Northern Attitude

💰 The Oklahoma City Thunder are now paying three players over $800 million. With Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams both signing extensions, the defending champions will now pay that duo plus Shai Gilgeous-Alexander $822 million over the next five years. 

• Meanwhile, Phoenix Suns’ Devin Booker will make more in one year of his new contract ($72.5 million) than the entire Miami Marlins payroll this season ($70 million).

• Parents, sign your kids up for basketball. Just make sure they’ll grow up to be 7 feet tall.

⚾️ For the first time in MLB history, there was a leadoff inside the park home run and a walk-off inside the park home run on the same day. Guarantee these guys went straight for the oxygen tanks post game. 

🏎️ After 239 Formula One races, Nico Hülkenberg got his first podium. The Sauber F1 driver started 19th on the grid and somehow drove his shitbox of a car to 3rd place in the British Grand Prix.

• The podium was so unexpected, his team had to borrow champagne from Mercedes for the celebration. 

🎾 Hugh Grant took a nice nap in the Royal box at Wimbledon. Stop making fun of him guys, he's 64 years old. Let the man sleep. 

• On a separate Wimbledon note, Ben Shelton got his sister an extra week off work by calling her boss at Morgan Stanley to tell them she was his good luck charm. That luck ran out pretty quickly against Novak Djokovic by the way. 

🤦‍♂️ Paul Skenes and the Colorado Rockies have become record-breaking losers. Skenes, who’s been arguably baseball's best pitcher this year, has just one win in his last 13 starts despite pitching to a 1.72 ERA. 

• The Pirates are bad, but they're not Colorado bad. The Rockies have now lost 17 straight series at home, the longest losing streak since 1917.

• This play from the other night pretty much sums up their season.

💸 Hockey’s top prospect Gavin McKenna takes $700,000 to play at Penn State. Welcome to the new age of college sports, where even hockey players are banking more money in a semester than their parents will make all year. .

🥊 An ex-NHL enforcer decided to come out of retirement…on the golf course. The guy who picked the fight probably didn’t know he used to knock guys' teeth out for a living. 

Over the last two weeks, the Blue Jays have snapped off a 10-game win streak, took over first place in the AL East, and caused more than a few Yankees fans to put baseball bats through their TVs. 

At 54-39, the Jays have already set a new franchise record for wins before the All-Star break. Their once slim playoff odds now sit at 88%, which is pretty good for a team that most people picked to finish fourth in their division this year. 

• After sweeping the Yankees in a four game set at home (and leapfrogging them in the standings), the Jays took their brooms out again in Anaheim and were one win away from sweeping the White Sox. 

So how’re they doing it? Surprisingly, it's not the Vladimir Guerrero Jr. 's or Bo Bichette’s getting it done. It’s guys you may have forgotten still played baseball or never heard of in the first place (Do the names Nathan Lukes, Myles Straw, or Ernie Clement ring a bell?)

• The Jays big hero over their winning streak has been none other than 35-year-old George Springer, who went 12-for-22 with five home runs in his first five games of July.

• His game winning grand slam on Canada Day was the exclamation point on his unlikely Cinderella season. 

• De facto rookie Addison Barger — a favourite for best head of hair on the team — has been one of the best hitters in baseball this month, and was just named AL player of the week. 

Takeaway: What makes the Jays success all the more satisfying is that nobody really expected it. After going 74-88 last season, this team — which has barely changed from 2024 — suddenly looks like a World Series contender. 

Take some inspiration and lock in your picks to be featured in next week's edition.

@Doublec630 landed the biggest win of the week with this seven-legger. A few overs, a few unders, and a lot of confidence in the Cubs to get it done. Can’t argue with a 35x hit.

On this day in 1985, the Houston Astros' Nolan Ryan became the first player ever to strike out 4,000 batters. Ryan was known for being a flamethrower, but most people don’t really understand how hard this guy threw. By some estimates, Ryan’s fastball would’ve been clocked at a record 108mph with today’s pitchtracking technology.  

Alright, that’s enough yelling for one Friday.

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