Sophie Cunningham fires shots at scornful WNBA girls as jersey sales surge, Fenway proposal & Rockies Gianna!
Final Monday of June. We're here. We're in it. We've got less than 48 hours left, and then the 'ol calendar gets a big flip.
Feels like we were just talking about Memorial Day, and now we're a few days away from the big 2-5-0. The Fourth of July always feels like the last hurrah for the first part of the year, right? The rest of the month is quiet.
August is really quiet.
And then, the second half of the season cranks up the heat. Football. More football. Labor Day-Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas. Playoff baseball.
We go from 0 to 100 real quick. I've always said the second half of the year is when we thrive as a country. But I don't want to get ahead of ourselves.
This is a big week. July is a big month. This is a big birthday for this great country, even though I'm sure the Libs will try to ruin it.
Not on my watch! Let's roll.
Welcome to a Monday Nightcaps — the one where Sophie Cunningham shoots a message to the WNBA haters as the Fever take a week off. What a run for our girl. What a star.
What else? I've got the best #content you may have missed from a loaded weekend, an unfathomable Fenway Park proposal, and how about the GOLF this weekend?
Viktor Hovland beat Scottie in a playoff this morning, and it was electric. How did Scottie miss that putt?!
OK, grab you a waffle iron for National Waffle Iron Day, and settle in for a Monday 'Cap!
I'm not the biggest fan of waffles, but I will say, hotel waffles are elite. I don't know how they do it, but they somehow make them taste 100 times better than they actually are.
In the grand scheme of things, waffles are waaaaaaaaay down the list of breakfast foods. Frankly, they don't even crack the Mount Rushmore:
And that concludes the breakfast portion of our Monday class. You're welcome!
OK, let's get this thing moving with Sophie Cunningham giving the haters the finger(s) as the Fever take the week off:
For those who missed it over the weekend, Sophie went on her podcast and absolutely torched the rudderless WNBA. Just stuffed them into a locker. It was a bloodbath.
Some fun quotes:
Incredible. In case you're wondering, Sophie is currently climbing the charts in terms of popularity ... rapidly. A quick check of the WNBA's Fanatics website shows her jersey at the top with a "Most Popular" label slapped under it.
We don't have actual numbers because the WNBA doesn't provide those (neither does Fanatics), but her No. 8 jersey is currently No. 1 on the site. No idea if that's in chronological order or not, but regardless, she's on the move:
Look out, world. Sophie's coming. And for only a measly $100! Plus, "FREE Jersey Assurance," whatever that means.
The First Lady is making me buy a $700 sectional couch on Facebook Marketplace tomorrow, so I'll have to skip this one for now. And, perhaps, take out a second mortgage. Awesome.
OK, let's get to the best #content from a big weekend. First up? Ever swing and miss at a ball that drills you in the chest?
What a weekend. How about my Red Sox sweeping the Yankees? You wanna see an absolutely incredible stat?
Try this one for size:
The Yanks are now 1-18 in their last 19 June games at Fenway Park. How is that even possible? Can we somehow blame Pride Month?
This Red Sox team is so hilariously bad, which makes last night's walkoff — and this weekend's sweep — even funnier. This version of the Red Sox have no business sweeping anyone. Amazing.
Perhaps we should've known this was bound to happen when we saw THIS take place last night:
Lordy. Yankees fans getting engaged at Fenway? What's happening here? Could you IMAGINE if the tables were turned and Sox fans tried that at Yankee Stadium? No shot. None. Zero.
Treason.
OK, a couple quickies on the way out. First? We've gotten a couple emails this morning about our coverage of Caitlin Clark.
From Mike S:
I get that it’s June and it’s too early to start breaking down every game on the football schedule this September, but Jesus, we seem to do a lot of WNBA in this newsletter and for the life of me I can’t understand which of your readers are so enthralled with it that they pay that much attention to it? I literally scroll past everything that either has the words "WNBA" or the image of a female basketball player in it. Completely irrelevant to what I’m assuming is 90% or more of your base of readers. Am I wrong?
Yes, you are wrong. I see the numbers. I see the charts and the analytics and the fancy graphs. I see the engagement time. Joe is off this week, so I'll go ahead and echo what I'm sure he'd say ...
The Google algo drives the content, and you guys drive the content. If you aren't clicking on something, we're gonna stop writing about it. If people aren't searching for it, we're gonna stop writing about it.
Neither of those things are true when it comes to Caitlin Clark. Not the WNBA.
Caitlin Clark.
And yes, it's June. What in the world are we supposed to be covering right now? The World Cup? I've seen the numbers on that one, and, trust me, our readers are far more interested in Caitlin Clark getting mugged on a basketball court than they are with anything that happens on the pitch. I promise.
What else? You want meaningless summer baseball? Which NFL player got arrested today? NBA and NHL Draft talk? The cupboard ain't exactly full on June 29, yet we have to keep the lights on until football season. That's just the truth.
So, this is where we are. We've got 61 days till TCU and UNC face off in Ireland. Hang on just a bit longer. I promise, we're almost there.
OK, that's it for today. Good start to the week. I've got nothing really revolutionary to close us out on, so here's Rockies in-game host Gianna Girardi celebrating the halfway point of the MLB season.
See? Baseball!
See you Wednesday.
OutKick Nightcaps is a daily column set to run Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. (roughly, we’re not robots).
Are waffles overrated? Email me at Zach.Dean@OutKick.com.