Defector
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Is This The End For Gianni Infantino?
All Gianni Infantino needed was patience. Memory for scandal is short, even in a sport as massive as soccer, and whatever controversies the FIFA president willingly courted during the 2026 World Cup would have soon faded into the background as he won what was going to be an unopposed re-election next March. He could have ridden off into the sunset in 2031 and made millions off the connections built during his tenure at the head of FIFA. That wasn't enough for him, though, and so now, the walls...
The Women’s Pro Baseball League Will Eventually Need To Escape The Past
You may think you've experienced joy before, but you had previously never seen a mascot version of a 99-year-old woman with a cane dancing and cartwheeling around a baseball field in Springfield, Ill., which ushered in the inaugural weekend of the first professional women’s baseball league in nearly 30 years. I have never been happier than I was witnessing that moment. Our lives are all downhill from here. That mascot is modeled after Maybelle Blair, a former pitcher for the All-American Gi...
Concussion Protocols Are A Sham
Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag . You can also read Drew over at SFGATE , and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it . Today, we're talking about flouting the law, botched first dates, jealous dickheads, and more. Drew is off today. I have seized the means of Funbagging and, as is my custom, forgotten to make use of them until the last second. With that in mind, let's get to... Your dang letters:
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Kansas City Chiefs
Some people are fans of the Kansas City Chiefs. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Kansas City Chiefs. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: It’s over.
David Ellison’s Bid To Control Warner Bros. Hits The Rocks
Until a month ago, everything was going great for David Ellison and his plan to control American cultural production . He'd successfully made Paramount an outer arm of the Trump administration, with all the lucrative sinecures and harrowing moral and journalistic compromises that come with such an arrangement. Ellison's smooth ascent to power took a little bump when he lost the initial bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery, but his father is Larry Ellison, one of the richest men in the world,...
Reality Has Set In For The San Francisco Giants
Maybe we've been viewing Harrison Bader all wrong. Not that he hasn't behaved like a Thanksgiving ham in a batting helmet , but he may have spurred his soon-to-be former employers to accept their current situation with a clearer eye and purpose. And with some gelignite . The San Francisco Giants have been freefalling all season long, which if nothing else marks a refreshing change from their decade of mediocrity in stasis. The amazing thing about their season is that they still haven't ch...
The Right Has Created Its Perfect Trans Athlete
A lot of people in and around the WNBA are talking about trans women. In the aftermath of Indiana Fever role player Sophie Cunningham's negative comments about trans people playing sports in an ESPN profile , transphobic right-wing grifters and small groups of protesters have made a show of themselves at her games. In response, Seattle Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton was suspended by the league for telling off a couple of Cunningham boosters, while coaches like Cheryl Reeve and Natalie Nakase ha...
If Baseball Is Ruined, Show Me The Ruins
The Los Angeles Dodgers got Tarik Skubal , damn them. Damn them for having money; damn them for being too damn good; damn them for ruining baseball. That they got Skubal, the hottest commodity on the stove at the trade deadline, for relative peanuts, well. In this case, you damn everyone else. This trade will ostensibly impact the Dodgers' odds through the 2026 World Series, though that's the least relevant part of the picture. All anyone can think about, at least as it pertains to the Dodg...
Trade Season Kicks Ass Until They Sell Your Beautiful Son
Who is ruining baseball? For me, today, it's the Washington Nationals. Games played by my home team make up a solid 90 percent of the baseball I watch in a given regular season. Like a lot of baseball fans, I was hoping Tarik Skubal would go to the Milwaukee Brewers or the Tampa Bay Rays instead of the Dodgers , but in a distant, uncommitted sort of way, the way that I might hope that my friends have favorable weather while they are taking a trip someplace. Skubal's trade destination is firmly...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: New Orleans Saints
Some people are fans of the New Orleans Saints. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the New Orleans Saints. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: New Orleans Saints. Your 2025 record: 6-11, otherwise known as the record of the false dawn. It's a record that looks a lot better than 3-14, until you remember how easy it is for a bad team to scrape together three meaningless wins (or four, or five) at th...
The Crossword, Aug. 3: Lucky Stars
This puzzle was constructed by Eli Robinson , and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Eli is the Chief Trivia Officer of Water Cooler Trivia. He has far more questions than answers, if you must ask. He lives with his family in Washington, D.C. Defector crosswords, launched in partnership with our friends at AVCX , run every Monday. If you’re interested in submitting a puzzle to us, you can read our guidelines HERE . The AVCX, an independent puzzles and games outlet, invites you to subscribe, or sam...
Abdul El-Sayed’s Campaign Believes The Many Can Defeat The Money
DETROIT — It’s 2 p.m. on a Tuesday, just one week from Election Day, and Abdul El-Sayed’s Detroit office is standing room only. The front and back of the room are packed with volunteers eager to hear the Senate hopeful speak before they go out and canvass the nearby neighborhoods. Many of them are still coming off the high of what they saw as a stellar performance from El-Sayed in the candidate debate that aired the night before. “He was so good, so good,” Lisa, a woman from Grosse Pointe ...
Gaelic Football Legend David Hickey Wants War Profiteers Out Of His Sport
DUBLIN — David Hickey was built for Gaelic football, the sport that can’t stick to sports. Hickey, who was a two-time GAA all-star and four-time All-Ireland winner as a half-forward for Dublin, used football’s biggest weekend as a platform for protests. First, Hickey loudly refused to show up for a so-called Legends Lunch at storied Croke Park on July 24, where he was to be honored alongside other members of the Dubs’ 1976 championship side . Hickey’s boycott was aimed at the Gaelic Player...
Kelsey Plum Is Back At The Center Of A Head-Scratching Trade
Weird trade. They must think they can re-sign her. This is more or less what I said before the 2025 season , when the Los Angeles Sparks traded for a year of Kelsey Plum. In a three-team deal that also sent Jewell Loyd to Las Vegas, the Sparks gave up the No. 2 pick in the 2025 draft to Loyd’s former team, Seattle. Plum was the best player in that deal, and in Los Angeles, she did kind of prove what she wanted to when she sought an opportunity to lead her own team, out from the shadow of A’j...
Sydney Taylor Is The Undrafted Rookie Making Sky Games Fun
The “heartbreaking endings to 2026 Chicago Sky games” montage that CBS showed in the final minute of the Sky’s Saturday matinee against the Las Vegas Aces hinted at how this game might unfold. One of the endings was from a game against the New York Liberty in late June, the same game 25-year-old undrafted rookie Sydney Taylor debuted in Chicago’s starting lineup. On the possession after Taylor hit a go-ahead three with 15 seconds left, the Sky let Sabrina Ionescu waltz to the rim for a layup...
By Bunt Or By Blast, The Red Sox Keep Winning
The Boston Red Sox enjoyed a 15-game win streak that vaulted them back into the playoff picture last month, and they've stayed upright in the days since. Holding a four-game edge over the third and final wild card slot, Boston's preserved their flame with a series of games in which they've simply, pardon the cliché, found a way to get the victory. Whether they're smashing the ball over the fence or knocking it just a few feet beyond home plate, the Red Sox are proving very tough to handle. ...
The Dodgers Got Tarik Skubal
If Shohei Ohtani doesn't return to the pitcher's mound for the Los Angeles Dodgers this season, they've got themselves a hell of a replacement. Late Saturday night, the back-to-back defending world champions made the biggest trade deadline move possible, acquiring back-to-back AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal from the Detroit Tigers in exchange for three prospects. This trade helps a strong team grow even stronger, and their 10-game lead in the NL West already makes the Dodgers the presumpti...
Who Was The Most Unsettlingly Tan Coach At Preseason Media Days?
There is a particularly unpleasant image of Brian Daboll that I return to in my mind from time to time. You can see it in the 2024 Why Your Team Sucks entry for the New York Giants ; the image in that story is a photo of my TV, from an episode in the team's turn as the subject of that season of the HBO series Hard Knocks . Subtitles show that Daboll is saying "That guy's a stud on tape," a likely enough thing for Brian Daboll to say, but what is more notable about the image is that Daboll's la...
Can A Monkey Have A Pet?
In the spring of 2004, researchers monitoring a population of wild bearded capuchins in a Brazilian woodland saw an infant clinging to Chiquinha, one of the adult female monkeys. The baby was not a capuchin but a marmoset—a much smaller monkey species. The researchers dubbed the infant Fortunata. Chiquinha became Fortunata's primary caretaker until the following summer, when she fell pregnant and another capuchin female, Dendê, began mothering the marmoset. Fortunata behaved like any other cap...
Tony Romo On Leave From CBS After Drunk Driving Arrest
On Friday, CBS Sports announced that NFL analyst Tony Romo is on leave "until further notice," following his arrest in Milwaukee last week for operating while intoxicated. https://twitter.com/adamschefter/status/2083211920094466188?s=46 Romo was given three citations from the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office after a traffic stop on July 23, when police spotted him driving on the highway, passing cars in a lane he shouldn't have been in. In the bodycam footage of the arrest, a glassy-e...
Kody Clemens Achieves The Ultimate Ultimate Grand Slam
Some time ago, if you asked me for an example of the most romantic, childhood dream–ass achievement for a baseball player, I probably would have pointed to Bryson Stott's home run against the Miami Marlins in the 2023 NL Wild Card series: a first-pitch grand slam with the crowd singing his walk-up song. But if we're being objective, there are a few flaws with the moment. The Philly crowd was singing, but it wasn't a game-winning grand slam, even if it was the dagger. The Phillies were already ...
Reports: Harrison Bader A Dope
We’ve all been there. We’ve all done something so incredibly stupid that we wish the Earth were flat so we could walk off the face of it. We’ve all thought to ourselves, I hope nobody saw that , only to turn around and see that yes everybody saw that and oh god now the police are involved and I have to go to the hospital and I sure do hope the Major League Baseball team I work for doesn't spend any time looking into how I got this season-ending injury. It's all so relatable. On Tuesday, the...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Washington Commanders
Some people are fans of the Washington Commanders. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Washington Commanders. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: Washington Comma—OH GOD NO NOT AGAIN https://twitter.com/ChadwikoTWW/status/1985195970687373778
Tom Dundon’s Shameless Minions Expand The Scope Of His War On Portland
Fans of the Portland Trail Blazers should prepare themselves for a very unpleasant time. Tom Dundon, the team's new owner, is digging in. Arena renovations would improve the value of his property, and so he wants arena renovations. He is simply and resolutely refusing to commit any of his own money to the project. If Portland refuses to pay for stadium renovations, and the stadium thus goes un-renovated, Dundon will have an ironclad pretext for packing the team into a U-Haul and moving it to L...
AI Listings Have Made Apartment Hunting Even More Debasing
I started reading Valley of the Dolls for the first time the other night. It opens in 1945, with Anne Welles landing in New York and securing a job as a secretary at Henry Bellamy’s theatrical agency. She’s been tasked with finding an apartment for Henry’s handsome business partner, something on the East Side with a living room, bedroom, bath, and kitchen, furnished, for around $150 per month. He tells her not to come back to work until she’s found something. “Henry,” his handsome business par...
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