The following podcast includes explicit language. In other words, might get a little blue in here. Hope you can handle it.

Hi, I'm Josh Levine, Slate's national editor, and this is Hang Up and Listen for the week of June 14th, 2021.

On this week's show, we'll discuss Danish soccer player Christian Erickson's collapse at the European

Championships and the agony of waiting to see if he was okay. Stephanie Epstein of Sports Illustrated

will also be here to discuss baseball pitcher's slathering balls with goo and what the game should do

about this sticky scandal. And John Wertheim will join us to talk about his new book, Glory Days on sports in 1984,

and we might get him to talk a little bit of tennis as well.

I'm in Washington, D.C. I'm the author of The Queen, the host of Slow Burn, Season 4 on David Duke.

Also in D.C., Stefan Fatsas, author of the book's Word Freak, and a few seconds of panic.

Hello, Stefan.

Hello, Josh.

And with us from Palo Alto, Slate Staff writer, host of Slow Burn Season 3, the upcoming Slow Burn

Season 6, Joel Anderson.

Hello, Joel.

Hey, what's up? Are we going to talk about LSU's

track and field victory? We couldn't, we couldn't shoehorn it in, but I didn't want to deprive it.

Well, I mean, I think that if, if you want to bring that up and not talk about how they

underwhelmed in the women's meet the day later, then, I mean, that's just sort of, you know, that seems a little... Shows my priorities. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. We don't want to give Terence Laird short shrift, though. Does Terence Laird of LSU's sprinting champion, does he have a chance to actually make noise at the Olympics or no? I think that he has a chance to make noise at the trials. You called him sprint champion, but he lost into 200 at the wire. So he's only, you know, I mean, winning the 100 meter dash is a big deal, but I'm a little disappointed because he's supposed to win the 200 guy than I want. No, I mean, I love the 100. I love the 100. That's my favorite event.

But, I mean, I thought he was going to double up and it didn't quite happen. So he's got to answer for that. We will continue our coverage of Terrence Laird and the U.S. Olympic trials as the weeks go on. In the 43rd minute of Denmark's Euro 2020 opener against Finland Saturday, the game in

the sport of soccer came to a virtual standstill when Danish midfielder Christian Erickson

collapsed on the pitch.

At first, it appeared that Erickson had merely stumbled to the ground.

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