fr Page 138 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Commissioner For A Day: Let’s Have More Indirect Free Kicks In The Box
One quirk of soccer is that the rules of the game change when the ball is in the box. Not massively, but in one small and crucial way: Because a foul in the box is punished with a penalty, things that would be fouls anywhere else on the field are occasionally just not called in the box....

Madison Bumgarner Gets Roasted To Hell By Max Muncy For Playing Dinger Cop
Madison Bumgarner is a good pitcher and a marvelous baseball player, but what he also is is a great big diaper baby. Few pitchers in all of baseball are as likely as Bumgarner to express their sensitivity to the humiliation of allowing a home run by shouting unwritten code commands at triumphant bat...

The Best Way For Jeffrey Goldberg To Help Diverse Journalists Would Be To Quit His Job
On Thursday, Nieman Lab published a friendly discussion with The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg and the magazine’s recently promoted executive editor Adrienne LaFrance, in which they addressed the great progress The Atlantic has made in adding women to its staff. Unfortunately (or fortu...

The Women's World Cup Has Already Been Marred By Some Corny VAR Bullshit
There is no shortage of arguments to be made against the proliferation of replay review in soccer, and I won’t bog down this blog post with points we’ve already made on the site many times over. Besides, the argument against the VAR decision from today’s Women’s World Cup opening match between Franc...

Rafael Nadal Is Tennis Jail
“If you want to do or achieve something on the clay, inevitably, at some stage, you will go through Rafa,” Roger Federer said after his French Open quarterfinal, “because he’s that strong, and he will be there.”...

Fred VanVleet: My Power Is Not Derived From My Son
One fun subplot of these NBA playoffs has been the resurgence of Raptors backup point guard Fred VanVleet. Through the first 15 games of the postseason, VanVleet was just one of the many Raptors role players struggling to find his shot while Kawhi Leonard dragged the team forward. He finally emerged...

Hey, Look At That, Dallas Keuchel Has Landed With The Braves
Former Astros ace Dallas Keuchel was the last man standing from the grueling free agency winter of hell that followed the 2018 season. Craig Kimbrel, the other glaringly overqualified but evidently unemployable pitcher, landed with the Cubs Wednesday night; Thursday night, at last, Keuchel scored a ...
![Was Kyrie Irving At The Club With Nets Reserve Alan Williams? [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/lr35fyclek6smukdms0v.jpg)
Was Kyrie Irving At The Club With Nets Reserve Alan Williams? [Update]
Soon-to-be free agent Kyrie Irving was on Manhattan’s Upper East Side yesterday, if you accept the word (and image) of a local real estate developer....

American Teen Amanda Anisimova's Singular Backhand Tore Up The Defending French Open Champ
Amanda Anisimova has a good backhand, so good as to foreclose any technical critique from the peanut gallery. She’s 17 years old and it has already been described by tennis commentators, perhaps accurately, as the best backhand on tour, and, hyperbolically, as the best of all time. I’ll leave those ...

South Africa's World Cup Debutantes Are Already Legends
No matter what happens in France this summer, the players that make up the South Africa women’s national team are already legends....

Craig Kimbrel Finally Lands A Job, Joins Cubs
It took all the way until June 5, but finally, finally, one of the handful of best closers in baseball has landed a job. Per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, Craig Kimbrel has reached an agreement to join the NL Central-leading Chicago Cubs on a multiyear deal:...

VAR Malfunction Turns African Champions League Final Into Protracted Shitshow
After a five-day controversy that included fans protesting in the streets, the Confederation of African Football executive committee decided Wednesday that the second leg of the African Champions League final will be replayed, the Associated Press reports....

Clint Frazier Has Some Things He'd Like To Get Off His Chest About The New York Media
The very first thing Yankees fans were told about Clint Frazier was that he was going to be good. Upon his acquisition from Cleveland in the Andrew Miller trade, Frazier was immediately ranked as the Yankees’ No. 2 prospect....

What The Hell Are These Questions From The French Open Pressers?
Today at the French Open, No. 7 seed Sloane Stephens lost her quarterfinal match. She went to press after, only to field this question, as noted by tennis writer Ben Rothenberg:...

France's Women Are On A Mission To Establish Worldwide Soccer Dominance
If the 100 percent non-existent aliens that purportedly flit about Earth’s skies were in fact real, and if they somehow mustered enough gumption in their lily liver-equivalent alien organs to descend upon the far superior human race and challenge us to a pair of soccer matches—one men’s, one women’s...

The Greatest Tennis Match Of The Year Was A Filthy, Hectic War
Forget the semifinals, the finals, or the shiny trophy ceremonies. The sweetest spot of a tennis major is the first weekend....

Can’t Everyone Just Stop Hollering At Phil Kessel While He’s Tryin’ To Watch The Teevee?
With the long NHL offseason here and no more hockey being played at all*, a young fan’s fancy turns, of course, to trade drama. This year’s downright biblical playoffs mean lots of teams are likely to be in the mix this summer—Columbus is about to lose high-value Russians faster than Petrograd afte...

Padres' Franmil Reyes Serenades Home Crowd With Rendition Of "I Will Always Love You"
Padres outfielder Franmil Reyes was able to put on a show for the Friar faithful in San Diego on Friday. Not only did the 5-2 victory over the Marlins include a solo shot in the bottom of the first—giving him a team-leading 16th home run for the season—but he also capped off the win with a solid ren...

Fred VanVleet Can Do No Wrong
How big a lead does a team have to have on the Warriors before its fans can feel comfortable? Twenty points with two minutes left? Fifteen points with 30 seconds to go? To me, it didn’t feel like the Raptors had Game 1 locked up until they were actually dribbling out the final ticks, up nine with th...

Spanish Soccer Team Celebrates Promotion With Awkward Postgame Strip Tease
With their season-capping win on Saturday, soccer club Esportiu Llançà won promotion from Catalonia’s third division (Spain’s seventh tier overall) to its second. To celebrate the team going up, one of the club’s board members arranged for a stripper to enter the locker room after the game and drop ...