Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Vanessa Rose stands at the ready in center field. In a half-crouch with her glove-hand resting on one knee and her throwing-hand resting on the other, she stares in at home plate as the rock star Jack White digs his cleats into the batter’s box.

St. Louis Cardinals legend and Hall of Famer Lou Brock died on Sunday at age 81. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that he had been dealing with several medical issues, but did not give a cause of death. His passing comes in the same week as another iconic star of the 1960s and 1970s, Tom Seaver.Read more...

It’s been a bonkers year for just about everyone, in every sense of the word. Tennis is no different, and Novak Djokovic is no different. From his medical views derived from Mars to dismissing the risks of COVID-19 and then catching it, as well as carrying an undefeated record this year, there would be more than…Read more...

The world’s most famous horse race has taken a backseat this weekend.

Time is up for Milwaukee.

In the 2020 version of College GameDay, we see Kirk Herbstreit broke down in tears, and Lee Corso, working remotely surrounded by cardboard cutouts of his colleagues, said college football should not be played due to COVID-19 concerns.

Pat Mahomes received his bank-breaking contract earlier this summer, so we knew it was a matter of time before Houston’s Deshaun Watson had the Brinks trucks rolled out for him.Read more...

Hope you enjoy this Labor Day weekend, because once it’s over, there’s a whole slew of takes on the way.

Iranian wrestler Navid Afkari was given two death sentences by the Iranian government after participating in a protest over economic and political struggles in the nation back in 2018.

All that drama about Lionel Messi telling Barcelona he wanted to leave? Yeah, he’s not leaving.

Russell Westbrook and James Harden will be playing in the most important playoff series of their careers tonight.Read more...

After a Deadspin story last week on sports-talk troglodyte Tony Bruno’s racist claim that most professional basketball players are illiterate, national broadcaster Sports Map Radio has dropped his evening program, the network confirmed Friday. SiriusXM has also reportedly yanked his boring afternoon show. These…Read more...

It’s taken two-and-a-half years for sports gambling to clear the Supreme Court hurdle to actually arriving in arenas and stadiums where the games people play are housed. But we’re there.Read more...

It probably won’t be the basketball that will be remembered about this Orlando bubble to finish the 2019-2020 season, and rightly so. That doesn’t mean some of the teams and players aren’t going to try. The Celtics and Raptors engaged in an absolute bonkers ending to Game 3, and when it was all said and done the…Read more...

A hundred years ago, on Aug. 16, 1920, Ray Chapman was killed by a pitch.

Throughout the summer, athletes across the sports spectrum have expressed their viewpoints on issues disproportionately harming the Black community.

Context, reasoning, and facts don’t exist anymore. They’ve been replaced by a lack of information and emotional overreactions.

NCAA President Mark Emmert has a base salary of something like $2.3 million. In 2017, he made $3.9 million. In 2018, he dropped off to $2.7 million.Read more...

It was another primetime night for the NBA in Orlando, and generally their worst nightmare is when the refs hijack such an occasion. NBA refs can never decide if they want to be the show or not, and the indecision tends to just make it worse (credit the other sports arbiters for knowing exactly what they want,…Read more...

The darkest day of my youth was the day the Mets traded Tom Seaver.Read more...

They told us that sports were a reward for a functioning society.Read more...

It’s rare that Twitter lights up in positivity, aside from baseball writers getting wind of a new Springsteen album. It’s a hellscape for the damned, and we’ve known that forever. But there is no dark space filled with the most vile evil that light cannot penetrate. U2 has a good song and a half somewhere in their…Read more...

As Serena Williams approaches Margaret Court’s record of 24 Grand Slams, some rightfully wish Court were already an afterthought.

In a podcast appearance, Kirk Cousins questioned the efficiency of masks and said he was “at peace” with getting COVID, even if he died from it.

As Jordyn Wieber walked off the mat after her floor routine at the 2012 Olympics, she was giddy, and a big smile danced across her face as she walked down the performance steps.Read more...

A shortened baseball season isn’t weird enough to keep some traditions from continuing. The Pirates suck, the Dodgers are Skynet, and Aroldis Chapman is a cowardly asshat. Tonight he thought it’d be fun to fire a 101 MPH fastball directly at Michael Brosseau’s head, which came a millimeter or two from greatly altering…Read more...

It’s not the Kentucky Derby Churchill Downs would have imagined. It’s on Labor Day weekend instead of the first Saturday in May. It will take place without fans in the stands. It’ll be the second race of the Triple Crown instead of the first, as the Belmont has already been run. And whereas, for some, it used to mark…Read more...

The powers that be in this country never cease to amaze me.Read more...

When Senator Ron Wyden played basketball at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he got paid — just not on the court.Read more...

The Bubble Domes continued at pace last night, and perhaps the story was OKC forcing a Game 7 against the Rockets in their first-round series. Or rather, the story within the story.Read more...

It kind of came out of nowhere. While rumors of Weston McKennie wanting to move on from Schalke in the Bundesliga were running pretty wild, the mentioned destinations were more mid-tier Premier League clubs. Southampton was the main one, which made all the sense in the world. Certainly McKennie would have seen how…Read more...

As I wrote in the Mourning After, it seems strange that any MLB team would view this season with anything other than suspicion or derision. It’s hard to have any feel for what your team is after just 30 games, if your team has even gotten to 30 games. The expanded playoffs mean that just about anyone could eat it in…Read more...

For Black men of a certain age, John Thompson was the pinnacle. And even if they didn’t play for him, he was their coach.

Ja’Marr Chase is a smart man.

It was a garden-variety fuck up.

Legendary Georgetown Men’s Basketball Coach, John Thompson Jr., has died. He was 78.Read more...

It’s kind of perfect that on the weekend when so many teams had doubleheaders due to canceled games on account of a killer pandemic, the league is trying to trudge through while pretending “just going to their happy place” is an actual medical prescription, and when the A’s became the latest team to join the list of…Read more...

Standing alone on the baseline of his sport’s biggest stage, returning serve against systemic racism on-and-off the court, 1996 Wimbledon finalist MaliVai Washington, knows the weight of being a high-profile athlete balancing professional responsibilities with the complex dilemma of being a role model, speaking his…Read more...

Halfway through the season sprint, another MLB team has recorded another positive COVID test, bringing the contamination total to five teams.Read more...

If MLS and NWSL have a lot of things to catch up on to be considered a “major league,” one thing we can cross off the list is the speed at which they eject a shithead racist owner from their ranks.

Novak Djokovic certainly can’t be accused of just going along with the crowd, even if his own road takes him to some truly stupefying and weird places. It appears Nole is once again following his own beat, as he, along with Canadian tennis player Vasek Pospisil, are forming their own men’s tennis players union.

Updated on Aug. 29, 2020 at 8:05 p.m. EST: Milwaukee Bucks guard George Hill decided to sit out the national anthem before the Bucks’ playoff game vs. the Magic on Saturday... literally.Read more...

Everyone’s hopes and dreams have validity, and who among us has not dreamed of buying a baseball team?Read more...

Cliff Robinson, an NBA player who by many accounts was a time machine into the future in a number of aspects of his life, including being a fierce proponent of marjiuana legalization, died Saturday at 53.Read more...

After an historic few days of player protests following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, in Kenosha, Wisc., by a white officer, the NBA and National Basketball Players Association announced a three-step plan in response to the concerns of players in their fight against racial inequality.Read more...

Even after all that 2020 has taken from us, the loss of Chadwick Boseman seems unbearable.Read more...

When Black professional athletes say police brutality and being treated like a criminal is important to them, they truly mean it because it’s personal.Read more...

That’s some Broad Street Bullshit.Read more...