ball Page 519 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Nationals Have Finally Freed Themselves From The Curse Of Trevor Rosenthal
If you listen closely with your ear towards a swamp-like city near the mid-Atlantic, you’ll be able to hear the faint sounds of mild optimism returning to the minds and spirits of the dozens of Nationals fans in the DC-metro area. The reason for this is because of Washington finally getting rid of t...

Derek Dietrich Is Still Not Giving Up The Inside Corner
In the top of the fifth against the Brewers, Reds second baseman Derek Dietrich got hit in the elbow by a 71 mph changeup from Alex Claudio. It was the sixth time that a Brewers pitcher had hit Dietrich with a pitch in three games, setting an MLB record for most times a player has been hit in a seri...

Wilkin Castillo's First MLB Hit In Over A Decade Was A Go-Ahead RBI Double
For the first time in over 10 years, 35-year-old Wilkin Castillo got a hit in the majors, and it was a pretty sweet one at that. In the top of seventh with two outs against the Phillies, Castillo smoked an RBI double into right field that sent two runners home and gave the Marlins a lead they wouldn...

Todd Frazier Upset He Hit Home Run Instead Of Deep Fly-Out
The Mets have been having an off day in the sense that they’re actually on the winning side of an embarrassing rout for once. Of course, such breaks in normalcy are bound to happen when the weather is on your side. Such was the case in the top of the third when Todd Frazier from Toms River, N.J. was...

Vanderbilt Responds To "Fuck You" Barrage From Louisville Pitcher With Ninth-Inning Rally
Louisville’s Luke Smith was pitching his ass off against Vanderbilt on Friday. Through eight innings, the junior had struck out 10 while only giving up three hits and one earned run. No one would have blamed Smith for showing a little emotion after striking out Vanderbilt’s Julian Infante, and putti...

Nomar Mazara Broke His Own Home Run Record With A 505-Foot Bomb
Less than 24 hours after MLB commissioner Rob Manfred finally acknowledged that this year’s batch of baseballs might in some way, shape or form be contributing to the league’s historic home run pace—it’s not that the balls are juiced, the “pill” inside the ball is providing less drag—a home run dist...

Jack Flaherty Gets Picked Off To End The Game, Soaks In His Failure On The Field
This has happened to the Cardinals before, albeit on a much bigger stage. St. Louis was down 7-6 in the bottom of the 11th inning, with two outs and pinch-runner Jack Flaherty on second base, when Marlins reliever Sergio Romo whipped around for a game-ending pickoff, to the dismay of the home crowd....

T-Ball Child Elevates Bat Flip To Deadly Art
This young T-baller identified as Abelardo served up a mighty hit, circled around to find a target, and flung his bat directly toward the cameraman, briefly staring him down before trotting off to first base. Max Muncy could maybe learn a thing or two from him....

KawhiWatch: Kawhi Leonard Enjoys Baseball Game, Proving He'll Stay In Toronto
Kawhi Leonard is the prize of this summer’s NBA free agency bonanza, and the reigning Finals MVP will be courted by a bevy of teams starting July 1, all of whom will do all they can to prostrate themselves as his feet. When we checked in with Leonard yesterday, he was making a run on cardboard boxe...

The Phillies' Leadoff Problem Is Compounding Their Even Larger Bryce Harper Problem
The Washington Nationals finished off a weather-shortened three-game series sweep of the Philadelphia Phillies Thursday night. The Phillies are in a bit of a swoon, having lost eight of their last 13 games. That stretch isn’t so arbitrary as it might seem—Andrew McCutchen succumbed to a season-endin...

Dodgers Organist Has Fun With The Aquatic Feud Between Max Muncy And Madison Bumgarner
When the Giants and Dodgers met earlier this month in San Francisco, the final game of the series was a 1-0 Los Angeles win where infielder Max Muncy irritated Madison Bumgarner by cracking a solo shot deep into the bay. As Muncy rounded the bases, Madison acted like a mad bum, telling the Dodgers h...

Phil Regan, Who Is 82 Years Old, Is Your New Mets Pitching Coach
Any Major League Baseball franchise setting out to hire a pitching coach over 80 years of age would do well to get Phil Regan. He has had a distinguished and improbably eventful life in baseball, and a very long one. Regan’s first big-league manager, in 1960, was Jimmy Dykes, another lifer who made...

All NBA Draft Grades Are Useless. Here Are My NBA Draft Grades
Now that the mock drafts are dead, the fashion show is done, all the crying parents have come and gone and Woj and Shams are back in the holster for a few hours, let us see what Postseason Advent has wrought:...

Reds' Jesse Winker Goes Ass Over Teakettle To Turn A Double Into A Triple
With one out in the top of the second inning of yesterday’s Reds-Brewers game, Cincinnati’s Jesse Winker smoked a loopy Jimmy Nelson breaking ball on a hard line past center fielder Lorenzo Cain and all the way to the wall. It was a double, easily. Was it a triple? Only for a madman. A madman like J...

Jordan Bone's Draft Party Went From Tragic To Joyful In A Flash
As this video of undrafted Fred VanVleet that made the rounds last night showed, there are at least some NBA draft parties that fizzle out before anyone can enjoy the ecstatic release they all came for, and it looked like Tennessee standout Jordan Bone’s party was headed that way as the draft wound ...

Bol Bol Heads To Denver Nuggets After Agonizing Draft Night Slide
Extremely fun one-and-done Oregon prospect Bol Bol showed up to Thursday night’s NBA draft decked out in a black suit featuring a garish sequined spider web on the left shoulder, smiling and optimistic and looking forward to being drafted somewhere in the lottery. His night ended with him gloomily t...

Here Are The Lottery Picks Of The 2019 NBA Draft
The saddest teams in the NBA have gone ahead and taken prospects they hope can lead their franchise into next year’s tank when they race for whoever 2020's best college player will be. Here are the lottery picks of 2019....

Chauncey Billups Drags Out Tired Trope, Says Zion Williamson Was "Raised Right" Because He Had "Two Parents In His Home"
With the first pick in the NBA Draft, ESPN draft analyst Chauncey Billups selected one of the worst possible approaches to complimenting a player’s character, after Zion Williamson had finished taking his ceremonial photo with commissioner Adam Silver and was making his way over to ESPN’s Maria Tayl...

Darren Rovell Overdoes It On Attempt At Human Emotion With A Pennywise-Ass Giggle
The 2019 NBA Draft is almost underway and, in a surprise to absolutely no one, Darren Rovell is in attendance talking about the only thing that matters to him: the brands. With this access, he approached the guaranteed first-overall pick of the draft in Zion Williamson and asked him when the shoe de...

All Your Assets Are Belong To The Pelicans
The trade that sent Anthony Davis from the New Orleans Pelicans to the Los Angeles Lakers was a good one. The Lakers got a superstar to pair with LeBron James, and the Pelicans got a hefty package of young players and draft picks to put toward rebuilding their roster. One of the top assets to change...