Lorenzo Musetti: The Last Italian Romantic in an Age of Algorithmic Tennis By our correspondent in Rome, still waiting for the espresso machine to be fixed since 2019 If tennis were still governed by Renaissance patronage, Lorenzo Musetti would already have a ceiling somewhere—probably the Sistine Chapel gift shop, between Michelangelo’s self-checkout kiosk and a…
Blue Jays vs Reds: A Global Tragedy Painted in Feathers and Box Scores By Dave’s Foreign Correspondent, still wearing yesterday’s cynicism GENEVA — While the world’s finance ministers argue over digital-tax commas in Swiss conference suites, and while a forgotten war reruns its greatest hits on another continent, two North American bird-themed baseball clubs have…
Najee Harris and the Global Cargo Cult of American Football By Our Man in the Cheap Seats It is a truth universally acknowledged—at least from the VIP boxes in Dallas to the betting kiosks in Macau—that the United States exports only three things with reliable profit margins: weapons-grade anxiety, Marvel plot twists, and the National…
The Last Flight Out of Bucaramanga: How a Colombian Football Match Became a Global Metaphor for Everything Wrong (and Right) with 2024 If you squint hard enough through the smog of modernity, the world occasionally lines up its metaphors like dominoes waiting for a toddler with a sugar rush. Case in point: last Tuesday’s Copa…
Pam Shriver: The Accidental Oracle of a World That Forgot How to Volley By Our Correspondent, Somewhere Over the International Date Line You know the world is in dire straits when a retired American doubles specialist becomes the most coherent voice in global sport. Yet here we are, watching Pam Shriver—she of the 1980s teased…
Jon Jones: Humanity’s Last Riot-Control Specialist By Dave’s Foreign Correspondent, filed from a hotel bar where CNN is muted but the fight replays never are The first time most of the planet heard about Jon Jones, he wasn’t being celebrated for his footwork or his ability to fold human joints like origami; he was on…
Amanda Anisimova and the Absurd Ballet of Modern Fame By Dave’s Far-Flung Correspondent, nursing jet-lag in three time zones The world first noticed Amanda Anisimova in Paris, 2019, when she cannonballed into the French Open semifinals at seventeen, an age when most of us were still perfecting the art of missing curfew. She beat the…
Anisimova: The Name the World Suddenly Can’t Spell but Won’t Stop Saying By our correspondent in a hotel bar that still thinks fax machines are avant-garde PARIS—Somewhere between the third espresso and the fourth police barricade, it became clear that “Anisimova” had transcended its bearer and become a global Rorschach test. To the French, it…
WARSAW, 1 a.m. local time—While most of the planet was doom-scrolling through another evening of geopolitical whack-a-mole, a solitary 23-year-old from Raszyn was busy re-negotiating the price of immortality. Iga Świątek’s three-set demolition of Aryna Sabalenka in the Madrid final did more than add another bauble to Poland’s trophy cabinet; it quietly redrew a few…
Eurobasket 2025: When the Continent’s Fractured Egos Learn to Share One Orange Ball and a Trophy By the Global Affairs Desk, Dave’s Locker Berlin—The biennial festival of hardwood nationalism known as Eurobasket has rolled back into town, and once again Europe is pretending that twenty-four countries can resolve centuries of mutual suspicion by sweating through…
The Ballad of Ryan Helsley: When a Fastball Becomes a Diplomatic Incident By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Somewhere Over the Atlantic In an age when trade wars are fought on Twitter and climate summits end in steak dinners, the most electrifying act of international brinkmanship this month came from a 29-year-old man with…
MrBeast Tackles the NFL: When YouTube Philanthropy Meets America’s Most Sacred Violence Circus By Dave’s Locker International Desk If you woke up last week to learn that Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson had purchased the Carolina Panthers, congratulations—you’ve just witnessed late-stage capitalism’s newest halftime show. The rumor mill began whirring after Beast dropped a teaser video titled…
