An International Postcard from the Edge of the Six-Yard Box: André Onana as Global Metaphor By the time André Onana mis-caught that harmless Istanbul free-kick last autumn, the planet had already mis-caught everything else. Inflation, elections, climate summits—each bobbled worse than the Cameroonian’s latest parabolic flap. Yet the cameras zoomed in on him, because a…
Baseball, that pastoral relic of 19th-century American leisure, still manages to ricochet across the planet every October like a drunken satellite. This week the Philadelphia Phillies—those perennial bridesmaids in red pinstripes—have clawed their way atop the National League East, and the reverberations are being felt from Caracas to Seoul. Why should a city famous for…
Aaron Judge: The 6’7” American Export Who Reminds the World That Size Still Matters By “Globetrotting” Grigor Malinov, filing from somewhere with regrettable Wi-Fi and excellent bourbon Somewhere between the collapse of the Turkish lira and the news that Beijing’s smog now has its own diplomatic passport, a man named Aaron Judge—built like a Cold-War…
The Thunder in the Void: Why Benin vs Lesotho Is the Geo-Political Cage Match Nobody Ordered By the time you read this, the world’s attention will have already flitted elsewhere—probably to whatever tropical island a crypto billionaire just sank his yacht on—but for one shimmering, slightly ridiculous moment, the planet’s idle gaze fixed itself on…
Bosnia vs Austria: A Balkan Derby for the Age of Collapsing Certainties By L. V. Raković, Senior Continental Misanthrope VIENNA—When the draw spat out “Bosnia-Herzegovina vs Austria” for the Nations League fixture this week, the world’s attention pivoted—briefly—from whichever apocalypse is currently trending to a collision of two nations nobody has confused since 1914. On…
San Francisco 49ers Dispatch from the Edge of the World By our man in the cheap seats, somewhere between the 38th parallel and the 49th roster cut Word out of Santa Clara is that the 49ers have decided what every global empire eventually decides: let’s get younger, cheaper, and hope nobody notices the drop-off in…
Dave’s Locker – International Desk 3 June 2024 Red Sox vs Athletics: A Microscopic Battle on a Planet That’s Already on Fire By the time the first pitch left Brayan Bello’s hand in Oakland, the Nikkei had slipped another 400 points, a cyclone was politely rearranging the coast of Bangladesh, and somewhere in Brussels a…
Tonight, somewhere between the Arctic Circle and the last functioning Wi-Fi router in Gaza, twenty-two million souls will crane their necks at the same glowing rectangle to ask the same question: “What football game is on tonight?” The query itself is a kind of secular prayer—uttered in seven thousand languages, muttered over instant noodles in…
Royals vs Guardians: How a Pedigreed Pastime Became a Global Power Struggle The phrase “Royals vs Guardians” sounds like the elevator pitch for a Netflix fantasy series—complete with brooding heirs, moody castles, and a CGI dragon voiced by a disgraced Oscar winner. In reality, the drama is unfolding on baseball diamonds from Kansas City to…
Steven Lenhart: The Man Who Turned MLS Fouls Into Performance Art and Accidentally Forecasted the End of the American Century By A Correspondent Who Once Watched a Friendly in Pyongyang and Still Has the Whistle Marks PARIS—Somewhere between the croissants and the existential dread, the name Steven Lenhart still surfaces in bars along the Boulevard…
Accra’s Independence Square was already vibrating at tectonic levels when the Black Stars jogged out to face Mali’s Eagles last Thursday night, and somewhere between the first vuvuzela blast and the ninety-third, the match stopped being a mere AFCON qualifier and became a referendum on everything from Chinese soft-power loans to French uranium subsidies. In…
The Ballad of Joey Bosa, or How One Very Large Man in Pads Explains the Modern World’s Collapse By: Our Man in the Press Box, Somewhere Over the Pacific We open on a Wednesday in the Year of Our Overlords 2024, when the news ticker crawls past like a dying tapeworm: “Joey Bosa, Los Angeles…
