Traditional publishing is a frustrating industry whose workers are under-resourced and often mandated to chase metrics like authors' audience size and nascent trends based on "data," "vibes," and "TikTok." If, in the years-long dark period when I had an agent but not yet a ...

Some of my favorite sports uniforms are red. This has always been true, and my choices of teams to support have only reinforced that. (A chicken-egg situation?) Other than the Miami Marlins (who did have the snazzy Sugar Kings red jerseys a few years back), the Miami Heat, N...

Imagine you are a horny male redback spider. You might be a small guy—a fraction of her size—but unlike some, you don't have a complex about it. You're just happy to be there, "there" meaning the haphazard snarl of a web of a female redback spider. Only 20 percent of male re...

Just shut up and solve our Monday crossword already. This week's puzzle was constructed by Owen Bergstein and Nick Dent, and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Owen and Nick are longtime frenemies based in Boston. They met when Owen was a freshman in high school and Nick (aka...

I won't dispute that I once had red hair. Back in 2019, just for kicks, I went with a bright Hayley Williams–esque red that petered out for obvious reasons the following year. Then in 2025, with a 30th birthday and a big trip on the horizon, I decided to freshen up my look w...

For as long as baseball’s All-Star Game has been played—almost every year since 1933, including twice a year from 1959 to 1962—it’s been the ultimate in wish fulfillment for fans. Want to see a team of future Hall of Famers playing together? It’s got that. Want to see your favorite local players honored on a national stage? It’s possible. Poignant curtain calls and unexpected comedy? You bet.

But actual fan participation in selecting All-Star teams? That’s been a rockier road.

In this generation, when baseball fans are inundated with emails and in-stadium announcements encouraging All-Star Game voting, it’s hard to believe this wasn’t always the case. But after the first game in 1933 featured fan voting, team selections were done briefly by player vote and then entirely by managers. 

Gaze into the eyes of Comrade Redlegs, and let the truth of the situation wash over you: It’s Reds Week. That’s right. You may have survived Senators Week, Rays Week, Wings Week, and Bills Week—but do you have what it takes to journey with us into our latest theme week? Over the next five days,…

There are a number of very obvious reasons why Cleveland Browns fans might boo Deshaun Watson, all of which are a matter of public record and none of which Watson can really afford to concern himself with. It is a requirement of his extremely difficult job that Watson must m...

The Seattle Mariners have reached the stage of a busted season where they are just hunting around for reasons to smile. This was a 90-win team last season, one that came within a George Springer dinger of advancing to the franchise's first ever World Series. Now they are cru...

It's August, you know the drill: Frances Tiafoe's tennis season is just getting started. North American hard court summer is his wake-up. I once asked him if he could figure out how to bottle up the confidence of playing on home turf and tap into it elsewhere on tour, and hi...

Some people are fans of the Los Angeles Chargers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Los Angeles Chargers. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Your team: Los Angeles Chargers.

https://twitter.com/ChargersCountry/status/2086143238252183978

Welcome to the Defector College Football Watch Guide, where Israel Daramola and Ray Ratto will tell you which of the weekend’s college football games are worth giving a crap about.

It's almost fall! School is back in session and football is just about back. The 2026 college football season will be here next week, and the sport is as chaotic as ever. NIL money is flying, coaches are forever off their rockers, and the NCAA is holding on for dear life to a system that is crumbling in real time. The offseason has provided its own drama, in between transfer portal chicanery and recruiting violations. In the run-up to Week 0, we wanted to go over some of our favorite stories of the offseason, as a sort of pre-preview of things to know about and keep an eye on ahead of the upcoming season.

Lane Kiffin Watch

People sometimes wonder what editors do. It's a fair question to ask, given how difficult it is to read a column or blog post and be able to discern exactly how much influence an editor did or did not have over the final product. It's easy to assume that editors don't do muc...

Before Tadej Pogacar became a hypertuned killer on a bike, before he won any of his record-tying five Tours de France, before he was able to push the boundaries of the volume and variety of races that any single rider could win, he first had to break through. He did so seven...

It feels like the World Cup just ended, and yet somehow, some way, the Premier League is already back. England's top flight kicks off on Friday with defending champi—oops, I mean attacking champion; sorry Mikel—Arsenal taking on newly promoted Championship champion Coventry ...

It’s been a summer of bad news for anybody with favorable feelings (me!) about Texas Tech. The New York Times joined the pig pile this week with a feature story whose subhead said the school had become a “a dystopian academic nightmare.” As if this year’s athletics debacles ...

Some people are fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Your team: Ctrl-V.

Talk about a load-bearing hyphen. After a half-season of half-threatened retirement and full-frenzy speculation, the status quo simply continues: As the Formula 1 summer break comes to a close, Red Bull Racing and Max Verstappen announced before Verstappen's home race that h...

I don't get nervous before recording episodes of The Distraction, and was surprised to notice during our more recent live episodes that even the usual bite of anxiety which comes with going onstage was just a fairly mild nibble. Some of this is because Drew does a lot of the...

In a kinder world, WNBA expansion teams are allowed to flail and muck about in peace for a few years before anyone pays close attention to them. But this is an unkind world, one that finds the Golden State Valkyries second in the standings and headed to the playoffs for the ...

We had moderate hopes for Tugboat Wilkinson in his major-league debut, just because his nickname and carriage merge so harmoniously. But because the San Francisco Giants clearly hate all of you, we didn't get nearly enough tug, or boat.

Wilkinson, whose real name is Matt, is only the second Tugboat in major league history after Thurman Munson, and he comes by his nickname with the fullest honesty. He is listed at 6-foot-1, 250 pounds, and has the front porch to suggest that the second number may be only an estimate, but that's not the hook. It's not even the fact that his best pitch has the 1934-styled nickname "invisiball." 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP2U7x_w7_k

Olivia Miles made her first bucket of Wednesday night's game against the Golden State Valkyries early in the first quarter. It was a pull-up jumper from the left elbow, and the broadcast camera zoomed in on her face as she backpedaled down the court. After a moment of though...

Some people are fans of the Green Bay Packers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Green Bay Packers. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Your team: 

Time to drop a little summer recipe. Take some lesbian 20-somethings—like at least 60 of them—and drop them in a group chat. At the center of it all you’ll need a leader, someone who commands attention or fear, and could be the object of everyone's affection under the right ...

How many runs did the Seattle Mariners lose by in Tuesday night's game against Brewers in Milwaukee? And how many runs did the Mariners themselves score? Don't concern yourself with these matters, this silly fixation on who won the game, and by how much. The true connoisseur...

The 2026 LIV Golf season will end this weekend at LIV Golf Indianapolis. The 4 Aces GC fellows have a narrow lead over Ripper GC in the team championship, which I guess they will uhh look to maintain or whatever. Don't worry about it. That team title was supposed to be decid...

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 minordilemmas@defector.com.

This week, Chris answers a question about being summarily rejected by one's own flesh-and-blood.

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The bases are loaded in the bottom of the second. Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor, with his beautiful hair and crisp terrifying swing, is at the plate. The pitch from the Padres' Robbie Ray is a 92 mph sinker that he leaves up on the outer edge of the zone. Lindor stings it to the opposite field, and the ball towers up and out toward the right-field corner, where he is waiting. He is always waiting.

Fernando Tatis Jr., the king of the Robbin' Padres, with his flowing hair and his big face, does not fear the long ball. He is its god. Already, in this game, he has hit a home run, but that does not mean he will allow others the pleasure. No, he is the home run's master. He sees the ball off Lindor's bat threatening to become a grand slam, and he tracks it.

His legs race, his head craned toward the ball, his eyes on it. That is his ball. He knows it.

On the cover of Slam magazine's October 1998 issue, Chamique Holdsclaw wore a New York Knicks jersey, NBA basketball in hand. Right next to the forward from Queens was a sneaky inversion of the more common question: "Is The NBA Ready For Chamique Holdsclaw?" She was the firs...

For most women who play baseball in the United States, playing America's pastime in a professional league has been little more than a dream. Yet for a select group of women, that dream is becoming a reality. 

The Women's Pro Baseball League began its inaugural season on Aug. 1, with the four-team league playing all of its games in Springfield, Ill., where dozens of the 120 women who were selected in the league's draft play pro ball. It is the most anticipated women's pro baseball league since the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League disbanded in 1954. 

But for many players who were selected in the draft, which took place in November, the dream of getting paid to play baseball in the United States remains deferred.