Icebound Empire: How 32 NHL Teams Quietly Became the World’s Most Expensive Export By the time the Zamboni’s final lap glistens like a freshly minted credit card, most spectators have already forgotten that the National Hockey League is less a North American pastime than an accidental global franchise. Yes, the rinks are still refrigerated with…
The Curious Case of Teoscar Hernández: How One Man’s Bat Became a Geopolitical Barometer By the time Teoscar Hernández launched his 10th postseason home run into the Chavez Ravine gloaming last October, the baseball had already cleared three time zones, two trade agreements, and one very confused customs officer in Tijuana. To the casual eye…
**The Gronkowski Doctrine: How a Dancing Tight End Became America’s Most Effective Cultural Ambassador** While diplomats in Geneva debate the finer points of international law and trade agreements, the United States has been quietly exporting its most potent weapon: a 6’6″ former tight end whose primary qualifications appear to be an inability to pronounce “con-cate-nate”…
From the banks of the Des Moines to the boulevards of Brussels, the phrase “Gronowski Iowa” has become a sort of geopolitical Rorschach test: stare at it long enough and you’ll see whatever your particular hemisphere fears most—Midwestern moral panic, European regulatory smugness, or simply the slow-motion car crash we politely call “the 21st-century attention…
Robbie Ray: The 94-Mph Metaphor for a Planet That Can’t Decide Whether to Rebuild or Reload Bylines from Toronto, Seattle, Tokyo, and the existential void Every so often, the world needs a left-handed parable. Enter Robbie Ray—Cy Young winner, strikeout evangelist, and human embodiment of the international supply-chain crisis currently masquerading as professional sports. From…
Drew McIntyre: The Last Scotsman Standing in a World That Forgot How to Fall Gracefully By Our Man in Every Airport Lounge from Glasgow to Guadalajara The planet tilts on its axis because somebody, somewhere, is still trying to body-slam another human through a folding table. In that grand, slightly deranged tradition steps Drew McIntyre:…
Jazz Chisholm Jr. and the End of the Empire: How a Bahamian Infielder Explains the 21st-Century World Order By Our Correspondent, Still Recovering from the 2016 Election and Other Existential Jokes NASSAU, THE BAHAMAS — While the United States busies itself weaponizing nostalgia for a 1950s that never quite existed, its erstwhile colony 185 miles…
Nia Jax and the Collapse of Distance: How a Polynesian Samoan Superstar Became a Global Rorschach Test By the time Nia Jax (born Savelina Fanene in Sydney, raised in Honolulu, billed from “The Irresistible Force”) power-bombed another petite opponent through a commentary table last week, the clip had already ping-ponged across seventeen time zones. A…
Phillies vs. Diamondbacks: A World Series So American It Could Only Happen on a Planet Circling the Drain By the time the first pitch left Zack Wheeler’s hand in Game 1, half of humanity was busy Googling “What is a Phillie?” The other half, having already memorized the 2001 Luis Gonzalez bloop single, was refreshing…
Cooper DeJean, the 21-year-old Iowan who can apparently outrun both his own shadow and the existential dread of living in a state whose main export is corn and repressed memories, has become the latest American football prodigy to be hoisted onto the international stage. For those who’ve wisely invested their sanity in soccer, cricket, or…
Mike Gundy, the Oklahoma State University head football coach whose mullet once qualified as a diplomatic incident in several NATO countries, has improbably become a case study in how American provincialism still manages to ricochet across the planet like a rogue drone over the Black Sea. In a week when French farmers dumped manure on…
Marlins vs Rangers: A Global Trade War in Cleats By Our Correspondent Who Once Covered a UN Summit and Found More Diplomacy in the Dugout MIAMI—While the rest of the planet negotiates over microchips, grain corridors, and which septuagenarian autocrat will next threaten nuclear Armageddon, two American ball clubs convened at LoanDepot Park last night…
