I demand the United States win the next men's softball world championship

America has not won in men's softball or women's baseball in decades. We must fix this. PLUS! Updates in sicko swimming, and an all-time goalkeeping performance at the WEuros.

From here on out, you might notice that the Read Rodge newsletter has fewer grammatical errors and more astute analysis of professional cycling. That’s because I asked my old colleague from SB Nation, Louis Bien, to help me with editing. You can go ahead and follow Louis here.

The Men’s Softball World Cup was held last week in Prince Albert, Canada, and the United States did not win the gold medal. In fact, Team USA hasn’t won gold at the Men’s Softball World Cup since 1988, 12 tournaments ago. Venezuela took gold, shutting out New Zealand in the championship game:

Sorry for the double gut-punch: Not only are you likely finding out that there’s an opportunity to watch more softball, the world’s best sport, and you had no idea …

…but also, you’re finding out that the United States is losing at softball, year after year, even though we invented the sport and have millions of bat-swinging men. Devastating!

• This was the first championship for Venezuela. Pitcher Maiker Pimentel won MVP with a one-hit, nine-strikeout performance in the final. Hitting a fastball in the high-80s from 40 feet away looks functionally impossible.

• New Zealand won silver, and yes, players do the haka before games. It’s one of the few countries that treats softball as a dual-gender sport, and it actually has more registered men playing than women. The winning head coach at this year’s Women’s College World Series, Texas’ Mike White, is a former Kiwi men’s softball star and won the World Cup twice as a player… and after changing citizenship, helped Team USA win bronze in 2000.

• And then Team USA didn’t medal at all from 2000 to 2022. So the fact that they’ve won back-to-back bronze medals in the last two World Championships is pretty good

• ……..

• … BUT COME ON!!!!!!

• There’s nothing more American than saying “I think we should win at X sport, can’t we just put together a roster of players from (a completely unrelated sport) and dominate?” But … like … you’re telling me we don’t have enough dinger-smashing talent in this country to convert a roster of former baseball players to softball?

• Or we can just get to the root of the problem: That our nation arbitrarily decided that only men should play baseball and only women should play softball, even though there is nothing physiologically preventing women from throwing overhand, nor men from throwing underhand.

• It’s true! I have witnessed multiple women throwing things overhand without spontaneously combusting. It even happens during softball games!

• And yet, the United States has not won a gold medal in men’s softball in my lifetime, and hasn’t won the Women’s Baseball World Cup since 2006. We must fix this.

• And if we can’t build a championship men’s fastpitch team, we must institute a World Slowpitch Softball World Cup, so this guy can get a gold medal for hitting the ball one million miles per hour.

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Berger Queen

My favorite sports performance of the week came in the quarterfinals of the women’s Euros. Germany seemed guaranteed to lose after an early red card and penalty put the team down a goal and a player.

But goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger kept Germany alive and provided an all-time highlight. You’ve just gotta see her leaping one-handed deflection to keep her teammate from scoring an own goal:

• Berger, the NWSL Goalkeeper of the Year in 2024 for Gotham FC, made nine saves. The only goal she allowed came on the French penalty kick after the red card.

• Then she made two more saves in the penalty shootout, taunting opposing shooters by waiting for their shots with her hands behind her back. And she scored a PK herself, helping Germany become the first team ever to come back and win a game at the Euros with fewer players than their opponent.

• This is just what Ann-Katrin Berger does. Last year at the Olympics, she stopped two penalties and scored the winner in the quarters against Canada.

• Spain is up next for Germany in the semis … and the last time Germany played Spain, Berger sealed Olympic bronze with a penalty save in the 99th minute.

• But the win against France is not even a Top 2 comeback for Berger: She’s had two bouts of thyroid cancer during her career, and she’s still here, flying all over her net like a maniac to keep it safe.

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The best swimmer in the world (non-chlorine category)

Germany’s Florian Wellbrock won all four open water swimming events at the World Aquatics Championships, the first man ever to do so. Here he is winning the 10k swim, powering to the finish in just under two hours (1:59:55.5):

• Wellbrock, who won the gold medal in the 10k swim at the 2020 Olympics, is the first person ever to win four open water golds in one world championships event: The 5k, the 10k, the team relay, and a new 3k knockout event. In the 3k event, Wellbrock posted the fastest time in all three heats—a 1500m swim, a 1000m swim, and the concluding 500m sprint.

• In fairness, a slightly altered program has made the feat easier—World Aquatics got rid of a 25k event, which catered to its own genre of distance swimming specialist.

• Open water swimmers are some of our sickest sports sickos. Swimming five miles is about as grueling as running a marathon, plus the water has currents, plus the events are often held in areas with questionable water quality. (Remember the poop in the Seine?) And it’s legitimately dangerous: Even top-level competitors have drowned during races.

• The water in Singapore was dangerously hot, with water temperatures hitting the maximum allowable limit of 88 degrees Fahrenheit. Wellbrock described the conditions as like “being in a washing machine with (100-degree) water” and needed medical treatment after his final race.

• Australia’s Moesha Johnson won both the 5k and the 10k swims on the women’s side. Johnson actually trains with Wellbrock in Magdeburg, Germany … and yes, she was born in 1997, right after “Moesha” began airing.

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Quick Hits

• Scottie Scheffler won The Open Championship by four strokes. I don’t know what more I’m supposed to say. That man is just better at golf than the rest of us.

• The Liberty swept WNBA All-Star Weekend, as Sabrina Ionescu won the 3-point contest and Natasha Cloud won the Skills competition. Then the Liberty signed Eurobasket MVP Emma Meesseman in free agency. As a fan of the Libs and Meesseman: It’s over for the rest of you.

• The Charlotte Hornets went undefeated and won the Vegas Summer League, led by 4th overall pick Kon Knueppel. It was the greatest on-court accomplishment by the Hornets this century. (Not an exaggeration!)

• 3-time Tour de France champion Tadej Pogačar has pulled away with this year’s race, opening up a 4-minute gap and cementing his GOAT case.

• Meanwhile, Julian Alaphilippe thought he won a Tour stage Sunday … but it turns out his radio was broken and two riders finished so far ahead that he couldn’t even see them.

• The President of the United States got several sports facts wrong in a post urging the Washington Commanders to adopt a racist slur as their team name. In 2013, he argued that the name of Washington’s football team was too insignificant an issue for the President to post about.

• The Faroe Islands dominated the medal table at the 2025 Island Games in Orkney, off the north coast of Scotland. The Island Games is a multi-sport event meant to be a mini-Olympics for islands and archipelagos that are too small to send teams to the Olympics, although I do wonder who would win the most medals a similar event with all of the world’s islands in it. The boring pick is Great Britain (how many of their medal winners are specifically from Northern Ireland or the Channel Islands?) but I think Honshu would be a strong competitor. And I like to think my home island of Manhattan would get on the board, too.

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On Deck

• As previously noted, the World Aquatics Championships are underway in Singapore. The swimming and diving events will get started later this week, but for now we’ve got the fun stuff like artistic swimming, water polo, and HIGH DIVING! (All streaming on Peacock.)

• The FIE World Championships (that’s fencing) start Tuesday. (Streamable here, I think it’s free.)

• The World Matchplay darts championship started with defending champion Luke Humphries losing in the first round. (Also streaming on Peacock, which is having a moment.)