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Everton decided to take on a fifth-division Austrian team, ATV Irdning, ostensibly because they were the closest 11 sentient beings in the area at the time. The offseason friendly took place in Austria, where Everton have a training ground in picturesque Bad Mitterndorf, a few miles up the road from the home…Read more...

Prime Day officially kicks off at 3PM ET today, but Amazon went ahead and put their own devices on sale early to kick off the festivities.

Former NHL goalie Ray Emery drowned Sunday morning while swimming at Hamilton Harbour at Lake Ontario, according to multiple reports. Emery reportedly never emerged after diving into the water near a friend’s boat, and a search for a missing swimmer became a recovery operation Sunday afternoon.

I can’t quite describe why I find this image so funny, but here it is: Vladimir Putin, grinning in the handshake line at the World Cup medal ceremony, with like the one umbrella anywhere in sight being held over his head dutifully by an attendant, while all around him are drenched in pouring rain:Read more...

History has a habit of repeating itself over and over in sports, especially in baseball. Saturday afternoon Starling Marte and Gregory Polanco got in some history-making of their own: they became the third teammates in MLB history to amass back-to-back home runs in both games of a double-header. This unlikely…Read more...

In the World Cup final between France and Croatia, player Antoine Griezmann celebrated in the rudest way possible: with an emote dance from Fortnite.

A hilariously wild and ragged World Cup final concluded with a 4-2 victory for France, after a chaotic first half marked by a pair of dumb goals for France, and a second half marked by a Pussy Riot field invasion and maybe the dumbest goal you will ever see in a World Cup Final, from Croatia.

Kylian Mbappé had just made a great run. Danijel Subašić saved it. The Croatian team went for a counterattack and… suddenly, there were idiots on the field.Read more...

The Indians and Yankees were tied at four apiece in the top of the seventh Saturday night when Austin Romine stepped to the plate and smoked a double to right center field. A slicing, dangerous hit, an easy stand-up two-bagger. Until!Read more...

If you were worried the World Cup final would present a couple of cagey teams hoping to avoid mistakes and get lucky on one decisive set piece or counterattack, that fear was dashed in just the 18th minute, when a pretty shameless dive gave France a dangerous free kick that converted to an own goal on the very…Read more...

Kevin Anderson tried his hardest to upset Novak Djokovic in the men’s Wimbledon Final, but the Serbian wasn’t having any of that. No. 12 Djokovic effortlessly defeated No. 8 Anderson in three sets, 6-2, 6-2, 7-6 (3), capturing his fourth Wimbledon title and 13th Grand Slam title.Read more...

The St. Louis Cardinals axed manager Mike Matheny Saturday night, following an 8-2 loss to the Cincinnati Reds. The loss was their fourth in five games, and 10th in their last 15 games. The Cardinals are now 7.5 games back in the NL Central. The Cardinals announced Matheny’s firing via a team release late Saturday…Read more...

Papa John Schnatter did an interview on Friday with Terry Meiners of NewsRadio 840 WHAS, reflecting upon his extremely bad and dumb week and the bizarre and offensive comments that got him into so much trouble. I suggest listening to the whole thing. Meiners is direct and reasonably tough, and calls Schattner on some…Read more...

The timing on this is very fun. Red Sox first baseman Blake Swihart singled in the bottom of the seventh inning Saturday, with one out and the the Red Sox down a run. Three pitches later, Sandy León skied a fly ball to left field, a harmless out that earned León’s disappointed body language. And that was before he saw…Read more...

By far the funniest thing about Fangraphs contributor Mike Werner’s reaction to video of Billy Hamilton’s insane catch Friday night is the possibility that Werner previously doubted the existence of spider monkeys, and understood this video of Billy Hamilton to be persuasive evidence of their existence.Read more...

Confident proclamations from Giannis Antetokounmpo about Jabari Parker’s future in Milwaukee turn out to have been premature: Saturday the Milwaukee Bucks rescinded the qualifying offer that gave them matching rights for any restricted free agency offer for Parker, paving the way for Parker to sign a reported…Read more...

The story here is less that Jimmy Butler turned down a four-year, $100 million extension offer from the Minnesota Timberwolves than it is that the Minnesota Timberwolves thought there was any chance in hell that Jimmy Butler would agree to a four-year, $100 million contract extension, in the same summer in which Zach…Read more...

Wimbledon’s women’s side put the final cherry on top of a weird-ass tournament Saturday, when Angelique Kerber made short work of Serena Williams in the final, 6-3, 6-3, to capture her first Wimbledon title and deny Serena her 24th career Grand Slam title.Read more...

Belgium topped England in a loose and entertaining third-place game Saturday, behind a couple terrifying quick-strike counterattack moves, and some delightfully screwy defending from the lads of England.Read more...

Billy Hamilton’s season at the plate has improved significantly from its dismal start. Where he was producing an awful .517 OPS in early June, and considering dropping switch-hitting as a potential remedy, he is now producing a more recognizable .636, in line with what he’s generally done over the past four seasons.…Read more...

If you still listen to audio through your computer’s built-in speakers, this deal’s for you. It’s a small, USB-powered sound bar designed just for computers (though I could also see using it with, like, a bedroom TV). Just plug in the USB port for power and the 3.5mm jack for audio, and boom: Instant audio upgrade.…Read more...

In 2015, according to police reports, a woman went to police in New Jersey saying that LeSean McCoy had hired her to help him host a party but that, when she arrived, it ended up being more of a family barbecue—and afterward McCoy refused to pay. The woman also told police that she was forced to leave behind thousands…Read more...

TMZ Sports posted a video today showing former Suns guard and current free agent Tyler Ulis getting into a fight with three anonymous guys in a Tempe, Arizona elevator in May 2017, then later fending them off with the help of Devin Booker.

The Tour de France peloton was not impressed with Stage 7, which wrapped up this morning with a ho-hum bunch sprint after 231 kilometers of nothing. Peter Sagan said, “It was boring today. We went pretty easy all day and then raced the last 10 kilometers.” Alejandro Valverde added, “It’s too much. A 230-kilometer…Read more...

At the IAAF Rabat Diamond League track meet in Morocco today, pole vaulter Timur Morgunov’s pole skewered the front of his shorts. His dangly bits narrowly and luckily remained intact.

While watching the FIFA World Cup a few weeks ago, my boss noticed players sitting in race car seats, and ordered me to figure out why. So I reached out to one of the biggest race car seat manufacturers, Recaro. Here’s what I learned.Read more...

Wimbledon always hosts a number of goofy exhibition doubles matches involving former players. Mostly these are excuses to showcase the racket hijinks of the spectacularly mustachioed Mansour Bahrami. But in a match yesterday, there was one point in which he somehow did not steal the show. Instead, the honor went to…Read more...

We see a lot of deals around the web over on Kinja Deals, but these were our ten favorites today.

The U.S. Olympic Committee announced its new CEO yesterday—Sarah Hirshland. She previously was an executive with the U.S. Golf Association and, before that, spent several years at Wasserman Media Group, a giant sports marketing agency whose CEO, Casey Wasserman, helped bring the Olympics to Los Angeles.Read more...

Some tennis, like the ongoing Nadal-Djokovic semifinal at Wimbledon, is so clean and crisp that it makes you want to get out on a court and whale on some balls. Other tennis might cause you to enter the fetal position and stay there for a long time—hypothetically speaking, six hours and 36 minutes. But today’s …Read more...

A week that began with reports that Papa John’s founder Papa “John” Schnatter somehow worked an overt hard-r racial slur into a conference call with a marketing company is ending with the removal of Schnatter’s name from virtually everything on which it had previously been emblazoned. There are only so many of these…Read more...

Fortnite got a huge patch yesterday for the start of Season Five. Among other things like the addition of portals and some changes to how challenges work, the game also got a new emote that effectively lets players golf. For now, the mini-game feels barebones and disorganized. You have to keep score yourself and you…Read more...

Welcome back to Dead Letters, the feature in which we reprint our favorite reader mail. We should take this moment to remind you that all emails to Deadspin and its editors and writers are on the record unless otherwise specified. Now for your letters.Read more...

The start of this Oakland Athletics season started out in unsurprising fashion, by which I mean everything went wrong.Read more...

High school and college basketball players will not only get paid if they play in LaVar Ball’s JBA league, but they’ll also get the kind of coaching experience you can’t even find in the NBA—specifically, getting shoved and cursed at and challenged to a fight.Read more...

Decades of pro wrestling history were upended via joint press release on Thursday when Ring of Honor, New Japan, and Madison Square Garden announced a joint show at “The World’s Most Famous Arena” for April 6, 2019. Unless an unannounced (but previously reported) planned show from Mexican promotion AAA materializes in…Read more...

TGIF.Read more...

We’re all in agreement that holding the 2022 World Cup in Qatar is a bad idea, right? Like, historically bad, since both the oppressive heat and the lack of infrastructure make the tournament such a logistical nightmare that it has to be played in December, with an entire city created from scratch to host the final.…Read more...

The Vegas Golden Knights announced that they have signed goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury to a very bad contract extension.

It would be difficult to endorse the ongoing John Isner vs. Kevin Anderson Wimbledon semifinal as a sports-viewing experience, per se—maybe more as a masochistic endurance sport. It’s been over four-and-a-half hours. Serves are big. Points are short. When they are not, they are not exactly ... good, either. There are…Read more...

The Denver Nuggets pulled off a midnight trade this morning, sending the expiring contracts of Kenneth Faried and Darrell Arthur to the Nets in exchange for guard Isaiah Whitehead, who was promptly waived. That the Nuggets didn’t receive much of anything in return might not make sense at first, but it was actually a…Read more...

MLB and Clear announced a partnership on Thursday that will soon let baseball fans enter stadiums using fingerprints, and eventually, just their face, instead of tickets.Read more...

Our beloved colleague Dave McKenna tells good stories. He’s done a lot of cool shit, met many weird people in weird ways, and had his run-ins with the law. And after selfishly squirreling all his stories away in Slack and our brains for years, we’ve realized we have a societal obligation to share.

Jacksonville Jaguars defensive lineman Marcell Dareus is currently facing two separate lawsuits that accuse him of sexual assault. Both anonymous plaintiffs—one woman from Las Vegas and another in Texas—say that Dareus had sex with them while they were blacked out or otherwise incapacitated. The Texas woman also…Read more...

JoAnne “Big Mama” Carner was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame 36 years ago. She hasn’t walked a course since 2004. She was asked yesterday, before the first-ever USGA Senior Women’s Open, if she had hit the gym to prepare. “Do I look like I hit the gym?” she replied.

Save big on a Dyson vacuum, the uber-popular Spikeball, your favorite affordable Bluetooth headphones, and the rest of today’s best deals.Read more...

Point guard Isaiah Thomas—formerly of the Lakers, Cavaliers, and Celtics all within the past 12 months—has found a new home in Denver. Adrian Wojnarowski is reporting that Thomas has signed with the Nuggets for the veteran’s minimum.Read more...

The best short film of the summer has arrived, and it’s Red Sox outfielder Mookie Betts patiently working through a 13-pitch at-bat against Blue Jays pitcher J.A. Happ before socking a grand slam dinger over that big Green Monster in left field. It’s got pathos—Justin Smoak dropping a foul pop-up just a few pitches…Read more...

In a June 2017 meeting with Tesla employees, CEO Elon Musk solicited their complaints about safety issues and promised to address their concerns, so long as they refrained from trying to organize a union, the National Labor Relations Board alleges.

The lengthy offseason limbo of Chelsea manager Antonio Conte appears to be nearing a resolution, as the BBC is reporting that an official announcement on Conte’s departure from the club is imminent. This tweet from Chelsea midfielder Cesc Fàbregas appears to give it away, too.Read more...