Greetings from the sports desk located slightly below the main deck of the Good Pirate Ship RedState. Sammy the Shark and Karl the Kraken are both devastated over the news that LeBron James has opted to play his final two years of basketball with the Philadelphia 76ers instead of their respective teams of choice…
To be fair, Karl’s team, the Seattle Supersonics, aren’t quite back in the league yet. But soon.
Anyway, football—the American kind—leads our coverage, with NFL training camps opening this week (July 26, 2026-August 1, 2026). Thus far, it’s been relatively quiet on the field. Patrick Mahomes, he of Kansas City Chiefs quarterbacking infamy, appears to have recovered sufficiently from last year’s season-ending ACL injury to resume his usual torturing of opponents. This is also the case for Daniel Jones, the quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts, who has returned from the torn Achilles tendon he suffered last year.
One of the bigger mysteries revolves around a player who not only is not in training camp but hasn’t participated in one since 2023. Aaron Donald, who spent 10 years giving quarterbacks nightmares as not only the premier defensive tackle of his time in the NFL but one of the all-time greats period, is mulling over coming out of retirement to play for his former team, the Los Angeles Rams, so he can line up along freshly acquired Myles Garrett to form a twosome bringing back memories for us (ahem) well-seasoned Rams fans for Merlin Olson and Deacon Jones making up half of the Fearsome Foursome that terrorized the NFL in the 1960s. My guess is that Donald will skip both training camp and the preseason, instead strolling into the Rams locker room shortly before player introductions prior to Los Angeles’ season opener against the San Francisco 49ers… in Melbourne, Australia (yeah, makes perfect sense to me too), flashing a smile and asking the equipment manager where his gear is.
Baseball is muddling along, with two important dates fast approaching: August 3, 2026, which is the trade deadline, and December 1, 2026, when the owners will undoubtedly lock out the players as part of a massive labor battle. Let’s look at the first date. Teams in contention will be looking to make themselves better for the immediate future, while teams that are going home right after the regular season ends, such as my San Francisco Giants, will probably be looking to offload the players that, for whatever reason, are not part of any reconstruction plans in favor of young prospects, thus hoping to turn their short-term pain into long-term gain. One name that keeps coming up is Detroit Tigers starting pitcher Tarik Skubal, the team most often tabbed as a possible location being the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Dodgers are in no desperate need for Skubal, who is a free agent after this season, but can hardly be blamed for seeking to add him. The Tigers' reason for trading him would be either an admission that they are unwilling or unable to write a big enough check to re-sign him, or that they have no legitimate shot at postseason play. However, as of this writing (July 27, 2026), they are only four games out in the American League wild card race. So who knows what will happen.
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