Sport

It is the nature of a podcast to unravel, or anyway it's mostly the way that ours works. We start out trying to be normal, with a rundown of topics to address and a sense of roughly how long we have to discuss them, and then it all kind of unspools and derails and malfunctions and by the end I am singing the "they got a pepper bar" song from those weird Quiznos ads while Drew names different Vikings interior linemen as our guest feigns technical difficulties. Listeners know this; presumably some of them even like it. I mention this only because this week's episode, in which we are joined by Defector's own Maitreyi Anantharaman, unfolds more or less in reverse.

On Wednesday, Victor Robles was hit by a Luis Gil pitch, and jogged at the mound—to give Gil a half-hug. After a couple of walks and flyouts, Robles made his way to third. And with the bases loaded, two outs, and Justin Turner working Gil to a 3-0 count, Robles took off for home as Gil reached for his rosin bag, and was easily caught stealing to end the inning. It was the complete Robles experience. Here's a lovable guy with enough pathos to befriend a wild praying mantis, and also a guy who will follow it up with one of the worst base-running experiences you've ever witnessed, all within the very first inning of the game. The Mariners went on to lose 11-2, which is one point in Robles's defense: It probably wouldn't have mattered anyway. On Thursday, the Mariners were tied 1-1 with the Yankees when, in the bottom of the 10th inning, Randy Arozarena struck out swinging on a dropped third strike. His bat went sailing over the third-base line and nearly took out Julio Rodríguez, who danced out of the way and then forgot that the ball was still in play. He took a wide jog about the base, turning to the dugout, while Jazz Chisholm Jr. stood on base and called for the ball. It took a few beats for Yankees catcher Austin Wells to make the throw, but Rodríguez was still doubled off easily. The Mariners went on to lose this game, 2-1.

As reported by ESPN, the University of Tennessee, as part of its future plans for revenue-sharing with players in 2025, will tack a 10 percent "Talent Fee" onto the ticket prices. The university announced this in an email to football season-ticket holders this week, complete with a video from athletic director Danny White, in which he describes the new fee as "part of an extensive plan to continue our dominance in college athletics and build something like never seen before." https://youtu.be/TV-ZzeJxWIQ?feature=shared

When you think about it, it's a bit strange that the best team in the world added the best player in the world, thereby forming a potentially era-defining superteam, and yet it doesn't seem like the union between Real Madrid and Kylian Mbappé has been received as the monumental occasion it truly is. Part of it comes from the collective exhaustion with the endless will-they-or-won't-they dynamic between player and club. Watching the two make goo-goo eyes at each other from across the Pyrenees for four years straight bled the courtship of all its titillation, even now that they're finally fucking. The other part is probably a response to the infinitely impressive but still somewhat dulling nature of Madrid's success. So you're telling me the reigning Champions League champions, winners of six of the last 11 European Cups, are the favorites to win the Champions League again?

Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season. Got something you wanna contribute? Email the Roo. And buy Drew’s book, The Night The Lights Went Out, through here. It’s still September, which is when the more learned members of our football media remind their audience to not overreact to anything just yet. We’ve only played two games, and everything about the league, save for the Chiefs winning a close game in the most uninspiring way humanly possible, changes on a weekly basis. This is a marathon, not a sprint. We need a larger sample size. Patience, young grasshoppers.

Nightbitch is billed as a film about an overburdened stay-at-home mom who turns into a dog at night in order to free herself from her shackles. But it’s the night part rather than the bitch part that stands out here. This is a movie about a woman (Amy Adams) whose days have been stolen, who is pushed so far that the narrative has to contort into fantasy in order to break her out of her reality. This is her reality: Cast iron pan, sizzling butter, frozen hash brown, lunch with kid, walk with kid, library with kid, cast iron pan, sizzling butter, frozen hash brown, lunch with kid, walk with kid, library with kid. Time passes in blocks of repetition for this nameless mother who seems to exist only to complete the tasks that keep her child (not even herself) alive, one of countless Jeanne Dielmans pacing the planet, her identity absorbed by these mundane chores that mark the time ticking by and her life along with it. She seems barely there, even her epic earnest responses to outside questions about her life are only answered truthfully in her head, as she presents a frictionless surface. Or maybe not entirely frictionless. A slight grimace here, a pleading look there, something is starting to peek through the veneer.  This woman is so alone in this temporal hell that you are surprised when a man (Scoot McNairy) suddenly shows up. And this is the part of an otherwise generic-veering movie about the power of motherhood that stuck out in my mind. Because Nightbitch is the rare mainstream Hollywood movie that not only dissects a particular kind of passive male uselessness—in this case the father who is barely there and when he is there is barely there—but how that uselessness can actively prey on women’s time. 

If it was, it would still be around, wouldn't it?

We here at Defector have made our affection for Girona well-known. Even with the City Football Group ownership angle, it's hard to deny that Girona breaking into the top three of La Liga last season was very cool. Hell, even as a Barcelona fan, I found myself pulling for a Gironiste title charge during the club's season-opening points barrage, when it led the league into January. Though winning La Liga turned out to be just a pipe dream, third place and a debutant spot in the Champions League was more than enough consolation for a club that isn't all that big, and one that often has served as a Manchester City feeder club. On Wednesday, Girona made that Champions League debut in France, taking on the new-look Paris Saint-Germain—"new look" meaning "no longer employs Kylian Mbappé"—in the opening match of group ... well, there's actually no more group play in the Champions League. Love or hate the new format—I'm a centrist, leaning ever so slightly towards the hate side—the stated goal of the tournament is to get more games that matter on the calendar. (The unstated goal of the tournament is to simply get more games, and more money, on the calendar.) To have the French champions, a veritable juggernaut, take on the upstart Spaniards ... that's the type of match this new format was seemingly made for.

How long can one man orient his life around the unbelievably demanding but ultimately vacuous race to tweet out transactional NBA news a few seconds faster than the competition? ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski has found his personal answer.

Welcome to Perfectly Fine Dinner Party Club, a cooking and hosting column from Libby Watson, who likes to throw dinner parties but is normal about it. You have surely noticed that a few months have passed without a Perfectly Fine Dinner Party Club Post From Libby Watson At Defector. Your friends have been waiting for you to host your next event, and wondering what the holdup is. I will admit to you that I did throw a Fourth of July dinner party that was meant to be the next edition of this column, but here’s the deal: It was not quite "perfectly fine" enough. It was inadequately fine.