ball Page 427 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

After another sensational two weeks, the NCAA women’s tournament broadcast package needs to level up
When people talk about investing more resources into the women’s game, it goes far beyond any monetary value....

Alex Rodriguez and ESPN’s <em>Sunday Night Baseball</em> are Can’t Stomach TV
Shohei Ohtani’s remarkable mound/plate performance last night helped mask what otherwise was a turgid, if not torturous, ESPN broadcast. The network’s Sunday Night Baseball show has been a bane to fans for pretty much its entire existence, spawning the one site that’s basically responsible for all t...

Rebecca Welch becomes first woman to ref English Football League match
When Rebecca Welch sounded the opening whistle during today’s Harrogate Town and Port Vale tilt, she became the first woman to referee an English Football League game....

Vaccine passports could be the ticket back to full stadiums
Ah, baseball’s opening weekend, fans in the stands and the Nationals sidelined by the coronavirus....

Shohei Ohtani’s performance last night was something to marvel
I’ve written about Shohei Ohtani before in this space. About how he almost certainly can’t be all that he teases, and the Angels are losing out on all he can be as a hitter or a pitcher by allowing him to be both. ...

Bayern Munich did that thing again
It was at the same point last season, though not in the calendar thanks to the pandemic, that this happened. Less than 10 games left in the season, Bayern Munich facing an away date against their closest rival and looking … well, vulnerable is too strong a word. Less godly, let’s say. The chasing te...

Charles Barkley thinks politicians, not hateful white people, are the reason racism succeeds
Charles Barkley is trying his best to be the next Jason Whitlock — the overweight and jovial Black man with a larger-than-life personality, whom you can always count on to say something to make white Americans feel good about themselves while demonizing and belittling his own people....

UCLA vs. Gonzaga might have been the best college game ever played
That was the best college basketball game I have ever seen in my lifetime. ...

Jalen Suggs turned a ho-hum NCAA Tournament into one for the ages
The NCAA men’s basketball tournament hasn’t really been all that exciting this year. Sure, there have been upsets, and a handful of close games, but particularly in a year without Duke and Kentucky in the field at all, and several other traditional powers in the doldrums, not to mention the whole to...

Ty Buttrey’s heart wasn’t in it, so he walked away — and good for him
Optioned to the minors by the Angels last week, a few days before his 28th birthday, Ty Buttrey decided that he was done with baseball. He’d accomplished his goal to “prove to every motherf***** who didn’t believe in me and doubted my ability to become an MLB player, that I could do it.”...

Could ‘Coors Cat’ find itself going from the alley to the front office?
Rockies fans have been looking for something to be excited about since the Nolan Arenado trade, and now they have it....

MLB umps play Keystone Kops in punishing wrong guy in bench-clearing non-brawl
Nicholas Castellanos was angry about being hit by a pitch from Cardinals right-hander Jake Woodford, so when the Reds’ right fielder came in to score on a Woodford wild pitch, sliding into Woodford in the process, he made his feelings known....

Grant Hill named director of USA Men’s National Basketball Team
You could go so far as to say Grant Hill was always meant for this. ...

Thunder, Warriors stinkers further evidence that NBA means ‘Nasty Blowout Again’ this season
The Thunder’s starting lineup on Friday night was Aleksej Pokusevski, Théo Maledon, Moses Brown, Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk, and Isaiah Roby. If none of those names is familiar, don’t worry, they’ve combined for 285 games of NBA experience — 280 before Friday night. ...

Francisco (not Frankie) Lindor, Roberto (not Bobby) Clemente, and the unintentional disrespect of Americanizing Latin names
Nicknames are endearing, but they’re not always respectful. ...

Once again the Atlanta Baseball Team proves itself a shrieking fraud on caring about Black people
You mean to say that a baseball franchise with a racially insensitive name, which does all it can to harm any argument that their name isn’t just insensitive, but outright racist, by encouraging its fans to do racist chants; which moved out of team’s location name’s urban core and into another count...

McDonald lifts Arizona over UConn, will face Stanford in all-PAC-12 Final
Stanford vs. Arizona will be the matchup for the women’s national title, and the Pac-12 will have its first national champion since 1992, when the Cardinal — then, as now, coached by Tara VanDerveer — won its second title....

Which team played the villain role best?
With the Houston Astros now wearing the crown as the most hated team in professional sports — as indicated by the chorus of boos and piercing screams of “CHEATER!” that rang through the Oakland Coliseum (whatever ridiculous name it has today) last night on Opening Day (ahh… welcome back baseball, an...

The players we’d most like to see in the Big 3’s new season
According to a report from Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports, the Big3 is returning after their 2020 cancelation due to COVID....
