art Page 145 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Should A Home Run Automatically End An Inning?
I will not keep you waiting for an answer on this one. No, absolutely not and under no circumstances would it be a good idea for a homer to automatically end an inning in a big league baseball game. It seems important not to equivocate on this question. And yet this Funbag question, from a listener ...

Giannis's Shoulders Not Big Enough To Carry Everyone; Team USA Cruises Past Greece
The problem with simply double-teaming Giannis Antetokounmpo or clogging the paint to thwart him is that when the ball is not in his superhuman hands, it’s usually in Khris Middleton’s very capable hands or Brook Lopez’s or Eric Bledsoe’s, or hell, Pat Connaughton’s. ...

Michigan State Agrees To Pay $4.5 Million Fine For Failing To Stop Larry Nassar
Michigan State has agreed to pay a $4.5 million fine for its failure to protect students from Larry Nassar, a former school employee and former doctor to the USA Gymnastics national team, who is now serving more than 100 years in prison for sexually abusing young girls under the guise of medical tre...

The Dodgers' Best Reliever Is Their Backup Catcher
I regret to inform you that the Los Angeles Dodgers, a powerhouse that always seems to find new sources of talent whenever it needs, have a new shutdown reliever on their hands. He’s short, he’s Canadian, and he simply cannot be touched....

Video Shows Mateen Cleaves's Accuser Struggling To Flee His Motel Room
Former Michigan State men’s basketball player Mateen Cleaves was acquitted on Tuesday of four sexual assault charges stemming from an incident with a 24-year-old woman in September of 2015. Video of the incident that was shown in the courtroom has since been released because of a public records requ...

CNN Wonders If Smartphones Are Why The Tennis Youth Can't Beat Roger Federer
An article over at CNN today formally advances a claim dropped casually by commentators, coaches, fans, and any crank with a taste for caricaturing a whole generation. Here goes: Smartphones are hampering tennis’s young players, which is why they can’t stop the Big Three in the men’s game, who enjo...

Larry Bird Complains After Artist’s Mural Makes Him Seem Too Interesting
Artist Jules Muck recently painted a mural of Larry Bird in the Fountain Square section of Indianapolis, which features the image of Bird in his Indiana State jersey doing the “Shh!” gesture, similar to the Nov. 28, 1977 cover of Sports Illustrated. This time, though, Bird is doing the shushing inst...

Jimmy Garoppolo's Return Was Pretty Miserable
The important thing is that Jimmy Garoppolo is healthy. It has to be, because to focus on the 49ers quarterback’s performance in his first game action since tearing his ACL in Week 3 last season is to invite some serious collar-tugging....

The Cubs Were Screwed By The Worst Strike Three Call Of The Season, Maybe Of All Time
Maybe it’s time to let our robot umpire overlords reign supreme. At the very least, Cubs fans would be well within their rights in calling for the technology that will, in theory if not yet in practice, remove human error from strikes and balls, after Chicago was on the wrong end of one of the worst...

Josef Martínez Adds Two More MLS Scoring Records To His Growing Collection
Atlanta United forward Josef Martínez can’t stop breaking records. Last season, the 26-year-old Venezuelan shattered the MLS single-season scoring record with 31 goals, four more than the previous record of 27. On Sunday, he added two more records to his collection with this towering header against ...


Larry Nassar's Former Boss Is Going To Jail
William Strampel, the former dean of Michigan State’s osteopathic medical school, was sentenced in Ingham County Court today to up to a year in jail, after he was convicted in June on charges of neglect of duty and misconduct in office. As dean, Strampel was the boss of Larry Nassar, who’s currently...

Orioles Outfielder Bonked On The Head By Badly Misjudged Pop Fly
If you were looking for one single moment to represent the bottomless misery of the last, oh, two years of Orioles baseball, you could do a lot worse than D.J. Stewart’s ill-fated play on a fourth-inning fly ball in Tuesday’s game against the Yankees in Baltimore. Stewart, chugging in on the play, a...

Let's Remember Some Vince Carter Draftmates
Vince Carter is reportedly running it back with the Atlanta Hawks. Holy moly! He’ll turn 43 before the all-star break. He has been on this Earth over twice as long as the Hawks’ stars, John Collins (21) and Trae Young (20). In his last season with Atlanta, gray-bearded Carter logged 18 minutes a nig...

Tom Brady's Getting A Raise But Not Actually An Extension
When the news first broke of Tom Brady’s new Patriots contract, it was reported as a two-year extension, running through 2021, at $70 million. After years and years of having to write the same blog, I’m as surprised as you are that scoopsters didn’t wait for the details of the contract to see what i...

Lou Anna Simon Is Finally Leaving Michigan State
Disgraced former Michigan State president Lou Anna Simon will retire from the university at the end of August, according to a report from MSU Today. It’s been a long and ignominious slide for Simon, whose 15-year tenure as president at MSU was marked by a “culture of indifference and institutional p...

Two Key Riders Kicked Out Of Tour de France For Pushing And Shoving
A brutal run of three straight Alpine climbing stages starts tomorrow at the Tour de France, but two of the best teams in the peloton will be without their strongest support riders after they got testy on today’s flat stage....

Twins Show Off Cat-Like Infield Reflexes Against Vile Yankees
The Twins and Yankees are playing the opener of a three-game series Monday night in Minnesota, where the Twins offense has become basically a howitzer firing baseballs into the outfield stands. These are two of the top three teams in the American League, so this series has some juice....

Josef Martínez's Hideous Penalty Kick Run-Up Ends In Humiliation
The reward for Josef Martínez’s frankly insane penalty kick routine is an unreadable technique that makes it easy to best keepers from the spot, as evidenced by the Atlanta United forward’s 14-for-16 penalty record in MLS. The risk is that it makes him look like a huge weirdo and sets him up for rid...

Artemi Panarin Becomes Highest-Profile Russian Athlete To Criticize Vladimir Putin
The New York Rangers’ marquee free-agent signing of the summer, Artemi Panarin, gave an interview that posted on Thursday where he did something unprecedented for a Russian athlete of his caliber: criticize President Vladimir Putin. ...