The Mourning After Page 9 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Everyone wants to love women’s soccer without taking any responsibility for it
It wasn’t quite the theater of the idiotic that his pre-Qatar speech was, but FIFA president Gianni Infantino had to get in front of a mic before the kickoff of the women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand and certainly wasn’t in any more of a mood to take any responsibility for problems with ...

Wiz Khalifa continues Pirates tradition of pitching while totally zooted
While the Pirates will never build him a statue, Dock Ellis has made sure that the greatest accomplishment in sports was performed by a Pirate. That was throwing a no-hitter while on LSD. Perhaps as our country continually lessens its aversion to drugs it’ll get the display it deserves at PNC Park, ...

Carlos Alcaraz out-Djokovic’d Novak Djokovic
There is a vision of how to beat Novak Djokovic at a major, especially at Wimbledon, and even more especially at Centre Court, where he hadn’t lost in 10 years. It’s only a vision, because so few have ever achieved it. Only Rafa Nadal and Daniil Medvedev had managed to beat Djokovic in a major in th...

Lionel Messi went to Publix, and if you know, you know
There are seminal moments in the lives of humans: First sexual experience, drink, cigarette, joint, child, marriage, family death, trip to Publix, among others. Once you’ve been through each, your world view changes, and ideally it’s accompanied by a boost in wisdom; for those who’ve never been insi...

NCAA treating violations with the leniency of a Boulder beat cop on 4/20
The University of Tennessee was hit with an $8 million fine, among other penalties, on Friday for “hundreds” of NCAA violations. Former coach Jeremy Pruitt and his staff committed north of 200 infractions, and while pretty much all of them weren’t a huge deal individually, when you rattle them off i...

The Orioles need to trade for Shohei Ohtani, and Christian Pulisic in Milan
Sure, it’s completely ridiculous. But being a baseball fan is about being ridiculous and, before owners crushed our spirits, discussing trades used to be the most fun part. Are the Angels going to admit that thanks to Mike Trout’s injury on top of all their others that it’s probably over for them? N...

The St. Louis Browns lose in the funnerest way possible
Hey-ho! AI Sam Fels is here to give you your usual Morning Aftre!...

Well, that’ll about do it for the Angels
There was always a Hail Mary aspect to this Anaheim Angels season. It’s been as close to a foregone conclusion that Shohei Ohtani is tail lights after this season, thanks to the Angels’ lack of success, perceived incompetence, and the $700 million that the team up I-5 is almost certainly readying fo...

I guess the visuals were the thing for NASCAR in Chicago
If you’re the city of Chicago, you can’t control the weather, though we’ve had a couple mayors who were definitely under the impression that they could. So a historic rainstorm on the day of Chicago’s NASCAR road race is just bad luck, unless you believe in the gods exacting justice of some sort....

The case against fandom
Welcome to Deadspin’s The Sports Nihilist, where all is for naught and we are but accidental jolts of electrified meat stuck to the surface of a rock in an indifferent universe. Fuck you....

The $100M questions for the NBA free agents who cashed in
Before anybody evaluates contracts or shouts that Fred VanVleet is overpaid from the mountaintop, let’s take a moment to congratulate all of the free agents who just guaranteed themselves and their families generational wealth. Tyrese Haliburton, Jerami Grant, Desmond Bane, Kyrie Irving, Cam Johnson...

Women’s hockey reforms, for better or worse
A pro women’s hockey league in North America has been something of an ungettable dream. Or at least having one unified one has been. There was the CWHL in Canada, but that folded. There was the NWHL, which became the PHF, but it ran alongside the CWHL and never with it. When the CWHL folded, the PWH...

Mets owner Steve Cohen doesn’t need to talk at all
New York Mets owner Steve Cohen certainly has made a splash since taking over the Queens club. Most of those ripples are due to the checks he signs, with the occasional bombastic quote to an insatiable New York media. The fact that a lot of what he’s had to say is adversarial to what the rest of MLB...

Immaculate Grid was designed for the unsalvageable like me, and the LA Kings try to convince themselves
There almost certainly is a sordid side to Immaculate Grid, just as there is to Wordle, or Numble, or Framed. In just the week I’ve been playing the Grid, I’ve probably given away my birth certificate, passport, and most of my DNA. And yet I’m not going to stop, and neither are you. ...

The off-putting history of Spencer Strider, and the incredible weirdness of the NHL Awards
I won’t pretend what follows makes any sense. It is simply a matter of taste, and my tastes have warped and mutated often into a territory I can no longer explain. If you’re an Atlanta baseball fan, Spencer Strider is a titan walking among men. Cobb County probably has dubbed it “Strider Day,” a gam...

The Yankees need to smash the panic button for doldrum of storylines reasons
We’re entering Brian Cashman territory with Aaron Boone. The Bronx at one point was the most hostile work environment in MLB. The standards were ridiculously high, and someone would’ve lashed out by now considering how long it’s been since the New York Yankees ran the American League. The head of th...

There’s less shame in porn than on the set of <i>First Take</i>
The easiest way to get clicks for the past week or so hasn’t been Victor Wembanyama content, or Damian Lillard trade destinations. No, if you really wanted to gin up page views and subscribers, put Zion Williamson and Moriah Mills in a headline. It’s the reason why Stephen A. Smith has repeatedly go...

Qatari ownership has come to sports on this continent, and is it just the beginning?
We’d wondered when Middle Eastern regimes would come for U.S. sports. They’ve got their mitts all over soccer now, warping how that sport works in Europe. They’ve completely altered golf. Boxing too. And yet it seemed that North America was the last frontier. ...

It’s getting a little late a little early for the San Diego Padres
One of the many things about the expanded playoffs in MLB is that a team doesn’t have to be good for six months. Or really even three. Put two good months together and a team can probably Forrest Gump their way into the dance. It’s what the Phillies did last year, after all. That’s what the San Dieg...

The Texas Rangers lost a game last night when New York went in search of a problem
I don’t know what your rule is for food falling on the floor. Most common are a five-second rule or 10-second rule, depending on the cleanliness of your floors, your level of depravity, and how springy your dog might be. Whatever MLB replay officials have, they should also apply it to how long they ...