They're for real this year as they bring a nine-game win streak with them | Continue reading
A joke has structure. It has a central rule. Setup, punchline. The setup produces a tensed, expectant state; the punchline resolves the tension with a surprise. If the elements of the joke are not arranged into a setup and a punchline, it is not a joke. It is just a statement. | Continue reading
Cam Perron started flipping baseball cards in first grade. | Continue reading
In 1971, Ted Williams and John Underwood released The Science of Hitting, the definitive treatment of the subject. Few great athletes have ever been so articulate about the mechanics of their greatness, which is one reason the book holds up even today, well into the analytics era … | Continue reading
You’ve seen a painting of Norbert Grupe. A heavy, creased brow and shoulder-length hair framing a frightening scowl, the massive work hung in the fictional Manhattan Museum of Art in Ghostbusters II. When the medieval sorcerer pictured within the painting begins to physically man … | Continue reading
From night to night, odds are Clyde Frazier is best thing going during any given Knicks telecast. Swoopin and hoopin may as well run on every graphics package. But is there a method to how Clyde dishes out the Clydeisms? Yes, actually. | Continue reading
From night to night, odds are Clyde Frazier is best thing going during any given Knicks telecast. Swoopin and hoopin may as well run on every graphics package. But is there a method to how Clyde dishes out the Clydeisms? Yes, actually. | Continue reading
If you're like the average American, your experience of major horse races centers on one: the Kentucky Derby. Perhaps you know a bit more about the sport and follow the Preakness and the Belmont as well, putting a bit of money down in the same spirit in which you'd pick a bracket … | Continue reading
We have received a great deal of feedback from you, our readers, about the sound-on autoplay videos that have been inundating our sites. We want you to know that we hear you, that we take those complaints seriously, and that we, the writers, editors, and video producers of Deadsp … | Continue reading
Major League umpire and apparent MAGA fiend Rob Drake posted and deleted a tweet late Tuesday indicating that he would be purchasing an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle on Wednesday in order to wage “CIVAL WAR” should Congress impeach peabrain president Donald Trump. Going to go out on … | Continue reading
If you paid attention to ESPN channels yesterday, you saw the network repeatedly attempt to grapple with the story of Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey creating an international incident after tweeting and then deleting his support for pro-democracy protestors in Hong K … | Continue reading
If you paid attention to ESPN channels yesterday, you saw the network repeatedly attempt to grapple with the story of Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey creating an international incident after tweeting and then deleting his support for pro-democracy protestors in Hong K … | Continue reading
If you paid attention to ESPN channels yesterday, you saw the network repeatedly attempt to grapple with the story of Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey creating an international incident after tweeting and then deleting his support for pro-democracy protestors in Hong K … | Continue reading
Let us now chronicle the rise and sort-of fall of British YouTuber and now-former national e-cycling champion Cameron Jeffers. Unfortunately, the nouns in this story do not become that much easier to understand as we proceed, but please bear with me. | Continue reading
Now that Sports Illustrated’s three owners, Meredith Corp., Authentic Brands Group, and TheMaven, have completed the callous layoff of half of Sports Illustrated’s newsroom and finalized a deal that gives control of the publication to TheMaven, a wannabe tech company helmed by no … | Continue reading
The gutting of Sports Illustrated was pointless, needlessly cruel, stupid and thoroughly corporate. It is what we do now—from an agrarian society to an industrial one to an informational one and now to the strip-it-down-resealable-parts one. Hurray for progress! See you in hell! | Continue reading
Now that Sports Illustrated’s three owners, Meredith Corp., Authentic Brands Group, and TheMaven, have completed the callous layoff of half of Sports Illustrated’s newsroom and finalized a deal that gives control of the publication to TheMaven, a wannabe tech company helmed by no … | Continue reading
On a recent Thursday evening in August, a 40-year-old MMA gym owner in Beijing named Xu Xiaodong activated his VPN, hopped over the Chinese government’s internet firewall, and began his first-ever live YouTube broadcast. He wanted to talk about the ongoing protests in Hong Kong, … | Continue reading
Dozens of staffers at Sports Illustrated are expected to be laid off as early as Thursday, according to sources and published reports, and the cuts could be as deep as 50 percent of staff. | Continue reading
The motivation for using video review in sports is obvious: to get more calls right. This seems like an easy enough mission to fulfill, but anyone who has spent even a little time watching sports on TV can attest to the fact that the application of video review is not so simple. … | Continue reading
In a garden-variety suburb outside Albany—a recent July morning, but it could have been any morning—Patrick Battuello woke up at five, brewed a cup of coffee, and then sat at his computer to review the previous day’s horse races. He’s done this every day for the last six years. T … | Continue reading
Many people who visit Beijing take special pleasure in doing a thing they often do, but on the Great Wall. Shotgunning a beer on the Great Wall. Lighting a cigar on the Great Wall. Making a sandwich and then eating it on the Great Wall. I have personally seen a used condom on the … | Continue reading
My God, the Mets. Phew. The hell they entered Tuesday night is a special, Mets-only hell. There are excruciating losses, and then there’s watching in horror as a sure-fire victory leaps out of the bag and lays waste to the dwindling hopes of your fading season. | Continue reading
Nobody goes to baseball games anymore. That’s the common alarmist wisdom that has become one of the overarching themes of the 2019 season, which had barely gotten underway before USA Today was declaring that MLB’s attendance slide of recent years had taken on a “more permanent lo … | Continue reading
SARASOTA, FLORIDA — The sun hadn’t yet risen over the Sarasota Kennel Club, and Deb Linn was wrist deep in 100 pounds of bloody meat. She had been been up since 4:30 a.m., when she made the 45-minute commute south from Ellenton, a small town where the rent is more affordable than … | Continue reading
When Jim Spanfeller and a private equity firm called Great Hill Partners took over G/O Media—formerly Gizmodo Media Group—in April, their stated goal was to make the company profitable. It was a welcome refrain for employees all too aware of how the company had languished under U … | Continue reading
When Jim Spanfeller and a private equity firm called Great Hill Partners took over G/O Media—formerly Gizmodo Media Group—in April, their stated goal was to make the company profitable. It was a welcome refrain for employees all too aware of how the company had languished under U … | Continue reading
When news broke eight days ago that reigning Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel faces an NCAA investigation into whether he sold autographs, the college football world reacted with either confusion or outright skepticism. After all, the press had created an image of the Manzie … | Continue reading
The Los Angeles Clippers held an introductory press conference today for new players Paul George and Kawhi Leonard. Also on stage was team owner Steve Ballmer, known for being shiny, red, and het up while courtside at his team’s games. In a sense, this is charming: Ballmer’s one … | Continue reading
Golden Warriors fan Trevor Laub had a wonderful grift going at the team’s arena that allowed him to sneak courtside for games. And then last week, he revealed it to all the damn YouTubers. | Continue reading
The emergence last month of a 2016 video featuring mic’d-up Terry Collins arguing with umpire Tom Hallion not only gave the world, if only briefly, a unique insight into how umps deal with enraged managers, but also its most prominent demonstration of a phrase that was, until tha … | Continue reading
George Wilson stepped out into the medieval-walled prison yard and began to walk. He was 47 years old, beaten-down, and half-starved. His squat frame and stubby legs hardly suggested athletic excellence. But Wilson was well-known as a perambulator, a peregrinator, and a master of … | Continue reading
The American Hockey League’s long-awaited schedule announcement for the 2019–20 season hit a minor road block on Wednesday, when the code behind the official app of the NHL’s top minor league became self-aware and demanded money from Stewart Zimmel. At least, that’s one way to in … | Continue reading
Astros pitcher and American League All-Star Justin Verlander is convinced that baseball’s ongoing surge of home runs is not only the result of a more aerodynamic baseball, but is the result of a baseball that has been intentionally juiced during manufacturing in order to produce … | Continue reading
Around 9:30 a.m. on June 24 in Manhattan, cyclist Robyn Hightman rounded the corner from 23rd Street onto Sixth Avenue, where they were struck by a large white delivery truck and thrown off their bike into the middle of the street. A photo from shortly after the crash shows a ma … | Continue reading
Ideally, this would be a story about the best saves of the group stage from the group stage of the 2019 World Cup. The field for this eighth run of the women’s tournament is deeper and more talented than ever, and there have already been a number of highlight-worthy stops to matc … | Continue reading
The 1973 Philadelphia Sports Writers Association Awards banquet wasn’t lacking for starpower. Flyers legend Bobby Clarke, who became only the ninth player in NHL history to score 100 points with his 104-point 1972-73 campaign, was one of the honorees. So too was Penn State runnin … | Continue reading
The Portland Trail Blazers survived the 68-minute marathon against the Denver Nuggets on Friday with a 140-137 win at home. Since it had been over 60 years since the last time a postseason game had gone the distance of four overtimes (1953), neither team had exactly prepared for … | Continue reading
In the autumn of 2012, I began working at a pricey midtown Manhattan steakhouse. At one of my first tables sat Geno Auriemma, the women’s basketball coach at the University of Connecticut. Eleven years earlier, I had embedded with him and his players for six months for a book I’d … | Continue reading
Toledo was a place where you could fight a man for money. | Continue reading
The 2026 Winter Olympics will be held, somewhere. That’s about the only thing we can say for certain, six months before the International Olympic Committee is due to announce who the host city will be. One potential candidate, Calgary, took itself out of the running last month wi … | Continue reading
In a recent memo, SB Nation’s “team brands director” John Ness—who has ostensibly spent the past year fixing SB Nation’s outdated and exploitative team site model, but is in reality just one more bullshitter Vox Media’s upper management has put between themselves and an increasin … | Continue reading
LONDON — There’s been drama worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy at the World Chess Championship, as Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana have fought to a draw in each of their 12 head-to-head games, sending the match to overtime with a day of tiebreaks to decide the winner. Games 9-1 … | Continue reading
In an attempt to burnish their brand in the eyes of the nation’s population of shrieking nine-year-olds who steal their mothers’ credit cards to cosplay John Wick in a bad video game, the NFL has partnered with Fortnite and released a bunch of official skins and other crap. Predi … | Continue reading
There’s a premise built into the structure of the Olympics that pretty much every single Olympian, even those far down the standings, are elite athletes at the top of their game performing at a level most fans could only dream of. Freestyle skier Elizabeth Swaney is an affront to … | Continue reading
The Athletic, the venture capital-backed digital sports media venture that’s plundering sportswriters from news organizations all over the country and has said it wants to brutally kill newspapers, finally announced on Monday that it is turning its gaze to Washington, D.C. The c … | Continue reading
It has long been known that Carmelo Anthony, upon working out the finer details of his buyout from the Atlanta Hawks, would join the Houston Rockets. Melo finalized his buyout and was waived by the Hawks on July 30; he cleared waivers on Wednesday, August 1. Today brings the expe … | Continue reading