Lauren Theisen

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — If you regret that you never got a chance to see the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, the losingest team in MLB history, can I interest you in a trip to Staten Island?

We'll start with the most significant play of the 2026 MLB All-Star Game: a hit batsman.

When Steve Yzerman took over as Red Wings general manager in 2019, the state of Michigan embraced him as the man who would return their hockey team to glory, or at least clean up the mess Ken Holland left behind. Some of that was nostalgia for the time he was the Wings' captain, helping them hoist three Stanley Cups. But it was based on something more tangible, too: Yzerman was coming from Tampa, and the Lightning's team-building in the 2010s was of the finest caliber. For his entire hockey career, Yzerman had been nothing but successful. Then he came back to Detroit.

This is the fourth MLB season with a pitch clock, so one might think that any beef around the rule change has long ago expired. But José Caballero’s got a huge supply of dry-aged steak in the walk-in freezer. The Yankees’ base-stealing utilityman, who hits just a tick below league average, has made himself notorious…

The actor Eli Gelb has really found a niche for himself as “unassuming guy in a three-hour play who’s able to avoid getting directly hit by the drama.” Before catching him in Birthright, the new off-Broadway play from Jonathan Spector, I’d last seen Gelb as the sound engineer Grover in the Tony-winning Stereophonic. In that…

It is an unfamiliar pleasure of this Chicago White Sox season that, in the two months when big slugger Munetaka Murakami did not hit a home run for them, the team improved from 3.5 games back in the AL Central, to first in their division with a 1.5-game lead. But you know what's even cooler than winning games? Winning games in blowout fashion when big slugger Munetaka Murakami smashes two dingers on his very own bobblehead day.

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.

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.

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, Storm…

It's been a bad season for the 37-year-old pitcher Miles Mikolas. He's got an ERA of 5.67, and he's made a habit of starts where a bunch of guys just wallop what he offers. Only two pitchers in MLB have allowed more dingers than he's surrendered, and the signs point to Mikolas giving it another go in Japan once his one-year contract expires.