samfels27 Page 12 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Texas Rangers are backing up
For avid horseplayers, there comes a point in most races, especially when your steed has shot out to the lead from the opening of the gates, where it becomes pretty clear you’re going to lose. Somewhere on that far turn, your horse’s gait is shrinking, the jockey is working just a little too hard fo...

Ben Shelton feels limitless
There’s been a lament, until recently, that on the men’s side American tennis just had a ceiling. And that ceiling wasn’t anywhere close to winning a Grand Slam. Which is a little unfair to Andy Roddick, who without the existence of Roger Federer would have been a multi-Wimbledon champion and probab...

What do the Cleveland Guardians want to be?
To hear Larry Dolan tell it, the Cleveland Guardians are the poster child for the unfairness in MLB. They can’t run with the big boys of the American League, even though there are no big market teams in the AL Central, at least when the Tigers suck eggs (and the White Sox will never act like they pl...

Arsenal are the Premier League’s new chaos masters and Chelsea can’t buy goals
It used to be Jürgen Klopp’s first Liverpool teams, and possibly the current one, that were considered the most raucous chaos merchants in the Premier League. They were equally capable of the most destructive football, going in both directions, equally capable of howitzer-ing their opponents or thei...

You know you’re cooked when Woody Allen comes to your defense
Whenever Luis Rubiales’s case ends, and it’ll hopefully be soon, he’ll know that Woody Allen voicing his opinion on the side of Rubiales was the death knell. There’s no coming back from Allen thinking he’s your ally. If Rudy Guiliani calls soon, he’ll know it’s very much over. ...

CM Punk and Tony Khan took a molehill and made it Three Mile Island
It’s hard to know which aspect of AEW firing CM Punk yesterday is more frustrating: How much both sides left on the table, or how easily it would have been for them to solve whatever the problems were so long ago. ...

Julie Ertz, the USWNT’s most irreplaceable player, retires
I’m a sucker for a midfielder. Especially one like Julie Ertz. It’s not that I played there or anything. It’s just something about a player who sees all the angles on both sides of the ball before being anywhere near it that gets me, I think. Xabi Alonso is my favorite Liverpool player of all time. ...

What a race we could've had in the AL West, and Nebraska goes loopy for volleyball
As someone who likes to spend a fair amount of time complaining about crusty baseball men and crusty baseball thought, I also spend a fair amount of time dabbling in both. As a crank, one can’t help but look at the AL West and wonder what might have been. ...

The National League Cy Young race is kind of a mess
With one month to go in the MLB season it’s generally about the time that not only playoff spot chases become pretty clear, but so do individual award chases. If not a clear winner, as one might find with the AL MVP, then at least a couple of candidates have separated themselves and voters at least ...

Bill Peters is why hockey players grow up to be douchebags
Hockey’s culture problem is easily explained. One, the sport doesn’t have much interest in changing, because it’s always been, and is happiest, when it’s insular. Say anything about it, and the response will automatically be, “You just don’t get it because you’ve never been in the room.” Two, that i...

The Angels wave the white flag, and Gregg Berhalter doesn’t know how a phone works
It obviously hasn’t worked out for the Anaheim Angels. While their determination to try and make themselves worthy of Shohei Ohtani’s long-term commitment, or at this point even a short-term one after the season, was admirable and certainly unique to MLB these days, their immediate nosedive after ac...

Mookie Betts, not Ronald Acuña Jr., is the NL MVP
We’d all be better off if every MVP award was simply renamed, “Player Of The Year,” as it would save us a very annoying and tiresome debate about what “valuable” means. It gets doubly so in baseball, where we still haven’t quite escaped what numbers people should pay attention to, and what is overbl...

Luis Rubiales can't tarnish Spain's World Cup victory
It’s been a disgusting turtle race, as we all knew where this would end and just had to watch a lumbering body make its way there painfully slowly and stupidly (please do not email me with corrections about how smart turtles are). After attempting everything from outright denial to victim-blaming to...

On its biggest stage ever at Wembley, AEW was its AEW-est
AEW took its big shot Sunday, putting on their first-ever stadium show and their first show in the UK at Wembley Stadium. It’s impossible to define what success would be for the show, other than selling a ton of tickets, which they did. Overall, the show was great, while also being everything else A...

Newcastle keeps being Newcastle, which isn't quite good enough
What Newcastle’s “problems” are depend on what their own expectations are. While they’ve certainly cemented themselves as one of the land’s biggest clubs, they’ve rarely, if ever, been touted as potential title challengers this season. Certainly none of that noise is coming from within. It appears t...

There is a reason Lionel Messi is tearing apart MLS
It might be hard for most to believe, but Lionel Messi played in his first MLS game Saturday night. I know, I know, you’ve been seeing the highlights and stats before now, but his first steps into the North American game have come in the Leagues Cup, a tournament invented by MLS and Liga MX this yea...

Christian Pulisic is having fun
If you’ve found yourself lost on soccer Twitter the past week, and it is a haven for the truly wayward as we’ve all had our brains addled by too many pre-dawn wakeups and day beers, you’ve probably seen a lot of “Pulisic is so back!” tweets and hashtags. Whether Pulisic is actually “back” is another...

No one was more themselves than Bray Wyatt
It’s been a rough week for wrestling and its fans. One day after the institution of Terry Funk was lost, perhaps the most creative and certainly one of the most unique minds passed, Bray Wyatt, at the unfair age of 36. ...

The biggest show in wrestling history should be on free TV
Let’s be clear about what the main story is about AEW’s All In show at Wembley Stadium on Sunday, which has currently sold 80,000+ tickets and will be the highest-paid attendance for a wrestling show ever (despite whatever figures WWE makes up about past WrestleManias). The story isn’t whether or no...

A tribute to Terry Funk, an unsung wrestling god
Legendary wrestler Terry Funk died yesterday. He was 79. I am certainly nowhere near a talented enough writer to eulogize him properly. Nor have I been a fan long enough or deeply enough for long enough to try and encompass his whole career. The thing is, no one is, so it’s not a personal failing. F...