williemays Page index.xml - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Not sure the UK will find MLB any more entertaining than the US
Serious question: If you underwent a bunch of plastic surgery, how eager would you be to show off the new goods? Even though the boob job is lopsided, the calf implants didn’t take, and your face literally can’t smile through the botox, you’d be on the first plane to Europe, too. Well, that’s MLB ri...

Should a player’s legacy be defined by postseason results?
Justin Verlander has a great shot at winning the American League Cy Young award this year. He pieced together a dominant season — at age 39 — after recovering from Tommy John surgery and helped lead the Houston Astros to another World Series. ...

Strawberry, not Mays, deserved to have his number retired by the Mets
Willie Mays was a great player....

Things are changing in baseball
Black baseball is coming back....

Miguel Cabrera becomes first Venezuelan-born player to reach 3,000 career hits
With an opposite field single in the first inning of Saturday’s game against the Colorado Rockies, Detroit Tigers’ slugger Miguel Cabrera, 39, became the 33rd player in MLB history to record 3,000 hits and the first Venezuelan-born player to accomplish the feat....

When Jackie opened the door, these men walked through
It took 2,559 days after Jackie Robinson’s debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers for Major League Baseball to have its 42nd Black player appear in a game. Those seven years and two days saw 11 of the league’s 16 franchises integrate. The Boston Red Sox were the last to do so with Pumpsie Green in July 1959...

What milestones might we see in baseball this year?
The coronavirus pandemic is going to wreak havoc on long-term baseball achievements for years to come. Obviously, anyone chasing career records took a hit from the 60-game season in 2020, and a lot of players were in and out of the lineup last season due to the virus. That also means interruptions t...

Meet Kenny Washington, the man who broke the NFL's color barrier
LOS ANGELES — There is a lot going on in the NFL shop at the Los Angeles Convention Center. There’s a section for Los Angeles Rams gear, Cincinnati Bengals gear, a place to customize your own gear, places for memorabilia such as autographed helmets and portraits, and a DJ. At the entrance of that NF...

Tennis is having the goldenest of all Golden Ages
It’s strange how normalized greatness is during something’s golden age. If you look at music for example, hip-hop peaked in the ’90s for a lot of people like classic rock did in the ’60s and ’70s. However, even when 2Pac and Biggie were at the apex, rappers like Nas and Jay-Z weren’t in the picture ...

Chris Davis was a brilliant meteor flashing across the sky
There have been 30 players in major league history who have hit 50 or more home runs in a season, and as of today, the only ones who are active are Pete Alonso, Aaron Judge, and Giancarlo Stanton....

Albert Pujols’ career wasn’t supposed to end like this
Albert Pujols’ lifetime numbers are utterly staggering. He has 667 home runs, that’s more than Willie Mays. 3,253 hits, more than all but 14 players, more than hitting machines like Rod Carew, Tony Gwynn and George Brett. More than some guy named Napoleon Lajoie, who played 120 fucking years ago and...

Why players and coaches love Cam Newton, but Patriots fans don’t
There is a deep Cam Newton divide in New England....

Negro League researcher Cam Perron talks about his new book, the Negro Leagues, and the times to come
In a profile over the summer, I asked Cam Perron what he’s up to next. At the time, the young Negro Leagues researcher, whose work of documenting players’ service time led to their receiving MLB pensions, was operating his memorabilia business and working on a book set to hit shelves in 2021....

The Best of Their Generation: Pop Lloyd and Oscar Charleston
This is a story about two great baseball players: Pop Lloyd and Oscar Charleston. They played in the Negro Leagues 100 years ago. Most stories about players like this rely on stories of old ballplayers and writers who saw them. Some of these stories are true, some are exaggerated and some are totall...

Josh Gibson and the Long Gone Summers That Should Have Been
The following is adapted from the podcast script for Stick to Pods Episode 11, “Josh Gibson,” which originally aired on April 12, 2018...

MLB 'Dream Bracket' Would Be Better If Teams Were Set Up By Country, State. Here's How It Could Work
How About A World Baseball Classic-Style Sim?...

Reliving My Baseball-Nerd Youth Through MLB’s 'Dream Bracket'
MLB’s ‘Dream Bracket,’ a tournament of every franchise’s best players, brings me back to the days of running computer baseball leagues on SSI, “Earl Weaver Baseball” and “Tony La Russa Baseball.” ...

The Lonesome Sporting Life
Originally published in the February 1981 issue of Inside Sports, this piece appears here with the author’s permission....

Those Are Really Not Equivalent
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Juan Lagares Did A Pretty Convincing Willie Mays Impression
When Willie Mays made The Catch in 1954, the New York Giants played in the Polo Grounds, which was a goddamn huge ballpark shaped like a horseshoe with a 483-foot center field fence. He had to get way the hell back there to make the over-the-shoulder grab. Given the dimensions of the ballpark, it’s ...