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For one night, you could be forgiven if your failing eyes confused Pete Crow-Armstrong for the ghost of Hack Wilson stepping up to the plate at Wrigley Field. Actually, scratch that. Most nights you could be forgiven for confusing Pete Crow-Armstrong with a ghost. Frankly, I’m not quite convinced that he isn’t, especially with some of the defensive gaffes he made earlier this season, where the ball seemed to slip through his fingers as if he was fighting to remain on the plane of the living. But I digress. Last night, PCA became the 13th player in Cubs history to complete a cycle, hitting a single, a double, a triple, and a homer in one game. But PCA only took four plate appearances to complete the achievement, and he did so in a way no other Cub has done before.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UlEIBrbMgM

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 Graham Platner (ugh), the World Cup, imperfect movies, and more. PROGRAMMING NOTE: I'm off to the beach next week. But we'll have a guest host manning the post to answer all of your Funbag questions while I'm out, so go ahead and email them here. Who will be our mystery writer? I do not know. Why? I cannot say. How? I do not know how to answer that. Let's move on. Your letters:

For nearly as long as Canadian homes have had televisions, hockey fans have been able to spend their Saturday nights watching the country's teams on the public broadcast channel CBC. Initially a branding for CBC's radio coverage of the NHL, Hockey Night In Canada debuted on TV in 1952, and since then it's become a national institution—think Monday Night Football crossed with Jeopardy!, times two. But starting next season, the Saturday night hockey tradition will be a shell of its old self, because the games will be entirely behind a paywall. No more CBC broadcasts that you can pick up with just an antenna, or free over the internet within the country's borders. It'll be just cable and streaming games exclusively on the Rogers Media–owned Sportsnet. https://bsky.app/profile/rickspringhetti.bsky.social/post/3mog5cp2l322m This disappointing news is a long time in the making. While CBC has carried these games for generations, they've been doing so for over a decade as a kind of hanger-on while live sports rights fees zoom past the territory of the embattled budgets of public broadcasters. In 2014, Sportsnet began its multi-billion dollar contract to broadcast the NHL nationally in Canada, and in doing so they worked out a simulcast agreement with CBC for Hockey Night and their NHL playoff coverage to quiet any outcry about taking away such a beloved program. With an even more lucrative deal about to begin next season, however, there is no such reverence for the old way of watching. On Saturday nights, or during the postseason, it's now Sportsnet or bust. And while CBC is trying to positively spin the change as an opportunity for them to broadcast other sports, potentially making ad money that doesn't go straight to Rogers, I'm more than a little dubious at any implication that they're happy about their last ties to their most iconic program being severed. It feels like justifying getting dumped by saying "Well, now I can focus more on my painting."

For many players, just lacing up the boots and throwing on the national team jersey for a World Cup match marks the pinnacle of their career. Even in an expanded tournament field of 48 teams, the percentage of the population that gets to say they played in a World Cup is astronomically low, and so simply being there is reason for celebration. Just see how much one goal in a 7-1 loss meant for Curacao, or what a stunning draw against Spain meant to Cape Verde. It's the World Cup, and everyone wants to be a part of it, to soak in the world's attention, and to make their mark. This is all to say that the Iran national team should be flying high after not just playing in the World Cup on Monday night, but taking part in the best match of the tournament so far, a 2-2 draw against New Zealand that had gorgeous goals, back-and-forth trips to the fireworks factory, and the kind of white-knuckle intensity that is unique to this tournament. Twice, Iran went down a goal, and twice it tied the game back up, the second time from one of the best and most accurate crosses you will ever see, with Ramin Rezaeian finding Mohammad Mohebi's head in the box in perfect position to equalize. The match, which took place in Los Angeles, was a beautiful thing to watch, a reward for the late-night soccer sickos (at least on the East Coast and beyond) who love the World Cup almost as much as the players. Following that draw, and the crucial point that goes with it, Iran should have been able to celebrate as a team and with their fans. Instead, the other side of this specific World Cup reared its ugly, embarrassing head.

SAN ANTONIO — "Wow … more Knicks fans?" said a local child, dejectedly, as he rounded a corner on the River Walk, only to encounter a cheerful man wearing a "Nueva York" edition David Lee jersey. Saturday morning, before Game 5 of the NBA Finals, this child's Spurs team still had life in it yet. But from the tone of his voice, it was clear that he had lost some emotional battle already. Presumably this child had heard the visiting fans calling out "Knicks in five" from the guided river boat tours, like a flotilla of insurgents. He'd seen them traveling in packs on foot, downing margaritas, turning his sweltering city walkable by force of will. He knew the enemy was in his midst and there was nothing to be done about it. When I heard his voice, I began to consider the comic-book supervillainous aspect of a fanbase that can simply pick up and drop a borough's worth of its bravest—or most unwell, or least fiscally responsible—soldiers onto any city in the country. Then I remembered that the Knicks still had a game to win. If turning a road game into a home game by sheer invasion would help finish the job, after 53 years of waiting, then so be it. Sorry to that child. He'll get his in time.

The New York Knicks are NBA champions. That meant Harry and I had to bring back regular guest Giri Nathan onto Nothing But Respect to talk about what it felt like to watch his team win a championship, Jalen Brunson's big-ass head, and James Dolan's performance on the championship podium. Unlike last time around, his power did not cut out at the last second, so this was a real success! Everyone should also please go read Giri's excellent Finals coverage. 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!

Well, that embarrassing 21-minute conference-room chat sure ended up being a big waste of everybody's time. Brendan Sorsby, the Texas Tech quarterback who admitted to placing over 9,000 bets on college and professional sports—including at least 40 bets involving Indiana football while he was on the team—has decided to give up his fight to remain a college football player. He will now attempt to enter the NFL via the supplemental draft. The NCAA declared Sorsby ineligible to play soon after his betting activity was discovered, but the quarterback won a preliminary injunction against the NCAA in a Texas court on June 8, which restored his eligibility and opened the door for him to play in the upcoming season, before any appeal from the NCAA would have time to be ruled on. What followed was an embarrassing week where Texas Tech, happy to have a transfer quarterback they paid $6 million for back in the fold, went on an extended PR campaign to make the case that letting a compulsive gambler who had already made bets involving his own team back into their program was actually the right thing to do. Texas Tech's yapping only seemed to antagonize the rest of the Big 12, and so on Monday the conference, ignoring a stupid and stern warning from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, filed for a federal injunction to restore its right to suspend Sorsby under conference rules. At the same time, the NCAA asked the appeals court to expedite its appeal of the June 8 ruling. All of this suddenly became too much of a headache for Sorsby and Texas Tech, and on Monday the university's board of regents released a statement announcing that Sorsby will be leaving the football program and setting his sights on the NFL.

On Jan. 5, World Boccia, the sport’s governing body, announced on Facebook that they had a problem: Someone was selling counterfeit balls. In boccia, which is akin to lawn bowling and has been a part of the Paralympic program since 1984, athletes take turns throwing balls closest to the jack, a white ball that is thrown at the beginning of each contest. It’s played by disabled athletes with a variety of access needs that can include the use of a ramp that is controlled by a sports assistant. The balls can be different weights and sizes, or even have different materials inside of them, but like a spitball or an underinflated football (sorry, Patriots fans), there are standards. Some things just aren’t above board. The culprit? An account called Boccia Ball, which still exists as of press time, and is offering a set for $40. The company, which appears to be based in India, was doing its best to pass off the items as legitimate, despite the sport’s federation having a clear supply chain for officially sanctioned competition equipment. The account offers a steep discount: a sanctioned set of balls cost anywhere between $400 and $1,000, at least 10 times the price of the knockoffs.

Donald Trump’s 80th birthday weekend didn’t all go well for him, at home or abroad. His name finally got pulled off the Kennedy Center early Saturday, after lots of effort to halt and obscure the removal. And word got out that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool that the president desperately wants credit for beautifying was already taken over by algae. Then there’s the matter of his dumbass and deadly Iran invasion ending in his thorough embarrassment. But UFC Freedom 250, the bizarre fight card that Trump hosted on the damn South Lawn of the damn White House, allegedly to celebrate our country’s sestercentennial but really to glorify and enrich himself and his lousy rich friends, went off without much of a hitch. I’m not sure, as the administration and UFC boss Dana White would want me to believe, that my Uncle Pat lost his leg while storming the beach at Normandy so I and 80,000 others could drink bottomless cans of zero-sugar energy drinks on federal land while guys beat the holy hell out of each other. But the bouts, all of which ended in KO's, weren't made any better or worse for their setting. Trump and his UFC pals made endless attempts to link the pugilistic proceedings to patriotism, each effort more hamfisted than the last. The hamfisticuffs peaked with featherweight Secretary of State Marco Rubio comparing hosting the fight card to putting a man on the moon. 

This was the moment when Gianni Infantino, the grubby little cash slag who runs FIFA, could have made himself a noble and even admirable human being in the eyes of a world that absolutely knows he would lick an alley clean for 10 bucks. And of course, he passed on it because he checked his Venmo and nothing new was in the queue. All he had to do was announce that Cape Verde's 0-0 draw with Spain (yeah, you read that right) was actually a win, and the Tubaroes Azuis (a cool name on its face) would be awarded the three points that would have come with a victory. Because it was. An enormous victory. Bigger in its way than the Knicks winning the NBA title. In fact, something far closer to your local community college's team winning the NBA title. Instead, and the standings continue to prove this no matter how many times we refresh the page, all they got was the traditional one point for not losing their nation's first-ever World Cup match, which came against one of the favorites to win the whole thing. That's a miscarriage of justice of the first magnitude, and Infantino is still, well, you know.