Locker Page 52 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
We were so close
You couldn’t really have asked for much more from the Dodgers and Giants, series or Game 5. What you want is it to be close and dramatic, and those boxes were checked. The stats for these teams are staggeringly close. 109 wins each going in, a season series that is now tied at 12, the run-differenti...
Kyrie is an agenda whether he likes it or not
It’s not that Kyrie Irving is wrong about everything, because he’s been right in the past. And he’s done good things. It’s just that he likes to huff his own farts. And when you’re someone who likes to huff your own farts, two things happen. A) You’re bound to do and say some pretty dumb stuff to pr...
There is no escape from the Astros
The longer the Astros stick around, the more baseball fans complain and bring out the tired jokes about their cheating. Maybe more opponents get suspicious, as Chisox pitcher Ryan Tepera did after Game 3. This is obviously the price the Astros have to pay for 2017’s scandal, and the only price they...
Dinosaur organization has dinosaur coach, film at 11
There isn’t much to add to the whole Jon Gruden dumbassery that my colleagues Carron Phillips didn’t address yesterday or Criss Partee the day before. Gruden never deserved his position, certainly didn’t do much to earn it while he was there, and then was found out as a world-class asshole who also ...
This was your human element moment
I’m not here to claim that anyone should feel sorry for the Tampa Bay Rays. While MLB would love to position them as the plucky underdog, what they really are is the model that almost every team owner has pointed to while yelling at their front office saying, “Why can’t we win that cheaply?!” while ...
Unbeaten Oklahoma on road to playoff, unbeaten Cincinnati not so much
Enjoy it now, Cincinnati, because they’re going to find a way to screw you over in the end....
Your weekend roundup of B.S.
We’ve reached a point where none of this bullshit is surprising. It’s just exhausting....
A steal of home, a catwalk, a double punt, and more in wild night
There were just a handful of games going on last night, but enough fodder produced from both to last as long as that box of Graham Crackers in your pantry....
It takes all the Dodgers’ power to fight off that Cardinal Devil Magic
Somewhere around the seventh inning, I said to myself, “I’ve seen this game.” I know it all too well, as a Northsider who’s had to crawl through the river of shit that is hating the Cardinals as much as I and the rest of us do. I may have left the Cubs behind, but that distaste never goes away....
What <i>are</i> the Yankees now?
I suppose one of the things that makes me feel old, one of the many things, is how I would perceive the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry versus someone who is 30 or under. I lived long enough in the era of the Yankees pissing all over the Sox to still have some base inkling toward that whenever these two lin...
The last playoffs
A few years ago, I was in a bar and got into an argument with a semi-regular (who I didn’t much care for) about which sport has the best postseason. He was a real #PleaseLikeMySport hockey fan, and I had felt (and still do) that the MLB playoffs had surpassed the NHL playoffs as the most enjoyable. ...
No wild-card chaos
Most seasons, on the last day, we hope for some kind of chaos to hit MLB’s playoff system. I think, deep down, it’s because people want to see the wild-card sham proven to be just that. Because having teams play a game just to play a game to get into the playoffs after 162 games and six months is pr...
Four-way wild card tie still very much a possibility
So, this is the scenario that Major League Baseball dreamed about when it scheduled all the games on the last day of the regular season for 3 p.m. Eastern....
Draymond defends Andrew Wiggins' anti-vaxx position
Remember at the beginning of the pandemic, when things happened like Steph Curry interviewing Dr. Anthony Fauci? How good of an example that was of basketball’s cultural importance, and being able to bring important public health information to the people?...
The Cubs are the dumbest
There are people out there, who — unlike me — didn’t fire the Cubs as a fan back in July after they completed their three-year sandbagging of the roster that brought them their first World Series win in 108 years. That should have been enough to see Wrigley be more desolate than the Atacama, but tha...
Richard Sherman has the right message — can only hope he’s the right messenger
I was hard on the Bucs for considering signing Richard Sherman back when it was rumored, and, probably, a touch unfair. Perhaps I was too focused on the Bucs and the feeling they’re giving off of getting away with anything now after signing Antonio Brown last season, and every observer thinking it w...
MVP debates make my ass weary
I’ve come to the conclusion that a big part of being a member of the baseball media is just justifying your existence. Which is why they spend most of the time turning stuff into a debate that isn’t really a debate. Nothing is worse than individual awards, where distilling what “valuable” means has ...
Maybe the Manningcast works because they don’t meet with coaches
In this age of working from home, and the push-and-pull with companies around the nation at the moment about whether to return to the office or not, we can all find inspiration in Peyton and Eli Manning saying they want to analyze Monday Night Football but they don’t see why they should have to leav...
Lions on cutting edge of losing
Quite often throughout a baseball season, you’ll hear an announcer say something to the effect of, “That’s why you come to the ballpark, because you just might see something you haven’t before.” And technically, that’s true. That gets harder and harder to do as time goes on and we see more and more ...
If only NIL money forced Dabo Swinney out of college football
Clemson is 2-2, and as big of a shock as that is for a program that’s won the last six ACC titles with a pair of national championships along the way, we really should have seen it coming....