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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 dumb PA announcers, selling yourself, coaches, and their hobbies, and more. Your letters: Jeff:

To hear powerhouse sports agent Drew Rosenhaus tell it, his client, the once-electric receiver Tyreek Hill, could sign with a new NFL team at any moment. From a football-only perspective, the agent’s optimism makes sense. With so many teams losing starters to injuries, any football fan would expect a veteran like Hill to get a…

You've been fighting it off as best you can, but the weight of the evidence is starting to hit your hips, knees and ankles in a series of small electric spasms. You've tried to explain it away as "Well, the league's weird this year," and while you're right no matter what league you're referring to, the disorientation is still there and getting worse. The Tampa Bay Rays look like they are going to win their American League Division Series, but that's not the thing that's making you nickname your persistent migraine as though it were a mischievous nephew. It's that they're making the New York Yankees look like the Los Angeles Angels, which is not just laughing at the power of branding but making a fresh mockery of a town that already has to put up with the Mets. The Rays gnaw at a game like hyperactive beavers, eschewing home runs (except for Junior Caminero) and embracing the annoying little things that modern baseball once disdained: speed, defense, and even the occasional bunt. The Yankees have struggled with stuff like catching the ball or throwing it in a useful direction, which have always been in fashion. That is how Game 2, a 5-2 Rays win, played out Monday night. The Yankees' four errors were spectacular, the second-most put up by the team in its 448 all-time postseason games, highlighted but by no means concluded by Jazz Chisholm Jr.'s comprehensive mangling of a double-play pivot on the Rays' third at-bat of the game. Had it not been for Ben Rice's two solo homers, the Yankees would have looked utterly Angelic in all the worst ways.

The first thing I have to warn you is that if you purchase Josh Malerman's Incidents Around The House, it will have a sticker on it saying it's a movie now. If that's a dealbreaker, there's no escaping it, because the movie is coming out next week and because it features one of the all-time fucked-up jump scares in a trailer. I almost can't believe that was allowed. Anyway, yes, this is the book that Other Mommy is based on. But several Defector staffers have previously read it and won't shut up about how good it is. The second thing to warn you about is that this book is scary. I am not a baby, and I read a decent amount of horror, and it's been a long, long time since I read anything that had me jumpy about leaving my bed in the middle of the night. My all-time favorites are Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and Michael McDowell's The Elementals, and I won't really hesitate to put Incidents up there with those. It's not postmodern/lit/"elevated horror," like so many of today's horror novelists seem to aspire to. This is the classic shit. Incidents Around The House is narrated by Bela, an 8-year-old girl who for some time has been visited by ... something that lives in her closet, but is not confined to it. She calls this something Other Mommy, because it looks like her mother—mostly, and sometimes—and it asks her, in increasingly threatening tones, if it can go inside her heart. She tells her parents about Other Mommy, and the book is about them not trying to figure out what it is, but rather if there is any way to escape it.

The Arizona State hockey team plays their home opener on Friday, but hanging over their season, and the entire program, will be what happened to defenseman Matthew Mayich. At an outdoor, "military-style" team workout on Aug. 20, Mayich collapsed from exertional heat stroke. He's been in the hospital on life support ever since, with his family attorneys saying that he has "zero chance" of making a complete recovery. Mayich's hospitalization has shone a harsh light on both the ASU administration and the wider culture of "military-style" workouts in athletics. The guy who ran this ASU workout, Tim Ziesel, is a former Army Green Beret who pushed the players through intense exercises in high-80s heat with limited water, and he ordered extra running for those who didn't perform to his specifications. An Ontario native and 2023 St. Louis Blues draft pick who transferred to ASU from Clarkson University in upstate New York, Mayich was one of 18 new players on the roster this season and was unused to the Arizona climate, putting him more at risk for heat stroke. According to The Athletic, when Mayich collapsed to the ground, "he stayed in the sun for several minutes before four players carried him into the shade." The workout was symbolic of a philosophy that head coach Greg Powers, the only man to coach the program since it joined D-I in 2015, attempted to implement after a lackluster end to the previous season. “I hate to say the word ‘soft,’ but that’s what we were,” Powers said in May. “And it became contagious." Per The Athletic, he was known around the program for a quick temper and a willingness to insult his players. Ziesel's whole deal seems specifically engineered to appeal to a guy who's anxious about making his charges "tougher." Per ASU players, Ziesel told them during the workout that he didn't drink water during combat and that "none of [the players] were worthy of his daughter."

In the 1870s, as the research ship HMS Challenger passed through the Philippines during its circumnavigation of the Earth, it dredged up a sponge from the gray sludge 95 fathoms (nearly 600 feet) below the surface. The scientists knew that glass sponges abounded in these waters, their bodies fragile, translucent, and curiously geometric. Sponges of this sort often house other animals, such as monogamous shrimp and various worms. So it was not exactly revelatory that the dredged-up sponge contained a worm, but the worm itself was a revelation. It had laced its body through the sponge's many passages, so much so that it might have resembled many worms. But it was just one worm whose body appeared able to branch like a tree. "The body of the annelid appears to have a furor for budding," the zoologist W. C. M'Intosh wrote in an 1879 paper describing the preserved specimen of the worm. Although M'Intosh did not comprehend this at the time, the worm had a furor for budding multiple anuses. Maria Teresa Aguado, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Göttingen in Germany, learned about branching worms as a PhD student. She had always romanticized the Challenger expedition and imagined what it was like to explore distant oceans and glimpse the life lurking at great depths. When she came across an illustration of the branching worm found off the Philippines, now called Syllis ramosa, the worm sparked a lifelong fascination. "I remember staring at it, wondering if such a creature could really exist," she wrote in an email. "How could an animal evolve such a bizarre body plan?" For more than a century, branching worms seemed extraordinarily rare, with only a single species described by science. There were some reports of branching worms found elsewhere around the world, in the Red, Tasman, and Arafuro Seas, all identified as S. ramosa. But in 2012, Aguado and colleagues found a second species of branching worm off of northern Australia, and then a third species off an island in Japan. Aguado began to suspect that branching worms were not so rare after all. "Perhaps there were many more species, and the old records weren’t just about one or two isolated cases, but about a widespread and diverse group," she said. She was right; in September, Aguado and colleagues published a paper in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society that describes 10 probable new species of branching worms and reconstructs the evolutionary history of the strange group.

LeBron James wasn't pretending. He really is taking daily helicopter rides from his home in New York City to the offices of his new employer, the Philadelphia 76ers. Since the start of October, the LeBron James Express (call sign N6FN) has made 18 trips between Northeast Philadelphia Airport and the Manhattan West 30th Street Heliport, plus a dozen or more shorter jaunts to and from Belmar, Teterboro, Wings Field Airport, and Philadelphia International. Because of the availability of realtime flight-tracking information, it has been possible for people on the ground to note that the helicopter shuttling James back and forth from work each day is plastered with graphics for the slapdick but ever-expanding sports and e-commerce company Fanatics. Fanatics, which now runs an events operation, a video production studio, retail sportsbooks, and an online prediction market, was founded and is run by first-class celebrity hobnobber and would-be world conqueror Michael Rubin, a native Philadelphian. Rubin was formerly a limited partner in Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment (HBSE), the sports and venue management company that owns the 76ers. Someone who works for LeBron told Front Office Sports on Monday that access to Fanatics' "corporate aviation" is part of a sponsorship deal. "It’s a feature in many of their deals with their largest athletes and we appreciate their partnership as LeBron splits his time between New York and Philadelphia," the source said. Because Rubin sold his shares of HBSE back in 2022, and because James signed his present sponsorship deal with Fanatics back in 2024, this particular benefit of playing for the 76ers is not considered circumvention of the salary cap. It is merely a benefit of being in business with Fanatics while working in Philadelphia, for the favorite team of a man who at one time or another has owned some or all of both enterprises.

This week's episode of Nothing But Respect was special on several fronts: Harry and I got to record in person for the first time in roughly a year, and we did so with our good friends at Hell Gate, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd and Max Rivlin-Nadler. Topics discussed include: how Eric Adams needs to go on Curious Mike, James Dolan's loathing of the city of New York and its talismanic basketball team, Max's proposal to save the Nets, and so much more. Harry and I also played basketball together for the first time this week, and we had great coordination in the two-man game. https://art19.com/shows/nothing-but-respect/episodes/463e8d4d-93b1-4815-b2f6-31c36bba0011 You can find Nothing But Respect in Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast app you use. Follow the show on Instagram, and contact the Broke Jumper Tip Line at (347) 380-6426. Thanks for listening!

At the start of Game 2 of their ALDS matchup Monday, Chicago White Sox starter-turned-reliever-turned-opener Anthony Kay faced the Cleveland Guardians offense and posed a powerful question. What would be more powerful: a papal blessing or Guardiansball, an offensive strategy best defined by the example phrase of "Steven Kwan infield single"? Well, immediately after the bottom of the first inning, Guardiansball was winning out. Kwan himself led off affairs by hitting a ground ball that trickled its way out of the infield for a single. José Ramírez walked. Chase DeLauter moved both runners into scoring position with another ground ball. Kay was pulled for White Sox reliever-stayed-reliever Sean Newcomb, who immediately went down 2-0 in the count to Jo Adell, before intentionally walking him. Nathaniel Lowe came up to bat and then booped a high chop that bounced right to Newcomb. The Guardians then implemented the second core piece of their strategy, "opposing team forgets how to place defense." Newcomb whipped the ball way off mark for a throwing error, allowing two runs to score. He went on to strike out the next two batters. And so the fourth-worst slugging team in baseball this year ended the first inning with a two-run lead, despite failing to elevate the ball even once. It was the first time in the White Sox's 2026 playoff run that the team started a game trailing and, permitting me to take even more indulgence in small playoff sample sizes, the first runs scored in by the Guardians in the series. The circumstances were in place for the White Sox's blessed playoff run to stall out, with the Guardians at home, their starter Gavin Williams well-rested and regularly hitting triple digits on the radar gun, and the White Sox's strategy of generously deploying openers looking suspiciously close to a cheap knock-off version of the Dodgers' "Oops, all starting pitchers!" approach to bullpen construction.

The argument against the Atlanta Dream says their transition-heavy style might be incompatible with playoff basketball. But in the three playoff games they’ve played so far, the latest a 92-82 home win over New York to open the second round, Karl Smesko's team has totally set the terms. As they see it, this is playoff basketball: fast, tireless, always connected.  Even when the Dream bump into issues running their halfcourt offense, they make the math work for them in other ways. The best offensive rebounder in league history wins them extra possessions, and a team defense that’s forced more turnovers than any other WNBA team this year sets up easy scoring opportunities against defenses on their heels. That made them a nightmare first-round matchup for the Washington Mystics, who turned the ball over more than any other WNBA team this year. Washington’s season indeed ended thanks to a 42-15 turnover differential across two games. Lest that stat be blamed on the young Mystics’ nerves, consider the 32 points Atlanta scored off 21 turnovers from veteran-stocked New York in Sunday's game. The fix for Game 2 on Wednesday sounds easy: Don’t turn the ball over. But the Atlanta Dream are a team designed to make it difficult. The Liberty’s problems weren’t all self-inflicted.