Welcome to Screen Shots! This is where I tell you what sporting events you should watch on TV every week! Make sure you subscribe, so it comes straight to your inbox! Have your own suggestions? Shoot me an email at [email protected]!

If you’re as devastated as I am that the World Cup is over, check out the recap episode I recorded with Brett! We talk about the final game, then zoom out to discuss the tournament as a whole, team archetypes, how the superstars performed, and the United States as a team and a host!

Now, to the sports!

Sexism is dealt a big blow as this one kicks off on ESPN! I’ve watched the boys’ version of this ever since I was younger than the participants, and have never seen anything other than the softball tournament’s championship game on ESPN. I don’t know what happened, but let’s take full advantage! If it’s anywhere as exciting as the College Softball World Series, we are in for a good time! Teams are TBD at the moment, but I’m willing to bet you don’t have a favorite Little League Softball team. Four games in a row, so get comfortable and find one!

The 3-Point Shooting Contest field was just announced, and, honestly, not bad. I would consider Azzi Fudd, Marina Mabrey, and Rhyne Howard women’s hoops household names. Natisha Hiedeman probably is, too, courtesy of her StudBudz fame, so it’ll be nice to see her skills get showcased for those who think she’s just a streamer.

Noticeably missing is Caitlin Clark. Call me crazy, but if you are the “Face of the League,” there are responsibilities that come along with that. In this case, bringing eyeballs to the W’s All-Star festivities. The 3-Point Shooting Contest is the marquee event of Friday night, and ducking it is akin to LeBron never participating in the NBA Dunk Contest.

Before you point to her being banged up off and on this year, I’ll remind you that Damian Lillard won this past season’s contest despite not having played a game as he recovered from a ruptured Achilles tendon. If you’re healthy enough to win Player of the Week and a big enough star to get Sophie Cunningham an ESPN feature, then you need to get out there during the league’s biggest showcase and shoot 3s for two minutes.

Even in a non-Olympic year, this is a big deal! Not only are these athletes looking to qualify for the World Championships in September, but being the best in America at anything is, well, something! They are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the first national championship meet. As part of the festivities, they have returned to New York City for the first time in 35 years, and will also be featuring Paralympic athletes, too. Today, tap in to see 400m Olympic Gold medalist Quincy Hall and Shot Put World Champion Chase Jackson!

I am generally anti-basketball all-star games, because nobody tries. However, with this being the 30th anniversary of the league, it’s worth tuning in to see how the WNBA celebrates its history. They’ve got Cynthia Cooper and Teresa Weatherspoon involved, which is a great start! I’m expecting to be transported back to my 7-year-old self when it’s all said and done. We can discuss how it went at the John Kresse Basketball Camp on Monday over some Dunkaroos!

Closing out the event with some of the sport’s biggest names, including Tara Davis-Woodhall, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, and everybody’s favorite villain, Noah Lyles! As if that wasn’t exciting enough, I’m trying to wrangle Coach Johnson for a recap podcast!

Last night, the Phillies were well on their way to putting yet another dent in my relationship with Dodgers reliever Tanner Scott. Down a run in the bottom of the 9th, J.T. Realmuto had just doubled to advance pinch runner Justin Crawford (son of Carl!) to 3rd. With the perpetually greasy Brandon Marsh at the plate, the Phillies clearly told both runners to take off on contact. Unfortunately for the home crowd, Marsh hit a groundball right at 3rd baseman Max Muncy that got Crawford caught up in a rundown. As unlucky as this was, runners at 1st and 3rd with 2 outs against Tanner Scott isn’t a terrible position to be in either.

Except it never happened. Realmuto, who easily made it to 3rd during the rundown, decided to try to return to 2nd base as Crawford was being tagged. Dodgers SS Mookie Betts fired the ball to 2B Tommy Edman, who tagged Realmuto as he attempted to slide into his original base. Realmuto took the blame afterwards, because what choice did he have? We all have eyeballs. Among many other things, he referred to the play as a “lapse in judgement.” Was it?

Technically, yes, but doesn’t that feel like a description you’d use if you embezzled money or operated a gift card scam? It almost feels like he used this phrase to elevate himself from “man who left his brain in the dugout” to “baserunning blunder mastermind.” Anyway, goofiness aside, these are two of the better teams in the league when they remember how the game is played, so you should watch!

Of all of the World Cup viewing parties in Atlanta, it was important for me to attend the one at Centennial Olympic Park. This was hallowed ground for me. My love of the NBA was the seed of my life-changing sports fandom, and the 1996 Summer Olympics was the Miracle-Gro for that seed. This was the first Olympic Games that I was aware of, and the fact that the greatest athletes in the world would get together for 3 weeks and compete to see who was the best in all of these different events was borderline unbelievable to me.

In what is probably a pretty devastating statement about our society, I knew about domestic terrorism before I knew about the Olympics. My education began in April of 1995. I was a news-loving 6-year-old, and the headlines were dominated by the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City that took 168 lives. Whether or not I was too young to watch this coverage is debatable. It feels ridiculous to consider any potential harm that may have occurred from my doing so when 19 of the casualties were younger than me. Also, it was almost entirely unavoidable. As my own son’s first birthday is just days away, I can recall being in line at the Piggly Wiggly seeing magazine cover after magazine cover featuring the picture of a firefighter holding the lifeless body of Baylee Almon, who celebrated her own 1st and only birthday the day before the bombing.

That my introduction to what I believe is still the greatest sporting event in the world, being hosted a mere 5-hour drive away, would be interrupted by yet another act of domestic terrorism is as American as apple pie, racism, and law enforcement incompetence that dominated the investigation.

Just after midnight on July 27th, 1996, security guard Richard Jewell was patrolling Centennial Olympic Park during a concert when he spotted a suspicious bag. He alerted officers from the Georgia Bureau of Investigations and began helping evacuate the area while the bomb squad was called in to investigate. Minutes into the evacuation, the bag, containing 3 pipe bombs, exploded. The blast killed Alice Hawthorne, who was attending the event with her teenage daughter. Turkish cameraman Melih Uzunyol, who spent his career covering wars across the globe, suffered a fatal heart attack sprinting to the scene. 111 others were injured.

As bad as those numbers are, they would have been exponentially worse if not for the actions of Jewell. 50,000 people were in attendance that night, and the bomb was described by Kent Alexander, US Attorney General for Northern Georgia at the time, as “the largest of that kind the FBI and ATF had ever seen.” Jewell was treated like a hero.

For 3 days.

On day 4 of the investigation, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the FBI was treating Jewell as a possible suspect. He was not officially cleared for nearly 3 months. During that time, he was hounded by investigators and law enforcement alike, with his picture now plastered on the very same magazine covers that had once featured baby Baylee. Now, of course, you can watch a number of movies documenting this entire ordeal, including Jewell’s exoneration and the capture and confession of Eric Rudolph.

Consider for a moment all that this country has done to protect us from terrorism. We stand in line for metal detectors, take off our shoes at the airport, throw away our water bottles, live under constant surveillance, send our loved ones overseas to kill and be killed.

And now consider that none of those actions were a response to domestic terrorism, only foreign. Our response to domestic terrorism? Silence. Why is that? Is it because we don’t know what we’re looking for? That it was merely a coincidence that Rudolph and Oklahoma City Bombing culprits Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols all held similar white supremacist, anti-abortion, and homophobic views and that those views were the foundation of the anti-government sentiments that led to these bombings?

That there was no large-scale response to either of these acts is the ultimate flex of white privilege. We not only didn’t stamp out these beliefs, but we’ve allowed them to become mainstream. That yesterday’s manifestos are today’s campaign messages should be even more unbelievable to me than those first Olympic Games. What does the fact that it isn’t say about the state of this country?

Okay, more lighthearted sports coverage! Cardinals OF Jordan Walker stole the show at this year’s Home Run Derby. He homered 6 times in a row to beat hometown favorite Kyle Schwarber as cameras kept cutting to his family wildly celebrating each one. Then, he talked about how he hopes his win inspires more Black kids to play baseball. Somewhere in rural North Carolina, Madison Bumgarner just put his shoulder through a dirt bike handlebar.

A club friendly between one of the best the Premier League has to offer and a world-famous club trying to make their way there. The subjects of FX’s Welcome To Wrexham were in England’s fifth division when they were purchased by Ryan Reynolds and the artist formerly known as Rob McElhenney back in 2021. Now, they are just a step below the pinnacle of English soccer. This won’t have an effect on that, but is a fun litmus test nonetheless!

Y’all almost got a Photoshop of some people mentioned in this newsletter in Indiana Fever jerseys, but self-restraint won. Today.

As always, thank you for reading! Make sure you’re subscribed so you get this in your inbox first thing Thursday mornings! Also, share with your friends! See you next week!