MLB Page 1098 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Source Of Robinson Cano PED Rumor Says He's Sorry, TV Station Makes On-Air Apology
Charlotte reporter Dan Tordjman offered a Twitter apology yesterday and his employer, ABC affiliate WSOC, issued an on-air mea culpa in the aftermath of his spreading a false rumor about Robinson Cano being busted for performance-enhancing drugs by MLB....

Bobby Valentine Bicycles Off Into The Sunset
Here's Bobby Valentine making his great bike escape from Boston reporters today. He was nice enough to hold an impromptu press conference after reporters caught up to him. And then he pedaled on, bicycle against the traffic, borne back ceaselessly into unemployment....

People Watch The Red Sox, Even When They Suck, And Other Things About MLB TV Ratings
Attendance is up, but local TV ratings were down six percent across Major League Baseball in 2012. Sports Business Daily has the full rundown of winners and losers. The Tigers were tops in average rating, with 9.13 percent of Detroit televisions tuned to FS Detroit during Tigers games, up 41.6 perce...

Venezuelan Man Is Good At Baseball, BBC Is Shocked To Report
The BBC headline (above) describes Miguel Cabrera's triple crown in just about the most British way possible. Despite Venezuelans playing in Major League Baseball since 1939, and Venezuela's finishing ahead of the U.S. in the last World Baseball Classic, Cabrera still gets treated like a gold-medali...

How The Crazy-Ass AL Division Races Unfolded: Visualizing Momentum
The Athletics and the Yankees clinched their respective division titles on the same day, but the paths they took to get there were very different. The A's budget freight train slammed through a Rangers squad that had sat atop the AL West for over 170 consecutive days, while the Yankees barely edged ...

Michael Wilbon Just Can't Decide How Much He Hates DC Sports Fans
Michael Wilbon has a problem. There's been all this winning and fun times going on with DC sports this year, so some major magazines are starting to tout DC's merits as a Great Sports Town. Problem is, when ESPN The Magazine rolled out its DC lovefest this week, we learned that Wilbon supplies the ...

Right After Bobby Valentine Gets Fired, ESPN Runs A Segment About Why He's Still The Manager Of The Red Sox
ESPN was covering the breaking news of Bobby Valentine's firing when the network accidentally aired a pre-recorded Tim Kurkjian segment, one that was presumably meant to air under the (unlikely) condition of Valentine returning as the Red Sox's manager for 2013. Oops. Chris McKendry did her best to ...

Curt Schilling Might Have To Sell His Bloody Sock In Order To Pay Down His Debt
The Red Sox have had a bad year, but Curt Schilling's has been worse. At least the Red Sox have money. Schilling's video game company, 38 Studios, filed for bankruptcy in June. Even worse, 38 Studios owes around $150 million to creditors, including a $100 million loan from the state of Rhode Island....

The 7 Stages Of A Bobby Valentine Meltdown
The worst part of Bobby Valentine's soon-to-be-over slow-motion train wreck with the Red Sox is its predictability. To say that Bobby Valentine has never gracefully handled a losing season would only obscure the fact that he's never gracefully handled any season. (Even during the salad days with the...

A's Pitcher Pat Neshek's Newborn Son Has Died
On Monday, the Oakland Athletics clinched a playoff spot, and just a few hours later pitcher Pat Neshek's wife went into labor. Neshek flew to Florida and was with his wife when she gave birth to a baby boy....

Holy Shit, The Athletics Just Won The AL West
In April, Baseball Prospectus picked the Oakland A's to finish 73-89. In June, we called the team "hopeless," and said they were playing out the string. Today, they beat the Rangers, 12-5, to finish 94-68, one game better than Texas. In first place. The Oakland A's. They won the AL West. Holy shit. ...

An Exhaustive Audio History Of The "Yankees Suck" Chant
This week's excerpt from Slate's Hang Up and Listen podcast is super-timely. It's got the Red Sox, the Yankees, and people who say the Yankees suck. Can't ever get enough of them. Massholes, like Sully. Gotta love Sully. And there's politics! There's some kind of political affair tonight, isn't ther...

"What Do You Want Me To Do—Tell You How Bad My Life Is, How Shitty It Is?": Adam Greenberg's Journey Back To The Majors
In 2005, Adam Greenberg was struck in the head with a fastball in his first major-league at-bat. He's spent the last seven years trying to get back to the majors. Last week, he signed a one-day contract with the Marlins and got his second career at-bat to a standing ovation in Miami last night. He s...

The Cleveland Indians Can't Stop Grabbing Each Other Inappropriately
A few weeks ago, Lonnie Chisenhall hit a walk-off single to give the Cleveland Indians a ninth-inning win over the Detroit Tigers. His teammates thanked him by mobbing him and trying to put their fingers in his butt....

David Cone Made An Unfortunate Reference To Ichiro's "Chopstick"
More than anything, I wager that David Cone's choice of words has more to do with the insatiable pressure that some announcers put on themselves to fill dead air or to feel as if they're adding their perspective to the telecast (especially if they happen to be a former player). Nonetheless, the fi...

When Vin Scully Starts Quoting Dylan Thomas, You Pay Attention
We can all agree Vin Scully is a national treasure, but if anyone dares to question that status, you just have them consider who else would be classy and confident enough to start throwing out Dylan Thomas lines in the more dramatic moments of a Giants-Dodgers NL West showdown with playoff implicati...

Adam Greenberg Finally Got To Swing The Bat In A Major League Baseball Game
Adam Greenberg finally got his first official MLB at-bat tonight, seven years after getting hit in the head in his only plate appearance. Unfortunately, it came against R.A. Dickey, who whiffed him on three pitches, something the presumptive NL Cy Young Award-winner specializes in. Regardless, good ...

Ben Sheets Will Pitch Tomorrow, Then Never Again
Today, Ben Sheets announced that he will start for the Braves tomorrow against the Pirates, and then retire. Tomorrow will mark Sheets's fifthninth start for the Braves this season after missing nearly two calendar years with a torn flexor in his pitching elbow....

Curt Schilling Is Trying To Sell His Massachusetts Home Again
The new season of 30 for 30 kicks off tonight with Broke, a look at pro athletes' penchants for burning through their fortunes. One of them is Curt Schilling, whose video game company not only went bankrupt, but blew tens of millions of dollars worth of shady taxpayer-funded loans. So it's maybe coi...

Top Yankees Prospect Who Had Innings Limit Now Needs Tommy John Surgery
The big Stephen Strasburg shutdown debate seems ancient now, with beads of cheap champagne lining plastic sheeting in the dumpsters out behind Nationals Park. But recall that Nationals GM Mike Rizzo—and Strasburg's agent, Scott Boras—insisted that the "doctors" supported their conclusions to end Str...