WUPPERTAL, Germany — When my friend in Cologne asked me if I might want to take a day trip, thanks to Cologne's proximity to various other notable cities (Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Bonn, among others), I said that I would like to go to Wuppertal to ride the Schwebebahn. To which...

The thing about all goalie goals is that they rock. There are roughly 175 feet and six prideful skaters between the promised land and any netminder bold enough to even attempt to reach it. There have been but 21 goalie goals, scored by 18 different goalies, in the entire his...

One of Monk's most Monk-like episodes in all of Monk occurs in Season 2, Episode 7: "Mr. Monk and the Sleeping Suspect." Adrian Monk, Tony Shalhoub's impersonation of Eeyore if the donkey had severe OCD, has taken to visiting Brian Babbage, a comatose man and his prime murde...

I was trying to puzzle out how to plagiarize my new podcast best friend while simultaneously filling in for him for this week’s Jamboroo, and for all my skill in stealing other people’s takes, I couldn’t figure out how to effectively disguise it. So instead, I’ll build off ...

It turns out you can trace America’s 2008 financial crash, in a roundabout way, to 18th-century Prussia. The Seven Years’ War left the kingdom in financial shambles: Just to afford the fighting, Prussia’s king, Frederick the Great, had hired private minters to ramp up curren...

When former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin revealed that he had been working on a Minecraft city for 12 years, I brushed it off. The idea of an NFL coach—a Super Bowl-winning coach who never had a losing season—taking time over a decade-plus to truly lock into Minecraft city-planning just didn't seem realistic, or like the result would be particularly interesting. I doubted Tomlin's gamer credentials.

Well, joke's on me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h_pQ1-5iQg

Hockey season has begun, and all teams are equal in the eyes of the creator. Hope springs triumphant for 32 collectives each striving as one, and the Stanley Cup lies shining before them, ready to be seized.

In rebuttal, there's this, from The Athletic's Kevin Kurz:

https://twitter.com/KKurzNHL/status/2105504339452145902

The WNBA playoffs are not about intricate offensive sets, squeezing efficiency from your ninth and 10th players, or winning the game on the margins—at least not as much as they are about Real Hoops. Arike Ogunbowale taught the Golden State Valkyries that painful lesson Wedne...

The following is excerpted from Every Time a Bell Rings, a book of essays about It's A Wonderful Life by Lauren Theisen and Emily St. James. It is available for purchase now. The bridge in Seneca Falls really does look just like the one that George and Clarence find themsel...

Dear Mascot Manners,

I have a lot of time on my hands now, so I figured I'd write you with an etiquette question. My team, the Boston Red Sox, just got beaten by our archrival New York Yankees. They beat us in two games, 9-0 and 9-2. But before we lost Game 2 Wednesday night, one of our guys, Nick, hit a home run. It got us within six runs. I think most of us would have rather just gotten out of there as quickly as possible.

But we have a tradition: When you hit a home run, you wear the Wally Head. One of our other guys, Jarren, came up with it last year. It's our "thing." So we made Nick wear the Wally Head after his homer, but I don't think he wanted to. I don't think any of us were particularly into it. Frankly the whole ceremony felt kind of embarrassing.

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, Drew answers a question about extracurricular activities.

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The U.S. Department of Education this week formally withdrew updates made during the Joe Biden presidency to the federal law banning discrimination in education based on sex. Specifically, the Education Department is removing language that expanded Title IX protections to co...

The Drake Maye Crisis, now seven weeks long stretching back to last season's playoffs, shows no signs of abating. His performance against the Jaguars in Week 3 was his worst yet, and he has now turned the ball over 15 times in his last seven games. What the fuck is going on?...

Looking at the raw numbers from 2026, the Chicago White Sox's stable of pitchers ultimately hover around league average, so I guess I can't start by saying something that feels emotionally true to me, which is "The Sox are going to try to be the first team to win the World S...

“Here are the main things you need to know about the Resident Evil games,” I explained to my friend Liz over the nonsense of the Digger trailer. “There’s a big outbreak of some kind of mutagenic virus. First you get a pistol, then you get a shotgun. A dog usually attacks you. There are locks and you look for keys. You open a lot of drawers. There’s an evil pharmaceutical company called Umbrella. You start in a house and end in a lab.”

“Got it,” Liz said. “I’ll point at the screen when any of that happens.”

“You heal yourself with herbs,” I added helpfully.

After Friday's unofficial reports that Manchester City had been found guilty on almost all of the 115 charges of financial rule breaching, it was only a matter of time before the true breadth of those breaches came to light. It was not surprising, save for maybe the almost p...

Every manager understands the prime directive of postseason baseball, which is, "Whatever you do, it's wrong. We'll let you know when."

Don Mattingly knows this, having danced the dance for nearly a decade now. In his eagerness to get to the ninth inning Tuesday, the Philadelphia Phillies manager summoned his closer Jhoan Duran to begin the seventh for what could have ended up being the white elephant of a three-inning save. That he never got past two was the wrong part, naturally. After a clean sheet in the seventh, Duran allowed a two-out infield single, a hit batsman, and a 100-mph fastball to pass dangerously within Austin Riley's line of sight, and boom, the manager's an idiot, and the Phillies are a game from elimination.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKoMwf53Xg8

What does the perfect Indiana Fever game look like? Corner any member of the organization to demand an answer to that question, and they would probably describe something like Tuesday's 99-89 victory over the Las Vegas Aces. If you've somehow yet to have your interest piqued...

Let me take you Behind the Blog™ for a moment. The Defector staff is currently assembled in a top-secret location, and a bunch of us were crammed into Lauren's room to watch the end of Yankees–Red Sox. Ben Rice hit a grand slam in the eighth to make it 9-0 New York, his seco...

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 overly chatty coworkers, Hunter S. Thompson, buying a new car, and more.

Your letters:

Todd:

For nearly six years, I have been fascinated by the case of the Spine Collector. The publishing world came to the collective realization a few years before the pandemic that a thief was aggressively trying to steal unpublished books from everyone who had access to them for t...

I can’t think of a time in my life when the idea of a Muslim terrorist was not the most acceptable societal enemy. As someone who came of age in the wake of 9/11 and the invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan, I have come to accept hating Muslims as the status quo. On a pers...

For a guy who has spent most of his career as a backup, Case Keenum suddenly has a decent collection of signature wins. OK, maybe "collection" isn't quite right, but as we sit here this morning we can say for sure that the man has at least two. There is of course the Minneap...

In each week of the NFL season so far, Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair has worn eye black that bears the name of a Palestinian child slain during Israel's genocide in Gaza. When he did it in Week 1, the NFL fined him. During Week 2, a league official threatened to ...

Does it still feel a little too early for hockey? Well, too bad! The NHL has expanded to an 84-game schedule, so we're getting September hockey that counts in the standings, and you're about to get briefed on all the teams. Whether you like it or not!

I've ordered these puppies by how many points they improved or declined by last season, because I did that last year and I liked how it went. I've included that point differential, and their playoff finish if they had one. Then I will catch you up to speed on how things are going with each team, and because I feel like a little bit more of a hater than usual, I've included something they should be afraid of going into this season. Let's preview some hockey!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpNUR87ZhQQ

It was many WNBA news cycles ago—but not that many human years ago!—that the league’s central power struggle was shaping up to be one between A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart. Since Wilson was drafted in 2018, the two stars have lived atop MVP ballots and together won six of ...

Inside the hundred-meter mark, after 273.3 kilometers of racing, Brandon McNulty looked back one last time to see the chasing pack behind him sprinting it out for silver. He banged on his handlebars, put his hands to his head, and pumped his fist, not seeming quite sure how ...

Call ‘em the Badwill Games. Ireland scored three early goals and cruised to a 3-0 win over Israel in the first of two matches between the teams that have already made everybody go ewwwwww.  The game, played in Debrecen, Hungary, was the first of two very controversial ...

You ever need something so badly it scares you to say it aloud, just because the universe might smell that stench of desperation about you and smite your ass back into the existential garbage time you deserve? The way I’ve been feeling about living in New York City qualifies...

Progress in the NFL is not linear, past success doesn't guarantee future success, regression to the mean is normal and expected—all of the cliches in the world can't possibly rationalize whatever the hell is happening to Drake Maye and the New England Patriots so far this se...