The Mourning After Page 20 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
I can’t with this Juan Soto swing
If you spend too much time arguing about the macro, you miss out on the micro. And it is in the micro that the real enjoyment can be found in any sport. Whether it’s a silky drive to the hoop and layup, a cross-seam pass to set up a one-timer, a perfectly-timed tackle, the sort of things top-tier at...
Bombs win in the playoffs, plain and simple
It’s not underground baseball science to say that home runs are the determining factor this time of year. Everyone has known it, and yet every so often someone tries to fool themselves into thinking that there can be another way. Generally, it’s someone clinging to the past, “the way baseball used t...
Football sucks now, but why?
As a Bears fan, I can’t help but grin at the plight of the Denver Broncos on national TV. See, it can happen to someone else! The Broncos have been on an island game already four times this season, and there are three more to go. And in every game, they’ve been awful. To be clear, they’ve been awful...
It’s never been easy to win a World Series
The past 24 hours or so have been filled with shrieking referendums on the MLB playoffs and its structure. Not that this structure is really all that different from what came before. But the hope, expressed by yours truly as well, was that making the lower-seeded teams play one or two more games bef...
Week 7 of college football was perfect
Coming into the weekend, we knew at least three unbeaten programs were guaranteed to end Saturday with a smudge on their immaculate records as six perfect top 13 teams were set to face off against each other. ...
With offense winning titles in other sports, playoff baseball is still about pitching
The Dodgers, Braves, and Yankees combined to win 311 regular season games over the course of the regular season, but the playoffs have been a beautiful disaster so far. Mid-’90s alternative rock references notwithstanding, all three clubs received first-round byes, and only New York isn’t on the bri...
Clint Eastwood has an explanation for Yordan Alvarez’s hot streak
Once Clint Eastwood turned into his character from “Gran Torino” I haven’t paid as much attention to the Hollywood legend’s movies. So forgive me, I just saw “Trouble with the Curve,” and aside from more evidence that Justin Timberlake isn’t an actor, I walked away pleasantly surprised. It was a pre...
Manny Machado is great, whether anyone bothers to notice or not
There’s been so much noise around the San Diego Padres for a few years now, it’s quite understandable that Manny Machado has sort of sunk under the radar. There has been a raft of buzz-worthy players acquired by the Padres since Machado in 2019. He didn’t win an MVP like his fellow prize of that par...
Don’t be in such a rush to show your genius
When you come at the Houston Astros, you’d best not miss. ...
The NFL doesn’t have to make sense
It was a great showcase for all the NFL can be on Monday in Kansas City. Even if you put aside the defiant and ignorant Chiefs fans doing the chop on Indigenous People’s Day — a truly lovely touch — or Troy Aikman insulting any woman who might be watching the broadcast, it was also an example of how...
The Mets didn’t do anything wrong
Perhaps that’s what will kill their fans most. Then again, Mets fans have never needed much prodding to tell the world how miserable it is to be a Mets fan. They’ll certainly have the ammo now....
For its next trick, the Mariners will juggle orcas while unicycling over a volcano
It takes a lot for the sporting public to notice a Saturday highlight other than a football one in early October. It has to be especially good on a weekend when Alabama staves off an upset, but my god what the Seattle Mariners are doing is beyond good. ...
‘It could always be worse’ isn’t much solace to Mets’ fans at the moment
Every lower seed but Tampa won on the opening day of the 2022 MLB playoffs. The Guardians, Phillies, Mariners, and Padres all hold 1-0 advantages and could send their opponents fishing today with another W. ...
There’s something magical about bad football
Remember, Amazon pays $1 billion per season for this. That means that Thursday’s Colts-Broncos hobo ho-down cost Jeff Bezos somewhere around $62.5 million. In the words of Axl Rose, “You get what you pay for, and life is real high priced.”...
Baseball always gives you a moment
I have lamented how the last series of the MLB season didn’t contain much drama, which it’s supposed to. Sure, the Phillies clinched a playoff spot on Monday, and there was some seeding to sort out, but overall the last three games of the season passed by in a vacuum, kind of befitting the weekday n...
Oh yeah, it’s Fat Bear Week!
Look, normally in this space in the a.m., I’d have to talk about Hockey Canada’s chair pulling a “Not All Men!” act in front of the Canadian parliament. Or a couple of owners in NWSL relinquishing “day-to-day” operations of their teams, but not selling their teams and disappearing into the cave wher...
Sports would be all right if it wasn’t for the organizations that run them
Yesterday was just a banner day for the governing bodies of sports. We know that people in power will do just about anything to protect what little fiefdom they have. In the grand scheme of things, having a seat on the organization running whatever league or game is a pretty small fiefdom. But that ...
Baseball cares not for your plans, especially when you’re the New York Mets
History will record it as another case of Mets-ian fortune. A Mets team that still might win 100 games blowing the NL East on the last weekend of the season. A Mets team that at one point was 10.5 games ahead of the Braves. A Mets team that really only had to win one game of three in White Flight Co...
There are many reasons why eight is the perfect number for the CFP expansion
The way I’d describe Week 5 of the college football season is the invisible fence test. If you’re unfamiliar, and you shouldn’t be since I just made it up, I’m referring to the phenomenon that is big dogs shrugging off the shock of an electric barrier....
There’s at least one MLB fan base who would open-mouth kiss Rob Manfred
The last time the Seattle Mariners made the playoffs, Blu Cantrell’s “Hit ‘Em Up Style (Oops!)” was atop the Billboard charts, a non-superhero movie (“Don’t Say A Word”) was No. 1 at the box office, and M’s All-Star rookie Julio Rodriguez was not yet a year old. ...