ball Page 693 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Oh Nothing, Just Another Mighty Walk-Off Dinger From Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
The New Hampshire Fisher Cats entered the bottom of the seventh* inning Sunday down 5-3 to the Binghamton Rumble Ponies. The very brink of a loss! Whatever would they do? Whosoever could save them from these dire circumstances?...

José Bautista Shifts Into The "Too Crummy Even To Play Third Base For The Atlanta Braves" Stage Of His Career
José Bautista’s unexpected and endlessly depressing stint as a third-baseman for the Atlanta Braves, kicked-off ominously with a one-year minor league contract in mid-April, has not produced the way anyone involved might’ve hoped: Bautista is hitting a putrid .143 with an alarming .593 OPS in 40 pla...

The Rays Are Making History With Strange New Pitching Strategies
The Rays announced last week an extremely unusual, cosmic-brain plan for the immediate future of their pitching rotation: rather than the traditional approach of deploying a starting pitcher to work through the opposing lineup a few times before yielding to the bullpen, manager Kevin Cash decided to...

LeBron In Full Must-Win Mode Is An Unsolvable Problem
The Cavs opened Game 3 with a huge 22-6 run, and that was more or less that. This was not a case of the winning team grabbing an early lead behind a fluky start and nursing it cautiously until the final buzzer—the Cavs were forceful and decisive early, and did some cool and different things to chall...

Benches Clear In Cubs-Reds After Bold Pitcher Stare-Down
Reds reliever Amir Garrett punctuated an inning-ending strikeout of Javier Baez in the seventh inning Saturday with a triumphant shout, loud enough to be audible over the television broadcast, followed by an aggressive stare-down of his vanquished foe. Unwritten rules and athlete egos being what the...

Petty-Ass Derek Jeter Yanks Credentials From Radio Host Who Tracked Down Marlins’ Overseas Corporate Office<em></em>
Last month Miami radio host Andy Slater joined Marlins Man on an investigative trip to the British Virgin Islands, where they learned that the corporate address of the Miami Marlins was a post office box, listed in order to establish the Marlins as a foreign company, for the most cynical of reasons....

Johnny Manziel Signs Contract To Play In Canadian Football League
Johnny Manziel, a prolific college quarterback whose career was put on hold for two years of mandatory service in the Cleveland Browns organization, will finally experience what it means to play for a professional football team: ...

Shortstop Pedro Florimon Pitches Perfect Inning, Then Socks Mighty Dinger
The dreaded Cardinals chased Phillies ace Jake Arrieta after just three innings in Friday night’s gloomy, rain-delayed tilt in St. Louis. The score was then 4-0; by the time reliever Drew Hutchison finished the sixth inning it was 9-2; the game finally became a laugher when Yacksel Rios allowed anot...

The WNBA Is Standing With Planned Parenthood
The New York Times reported today that the Trump administration plans to implement a rule banning reproductive healthcare providers, like Planned Parenthood, from getting certain federal funds if they provide abortion referrals. Hours later, WNBA President Lisa Borders put out this statement:...

Astros Manager A.J. Hinch On Santa Fe Shooting: "Thoughts And Prayers Are Great, But They're Not Fixing The Problem"
This morning, a student at Houston-area Santa Fe High School murdered 10 people with a shotgun and a .38 caliber pistol. This is the 22nd time this year that someone with a gun has either killed or injured someone on a high school campus. Astros manager A.J. Hinch was asked about the deadly attack a...

Tom Jurich Gets $7.2 Million, Lifetime Tickets In Louisville Settlement
If there’s one benefit to working in a leadership position at a major college sports program, and there are many, it’s that even if you end up disgraced and fired, you’re probably going to stay rich as hell....

Elfrid Payton's Hair Has Been Laid To Rest
Through all those tough years in Orlando to his current stint in Phoenix, the most notable feature of Elfrid Payton’s game has been his head. Not his “basketball IQ” or his “clutch mentality”—just that majestic drooping frond on top. Every season it protruded further past the point guard’s forehead....

Pirates' Gregory Polanco Becomes The Subject Of A Weird PED Hoax
On Tuesday, just after Mariners second baseman Robinson Cano was suspended 80 games for failing a drug test, Pirates outfielder Gregory Polanco started to receive concerned texts from his friends and family in the Dominican Republic. A fake ESPN tweet began to circulate online, suggesting that Polan...

Mookie Betts Played Kevin Gausman For A Fool
Mookie Betts, the best non–Mike Trout player in baseball who makes everything look impossibly easy, has a history of showing as little mercy as possible to the division rival Baltimore Orioles. He continued that trend during last night’s 6-2 victory over the O’s in Boston....

D-III Closer Gets Final Three Outs After Puking On The Infield
Rhodes College beat Franklin College 4-2 on the opening day of D-III regionals today, but it wasn’t without a ninth inning pitching performance that gave new meaning to the phrase “gutting it out.”...

Buck Showalter Will Not Yield For Your Home Run Trot<em></em>
A three-run dinger from Xander Bogaerts gave his Red Sox a 6-0 lead and chased Orioles pitcher Kevin Gausman in the fifth inning of tonight’s game. While Gausman himself couldn’t have been thrilled with his mistake, O’s manager Buck Showalter appeared even more disgusted, as he couldn’t even restrai...

Heck Yeah, J.D. Martinez Is Smashing Dingers Like Clockwork Again
New Red Sox signing J.D. Martinez had a very, very good first month in a Boston uniform—an April OPS of .994 is nothing to sneeze at—but Just Dingers has truly been living up to his nickname since May began. And in his first at-bat tonight against the Orioles, J.D.’s fifth-gear hot streak got even m...

In The Future, We Will All Gamble Constantly
The NBA Playoffs should be at something like their apex right now, and in the least entertaining possible sense they may well be. There are four notionally entertaining teams left, and they have combined through four games for maybe three entertaining quarters. The league’s biggest and most brillian...

DeMarcus Cousins Unfollowed The Pelicans On Instagram "Cause I'm Grown"
DeMarcus Cousins is in tricky, unpredictable territory now after tearing his Achilles tendon just as the Pelicans were easing into a groove. Without him, they sped up and swept the Blazers. This summer Boogie hits unrestricted free agency while recovering from an injury has sapped many previous star...

"Tommy G?": People On The Street Try To Name A Famous Active Baseball Player
If the 2016 survey of 6,000 sports fans that found no active baseball players cracked the top 50 most popular athletes, the persuasive handwringing over Mike Trout’s likability, and the fact that we just considered this question last week to no definitive answer weren’t convincing, here’s more evide...