Deadspin > Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise

Let’s issue the warning up front: You’re going to see a pretty gross finger if you keep reading. It looks like a bloody lowercase “Z,” if that helps you sharpen your imagination. Okay, you’ve been warned.

Antonio Brown’s long struggle with the NFL and the Raiders for the right to wear whatever old helmet he most desires may have reached a ceasefire on Tuesday. The brand-new Oakland wideout practiced with the team in an NFL-approved helmet for the first time since he went AWOL a couple of days ago, according to head…Read more...

Hall of Fame reliever Goose Gossage has been complaining about the state of baseball for so long that his complaints have spanned multiple decades of the sport. It feels like just yesterday, he was lecturing Joba Chamberlain on “the Yankee way.” (Joba Chamberlain is now retired.) Eleven years later, Gossage is still…Read more...

Today, we’re talking about ex-girlfriends, pens, secession, King Kong at the plate, and more.

Who is ready for a particularly grim session of Let’s Remember Some Guys? Because according to reports coming out of the Dominican Republic, former MLB players Octavio Dotel and Luis Castillo have been arrested in what authorities have described as “the largest operation against organized crime” in the country:

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

It has been two weeks since the finale of HBO’s R-rated Riverdale knock-off, Euphoria, aired to glowing reviews. Everyone wants to talk about how the show found its earnest heart, and whether Jules will come back, and how all the teens may be doomed by sexting and drugs, but no one wants to talk about how East…Read more...

At this point you are not exactly going out on a limb when you say it was stupid for the New York Giants to draft Daniel Jones. Everybody is already saying this, and will likely continue to say it up until the point Jones throws a bunch of touchdowns and leads the Giants to the playoffs. With that in mind, we can give…Read more...

The long wait to watch David Beckham’s Miami MLS franchise play in all the promised glitziness has hit yet another unfortunate snag: the ground where Inter Miami’s ritzy new stadium is to be built is literally poisoned.Read more...

A couple of Edifier bookshelf speakers, Super Mario Odyssey, and up to 40% off Climb Gear at Backcountry lead of Tuesday’s best deals from around the web.Read more...

In general, it’s fine to have informal house rules in a pickup basketball game. “Guard your man” is a good one, for example: Few things are more annoying or more ruinous to the flow of play than the lazy sack of crap who sags 20 feet off his man, substituting the aggregate strategic soundness of letting an amateur…Read more...

You know the big, climactic ending to The Natural, where Robert Redford booms a huge, pennant-winning bomb that knocks out a lighting fixture in the stadium? Okay, so maybe Paul DeJong’s sixth-inning homer in the Cardinals’ 3-0 win against the Brewers in mid-August isn’t quite that dramatic, even if the ball did break…Read more...

The important thing is that Jimmy Garoppolo is healthy. It has to be, because to focus on the 49ers quarterback’s performance in his first game action since tearing his ACL in Week 3 last season is to invite some serious collar-tugging.

Antonio Brown was a no-show at Raiders practice Sunday, after recent developments offered tentative hope that his helmet saga was nearing a satisfying conclusion. Raiders general manager Mike Mayock expressed the team’s frustrations and eagerness to move on in a statement Sunday afternoon, but unless or until the team…Read more...

Both sides eventually appealed a 2015 verdict that granted former Los Angeles Times hack sports columnist T.J. Simers $7.1 million in an age and disability discrimination suit against the paper. The Times appealed because holy shit, $7.1 million! Simers appealed because the amount was less than the $12 million he’d…Read more...

The Lakers are casting about for replacements for DeMarcus Cousins after the big man shredded his ACL in a pickup game in Las Vegas last week. The pickings are slim. Joakim Noah is available! Only slightly better than that experiment in re-animation is this: the Lakers have requested permission from the Memphis…Read more...

The owners of Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca—the most famous and intimidating soccer venue in North America—announced that they have removed offending vendors, and has promised to take legal action, after beer-sellers in the stadium were caught watering down their product during a Club America win on Saturday.Read more...

One of the best ongoing statistical oddities in English soccer is that Wolverhampton Wanderers youngster Rúben Neves has never scored for the club from inside the penalty box in open play. Heading into Monday’s game against Manchester United, the 22-year-old Portuguese midfielder had 12 goals for Wolves. Nine of those…Read more...

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

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

During the third quarter of Sunday’s Indiana Fever-Washington Mystics game, the broadcast thought it had spotted a celebrity in the front row: Orlando Magic guard Markelle Fultz, who was identified alongside his mom. Great! Only it wasn’t Markelle Fultz.Read more...

BauBax has been turning out Kickstarter hits in the travel apparel space for a few years now, and while their jackets and pants put the focus on utility and versatility, their new travel shoes keep things simpler.Read more...

For the second time in as many weeks of the new Premier League season, the biggest story from the weekend was another ruinously stupid imposition of VAR. The only thing more tiring than having to write the umpteenth anti-VAR post is having to witness video replay poison this wonderful sport from week to week.Read more...

The Pioneer League’s Missoula Osprey had to postpone all of its games this weekend when the aftermath of a Mumford & Sons concert combined with bad weather to make the baseball field mushy and unplayable.Read more...

Old Man Wayne Rooney’s MLS stint is just about done. At the conclusion of this season he’ll leave DC United to become a player-manager for Derby County back in England. Perhaps this is a good time for him to make an exit from American soccer, because he seems pretty fed up with the whole enterprise lately.

This past weekend, I stopped by the little beer-and-wine store near my local supermarket and picked up a 12-can variety pack of White Claw–brand fruit-flavored “hard seltzer.” At the checkout counter, I had two options: A hip-looking 20-something dude with a beard and some kind of bunlike thing going on with his hair,…Read more...

Turns out, there was no happy ending, only a long, sad breakup.Read more...

A big Sorel sale, Zelda soundtrack, a Nintendo Switch charging stand, and a cake pop maker lead of Monday’s best deals from around the web.Read more...

When he gets upset about poor umpiring, Yankees outfielder Brett Gardner has been doing ... whatever it is he’s doing in that GIF above. Some might call it a healthy venting of frustration, but others might call it obnoxious tantrum-throwing. Someone who is definitely on Team Obnoxious is umpire Phil Cuzzi, who…Read more...

The Cubs’ 7-1 win over the Pirates in Williamsport, Penn., on Sunday night wasn’t the tightest of ballgames, but the Little Leaguers in attendance had fun all the way through the end. In the ninth inning, with the game far out of reach and Craig Kimbrel on just to get some reps after coming off the IL, some kids in…Read more...

Sixteen years ago, the sun set on Web 1.0, and we embarked by the light of our smartphones to 24/7 connectivity, down a road paved with corporate blunders, littered with yesterday’s top 8 friends, scrubbed n00ds, trashed chiptune tracks, bomb threats, and downy unicorn costumes. Comedic treasures were born and…Read more...

It is impressive, frankly, how much has happened in the Antonio Brown helmet saga—how much has been said and done and how much angst has been expended in the Raiders receiver’s battle against the NFL over the rules barring him from wearing his helmet of choice—without the whole thing having moved even one sliver…Read more...

A serious crash stopped IndyCar’s ABC Supply 500 at Pocono Raceway on lap one today, a day that’s just year after another crash at the track paralyzed driver Robert Wickens from the waist down. Though no one sustained critical injuries this time, Wickens and many onlookers are calling for IndyCar to drop the infamous…Read more...

On Saturday, Iranian authorities released four women on bail who were arrested for trying to circumvent the ban on women entering soccer stadiums in the country by dressing as men, according to a researcher from Human Rights Watch. Cops arrested a total of six women brought them in for questioning on Aug. 13, and…Read more...

A wise person online once said, “Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it.” Such a quote can also be applied to the Baltimore Orioles this season. As a whole, the team has been a special kind of terrible that few people have ever seen before in their lives. Yet at least once a week,…Read more...

The lead up to a Honduran soccer game turned violent as supporters from two rival clubs clashed both with one another and with police inside and outside of the National Stadium in Tegucigalpa. Reuters reports that three people were killed, and at least 10 were injured during the incident, including three players.Read more...

ESPN’s Coley Harvey published a profile on Friday of internet-famous baseball narrator Jimmy O’Brien aka JomboyMedia on YouTube. For those unfamiliar, his videos consist of short, but detailed, breakdowns of interesting and comedic moments that happen in baseball games. Here’s an example:Read more...

Former Bears, Bengals and Packers running back Cedric Benson died on Saturday in a motorcycle crash in Austin, Texas, according to multiple reports. He was 36.

There were scary scenes in Sivas, Turkey on Saturday when Demir Grup Sivasspor’s goalkeeper Mamadou Samassa was taken to the hospital after he fainted while he was being helped off of the pitch to deal with an injury he suffered just moments earlier. The injury in question came as a result of colliding with Beşiktaş…Read more...

Jack White is currently on tour with his band The Raconteurs and their show on Saturday was in our nation’s capital. As he is wont to do, White went over to Nationals Park with his bandmates to catch the early portion of Brewers-Nats, but had to leave as the time for his concert approached. The show wrapped up and…Read more...

Despite having a man sent off just six minutes into the match, LA Galaxy found themselves clinging onto a 2-1 lead over the Seattle Sounders on Saturday in the final 10 minutes of regulation. In one of their many attempts forward, the Sounders launched a long ball with the hopes that forward Jordan Morris would reach…Read more...

By all accounts that matter—meaning the fight’s scorecards—Daniel Cormier had been better than his opponent, Stipe Miocic, through three rounds in the main event of UFC 241. Entering the fourth of the UFC heavyweight title bout, each judge had things scored at 2-1 in Cormier’s favor.

MLB announced on Saturday that Dodgers pitcher Julio Urias will serve a 20-game suspension for violating the league’s Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Policy. Urias was arrested on May 13 on suspicion of domestic violence after witnesses told law enforcement that they saw the pitcher shove a…Read more...

Aaron Boone wasn’t happy on Thursday. He didn’t like that his team was getting whooped by Cleveland, he didn’t like how his players performed on the way to the eventual 19-5 loss, and he especially didn’t like that he had to send first baseman Mike Ford to the mound to pitch through the final two innings of the…Read more...

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Manchester City were on the verge of pulling out a late victory against Tottenham at home, and then VAR stepped in to take it away.

Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott will not face criminal charges in connection to an incident in May where he shoved a member of an EDM festival’s event staff in Vegas, according to TMZ.Read more...

The legendary thrash metal band Slayer announced on Friday that they had been dropped as the primary sponsor of the No. 54 racecar that J.J. Yeley was set to drive at Bristol Motor Speedway on Saturday. In a statement given to Billboard, the band cited concerns from other legacy sponsors as the reason for their…Read more...

While Vlad Guerrero Jr. has proven in his short career to be a dinger-mashing machine just like his father was, the comparisons between the two can often be a bit much. Guerrero Jr. could hit a line-drive single to left field and someone will inevitably say something like “Wow, that’s just like the one his father hit…Read more...

NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported on Friday that Jets linebacker Avery Williamson had suffered a torn ACL during the team’s preseason game against the Falcons on Thursday. The injury happened with 3:52 left in the second quarter, at which point every defensive starter except for Williamson had been subbed out of the…Read more...

An Echo Dot Wall mount, $100 Off a Casper Mattress, Plus 2 Free Original Pillows, and Wayfair’s Home Renovation Sale lead of Saturday’s best deals from around the web.Read more...