abr Page 47 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Manchester City Defeat Liverpool On Penalties To Win Community Shield
Manchester City have won back-to-back FA Community Shield trophies for the first time in club history after defeating Liverpool 5-4 on penalties. Brazilian youngster Gabriel Jesus was the hero for Manchester City, scoring the winning penalty after Claudio Bravo came up big to save Giorgino Wijnadlum...

Stephen Strasburg's Mighty Batsmanship Overwhelms The Braves
Stephen Strasburg pitched five-plus innings Thursday night in the first game of an important four-game series in Atlanta against the NL East-leading Braves. It was a solid outing, especially considering the competition: Strasburg struck out seven and allowed three earned runs, and got the win, in la...

Fernando Tatis Jr. Bends Fabric Of Space And Time, Avoids Getting Tagged Out
It appeared as though Braves pitcher Mike Soroka was about the record the first out of his appearance against the Padres on Sunday. With an 0-2 count against Eric Hosmer, Soroka picked off Fernando Tatis Jr., who had a considerable lead at first base. Tatis Jr. was then caught in a rundown and, afte...

Miguel Cabrera's Decline Is Going To Be A Long And Sad Affair
I didn’t watch the Tigers lose 5-3 to the Rangers on Tuesday night—I was paying attention, instead, to the local baseball team that was actually trying to win. But a tweet from the Tigers’ broadcasters caught my eye in the middle of the Michigan-Vanderbilt game. I assumed, at first glance, that Migu...

Gabriele Grunewald, Who Defied Cancer By Racing At The Highest Level, Dies At 32
Former U.S. track and field champion Gabriele Grunewald died yesterday at 32 years old, a decade after she was first diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Despite her diagnosis, Grunewald competed professionally in the middle distances at the highest level for six years after she graduated college i...

Exceedingly Stupid Benches-Clearing Brouhaha Follows Phantom Plunking In Pirates-Braves
The Pittsburgh Pirates and the Atlanta Braves had a little benches-clearing brouhaha in the first inning of their Monday night game, after Pirates pitcher Joe Musgrove grazed the shirt of Braves batter Josh Donaldson and was assessed a hit-by-pitch. Donaldson seemed to smirk at Musgrove on his way o...

Hey, Look At That, Dallas Keuchel Has Landed With The Braves
Former Astros ace Dallas Keuchel was the last man standing from the grueling free agency winter of hell that followed the 2018 season. Craig Kimbrel, the other glaringly overqualified but evidently unemployable pitcher, landed with the Cubs Wednesday night; Thursday night, at last, Keuchel scored a ...

UCLA Walks It Off Against Oklahoma To Win Another Softball National Championship
It may not have been quite as dominant as the show of fireworks that they put on in their unbelievable 16-3 Game 1 win, but it was plenty more dramatic. The UCLA Bruins found the bats when they needed them, hit four dingers once again, and walked it off in the seventh for a 5-4 victory over a crushe...

What The Hell Are These Questions From The French Open Pressers?
Today at the French Open, No. 7 seed Sloane Stephens lost her quarterfinal match. She went to press after, only to field this question, as noted by tennis writer Ben Rothenberg:...

Gabrielle Union Needed To Tell Dwyane Wade That Milk Doesn't Cost $20
After years of scheduled practices, workouts, and games, the unstructured life of retirement can be a shock for any professional athlete who decides to hang it up for the last time at the end of their season. But for some, the shock of adjusting to everyday life doesn’t have to be a bad thing, as D...

Idiot On The Field Runs Himself Into A Corner, Gets Leveled
If you are going to run onto a major league baseball field in the middle of a game, there are two keys to survival. The first is to always keep moving, and the second is to have an exit strategy. The fan who invaded the field at last night’s Braves game followed the first rule, but failed miserably ...

Freddie Freeman Crushes A Towering Tater Off His Own Child
Leave a pitch in one of Freddie Freeman’s hot zones, and you’ll regret it. The Braves first baseman’s own son learned that lesson the hard way. Locate those strikes, kid....

You Could Microwave A Hot Pocket In The Time It Took Zack Greinke To Throw This Damn Pitch
Zack Greinke was up against Ozzie Albies in the top of the second and had just thrown his second consecutive changeup outside of the strike zone to give the Braves batter a full count. With two men on base, Greinke didn’t want to be the one to break the 1-1 tie so he decided to be patient for his ne...

Fate Came Back Around To Punish Max Fried's Pitching Hand
Atlanta’s Max Fried is a very cool young pitcher. He got off to a great start this season, compiling a 4–1 record and a 2.11 earned run average through his first six starts, with a scrumptious 0.991 WHIP. He has also evidently run afoul of Fate, which came to collect its due in the second inning of ...

Gabriel Landeskog Had To Get His Hands Dirty
In hockey as in few other sports, things rarely play out like they’re supposed to. (If they did, the Avalanche wouldn’t have made it to this series, let alone be headed for a Game 7 in San Jose after a wild 4-3 OT win on Monday night.) The storyline/scouting report for Avs-Sharks was supposed to be ...

Manny Machado's Feud With The Braves' Mascot Is Extremely Good
It is unclear when and where the beef between Manny Machado and Blooper, the Braves’ strange mascot, began. It dates back to at least last season, Blooper’s rookie year, when Santa Blooper gave Machado a lump of coal, and later, in the playoffs, when Machado, uh, refused to mount Blooper(?). It has ...

Yasiel Puig Goof Becomes Yasiel Puig Highlight Via One Bazooka Outfield Assist
When Freddie Freeman saw his third-inning liner to right-center squirt away from the glove of Reds outfielder Yasiel Puig and toward the warning track Thursday night, he made the perfectly sensible decision to chug his way to second base. That’s a sound, heady base-running decision, which is why it ...

Reds Announcer Suggests Ozzie Albies Doesn't Know The Difference Between $35 Million And $85 Million
The Braves became the target of many people’s ire earlier this month when they signed Ozzie Albies to a seven-year, $35 million contract extension that will, if Albies turns into the kind of player he looks destined to become, go down as one of the most appallingly team-friendly contracts in basebal...

There's A Lot Going On In This Jason Vargas Interview
Everyone’s eyes will naturally be drawn to the colonial-seeming fellow sliding into the background of Saturday’s postgame scrum for Mets pitcher Jason Vargas. Fine, that’s understandable. This blog will get to him shortly, but there are other things to appreciate here, too....

The Braves Just Got Nine Years Of Ozzie Albies At An Insultingly Low Price
After signing Ronald Acuña to a team-friendly deal worth at most $12.4 million annually over the next decade, the Atlanta Braves have locked up another one of their young players with a dirt-cheap extension that’ll last beyond arbitration and through his entire 20s. Second baseman Ozzie Albies, curr...