ball Page 533 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Baseball Owners Want An International Draft Because They Want Absolute Control
For North America’s amateur baseball players, be they generational talents like Mike Trout or organizational filler like Mike Fish, the road to the majors begins in the same place: with Major League Baseball’s amateur draft. There is no such system in place for international players, at least not ye...

Idiot On The Field Runs Himself Into A Corner, Gets Leveled
If you are going to run onto a major league baseball field in the middle of a game, there are two keys to survival. The first is to always keep moving, and the second is to have an exit strategy. The fan who invaded the field at last night’s Braves game followed the first rule, but failed miserably ...

Brook Lopez Leads The Bucks Over Kyle Lowry And The Raptors, Just As We All Saw Coming
In an epic matchup of global basketball superstars, Brook Lopez led his top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks over Kyle Lowry and the second-seeded Toronto Raptors, 108–100, in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals. Lowry led the Raptors to an early lead and kept them in front for the first three quarters, b...

Tragic Hero Trevor Cahill Pays Dearly For Runaway Ambition
Wednesday afternoon the Angels lost a close one to the Minnesota Twins, 8–7. Angels pitcher Trevor Cahill took the loss, allowing six earned runs in 4.1 innings pitched, so right there you already know it wasn’t his best day. The defining moment of Cahill’s lousy outing, and certainly the most regre...

Pascal Siakam Reduces "Splash Mountain" To Rubble With Savage Dunk
Seems like Bucks scrapper Ersan Ilyasova thought he’d have more help in the paint when he overplayed the right hand of Raptors forward Pascal Siakam, in the first quarter of Wednesday night’s Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals. In an unfortunate coincidence, it seems like Bucks center Brook “Sp...

Enjoy Or Actively Loathe True Psycho Chris Paddack While You Still Can
San Diego Padres rookie pitcher Chris Paddack got roughed up in his start Tuesday against the Dodgers, needing 92 pitches to get through 4.2 innings, surrendering six runs, and taking the loss. Beyond reinforcing that the Dodgers lineup is a beast—they lead the National League in runs, slugging, and...

Stephen A. Smith Wrings Emmy-Worthy Performance Out Of Knicks' Lottery Agony
The day after the tragicomic New York Knicks were denied the opportunity to draft Zion Williamson, a nation alternately laughing at more Knicks misery and consoling those who got their hopes up turned their eyes to the cranky bard of Knicks angst: Stephen A. Smith....

The Time Dave McKenna Played Offensive Tackle
Our beloved colleague Dave McKenna tells good stories. He’s done a lot of cool shit, met many weird people in weird ways, and had his run-ins with the law. And after selfishly squirreling all his stories away in Slack and our brains for years, we’ve realized we have a societal obligation to share....

Nostalgia Reaches Its Nadir
Oh, come on. Selective memory is a hell of a thing....

Can Sports Show The Way To Smarter Voting?
Electoral reform is coming to America. This year in MLB, a simple first-past-the-post voting system will no longer determine all-star starters. Fans will instead select three finalists in a Primary Round and then vote from among those finalists on a single Election Day....

Jets Fire GM Mike Maccagnan, Who Apparently Lost Power Struggle With Adam Gase
Less than a month after the NFL Draft, and long after any notable free-agent signings, the New York Jets have decided to get rid of GM Mike Maccagnan. The team also fired VP of player personnel Brian Heimerdinger, Maccagnan’s right-hand man and presumptive heir, installing new head coach Adam Gase a...

The Mighty Josh Bell Just Keeps Smashing Monster Dingers
A loyal reader reached out this morning with a fantastic question:...

If The Pelicans Don't Deserve Zion Williamson, Every Other Team Deserves Him Less
When the New Orleans Pelicans landed the right to seize the beginning of Zion Williamson’s basketball career, the reaction was swift, predictable and consistent: “What did those people do to deserve such a prize?”...

Rockies Strike Out 24 Times, Still Manage To Beat Red Sox
Tuesday night the Colorado Rockies became the third team since 1908 to strike out at least 24 times in a major league game and also win. They did it by beating the Boston Red Sox in extra innings, 5–4, on a game-winning RBI single from Mark Reynolds, who knows a thing or two about striking out a lot...

Steph Curry Reminds The Trail Blazers Just How Terrifying He Can Be
Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals had a familiar look for anyone who’s watched many Golden State Warriors home games during the Steph Curry era. The Warriors held the tough and determined Trail Blazers at a comfortable arm’s length for most of the night, and then just sort of cruised out of vi...
![A Certain Beefy Young Blue Jay Finally Socked His First Major-League Dinger, And It Was A Beaut [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/okmaphmy7bkriixnac2v.png)
A Certain Beefy Young Blue Jay Finally Socked His First Major-League Dinger, And It Was A Beaut [Update]
Holding to the principle that if a person doesn’t have anything nice to say they should say nothing at all, there hasn’t been a whole lot to say about Vlad Guerrero Jr. since his call up to the majors back on April 26. Entering Tuesday night, Vlad had played in 13 Blue Jays games, and was slashing a...

The NBA Would've Been Better Off Rigging The Draft Lottery
The NBA’s new odds format did the job of scrambling the draft order. Four teams played especially horrendous basketball last season, and of those four teams, three were bounced out of the draft’s top four selections. This was satisfying. The Cavaliers, represented by Nick Gilbert, dropped to fifth,...

Zion Williamson Is The Pelicans' Reward For Wasting Anthony Davis
The Knicks, Pelicans, Grizzlies, and Lakers all had a shot at Zion Williamson heading into the final reveals of the NBA Draft Lottery, and the sensational Duke forward might have gotten stuck in the most disastrous possible situation. The New Orleans Pelicans—who had a six percent chance of winning ...

If John Beilein Is Such A Good Person, Why Was He A College Basketball Coach?
Longtime Michigan men’s basketball coach John Beilein announced yesterday that he’s leaving the university to take over as coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers. It’s a move plenty of other college coaches have made before, but the departure of Beilein—reportedly beloved, supposedly clean, and, at 66, d...
