ball Page 522 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Red Sox Give Up History's Easiest Inside-The-Park Home Run When Brock Holt's Body Unexpectedly Shuts Down

This was an odd moment in Tuesday night’s Rangers-Red Sox game. Red Sox outfielder Brock Holt chased a Hunter Pence opposite-field smash toward Pesky’s Pole in right. Holt misjudged the ball on the fly and failed to haul it in, and the ball caromed off the low wall and back onto the track in deep ri...

Home Plate Umpire Takes A Backswing To The Head In Nationals-White Sox

For the second week in a row, the home plate umpire at a Washington Nationals game has suffered a wound in a freak accident. Last Tuesday umpire Mike Everitt took a 95-mph fastball directly to the chest and eventually had to leave the game. Tonight umpire Chad Whitson had his head gashed open by th...

Eat Your Heart Out, <i>Chernobyl</i>

Small-Town America Features, Ranked

Today, we’re talking about Steve Kerr, pillow talk, neglected foodstuffs, and more....

The Warriors Need DeMarcus Cousins Now, Which Is Concerning For Everyone Involved

Kevin Durant is short a limb. Kevon Looney’s ribs are splayed open like a blooming onion. Andre Iguodala has rocks in his shoes. The Warriors need two more wins, and medicine is not on their side. DeMarcus Cousins is, though....

Who The Hell Knows How This Ends, But At Least It's Not Without A Fight

Nope, I have nothing for you. I cannot explain how the Golden State Warriors won Game 5 of the NBA Finals, and neither can any of you. A team in tatters refused to shred, and it remains obstinate in the face of a hockey team’s list of injuries. This is almost not at all about the Toronto Raptors any...

Who's To Blame?

The reactions to a catastrophic NBA injury usually unfold in very simple terms. Stomachs drop, deep sympathies are expressed for the player involved, and everyone moves on while shaking their heads and grumbling about how sometimes life just isn’t fair. Rarely do such injuries lead to the general ma...

The Raptors Blew It

Coming close hurts all the more when you can quantify just how close you came. One shot, or one missed shot, or one call the other way, or ... one timeout? The Raptors came oh so close to winning a championship Monday night, and it’s not the one-point final margin that’ll stick in craws and steal sl...

Kevin Durant's Achilles Injury Sounds Like Bad News All The Way Around

Warriors president of basketball operations Bob Myers spoke at the postgame podium Monday night following his team’s 106–105 victory over the Toronto Raptors in Game 5. That’s an unusual step for a personnel honcho, but these are unusual circumstances—it fell to Myers to announce that Durant’s injur...

Several Minutes Of Horrendous Basketball Result In Warriors Surviving Game 5

Game 5 was anything but pretty. The first half was defined by Kevin Durant’s triumphant return, and then Kevin Durant’s disastrous re-injury. The second half was defined by one transcendent three-minute stretch from Kawhi Leonard, and then three minutes of ridiculous, frantic, slapstick mutual failu...

Which Of These Two Battered Pitchers Suffered The More Humiliating Sequence?

Phillies pitcher Jerad Eickhoff got the rudest of welcomes in his start Monday night in Philadelphia, against the Arizona Diamondbacks. A first-pitch leadoff home run is deflating; allowing back-to-back leadoff dingers is downright demoralizing; serving up back-to-back-to-back taters to open up a st...

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...

Success Spoiled Golden State Warriors Fans

A year ago, Steph Curry told SLAM how grateful he was that Oakland had embraced him “as one of their own.” He’s done his part, there: tons of local charity work, putting Oakland on a shoe and then giving 30 of them away. All of which is to say that he could likely tell you more about the town other ...

Report: Kevin Durant's "Expected" To Play Game 5

The Golden State Warriors are facing elimination, but Kevin Durant, who hurt his leg a month ago, isn’t a sure thing for tonight’s game against the Raptors. At today’s practice, head coach Steve Kerr wouldn’t say anything beyond calling his player a “game-time decision” for Game 5 of the NBA Finals....

Twenty Years Ago, Bobby Valentine Snuck Back Into The Dugout And Woke Up The Mets

This is an excerpt from Matthew Callan’s book Yells For Ourselves: A Story Of New York City And The New York Mets At The Dawn Of The New Millennium....

Reports: David Ortiz Hospitalized After Being Shot In Dominican Republic Robbery Attempt [Updating]

According to multiple reports, retired Red Sox slugger and former World Series MVP David Ortiz was hospitalized with a gunshot wound in the Dominican Republic Sunday evening. Enrique Rojas of ESPN reportedly heard directly from Ortiz’s father that Ortiz was shot “in an amusement center” in Santo Dom...

Madison Bumgarner Gets Roasted To Hell By Max Muncy For Playing Dinger Cop

Madison Bumgarner is a good pitcher and a marvelous baseball player, but what he also is is a great big diaper baby. Few pitchers in all of baseball are as likely as Bumgarner to express their sensitivity to the humiliation of allowing a home run by shouting unwritten code commands at triumphant bat...

Kevin Durant Practiced, But Maybe Not That Much, And Nobody Knows What The Hell Is Going On

Kevin Durant’s month-long absence from the Golden State Warriors while he tries to recover from a calf injury has thrown the NBA Finals totally out of whack. Now, with the Warriors down 3-1 to the Raptors and facing a potential dynasty-ending Game 5 on Monday, Durant’s return seems like the only thi...

The Mets' Plague Doctors Are At It Again

The latest string of updates about the quad injury that’s hounding Mets second baseman Robinson Cano are so familiar that it’s hard to absorb them without feeling intense déjà vu. Let me assure you that this is not news you have read before, or a memory from some past life bubbling to the surface of...

Righteous Baseball Dude Kumar Rocker Saves Vanderbilt's Season With 19-Strikeout No-Hitter

Vanderbilt found themselves down 1-0 in the best-of-three Nashville Super Regional against Duke, and so they sent stud pitcher Kumar Rocker to the mound to start Game 2 yesterday and asked him to save the season. Rocker responded with 19 strikeouts and a no-hitter, leading Vandy to a 3-0 win....