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Nervy tennis is so rich. It can contain both the worst of the sport (in a technical sense) and the best of it (in a narrative sense). You can witness breakdowns in routine strokes, diseased shot selection, and facial expressions that indicate a horrible geyser of bile into the esophagus. But you'll also see the bravery of a player who is flagging, hurting, and still playing gorgeous tennis from a land beyond conscious thought. Rarely will there be tennis nervier than the third-set tiebreak that decided Thursday's Wimbledon semifinal between Coco Gauff and Karolina Muchova, and would have advanced either player into her first final at the tournament. The two women had traded the first two sets, each won with roughly equivalent ease, and danced cagily all the way to 6-6 in the third. Between points, Muchova clutched at her right side with a wince; in press afterward she diagnosed it as a stitch, said she "couldn't catch a breath," and was trying to massage it away. Despite coming out flat, Gauff elbowed her way back into the match with her usual stamina, opportunism, and guile; she looked fresher going into the deciding frame. They proceeded to play 22 points so entertaining, with career-defining chances earned and squandered by both players, that I had to run back the tiebreak as soon as it ended in Muchova's favor. Why not do it together? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpl9mApl2Tw

Terry Thompson is part of a lawsuit against FanDuel and DraftKings, claiming that the sports books used their VIP services and products to intentionally prey on his gambling addiction. Thompson says he wagered $18.5 million with FanDuel and became addicted to gambling via the sports book's in-game micro bets. His suit claims he was also encouraged to continue gambling by a FanDuel VIP manager named Bryttanni Morgan, who at one point sent Thompson a personalized video from Phillies star Bryce Harper. The 21-second video, obtained by the Philadelphia Inquirer, features Harper speaking into his phone camera and wishing Thompson a happy Thanksgiving. "Your host Bryttanni, from FanDuel, wanted to make sure your Thanksgiving was extra special," Harper says in the video, which has a FanDuel logo superimposed over it. This was just one of many gifts Thompson said he received from Morgan, who communicated with him frequently via text message and shared details from her personal life. Morgan frequently provided Thompson with tickets to sporting events, including two Super Bowls.

PAU, France — Some people are natural performers. Torstein Træen is not, though his work on the bike might have been the last exciting general classification action before we get to Paris. As the 30-year-old Norwegian rider ascended the podium in Foix after Stage 4, to be wrapped in the yellow jersey, he grinned sheepishly and his Uno-X teammates gathered below to cheer him on. You wouldn't know he was bringing such a strange, interesting cycling career to an ecstatic new high. Træen looked shy, rocking back and forth like a character in an RPG loading screen and forgetting to take the ceremonial stuffed lion of victory until the podium attendant nudged him on the arm. At his official post-Tour press conference, at his other main interview, and at an interview after he crashed late in his first stage in the yellow jersey the next day (he's fine), the primary point Træen drove across was that he didn't really know what was going on. When a Japanese journalist looking for a very simple quote asked him about his extended family on the archipelago, Træen simply said, "I'm not really in contact with my Japanese family." Two days later, he was goofing around with the gendarmes and asking to hold one cop's gun. He is steady, laconic, the sort of rider I imagine Karl Ove Knausgaard would like (I emailed Knausgaard's representatives just in case). It didn't last, but it was beautiful.

I went to the Great American State Fair figuring it would make me feel lousy about my country. I don't remember being so right about anything.  I'd read all about how entertainers wouldn't take the stage, how states wouldn't staff the booths, and how nobody was showing up because the president had hijacked America's 250th birthday celebration and messed everything up. But with only a few days before this circus leaves town—the fair closes tomorrow—I wanted to see for myself if The Mess on the Mall could live down to its billing. And, sure, I wondered if Donald Trump's Stonehengian rendering of his proposed Arc de Failure looked as ridiculous in the flesh as online. (Yup and yup.) So I went. Turns out I was prepared for most of the awfulness. But not all the Jesus. So much Jesus. First, a summary of its pros and cons. 

There was always an irony to Happy's name. The elephant's misfortune stamped her a celebrity. In their home in the wild, female Asian elephants roam for hundreds of miles and form lifelong attachments to a group of around seven relatives. In her home in the Bronx Zoo, Happy lived alone in a small exhibit. She had been separated for decades from the zoo's other two Asian elephants, Maxine and Patty, for her own protection. So Happy became famous for her loneliness, deprived of companionship, of family, of physical touch. But Happy was smart, too. She stored treats in her ear. She was the first elephant to pass the mirror self-recognition test, proving her self-awareness when she saw her reflection and poked with her trunk at a white X painted on her forehead. In 2018, the Nonhuman Rights Project, an animal rights nonprofit, sued the Bronx Zoo to move Happy to a sanctuary, arguing that the elephant, in part because of her intelligence, should legally be considered a person. The suit was unsuccessful, and so Happy stayed put in her enclosure until her health deteriorated earlier this year. She was euthanized on May 26 at the age of 55. Patty, now the last elephant at the Bronx Zoo, lived much of her life in Happy's shadow. While clever Happy passed the mirror test, slow Patty did not. Patty has never been the subject of a lawsuit arguing for her personhood. Patty posed a different kind of problem for the zoo. In the summer of 2002, Patty and Maxine fatally attacked Happy's companion of 25 years, Grumpy, forcing the zoo to separate the elephants and making it harder for the public to root for Patty. When Happy died in May, the Wildlife Conservation Society, or WCS, which runs the Bronx Zoo, issued a press release referring to her as "Happy, a Much-Loved Asian Elephant." On July 7, the WCS issued another press release about "Patty, an Asian Elephant." Patty, it seems, is not so loved. Now Patty, 57, has once again become a problem for the Bronx Zoo. Captive and wild elephants have been known to live into their 70s, and Patty has no known physical health issues. With Happy's death, Patty has become the loneliest elephant. As such, the WCS is evaluating what should happen to her next—if she will be sent to a sanctuary to join other elephants in a better simulacrum of wilderness, or if she will live out her years at the only home she has known for half a century, alone.

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? No wait, come back. Just a few steps away from the ferry terminal, a morbidly curious fan can catch the independent Atlantic League's Staten Island FerryHawks, who have suffered through such a hapless year that they're legitimately challenging the Spiders' historic futility. With just over two months left in the season, the FerryHawks are saddled with an 11-57 record. Their pitchers carry a team ERA of 10.03. Their run differential is -389, which means they're losing their average game by 5.7 runs. Their best hitter, Joshua Palacios, is now on his way to the Pirates' Triple-A franchise. Yes, New York, it gets more miserable than the Mets. Staten Island's ballpark didn't always host indy ball. Pre-COVID, this was the home of the Single-A Staten Island Yankees, who came to the borough in a deal that also brought a Mets minor-league squad to Brooklyn's Coney Island. The Yankees lasted through the 2019 season, after which they were cut loose as part of MLB's overall downsizing of the minors. (It didn't help that the big-league Yankees were embarrassed by the club's headline-grabbing promotion in which they renamed themselves the Staten Island Pizza Rats.) The FerryHawks played their first Atlantic League campaign in 2022, and even though they've been a sub-.500 team in every season, their current mark is a steep fall from their typical mediocrity. I got to see the 57th loss live and up close as the FerryHawks fell to the High Point Rockers—as in rocking chairs, since they come from a North Carolina city famous for furniture. It was unlike any game I'd ever been to before, because my $12 ticket was in practice a general admission pass to the entire hollow park. The FerryHawks' home has an advertised capacity of 7,171, but I would be surprised if there were more than 100 people in the seats on Wednesday night (plus one seagull who chose to bring his fish dinner into the outfield). There was only one concession stand open on the concourse, though they did sell surprisingly excellent hot dogs for just $2, owing to the fact that it was Weenie Wednesday. We were able to walk right down into first-row seats directly next to the home dugout, close enough to see the umpires spit and hear snippets of conversations about the players' girlfriends in the foul-territory bullpen. One of the coaches ribbed me about keeping my head up when I was looking at my phone between innings.

The Carolina Hurricanes are worthy NHL champs, plowing through the playoffs with a 16-3 record. It's a victory of commitment to an approach, as head coach Rod Brind'Amour's system finally paid ultimate dividends after seven years of postseason exits. It's a victory for bloggers everywhere, thanks to the employment of GM Eric Tulsky and analyst Tyler Dellow(!). But most important, it's a victory for family. The Dundon family, specifically. No other families. Notoriously cheap owner Tom Dundon is listed first on the Stanley Cup engraving every champion gets. It's his team, he can do what he wants, and at least the NHL is the last holdout in not handing its championship trophy to the owner first. Executives have had their names on the Cup since the Bruins did it in 1929. So it's fine that Tom Dundon is on there now. But whoever's job it was to do the engraving was certainly not done at one Dundon:

OK, now shit is about to get even realer. The FIFA World Cup sponsored by FIFA and presented by FIFA is now down to eight teams. If your favorite team isn’t among the last countries standing, that’s tough shit. You must pick a NEW favorite country, and you must do it right this instant or else suffer the consequences. [I draw my sword] But how can anyone pick just one team from France, Morocco, Belgium, Spain, Norway, England, Argentina, and Switzerland? Fear not, amigo, because this week’s episode of The Distraction is here to help you do just that.

The Chicago Bears are one of the most storied franchises in the NFL. One of just two charter members of the league still playing today (the other being the Cardinals, a somewhat less-storied franchise), the Bears have had a lengthy and stalwart kinship with the City of Big Shoulders. That could change. Bears ownership announced on June 5 that they are focusing their attention on building a new stadium that not only isn’t in Chicago, but isn’t in Illinois at all. “[T]he Chicago Bears Board of Directors met and voted to advance our stadium development project in Hammond, Indiana, with the exact site to be selected,” Chicago Bears Chairman George H. McCaskey and President and CEO Kevin Warren said in a statement. “We believe a world-class stadium project in Hammond will transform the region, connecting Northwest Indiana to the South Side of Chicago through the Loop and across neighborhoods and suburbs stretching north of the city. It will bring Chicagoland together and deliver new opportunities to its residents and businesses."

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, Billy dives into the tricky question of screen time.