ap Page 1197 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

You’ve got a lot of balls, MLB
As long as you’ve known baseball, it’s been four balls for a walk, but it wasn’t always that way. Today is the 133rd anniversary of the Joint Rules Committee taking away 20% of pitchers’ margin for error, reducing the number of balls for a walk from five to four....

Dallas Stars coach benches rookie before homecoming game in front of friends and family
Twenty-three-year-old Riley Tufte got called up to the Dallas Stars’ roster last week to play for their fourth line. He saw a few minutes of playing time in victories against the Flyers and the Red Wings, but the big game for him was going to be his homecoming to face the Minnesota Wild in his home ...

Kansas fullback converts two-point conversion into $1,000 worth of Applebee’s
Before this season, if you made a catch like the one Jared Casey did last weekend to clinch the Kansas Jayhawks victory at Texas in overtime, you’d probably be a hero on campus for a few weeks. Your family would fawn over you at Thanksgiving, your parents wouldn’t shut up to their neighbors about th...

Cleveland Guardians’ launch has a bad sign and bad signs
The Guardians are here and ready to start selling their merchandise, marking a new era of baseball in Cleveland, moving beyond the 73 years without winning a World Series, the decades of intransigence over Chief Wahoo, the......

Joe Biden thinking about declaring diplomatic immunity, err, boycott of Winter Olympics
When politics and sports collide, people tend to lose their shit. “This is supposed to be my happy place!” “How dare you use your platform to speak out against racism!” “Loud noises!”...

Sean Payton agrees with you about NFL officiating this season
For any NFL fans out there who think that officiating hasn’t been at the level it should be, you are not alone. Earlier today, New Orleans’ Sean Payton was interviewed on the Dan Patrick Show and he was asked about how long it takes him to get over a loss. Payton responded that it usually takes abou...

The WNBA unveils new playoff format
The WNBA announced a new playoff format today that will increase the number of potential games in the tournament and completely get rid of single-elimination games. It will remain an eight-team playoff, with teams seeded based on overall standings over a 36-game regular season, but the first- and se...

The NL MVP has most likely already been revealed
I’ll be honest. I didn’t expect Philadelphia’s Bryce Harper to win the National League MVP this year. I didn’t think his hot streak would last as long as it did, and I certainly didn’t think Harper’s incredible OPS figure halfway through August would be enough to overcome his home run and RBI number...

HBO filmed Colts’ Nyheim Hines fanboying out on Tavon Austin and it’s very sweet
I had no idea that Tavon Austin was playing for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Nine years ago he was the most explosive player in college football at West Virginia, and arguably one of the most dynamic players in the history of the sport. At 5-foot-8 and under 180 pounds, he was still the No. 8 overall p...

The Rays keep on winning due to their financial situation, not despite it
The most fascinating aspect about the Tampa Bay Rays competing and winning in the AL East — Kevin Cash repeated as AL manager of the year, and Randy Arozarena took home rookie of the year honors this week — is how they do it not despite their financial shortfalls but almost with the help of them....

Cam Newton was present on the field Sunday, but Panthers need the 'old Cam' back to lead them
It has been all smiles in Charlotte since Cam Newton signed with the team that drafted him No. 1 overall in 2011. Last week, the Carolina Panthers went on the road and defeated the Arizona Cardinals — who were playing without two of their best, Kyler Murray and DeAndre Hopkins — who have the best re...

Will the knuckleball ever make a comeback?
The knuckleball might not be dead, but it’s certainly on life support. There are only two active players who’ve primarily used a knuckleball at the Major League level: Steven Wright, who is currently a free agent and hasn’t pitched in the Majors since 2019 and Mickey Jannis, who is also a free agent...

Jets are going with Joe Flacco instead of Mike White on Sunday, so watch something else
New York Jets Rookie quarterback Zach Wilson has still not recovered from his knee injury, but that doesn’t mean we get another week of the Mike White experience. The Jets instead will be going with a face from their recent past against the Miami Dolphins — 36-year-old Joe Flacco. They traded a sixt...

Stephen A. Smith got it right in his rant against the Brooklyn Nets
Welp, that’s it. It’s time to shut down the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Stephen A. Smith is done and never going back after the Nets’ lackluster performance Tuesday night against the Golden State Warriors....

Los Angeles County lawyers are still making Vanessa Bryant suffer
There’s a lot going on in California. The Golden State Warriors are on fire. Anthony Davis thinks the Lakers “suck.” And the Staples Center will be called the Crypto.com Arena starting on Christmas. Maybe that’s why more people aren’t focused on what’s still happening to Vanessa Bryant. ...

Capitalism is ugly and sports are poisoned, chapter 1,000,000
Of course it would be California:...

Marcus Stroman cuts the Yankees instead of his hair
The Yankees’ policy on personal appearance has long been worthy of mockery, and mockery it has received, for decades, going back to Don Mattingly’s appearance on The Simpsons, when Montgomery Burns kept telling the first baseman to cut his sideburns....

Giannis may seem like body armor dunking a basketball, but he has some of the same mental health issues as others
That singular focus on greatness, nothing else matters, no price is too steep, and there is always more sweat to be poured into the workspace... it turns out is not healthy. For one, where does an obsession like that even come from? For Giannis Antetokounmpo it came from a place of fear....

The NBA future is... WOWZA!
The NBA has never felt younger and more reliant on up-and-coming stars than it does today. Teams are beginning to utilize the draft more and more. We’ve seen plenty of tank-a-thons by teams in the last five years, and these efforts have panned out to varying degrees. For some, it has materialized in...

How will the College Football Playoff Committee shock and upset everyone tonight?
It’s Tuesday, which means it’s College Football Playoff rankings day, which means the CFP committee is getting ready to royally screw things up again, because that’s how this works....