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🚨 Headlines
⚾️ Misiorowski dazzles again: Brewers rookie Jacob Misiorowski outdueled Paul Skenes with yet another sensational start in Milwaukee’s win over Pittsburgh, improving to 3-0 with just 3 hits allowed through his first three career starts.
🏒 Oilers trade Kane: Edmonton has traded forward Evander Kane, a 16-year veteran, to the Canucks in exchange for a fourth-round pick in this week’s NHL Draft.
⚾️ Bonds getting statue: While Barry Bonds remains locked out of Cooperstown, it sounds like he may soon be immortalized in San Francisco. Giants CEO Larry Baer says they plan to erect a statue. “It’s coming,” he said.
🏀 Bonner breakup: The Fever released DeWanna Bonner just four months after signing her in free agency. The six-time All-Star requested to be waived because “the fit did not work out.”
⚾️ Sox fan banned: A 22-year-old White Sox fan has been banned from MLB games indefinitely after taunting Diamondbacks star Ketel Marte about his late mother during Tuesday’s game in Chicago.
🏀 NBA Draft: 30 dreams come true
The first round of the 2025 NBA Draft saw three Duke players go in the top 10 and a record 18 freshmen get selected.
Plus: The Trail Blazers shocked the world by picking Yang Hansen at No. 15, the Nets made history by using all five of their picks, and many tearswereshed.
Go deeper:Winners and losers
🏀 One high school, four draftees
The only team with more 2025 NBA first-round draft picks than Cooper Flagg’s Duke? Cooper Flagg’s prep team, Montverde Academy.
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Flagg was the No. 1 recruit out of high school and went No. 1 in the draft.
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Derik Queen (Maryland) was the No. 18 recruit and went No. 13 in the draft.
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Asa Newell (Georgia) was the No. 13 recruit and went No. 23 in the draft.
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Liam McNeeley (UConn) was the No. 17 recruit and went No. 29 in the draft.
Best high school team ever? You will not be shocked to hear that Montverde went 33-0 and won the national championship during their senior year. They were so stacked that they adopted a system where they’d rotate starters and have a different player come off the bench.
Talent pipeline: While this was a historic class for the Florida prep school, Kevin Boyle’s program* is no stranger to draft night. Cade Cunningham, Joel Embiid, Scottie Barnes, RJ Barrett, Jalen Duren, Andrew Nembhard, Ben Simmons, D’Angelo Russell and many other current and former NBA players also went there.
*On the move: Boyle departed this spring for Spire Academy (Ohio) after leading Montverde to eight of the past 12 national championships.
🥎 Pro softball’s moment is here
Has professional softball’s moment finally arrived? MLB certainly seems to think so.
Meet the AUSL: The new Athletes Unlimited Softball League’s inaugural season began earlier this month, and a week before the first pitch it secured an eight-figure investment from Major League Baseball as a strategic partner.
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“This is a watershed moment for women’s sports and especially for softball,” said AUSL commissioner and former Marlins GM Kim Ng.
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“MLB’s investment will supercharge our efforts to build the sustainable professional league this sport has long deserved.”
AUSL, explained: Athletes Unlimited launched in 2020 with a unique concept for women’s professional sports, using fantasy-style scoring to crown individual champions in their softball, basketball and volleyball leagues that redraft new teams each week. AUSL takes a different tack, giving AU its first traditional, team-based league.
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Teams and format: Four teams (Bandits, Talons, Volts, Blaze) are playing a 24-game barnstorming season across 10 cities, with plans to expand to six city-based teams next summer. The season culminates in a best-of-three championship in late July, followed by the All-Star Cup in August, which will revert to AU’s original redraft format.
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Players:Rosters are peppered with recent college superstars like 2025 POY Bri Ellis (Arkansas), 2021 pitcher of the year Odicci Alexander (JMU) and four-time Women’s College World Series champion Tiare Jennings (Oklahoma).
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How to watch: All 72 games, including those in the All-Star Cup, will air on linear TV, with a majority broadcast across ESPN’s platforms.
What they’re saying: “Our goal is to get a softball league into the same position of stability that the WNBA has found,” says MLB commissioner Rob Manfred. It’s a tall task, to be sure, but the sport appears to be in a prime position to take it on.
Business is booming: After decades of professional softball leagues failing to gain traction, MLB’s historic investment and the current landscape should combine to give AUSL a real chance of breaking through.
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This year’s WCWS was the most-watched ever across its 15-game slate, with Game 3 of the Finals drawing a college softball record 2.4 million viewers. That’s more than watched the first round of the Masters (2.3M) or Duke-UNC in the ACC tournament semifinals (2.3M).
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Texas Tech’s NiJaree Canady signed two $1 million NIL deals this year. That type of star power is exactly what the AUSL is banking on, with fans following their favorite players from college to the pros like they do in other major leagues.
Looking ahead: The next few years are critical. If the league has a strong start, it can take that momentum straight into 2028, when softball returns to the Olympic program in Los Angeles.
📚 Good reads
🥊 Elliot Worsell:Deontay Wilder’s right hand can only break things, not fix them
Once one of the most ferocious fighters on the planet, Tuscaloosa’s former heavyweight king returns Friday as a cause for concern rather than the cause of fear.
🏀 Jeff Eisenberg:Why AI — and how to use it — has become the NBA’s biggest secret
As basketball analytics have altered the game, NBA teams have become more and more secretive about how they use the heaps of data available to them.
⚾️ Jake Mintz:Braves still face an uphill battle, but with Ronald Acuña Jr., anything seems possible
Since missing the last four months of 2024 and the first two months of this season while recovering from his second career ACL surgery, Acuña has reemerged like a bat out of hell.
📺 Watchlist: Thursday, June 26
The group stage concludes today with four more games, headlined by Juventus vs. Manchester City in Orlando (3pm ET, TNT) — though both sides have already clinched knockouts. Later, Real Madrid and RB Salzburg square off in Philly (9pm, DAZN), with their spots not yet secured.
🏀 NBA Draft, Round 2 | 8pm, ESPN
29 more players will hear their name called tonight in Brooklyn. Some of the best players still available include Stanford’s Maxime Raynaud, Creighton’s Ryan Kalkbrenner and Arkansas’ Adou Thiero.
⚽️ USWNT vs. Ireland | 9pm, TBS
A relatively inexperienced roster of Americans (six uncapped players) take the field in the Denver suburbs for their first of three friendlies in the next week, as head coach Emma Hayes will use this window to widen the player pool.
More to watch:
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🏀 WNBA: Sparks at Fever (7pm, Prime); Mystics at Aces (10pm, Prime) … Can Caitlin Clark rebound from her season-low six-point performance?
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⛳️ PGA: Rocket Classic (6:45am, ESPN+; 3pm, Golf) … No. 5 Collin Morikawa and No. 7 Keegan Bradley headline the 156-player field at Detroit Golf Club.
🇺🇸 Geography quiz
The Pine Tree State is in the spotlight this week thanks to Maine native Cooper Flagg.
Question: What’s the capital of Maine?
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Portland
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Lewiston
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Augusta
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Concord
Answer at the bottom.
🤟 Longhorns on top
For the fourth time in the last five years, Texas won the Directors’ Cup as the nation’s top athletic department, edging out USC and Stanford.
Coming up: What’s the Directors’ Cup? What separates the Longhorns from the competition? How close was this year’s finish? We’ll dive deeper tomorrow.
Trivia answer: Augusta
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