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The Miami Marlins are a winning baseball team. For now. That revelation comes after one of their finest months ever, a 20-6 run that began, hilariously enough, after being swept in a three-game series by the gangrenous Mets and falling behind them in the NL East race. This would be a point of deep shame for most teams, but the Fish have been coated, breaded, and fried in shame for most of their existence, and utterly wretched since their last World Series championship 23 years ago. They ended May with a 26-34 record. Getting swept by the Mets, even these Mets, fell safely under the category of "Things I Don't Have To Notice For Any Reason Whatsoever." But the curative powers of the Mets beating you are apparently underappreciated: Since that moment, the Mets haven't beaten any one team twice in a row, while the Marlins are 46-40 on the season and suddenly mere percentage points out of a wild-card spot for the first time in ... oh god, don't make us look this up. We've waded through enough of the Marlins' historical cesspool as it is. Still, the Marlins have won more games in a calendar month only one other time in their history—May of 2012, when they won 21—and had a run differential of plus-53, their best in any month ever. They are the best team in baseball if the season had started on June 1, and it's hard to comprehend why, because any thought when it comes to the Miami Marlins begins with "What?" then sails past "Why?" and lands on "Leave me alone, you quivering bag of coleslaw in human clothes."

If there's one clean, satisfying lesson to be taken from the World Cup action we've seen so far, it's this one: Big games tend to be decided by the big dogs. Kylian Mbappé, Erling Haaland, Lionel Messi, Michael Olise, Harry Kane—all of these guys have been playing out of their minds since the first group-stage games, and each has taken a deserved turn as the tournament's brightest star. Right now, minutes after England's 2-1 victory over DR Congo in the round of 32, it's Kane who reigns as the world's best and brightest. DR Congo did everything an underdog is supposed to do in order to win a game like the one they just lost. They met England with more tenacity than the Three Lions may have been expecting, they defended like psychopaths, they scored early, and their attacks were dangerous enough to genuinely rattle the English players. After Brian Cipenga's opening goal in the seventh minute, DR Congo would hold onto a 1-0 lead for 68 minutes. Each minute that passed seemed to further fray the confidence of their opponents, as did a series of tremendous saves by Congolese keeper Lionel Mpasi.

This week's episode of Nothing But Respect was recorded hours before Jalen Duren's representatives committed to using the Sacramento Kings as an unwitting partner in scrabbling a bit of leverage from the Detroit Pistons, which would have been great to talk about, but does not really change too much of the first bit of the show. Maitreyi Anantharaman came back on to talk Duren, Jaylen Brown, and Analyticsgate, but mostly to catch us up on the WNBA season. We talked a ton about her incredible Olivia Miles profile, which you should all go read right now! 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!

Who among us has not attempted to start a whimsical community-oriented project only for it to devolve into a site of small scale authoritarianism? It happens all the time! It even happened in my own town!  For a couple of months earlier this year, there was a white box screwed into the outdoor wall of a restaurant on my street. Every time I passed it, people were crowded around it picking out little toys, stickers, and knicknacks that were stashed inside. One time I stopped by and traded a sticker for a clear mancala marble that I now keep in my jewelry dish. A lovely trinket trade!  But after about two months, the box disappeared, leaving only four holes screwed into the stucco wall where it had been installed. A visit to my city's subreddit revealed that because the citizens of this city were taking more than they were leaving, and also leaving the box's door unlatched, the box's creator had decided to move it from the street to inside a nearby cafe to "protect the space [...] and spirit of the project." 

On June 18, ESPN published a report that connected NFL free agent Mike Pennel Jr. to the death of a woman in the Dominican Republic. This week, the network retracted the article and issued a brief statement. The article, bylined by T.J. Quinn and Juan Recio, claimed that Pennel had "an ongoing relationship" with Carli Franchesca Guzmán Roche, who disappeared in 2021 and whose body was discovered in January 2026 on Pennel's property in Puerto Plata. The original report, which has since been deleted but can be found at an archived link, cited "interviews with people close to the victim and police records." Also mentioned in the piece were LeAndre Kemont Jefferson and Tyree Lamont Davis, two of Pennel's friends. In the original article, Pennel denied any connection to Guzmán and said he wasn't in the Dominican Republic at the time. He also added this:

Heading into the 2026 World Cup, the Mexican national team had one mission: Finish first in Group A. Beyond the obvious motivation to not lose a game, finishing top of the group guaranteed that El Tri would not leave the terrifying confines of the Estadio Azteca until the quarter-final round. It's impossible to overstate how powerful the home field advantage is for Mexico at the Azteca; in 89 official competitive games there (not including friendlies), Mexico has lost exactly two games. Two!! (In case you are wondering, 2001 to Costa Rica in World Cup qualifying, and 2013 to Honduras, also in World Cup qualifying.) In the World Cup itself, the advantage is even greater. Heading into Tuesday night's game against Ecuador, Mexico had won seven and drawn two of its previous nine World Cup games at Azteca. Mexico did win Group A, and thus they were able to steamroll Ecuador, 2-0, in last night's elimination game. Not even Ecuador's familiarity with playing at altitude could save them from Mexico's tenacity and the energizing effects the team always seems to draw from the raucous Azteca crowd. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpS_VzFm3DQ

Cade Cavalli, pitcher for the Washington Nationals, used "boy" Tuesday night in a taunt directed at Willson Contreras of the Boston Red Sox. Cavalli had caught Contreras looking at a third strike, and shouted, "Sit down, boy," loud enough for it to be caught on the television broadcast. Contreras, a Venezuelan man six years Cavalli's senior and with more than 40 times as many MLB games under his belt, took it exactly as intended. In the ensuing brouhaha, Contreras whipped off his batting helmet, fumbled it, recovered his own fumble, and then fired the helmet toward Cavalli. It was not Contreras's best throw: The helmet bonked off of Andrés Chaparro, a bystander and Contreras's countryman. Contreras was ejected. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNXrJnUhYp8 Cavalli, who provoked Contreras, jawed with him, and beckoned him forward, did not physically engage, and was allowed to continue pitching. This part of it really bothered Red Sox interim manager Chad Tracy, who took up his player's case with the umpires and was ejected. "I felt like the comment made—'Sit down, boy,' at the top of your lungs—was part of what caused that to happen," Tracy explained after the game. "As I understood after that happened the people that they chose, that were gonna leave the game, I just felt like the other pitcher should've been one of them, too. That was my biggest complaint, there, was why is he still in the game?"

You may have heard that a giraffe named Gracie skipped town—"town" being the Cedar Hollow Ranch in Leakey, Texas. Gracie, who is estimated to be around 3 or 4 years old, had been living there since May. Gracie is a reticulated giraffe, a species known for their clean and geometric pattern of brown spots. The owner of the ranch, Vick Jones, told The New York Times that Gracie had wandered to a fenced corner of the ranch, which is nestled in a canyon, climbed a slab of rock to nibble on some trees, and then descended on the other side of the fence. From there she wandered in the Texas outback, oblivious that she had made headlines as a "runaway" and a "fugitive"—a giraffe "on the loose." Although she occasionally popped up on game cameras from private properties in the area, Gracie dodged the authorities for nearly two weeks, leading Sheriff Nathan Johnson to decree "In almost 30 years of being a lawman, this is my first escapee giraffe," per USA Today. There was a rush of AI-generated memes of Gracie enjoying the local sights. The giraffe was found four miles from the ranch after an extensive helicopter search, and Jones organized efforts to capture Gracie and return her to the ranch. Sheriff Johnson, upon sharing the news, reported that Gracie was found "fat and happy" and that "she had a 'catch me if you can, sucker' attitude." It is funny to think about a giraffe wandering through Texas, just as it is funny to think about the search for said giraffe—perhaps nature's most obvious animal—taking two weeks. Sheriff Johnson, to be sure, is having some fun in his press conferences, whether his jokes are landing or not. But, as Kenny Torrella smartly pointed out for Vox, the reasons a giraffe like Gracie was in Texas in the first place are not so funny.

On the morning of Game 1 of the NBA Finals, I received an email from the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission (better known as “America250”) promoting the release of new commemorative apparel to mark the occasion. The shirt designs have little connection to the NBA Finals—“NBA” is nowhere to be found, and the only logo on it is America250’s—but somehow even less connection to the country’s birthday. One has a basketball going into a net, flanked by the phrase “Game seven grit and American spirit” on one side and “America 250” on the other. On another, “CHAMPIONS” cascades down the front, topped by the phrase “Victory Runs Deep.” What I can only assume is a now-middle-aged And1 guy streaks across the middle, gliding over the America250 logo and “2026 Finals.” There’s no real explanation why the entity responsible for planning a historic national anniversary is dropping unlicensed-looking hoops shirts. (America250 does actually have a formal partnership with Fanatics and every major pro sports league, so allow me to be the first person to ever write the sentence “This apparel would be better if Fanatics were involved.”) I wish I could tell you this was the dumbest 250th-anniversary memorabilia I’ve seen. Unfortunately, it’s not even close. This is formalwear by comparison. Semiquincentennial (think “half of five hundred”) merchandise has emerged slowly over the past 18 months—a shot glass here, a stuffed animal there. But just a few short days out from the Fourth of July, 250th-anniversary memorabilia is suddenly available pretty much everywhere I look.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in an opinion released Tuesday, voted 6-3 in support of two state laws that ban trans girls and women from playing women's sports at public schools and universities. The ruling applies directly to bans in two states—Idaho and West Virginia—while bolstering similar bans in more than two dozen others. Writing for the three votes against—all of which came from the court's liberal wing—Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that to the court's majority, "the facts do not matter, even though the consequences are serious." "Sports, of course, are often zero sum," Sotomayor wrote, "but the law need not and should not be."