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Deadspin Up All Night: I'm Still Here Listening
Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. Have a good one....
Don't Buy What Baseball's Also-Rans Are Selling
It is one of the charms of baseball’s postseason that both good and notably less-good teams take part. Sometimes one of those less-good teams catches the Holy Ghost and tears some or all of the way through the postseason, and it is good. A Colorado Rockies team that looked like a slightly-more-fitne...
To Truly Understand Jon Gruden's Mind Would Be To Go Mad
Nathan Peterman, America’s Quarterback and Oakland’s either second or third, is growing on Jon Gruden. Not like Kuato in Total Recall, although that is nice to think about—to be clear, Gruden is Kuato in this scenario; just slap a visor and a critical sunburn on this little guy and it’s easy to see—...
A Working Theory Of What The Mets Are Even Doing Right Now
On Sunday, the Mets did two unusual things. If you want to be rude, you can include them sweeping a series from the Pittsburgh Pirates as a third, but the first two are more notable and also let’s be nice. One of those unusual things was that, in a departure from the norm, the team did not use a “Su...
Every Team Sucks, But Not In The Same Way
Somehow, in wild defiance of everything that has ever given order to the universe, NFL teams will begin playing preseason games in the next week. Straight up full-dress, pads-on football games, one real NFL team against another, the whole thing. Or not quite the whole thing—the recognizable players ...
What The Hell Did The Mets Do To Edwin Díaz?
You hear things. Rumblings and dark intimations, whispers that skitter down corridors on ghostly little feet. People say that there’s something there, something hard to name, some kind of power. Something that doesn’t listen or bargain or play by the rules that hold the rest of us fast, something st...
It's Time To Get Upset About Sneakers Again
Earlier this week, Nike pulled the release of what the Wall Street Journal described as “a U.S.A.-themed sneaker” that had been slated to be released on July 4. The sneakers, which featured the circa-1770 “Betsy Ross flag” on the heel of the shoe, were shipped to retailers and then recalled. “Nike h...
Soccer Idiots Agree: The USWNT Is Cool, VAR Is Not
It’s Independence Day, the day on which every American feels especially proud to be American, which also now means every taking it upon yourself, as an American, to make sure that every other American is behaving in a suitably proud way re: how American they are. In real life, this holiday mostly re...
Let's Remember Some Guys: The Proper Use Of Flip-Down Sunglasses
To understand how and why the Guys that have lodged in my mind are where they are, you must remember that this was the 1980s and 1990s, and that I lived in the suburbs, and that I am an idiot. There were things to do there, and various places within a moderate bike’s ride at which to do them; I had ...
Down A Hole: When Mike Piazza Told Everyone He Wasn't Gay
I don’t remember where I was going or why I was going there, but given the neighborhood I was in and when in my life I was there, I was almost certainly going to a bar. It was raining, and as I hustled down a street that was briefly in that golden New York state of being both smelly and shiny, I saw...
Ancient War Goblin Henry Kissinger Defends Olympics In <i>Los Angeles Times</i>
Every global-scale sporting event exists in a strange standoff with itself. On one side is the inevitable bloat and graft and soul-deep cynicism that animates every such event—the neighborhoods flattened or surveilled or otherwise punished for sitting where a stadium is supposed to be, the bribery a...
Let's Remember Some Guys: They Enlarged Greg Minton's Teeth
There is something about a mustache that disorients a person. It is a grooming decision first and foremost, but also and in a broader sense it is a choice. Growing a bunch of hair on your upper lip and then getting like marinara sauce and old bits of cake in it is, at bottom, a decision that you mak...
Phil Regan, Who Is 82 Years Old, Is Your New Mets Pitching Coach
Any Major League Baseball franchise setting out to hire a pitching coach over 80 years of age would do well to get Phil Regan. He has had a distinguished and improbably eventful life in baseball, and a very long one. Regan’s first big-league manager, in 1960, was Jimmy Dykes, another lifer who made...
Can Philip Rivers Dunk A Basketball?
All the bars that can open their windows have opened them, and the other ones have shut them tight and dialed up the air conditioning. The air is dense and soupy; just walking down the street feels like wading out into a very still body of saltwater. The sports schedule, give or take the end of the ...
Lucas Giolito, Who Was The Worst Starter In Baseball, Is Now An Ace
It only feels like every strange or new thing that could happen in baseball has already happened. Lucas Giolito, who is currently pitching better than just about any starting pitcher in baseball a year after pitching worse than every other starting pitcher in baseball, is not remotely the first such...
Let's Remember Some Guys: American Gladiators Beyond Thunderdome
How smart do you want your sports to be, really? Not the athletes involved, who will invariably have the kind of fast and opportunistic and almost automatic intelligence that athletes display in the moment, but the sport itself. Do you want it to be complex and governed by arcane rules, or just so s...
It's Time For A National Conversation About Drake's Horny Watch
One thing that can be said about Drake that cannot be said about a disconcertingly large number of other famous people is that it is clear why he is famous. He has done actual things—performed some hugely popular songs about how disappointed he is in various exes; endorsed one of the better-liked le...
We Must Remove Mark Jackson From NBA Broadcasts Post-Haste
There is the constant travel and the dreary tape-eating research and the broader long-season ennui and the oppressive non-negotiable formalwear, and all of that is unpleasant. All the bleak hotel club sandwiches and the time away from family and periodically having to go to literally Phoenix and the...
Go Ahead And Get Upset About Kevin Durant's Injury
After a rapid and opaque rehabilitation from a strained calf, Kevin Durant’s return to Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Monday was cut short by a devastating injury. Everyone on the Warriors seems both stricken and kind of confused about who to blame; journalists like The Athletic’s Tim Kawakami who wrot...
The Mets Think They've Outsmarted The MLB Draft And You Know How That Usually Goes
The New York Mets: honestly who ever even knows with these guys. ...