Defector
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How Do You Get Over The Greatest Sports Story Of All Time?
The story gods have been good to me in my decades of typing for a living, but never better than with the Mayo football tale , which has consumed all of Ireland and me since the final 45 seconds or so of the historically downtrodden team's July 26 All-Ireland championship win over supposedly unbeatable Kerry. I knew even in the moment that getting to watch Mayo end its 75-year championship drought in person was a privilege. And it's left me ruined for other sporting events for now and maybe for...
A Brief Consideration Of Some Fictional Big Boys
Reacher is back, and in the first few episodes of Season 4, our enormous friend seems to be in fine form. He's smooshing guys in libraries, escaping a CIA black site, and making sure a tiny kitten finds a good home. While Reacher may be our current moment's most beloved answer to the question "What if a guy was really big?" he is by no means the only one. Plenty of authors have explored the possibilities inherent in hugeness. Fantasy writers in particular are enamored of this device. So, if...
In His Debut Game, Joshua Baez Ties Stump Wiedman On Career Homers List
Mama probably never said there’d be days like this . Newest St. Louis Cardinal Joshua Baez hit three homers in his first three plate appearances as a big-leaguer Saturday in Chicago. According to Baseball Almanac , there have been 22,800 other Major Leaguers since the National League’s founding in 1876. None had a debut to match Baez’s. In the top of the first inning against the Cubs, the Cards outfielder hit the first big-league pitch he ever saw 449 feet to center, almost leaving Wrigley ...
The Storm Are The WNBA’s Tank Champions
The WNBA doesn’t have an award for “clutchness” the way the NBA does, so it figures that they also do not have an award for “unclutchness.” Allow us to fill the vacuum: Defector’s inaugural Unclutchy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Choking and Tanking goes to the Seattle Storm. The voting wasn’t close, which is good; if it were, the Storm probably wouldn’t have won. WNBA Stats defines “clutch time” as the final five minutes of a game within a five-point margin. It happens to be the ti...
How And In What Manner Cal Raleigh Put The Ass Back In Big Dumper
Cal Raleigh got off to a slow start to the year, which was to be expected. It is impossible to follow up a 60-homer season with another of the same caliber, and between instigating teammate beef on the global stage and dealing with an early-season oblique strain which eventually landed him on the injured list, the slugging Seattle Mariners catcher has had much to fight through, even if partially self-inflicted. Alas, since he returned from the IL in mid-June, things have not gone much bette...
Make It Nice: Is There Such A Thing As A Good-Looking Dog Crate?
Welcome back to Make It Nice , Defector's best interior design advice column. Today we have fancy track shelving, a moody bedroom makeover, and my favorite: does a non-ugly dog crate exist? Our first “question” comes from recent conversations I had with a few friends who had been admiring photos of Vitsoe “606” shelves online. Both of them were ready to give up their Big Shelf dreams because the Vitsoe would cost them thousands of dollars—one friend was obsessing over a setup that would co...
More Like Edlose Diaz
It is hard to keep track of the number of free-agent signings and trades made by the Dodgers that have allegedly broken baseball. When Tarik Skubal lands in the dugout at the trade deadline and starts the freakout all over again , it's easy to move on from the last set of acquisitions that was raising qualms and inviting guffaws. But let the record show, before it's too late, that Edwin Diaz was at one point one of those baseball-breaking signings. The Dodgers signed Diaz this past offseaso...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Detroit Lions
Some people are fans of the Detroit Lions. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Detroit Lions. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: Detroit Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
Jayden Daniels Won’t Tolerate Some Scrub Wearing The Same Number He Did On His Journey To The ReliaQuest Bowl
Quick, what number did Jayden Daniels wear when he was at LSU? If you had to think about that for even a second, you might want to lock your doors, because it's very possible that someone from Daniels's inner circle is on the way to your house to kick your ass. I issue this warning because over the last few days we have discovered that the No. 5 jersey is extremely important to Daniels, or at least it is to someone who spends time handling his affairs. On Wednesday, ESPN reported that an at...
In This House We Believe A Bunch Of Stuff, With Justin Ellis
In my personal mental masthead for Defector, there are bureaus representing the places where my coworkers live. Philadelphia, you know about. New York, for better and worse, is implied. Minneapolis, where no Defector staffers currently live, is more complicated. But we have Drew, whose Minnesota sports fandom has put him under this heading even though he hasn't lived there in decades, and we also have Justin Ellis, who was shaped by his experience growing up there even though he, too, is a lon...
Russell Westbrook Was Total
It’s hard to imagine now—like imagining an era when man did not know the sun was huge, hot, and bright—but there was a time when we did not yet understand Russell Westbrook as a basketball player. Slow to hit his growth spurt, Westbrook didn’t dunk until his senior year of high school. Coming out of UCLA after his sophomore year, he was hailed as a defensive stud, with unexplored skill offensively; he still mostly played off the ball. Envision, if you can, an adult Russell Westbrook who had al...
Russell Westbrook Was Singular
When the Seattle SuperSonics drafted Russell Westbrook fourth overall in 2008, around six weeks before they officially became the Oklahoma City Thunder, the league had no idea what to do with such an athletic and violent point guard. Westbrook, who announced his retirement this week, leaves behind a very different NBA than the one he joined 18 years ago, but, despite the considerable passage of time, the extent to which the game changed, and the extensive accolades he racked up, he never becam...
James Gandolfini Had A Lot In His Bag
This piece was originally published in The Small Bow on Aug. 7. If you like it, consider subscribing . He was always referring to himself as a “guy like me,” in a baffled sort of way, like how the fuck did a guy like me pull this whole thing off? And part of what James Gandolfini meant was the son of the bricklayer and the lunch lady, this King Konging ex-jock with a neck like a paint can, a guy from New Jersey, where they were not what you might call beautiful but were magnificent. They...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Indianapolis Colts
Some people are fans of the Indianapolis Colts. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Indianapolis Colts. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: The Mayonnaise City Colts. Your 2025 record: 8-9, but that only hints at the story of the 2025 Colts, who were 8-2 going into their bye and 0-7 after it. I’ve seen SpaceX rockets with better trajectories.
Fenix Flexin Puts Bankrolls On The Table And AI On The Charts
Welcome to Listening Habits , a column where I share the music and musical topics I’ve been fixated on recently. Music's AI revolution has arrived, somewhat ... maybe. And naturally, it has come for rap first. This isn't the kind of trumped-up thing like what has been foretold in the roughly 100 weirdly written profiles about "AI actress" Tilly Norwood, a thing you've probably already forgotten about if you ever even heard about it in the first place. No, AI has been implemented in music...
Humanists Have Done Nothing Wrong
For many years, I’ve held a pet theory that cultural consumers can be grouped into two broad categories: Primary Source People and Secondary Source People. The former are the book lovers, cinephiles, archive perusers, and history buffs who grew to love their areas of study because of the specific objects that constitute the field: the two women I overheard whispering about how they wanted to fuck Adam Bede, in one of my undergrad classes; the student of mine who disclosed that he loved The Hou...
Craig Kimbrel Can’t Quit
"On one hand I resent it," Tim Layana told a reporter from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel while watching a 44-year-old Steve Carlton throw a bullpen session at Yankees spring training in 1989. Layana, who was then 25 and had just reached Triple-A, would pitch in three big-league seasons for the Reds and Giants; Carlton was 44, and had won four Cy Young Awards and 329 games. He was a veteran of 24 MLB seasons, an easy Hall of Famer, and identifiable as fully cooked from a hundred paces. The ...
Did The A’s Infect The Red Sox With Whatever Is Wrong With Them?
It is not news to you that the West Sacramento Athletics are deeply un-good. Even when they led the AL West in April and May, they somehow managed to do so while maintaining a solidly negative run differential. But since their last day at .500, on June 19, they have been, by both advanced and less-advanced metrics, Galactically Ass. Their three best hitters, Nick Kurtz, Shea Langeliers, and Brent Rooker, are hurt, their pitching struggles to be shambolic, and as a result they have lost 35 of t...
Lakers Owner Mark Walter Suddenly Sells Team Amid Federal Investigation
Out of nowhere, and after only a few short days of negotiations, Joshua Kushner and Bob Iger have agreed to buy the Los Angeles Lakers from Mark Walter for a reported record price of $12.5 billion. Every part of that sentence is wild, especially given the recent financial maneuverings of Walter and Kushner. Let's start with Walter, who bought the Lakers in June 2025 for $10 billion. Walter also owns the Los Angeles Dodgers and has turned them into an organization so hyper-competent that it ...
Eventually Everyone Needs An Axe Guy
All of us have that one friend who fully commits to the bit. And frankly, there is no better time in your life for taking new hijinks for an extended walk than the college years. But what if the bit was ancient Nordic weaponry? Our friend of a friend today sets off to college with the axe of her dreams in hand—we do mean an actual axe—and together they forge an extravagant bond. She find community and minor fame, even love. But her boyfriend’s fondness for her axe quickly becomes excessive...
Will My Only Child Be A Weirdo?
Welcome back to Minor Dilemmas , where a member of Defector's Parents Council will answer your questions on surviving family life. Have a question? Email us at [email protected] . This week, Ray tackles a question about the merits of having an only child.
Trans Rights And Lesbian Lefts, With Maya Goldberg-Safir
This week on Nothing But Respect , we welcomed back Maya Goldberg-Safir, one of my favorite WNBA writers and thinkers. Maya runs Rough Notes and has written a handful of amazing Defector stories , and I consider her to be the best person covering the history of women's basketball. On this episode, we talked about Maya's time at WNBA All-Star weekend in Chicago ( which she wrote about for Bustle ), the Sophie Cunningham situation, and the critical importance of understanding the past few dec...
All Day I Dream Of Curry Fries
Let me cut right to it: Why can’t I get curry fries over here? Look, I just got back from a work trip to Dublin (where everybody says "Look" to start a sentence), and curry fries are weighing heavy. The trip went as swell as possible. I not only got to cover an all-timer of a football match , but also had my fill of curry chips, in the local parlance, just as I'd hoped and dreamed. Good god, they’re good. And they’re everywhere in the Irish capital. But upon returning, I got peeved by th...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Some people are fans of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: Tampa Bay Buccaneers. https://bsky.app/profile/profootballtalk.bsky.social/post/3mrurzuufhk2u
‘The Cruelest Game’ Examines Tennis As Torture
Professional tennis has a way of breeding misery. It begins with the dream of reaching the No. 1 ranking, but almost everybody falls short. Those who find the promised land feel puzzlingly empty once there. Familial and coaching roles blur. Prodigious children bear the responsibility of feeding and enriching their families. The mechanism through which matches are decided is a torturous maze disguised as a scoring system. Tune in and you may see grown adults reaming out their support staff, fam...
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