The Mourning After Page 19 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

This is all Jack Eichel has
It’s not that the relationship between Jack Eichel and Buffalo Sabres fans will ever be good. Their union promised too much and delivered so little that there should be bitterness on both sides. The No. 2 pick the Sabres sold out for didn’t deliver them from the wilderness that they’ve been stuck in...

Gregg Berhalter is getting loose
Any coach hired by U.S. Soccer, at least for the men’s side (though Vlatko Andonovski isn’t winning many fans these days either), is never going to have 100 percent buy-in. They just haven’t gotten it totally right in… well, ever? Berhalter being related to an exec at the time of his hiring didn’t h...

This is not your beautiful house, these are not your New Jersey Devils
Must’ve been a slow night, sports-wise, if I feel the need to talk about the New Jersey Devils. There has been no more scenery team, and dreary at that, than the Devils the past 10 years. You didn’t think about them until they came up on the schedule against your favorite team. And even when that ha...

Jim Irsay is some kinda vibes
I guess if you were sentenced to hang out with one NFL owner, Jim Irsay might be atop the list. He at least has an identifiable love of music, which gives him something in common with most other people. We have no idea what most owners do for fun, aside from probably making their gardeners fight to ...

We were foolish to think any SEC game could steal the show from Alabama-LSU
While Saturday’s Georgia-Tennessee game was the biggest contest in the history of that matchup and the de facto headliner for Week 10, it was the SEC rivalry that has defined the conference for most of this century that once again stole the limelight. In his first time helming LSU against Alabama, c...

Nike and Kyrie Irving no longer a pair
As tired as you are of reading about Kyrie Irving, sports writers are equally as exhausted trying to come up with good ledes for stories about the guard who’s currently suspended by the Brooklyn Nets. I wish it would’ve been Pepsi that suspended its relationship with Irving in addition to Nike becau...

They say a good fastball is still the best pitch
It still amazes me how quickly a baseball playoff series, especially one of the seven-game variety, can pivot. ...

Dusty Baker is doing that thing again
The funny thing, no matter what Dusty Baker’s rep is, and will be, is that he’s gotten more looks at the postseason than many. While he’ll always wear the epic choke jobs of the Giants in 2002 and the Cubs in 2003 — fair or not — his time in D.C. and in Houston has shown a guy who has learned how pl...

I’m adrift in a world where the Chicago Bears do smart things
For 30 years now, anything good that happened to the Chicago Bears was assuredly an accident. The only time they ever seemed streamlined was in the middle of the 2000s when they had a GM that hired his own coach, which was Jerry Angelo and Lovie Smith. That was the only time they’ve made the playoff...

Who let Philadelphia be the sports capital?
In one light, there probably is no better place than Philadelphia, the epicenter of North American sports right now. There might not be a place where the teams matter more to the fans and residents, which of course leads them to some very curious words and deeds at times. You have to be truly dizzy ...

Michigan State paid $95M for a 3-5 team, but the ‘scuffle’ was free of charge
Before I get to the rest of this post, I’m just going to give you what you came here to see because you’re going to scroll down the video regardless of what’s penned before or after it. So, here you go, ya hyenas. Here’s the clip of a group of Michigan State players more or less jumping two lone Wol...

Still amazed by the Phillies? You haven’t been watching them
The Houston Astros entered the World Series perfect for the postseason. They extinguished the sizzling Seattle Mariners, and then sent New York Yankees fans spiraling. And in Game 1 of the World Series, they looked inevitable, getting out to a 5-0 lead after three innings with Justin Verlander perfe...

Tom Brady and the infinite sadness
Thursday Night Football is usually a pretty sad occasion as ritual, given the mess that it tends to be with the short rest and everyone still very much sore from the game they played just four days prior, and the lack of practice time dulling any sharpness. But last night was particularly acute. ...

Mullett Arena is somehow dumber than you’d imagine something called Mullett Arena could be
I’m one of many hockey observers that Coyotes fans, whoever they may be, claim to have an agenda at all times against the Yotes. And on some level, it’s fair, because it is hypocritical to talk often at length about the place teams have for fans in their lives and the public trust that they really a...

The <i>L.A. Times</i> still can’t quite seem to get a handle on the Dodgers’ playoff exit
It’s now generally accepted that playoff baseball is confusing. Given that every series is a week long at most, and it’s distilling down teams that have played for six months, everything is in bounds. Small moments like a pitching change here or a cutoff man missed there that would just be barely a ...

You mean the guy from West Sh*tkicker University wasn’t the answer?
There is no getting it back from the Patriots or their fans. They’d have to go through a couple of decades of haplessness, and that’s only because most of the Pats fans you know will be dead by then, and only then could you get some peace. Such has been their track record. The battle is lost, so you...

This is what it's all about
It’s not usually supposed to work like this in baseball. The quirk, some would say the beauty, of the game is that the big at-bats can fall to anyone. They don’t always fall to a team’s star player, and in fact, they rarely do. Opponents spell out a strategy most of the time to make sure they don’t....

It’s impossible to be completely miserable (or happy) during the sports equinox
There are 17 gazillion things happening in sports right now, and as much as I’d like to update you on all the happenings of the opening weeks of the NBA and NHL, the World Series-deciding MLB rounds, College Football Playoff-ramification slates, and every NFL, EPL, MMA, boxing match, game, contest, ...

If you were to watch the NLCS instead of just complaining about it, you might like it
There’s no denying that the ALCS is a bigger draw than the NLCS this year. The Yankees always garner eyeballs, New York and Houston have a recent, contentious history, and there is no fence straddling when it comes to the Astros’ cheating scandal. Either they should have a postseason ban like a coll...

For the Houston Astros, it can be as simple as one pitch
I am guilty, as well as many others, of thinking of the Astros as the same Godzilla offense as they were in 2017, whatever means they used to get there. I hear Astros and think whatever batter they’re sending to the plate sends thousands of Tokyo residents scurrying for cover. And the Astros offense...