baseball Page 143 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Cole Hamels Has Been A Cub For A Month And He's Already Talking Shit On Brewers Fans
It’s September. Kids are going back to school, football is back on the TV—it’s still too darn hot, but we can’t have everything—and baseball games are starting to really feel like they matter. The slog of the season pays off with this. There’s a sound a crowd makes that only really occurs this time ...

The Good-For-Nothing Nationals Came Within One Lousy Run Of The Rare All-69 Trifecta
The Nationals beat the Cardinals by one run in extras on Labor Day. Who gives a shit, right? The Nationals are junk. The loss could matter to the Cardinals in their pursuit of an NL Wild Card, but that is not why we are here. We are here for this:...

Just Like That, The Dodgers Are In Control
Well that happened fast. Just a week ago the Dodgers were in third place in the NL West, 4.5 games back of the Diamondbacks, and enduring all kinds of misery having to do with their season-long disappointment in close games. And here they are, on the first Monday of September, alone with the divisio...

Joe West Gums Up Phillies' Strategy With Textualist Reading Of Foreign Substance Rule
A strange thing happened in the eighth inning of Saturday night’s Cubs-Phillies game. Veteran umpire Joe West, working third base, noticed Phillies reliever Austin Davis pull a notecard out of his back pocket before pitching to Addison Russell, and decided he needed to know more, and brought the gam...

Padres Beach Hat Giveaway Comes With Free Gross Bugs
The lowly San Diego Padres gave fans attending Saturday night’s game against the Rockies complimentary beach hats. Nice! The problem? Some of the packaging of the hats was discovered to contain an infestation of disgusting bugs:...

Aaron Boone Tops Ron Gardenhire In Battle Of Colorful Manager Meltdowns
Jordan Zimmermann was working on a no-hitter in the bottom of the fifth inning Friday night when home plate umpire Nic Lentz gave him a strike against Gleyber Torres on a fastball that sure looked like it missed off the inside of the plate. Yankees manager Aaron Boone, who was apparently already dis...

Gio González Takes A Break From Weeping To Reassure Brewers PR People: "But I'm Happy! I Am Happy."
The Nationals traded lefty starter Gio Gonzalez to the Milwaukee Brewers on Friday, the last day that players can move between teams and remain eligible to play in the postseason. Gonzalez has been in Washington since 2012; during that time he’s gotten married, had a couple kids, and entrenched hims...

Was This Raccoon Witch Cursing The Baltimore Orioles? An Investigation
The Baltimore Orioles came into Wednesday night a horrendous 52.5 games out of first place in the AL East, and an equally shocking and horrifying 40.5 games back of the AL Wild Card. All of that sucking and losing happened before 8:33 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, when it was announced that this devi...

Marlins To Allow Musical Instruments At Otherwise Deathly Quiet Marlins Park
The Marlins have the worst home-field advantage in baseball, drawing a whopping 4,600 fewer fans per home game than the next lowest average attendance in the league. If you bring a harp to a Marlins home game and use it to play a soothing acoustic version of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the...

Tyler White's Unlikely Walk-Off Dinger Set An MLB Single-Season Record
The Astros won 5-4 today in the final game of a three-game series against the Athletics, after DH Tyler White hit a walk-off bomb. White’s homer not only extended Houston’s lead in the AL West to 2.5 games, but set a neat little MLB record, too....

Cole Hamels Looks Unbeatable Again
When the Chicago Cubs acquired Cole Hamels from the Rangers before the trade deadline, it looked like the team was just buying a lotto ticket. Hamels, who was putting up a disastrous 5.19 FIP with the Rangers in 2018, was just another formerly great but presently iffy arm who could join the rest of ...

J.D. Martinez Follows In The Footsteps Of Red Sox Greats, Like Curt Schilling
Red Sox outfielder J.D. Martinez will always have a gun on him, according to his 2013 Instagram post featuring a quote never actually said by Hitler. Wouldn’t that be dangerous if he dove for a fly ball?...

That Phillies Loss Might've Been The Season's Most Brutal
There’s an old baseball saw that you should never make the first or third out at third base. What does the conventional wisdom say about making the third out—the game’s final out—trying to tag up and move to third base, but leaving second base before the ball is caught?...

Mark Reynolds Punctuates Meltdown By Throwing Batting Gloves At Umpire
Nationals international man of mystery Mark Reynolds was displeased by a called strike three in the top of the eighth inning in Tuesday night’s game against the Phillies, when umpire Sam Holbrook rang him up on an 0–2 outside fastball after an enthusiastic frame-up by Phillies catcher Jorge Alfaro. ...

Adam Engel Makes Heroic Catch Despite Assault From Yankee Stadium Grass
Adam Engel has earned himself a bit of a reputation as a Yankee-killer this season, thanks to a tendency for the otherwise unspectacular White Sox centerfielder to make terrific grabs against the Bronx Bombers. Tonight, Yankee Stadium thought they might take some revenge on the home team’s fielding ...

How Maple Bats Kicked Ash And Conquered Baseball
As Barry Bonds pursued the single-season home run record in 2001, no detail went uninterrogated....

Shohei Ohtani Has Proven Himself
What’s often felt like an inconsistent and tumultuous season for rookie phenom Shohei Ohtani is shaping up to be a pretty damn impressive opening number. So much of Ohtani’s buzz quieted down when a ligament injury pulled him off the mound for most of the season, but while he’s been rehabbing in an ...

Delightful Clown Show Opens Up Flood Gates In A's-Astros
The Oakland Athletics jumped out to 4–0 lead early in Monday’s big tilt with the division leading Astros. The A’s have been hot as hell, and closed Houston’s lead in the AL West to a game and a half, and this had the look of another stirring Oakland victory to kick off an all-important series in Hou...

Michael Conforto Crushes Poor Baseball Into Outer Space
What we have here is a Mets [checks notes] highlight? No, wait, that can’t be right....

Hustlin'-Ass Cardinals Plate Two On Two-Out Infield Chopper
It sickens me to acknowledge this, but the dreaded Cardinals made a very cool play in today’s game in Colorado. They loaded the bases with two down in the top of the first inning against Rockies starter Tyler Anderson, with Austin Gomber at the plate, and the speedy young Harrison Bader at second ba...