Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Empathy isn’t one of football’s commanding virtues. You don’t play because you care about the other guy’s pain. You play because you want to crush him. Same goes for watching—either you disconnect from the consequences, or you can’t really enjoy it.

TriggerPoint’s GRID foam rollers are the most popular on the market, and Amazon just discounted the 26" extra long model to $45, from the usual $60. Foam rollers use compression from your body weight to simulate a sports massage after you work out, and they hurt like hell, but they really work!

ESPN reported this morning that the wife, child, and mother-in-law of Blake Bivens, who pitches for the Tampa Bay Rays’ Double-A affiliate, were murdered in Keeling, Va. on Tuesday. An 18-year-old named Thomas Bernard, who is the brother of Bivens’s wife, was arrested and charged with the murders after leading police…Read more...

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A game console coffee table book sale, Hulu subscription, Perry Ellis, and Borderlands 3 pre-order bonus lead off Wednesday’s best deals from around the web.Read more...

Sometime in the middle of August, Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen quietly launched a spicy chicken sandwich that gripped the nation. I first became aware of the sandwich thanks to Jezebel’s very own influencer, Clover Hope, who quietly shared with the group one day that she had tried a spicy chicken sandwich at Popeyes and…Read more...

ESPN’s Adam Schefter is a reporter who reports on the NFL. That implies certain things, or at least it used to, namely that a reporter should not have a personal financial stake in the NFL, a business they ostensibly cover objectively, making more money. This seems uncontroversial to me, and for decades upon decades…Read more...

The deadline came and went, and now one of England’s oldest soccer clubs has been kicked out of the English Football League. Bury had been on the ropes financially for the majority of this year, and with neither a sale nor a proof of financial stability coming through before Tuesday’s 5 p.m. deadline, the EFL has…Read more...

Yesterday, while attempting to beat her own land speed record, the 52,000 horsepower jet-powered car driven by racer, fabricator, and television personality Jessi Combs crashed in the Alvord Desert in Oregon, killing her, as local news reports. Combs was 39 years old and held the title of “fastest woman on four…Read more...

I regret to inform you that the Los Angeles Dodgers, a powerhouse that always seems to find new sources of talent whenever it needs, have a new shutdown reliever on their hands. He’s short, he’s Canadian, and he simply cannot be touched.

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Baseball, for all its supposed problems, must still be a pretty good business to be in. Prior to the Marlins’ sale two years ago, an MLB franchise hadn’t gone on the market since 2012. But the Kansas City Royals are now on the block, with owner David Glass reportedly in advanced negotiations to sell the team for more…Read more...

The Los Angeles Sparks, to be sure, are no scrubs. They’re sitting near the top of the WNBA standings, with a future Hall of Famer in Candace Parker, All-Star forwards in the Ogwumike sisters, and one of the league’s greatest perimeter threats in Chelsea Gray. Alas, none of it was enough to prevent the 95–66…Read more...

Perfectly serviceable rotation guard and tough-luck injury casualty Jeremy Lin was deeply bummed to find this summer that NBA teams had for the most part lost interest in him as a free agent. Now, a month later, Lin has made the decision to move on from the NBA and continue his basketball career elsewhere.Read more...

Reigning National League MVP Christian Yelich will appear in the upcoming ESPN Body Issue, the worldwide leader’s annual effort to capitalize on everyone’s desire to see the bare butt-cheeks of attractive famous people. The Body Issue is 10 years old now—no one who is not hoarding survival gear in an underground…Read more...

Ben Roethlisberger, churlish in his old age, dissected Antonio Brown’s route-running last December for an entire local radio audience to hear. Brown didn’t take it personally...

Pinch-hitter Sean Rodriguez hit a walk-off dong Monday night to put his Phillies over the Pirates, 6–5, in extras. Afterward, in the post-game locker room, Rodriguez decided the moment had come to call out notoriously stubborn and impatient Philadelphia sports fans for their habit of booing players on the home team…Read more...

Stefanos Tsitsipas has already concluded his time at the U.S. Open in a bizarre, brief run.Read more...

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

Last night, in the bottom of the 11th inning, Sean Rodriguez hit an 0-2 pitch into the left field stands to win his team the game. That was when the problems started.

TMZ Sports has released video that allegedly reveals Lakers center DeMarcus Cousins on a phone call with his ex-girlfriend Christy West. According to court documents, the call happened last Friday. Cousins seems to ask West to allow their 7-year-old son to attend Cousins’s wedding, which took place this past Saturday.Read more...

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Today, we’re talking about soccer snobs, voiceover acting, bad keys, eating wrappers, and more.

Reformed footballer Rob Gronkowski showed up at an event in New York City today to push some CBD product. Since the NFL world has been engrossed by the abrupt retirement of Colts quarterback Andrew Luck, Gronkowski brought up an injury he had suffered in this past season’s Super Bowl to illustrate a point about what…Read more...

Roger Federer, a 38-year-old father of four, sometimes has the stubble to match. “I played a little bit like my beard today,” he said after his first-round U.S. Open match. “Rusty.” The beneficiary of that rust was Sumit Nagal, an Indian qualifier ranked No. 190 in the world, who stole the first set and looked,…Read more...

Some people are fans of the Dallas Cowboys. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Dallas Cowboys. This 2019 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

As Serena Williams easily drubbed Maria Sharapova in their first-round U.S. Open match last night, she got to be magnanimous in victory, applauding one of Sharapova’s few winners in the second set and then telling the on-court interviewer post-match that facing Sharapova was an “incredibly tough draw” because she is…Read more...

One of the best traditions in hockey is the customary “players’ day with the Cup” that happens after a team wins a championship. And while the St. Louis Blues are gallivanting around with the Stanley Cup doing god knows that, we can say with some certainty that the Calder Cup, which is given to the champions of the…Read more...

There are more than 363 million civilian-owned guns in the United States. We kill each other and ourselves with them almost constantly, at a rate of around 100 deaths per day.

An Eddie Bauer sale, Stream Deck Mini, Anker power tools, and Daniel’s Briefcases lead off Tuesday’s best deals from around the web.Read more...

Nobody goes to baseball games anymore. That’s the common alarmist wisdom that has become one of the overarching themes of the 2019 season, which had barely gotten underway before USA Today was declaring that MLB’s attendance slide of recent years had taken on a “more permanent look.” By May, the Associated Press was…Read more...

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The single most telling thing in the wake of Andrew Luck’s surprise retirement is the near-unanimous support for his decision from other football players. The sports shouters on your TV and in your Twitter machine can rail against soft millennials all they like, but the people who know what it’s like to play…Read more...

New York Times op-ed columnist Bret Stephens has long seemed thin-skinned, but it now appears that skin might actually be more like an insect shell casing. If you suggest this, though, you better do it to his goddamn face, at his home, in front of his wife and children. OR ELSE.Read more...

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The way the robo-umpire experiment down in the Atlantic League is configured, it should not especially threaten the jobs of human umpires, who are still tasked with communicating balls and strikes and acting as a failsafe against computer glitches. That’s good news for all human umpires, but perhaps none more so than…Read more...

I prefer to live in a world where the action that got Keon Broxton ejected from Monday night’s Yankees-Mariners game was 100 percent intentional. What’s more, I prefer to live in a world where Broxton becomes the Homer Simpson of the no-look glove-slap, and goes around flinging gloves across the faces of everyone who…Read more...

Evgeniy Evnevich, a correspondent for Russia’s Match TV, had just begun his dispatch on the status of CSKA Moscow midfielder Kristijan Bistrović when a devilish sprinkler began to pursue him.

Nothing was especially exciting about Team USA’s win over Canada in Sydney Sunday night, but the exhibition game did offer one revelation: Milwaukee Bucks center Brook Lopez is deeply, inexplicably beloved in Australia.

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Even relative to the brutal baseline of physical punishment that applies to big league catchers, Francisco Cervelli has been through a lot. When the Pittsburgh Pirates put him on release waivers last week, Cervelli was rehabilitating from what was at least the sixth concussion he’s suffered since 2011, which had kept…Read more...

The start of a new season offers all the promise of a blank slate. Onto this yet untouched slab, our imaginations can run wild carving any conceivable array of results and events, thrillingly unconstrained by anything other than our own whims and predictions. However, though we are just three matches into a new,…Read more...

In a lawsuit filed last week, the former orthopedic physician for Penn State’s football team said Nittany Lions coach James Franklin pressured him to clear players to return to game action before they were ready. The civil lawsuit was filed Friday in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. In the complaint, Dr. Scott Lynch said…Read more...

I imagine Andrew Luck is thinking about a Senate run today. Nothing, after all, inspires dreams of grandeur quite as quickly as doing something personal and painful that makes America pick a side, twitch like a worker in a meth lab, and then scream at each other for a few days.Read more...

During a press conference this morning, Patriots head coach Bill Belichick was asked to respond to Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck’s shocking retirement, which occurred over the weekend. Belichick’s typically grumbly response at first made it seem as though he had been unaware of the news:

While FIFA’s recent disciplinary code changes meant to address racist abuse from supporters in the stands, the updated rules have already been called to action this month to combat homophobia, first in France and now in Brazil.

Some people are fans of the Indianapolis Colts. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Indianapolis Colts. This 2019 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.Read more...

Four goals in the first 16 minutes. A Zlatan brace. Carlos Vela yelling at his manager. The fifth edition of El Tráfico, the Los Angeles Derby between LAFC and the Galaxy that capped off MLS’s Rivalry Week on Sunday night, wasn’t just the best game of the season—it was an example of what MLS can be at its best.Read more...

Ron Fellows played cornerback for the Dallas Cowboys and Los Angeles Raiders from 1981–1988. He intercepted 19 passes and scored three touchdowns, including two on interception returns. Now 61 years old and living in Sacramento, Calif., Fellows suffers from Alzheimer’s, and his cognition is gradually declining. What…Read more...

Like thirsty desert travelers converging on a shimmering oasis, Democratic presidential candidates flocked to the Iowa Federation of Labor convention last week. An endless parade of hopefuls, comedic in length and wearying in content, came before the union delegates in a hotel ballroom, each with a promise in one hand…Read more...