the National League, and the third lowest total of runs allowed in baseball—find themselves in third place in the NL West, and fifth in the NL Wild Card? Well, for starters, by performing pretty poorly in one-run games, where they’ve amassed a…Read more...

Marlins pitcher Jose Ureña was suspended six games by Major League Baseball for his bush-league plunking of Ronald Acuña Jr., to break up Acuña’s three-game streak of leadoff dingers. As should be expected whenever a player is suspended, Ureña has appealed the punishment, which means he is eligible to pitch for the…Read more...

Speedruns are all about completing a game quickly, and the world record for 100%ing Grand Theft Auto V is a breezy ten hours of skydiving, helicopter flying, bike racing, and story missions. It’s a wonder to behold.Read more...

Former NBA star Tom Chambers was charged with two counts of assault this week in Arizona, related to an April incident in Scottsdale where he roughed up a shitbag youth who allegedly said some very rude things to him while he was dining out.Read more...

Jean Lopez—the former U.S. taekwondo coach who was banned in April 2018 following a report from SafeSport that described “a decades long pattern of sexual misconduct by an older athlete/coach abusing his power to groom, manipulate and, ultimately, sexually abuse younger female athletes”—will be reinstated, according…Read more...

It’s possible to believe a lot of whacky stories about Trevor Bauer, who is both a big old dummy and also a too-online crank who once wanted to use a soldering iron to cauterize a finger wound. A report that Bauer wants to use alternative methods to treat the stress fracture in his right fibula would surprise exactly…Read more...

Josh Gordon’s unexplained leave of absence from the start of Browns training camp—something Gordon described as “part of my overall health and treatment plan” when it was announced back in July—is now apparently over. Gordon announced Saturday that he’s rejoining the team:Read more...

Diamondbacks outfielder Jon Jay had a rough, frustrating time Friday night. Twice he reached up at the outfield wall to make a play on a shallow dinger, and both times Padres fans beat him to the ball. All Jay came down with, in the end, were a few droplets of spilled beer, and disappointment.

Duke’s multi-stage devastation of Canadian basketball continued Friday, in Toronto, with the vile Blue Devils pounding the bejeezus out of the poor Varsity Blues of the University of Toronto. Zion Williamson thrashed the feeble, excessively polite fellows of Ryerson Wednesday night, and although he continued to feast…Read more...

BOSTON, Mass.—We are just eight routines into Simone Biles’s return to competition and I’ve already run out of superlatives to describe just how good she is. I feel like everyone who is tasked with writing about Biles more than once finds themselves reaching for the thesaurus just to find new ways of describing her…Read more...

BOSTON, Mass.—There are a lot of things you might miss when you watch a sport on television instead of viewing it live. In sports like figure skating, it might be difficult to really get how fast the skaters are zipping around the rink. Ditto for the speed at which NBA players move on the court when you watch a game…Read more...

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. Hey pals!Read more...

In February of 2017, at some conservative event in Maryland, Donald Trump said that Paris was a ruined city because too many brown and black people live there now. (I’m giving you the gist.) He attributed this opinion to his friend “Jim,” a “very, very substantial guy.” Is this jogging your memory?Read more...

You almost have to respect the University of Alabama for so boldly and dickishly doubling down on the extreme inequality that plagues college athletics, without even the slightest care for the awful optics of their decadence. Almost.Read more...

Pro wrestling Twitter completely imploded on Wednesday. Well, more than usual.

Former 2016 first-round pick Corey Coleman was traded away for jack shit—er, a conditional seventh-round pick—two weeks ago, making him one of nine Browns first-rounders since 2011 to have been jettisoned for cents on the dollar.Read more...

Welcome to the Deadspin 25, a college football poll that strives to be more democratic and less useless than every other preseason poll. Leading up to the college football season kickoff, we will give you previews of the 25 teams that you, the readers, voted to be most worthy of writing about. Now, No. 12 Clemson.

Melania Trump seems to be very much alone in her position.

Tyrod Taylor is about to begin his eighth season in the NFL, his fourth as a full-time starting quarterback, and his first with the Cleveland Browns (the poor bastard). All this time, his first name has been pronounced incorrectly, apparently.Read more...

Just the other day, I was talking to a fellow gym nerd about the upcoming world championships in October. “Who’s your number two?” she asked, by which she meant who did I think would win the silver at worlds. I won’t say my answer because I am almost always wrong about these things. I don’t have to say that my number…Read more...

Boban Marjanovic appears to be spending some of his offseason back in his native Serbia, which has produced tennis stars like reigning Wimbledon champ Novak Djokovic and former No. 1 Ana Ivanovic. As tall, smooth-moving players with big serves increasingly find success in the men’s game, it’s become tempting to wonder…Read more...

I don’t know about you but if my unsuspected skull had just gotten blown the hell up by a flying soccer ball, I wouldn’t have reacted with half the poise and grace as this lady did:Read more...

Dwyane Wade and Jimmy Butler were previously teammates on the Chicago Bulls, so this could be a lighthearted gag between friends. Uh, maybe.Read more...

A hot new sports media startup may not be the place you’d expect to find a braindead take lifted straight from a dead-tree columnist’s 1996 notebook, but then you remember that The Athletic, in its quest to destroy all print sports sections, did hire plenty of middle-aged white guys. One of those guys is Joe McDonald,…Read more...