baseball Page 22 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

It's too early for the 49ers to declare their QB1

John Harbaugh will not be the only coach to have to answer questions about his starting quarterback situation during the NFL League Meetings. Kyle Shanahan won’t be asked about trade requests and franchise tags, but the media will want to know who will be starting at quarterback for the San Francisc...

Is there actually a reason to watch the Pittsburgh Pirates?

The Pittsburgh Pirates have been the prime symbol of everything wrong with MLB. They play in perhaps the league’s best ballpark. They have a passionate fanbase that is just screaming for a team worth their time, assuming they haven’t all been chased off (and they may need the Pirates soon given that...

Caitlin Clark stands on her own after stellar Elite Eight performance

There’s a big phenomenon when conversing about sports to find the next big thing, or who a younger athlete could become when she or he reaches their potential. Kobe Bryant or LeBron James having a Michael Jordan-like arch dominated conversations for over a decade. The name of baseball’s next great p...

Life ain’t easy for Bayern Munich… according to Bayern Munich

Wherever he is, George Steinbrenner must’ve smiled and nodded at the news of Bayern Munich firing their manager with three-quarters of the season gone. Not only would that have reminded Big Steinn of his “glory” days (obviously the Yankees didn’t regain their spot atop the baseball world until Stein...

Here are the Braves, sittin’ on top of the world

Life must be pretty good for the Atlanta Braves. They can kick back and watch all the headlines be about the New York Mets and their Correa fiasco, or the Mets and their Edwin Diaz fiasco, or the Philadelphia Phillies signing Trea Turner without really solving the problem that their outfield will lo...

The Angels will make the playoffs...or at least let’s figure out a way they can

As badass as the moment was of seeing Shohei Ohtani face Mike Trout with the World Baseball Classic on the line last night, you could forgive Los Angeles Angels fans if they were rubbing their temples a bit during it. The cry whenever either or both of those names come up in conversation has been, “...

In the era of offense over everything, golf is trying to zag, and Rory McIlroy is onboard

What would you say if I told you that baseball was capping how far a ball can be hit, basketball decided to negate shots over 30 feet, or the NFL limited how far the football can be thrown in the air? Your first reaction would probably be like mine when I read that Rory McIlroy is on board with the ...

You can’t script baseball, but sometimes it can seem like it

What they tell you about baseball a lot, is that because everyone gets a turn, you can’t guarantee that your best player will get to the plate with the game on the line. Sometimes it’s your second baseman with no concept of the strike zone who wets himself at the sight of any fastball over 96 MPH. S...

How much difference can it make to have a manager who is awake?

How much tangible difference a manager makes on a baseball team over 162 games has never been quite nailed down. It’s generally thought the best ones might only add a couple wins, and a truly bad one might only take away a couple wins. Most are just there, which is kind of why front offices stopped ...

Meaningless baseball continues to thrill millions

I think maybe what I might take most out of the World Baseball Classic is its insistence on portraying the entire scope of the best moments, what makes baseball the most artful game. ...

Jackass Tournament: First-round results

Welcome to the 2022-23 Jackass Tournament! Thank you for voting in our hotly contested series of Twitter polls. Here are your results....

Is it finally time for the Toronto Blue Jays?

Once the Toronto Maple Leafs get Andrei Vasilevskiy’d in the first round again, it’s not like the angst level in the T.O. will fade all that much through the summer months. That’s because the Toronto Blue Jays have reached the same threshold as the Leafs passed a few years ago, where you go from you...

No, Keith Olbermann, we should not 'kill' the WBC

If you ever wonder why much of the world views Americans as arrogant and uninterested in anything that happens outside the United States’ borders, look no further than Keith Olbermann’s recent tweets about the World Baseball Classic....

Stop bitching about the World Baseball Classic

We tend not to appreciate things that don’t matter as much to us as it does others. If there’s anything more American than “I got mine,” I don’t know what that would be. That seems to be the trouble with the World Baseball Classic, even though with every iteration it seems to pick up more steam. The...

Keith Olbermann has a scorching bad take on the World Baseball Classic

When there’s a way to have a trash take on sports, enter Keith Olbermann. This time, it’s about the World Baseball Classic, because what matters most to Mr. Olbermann is the Major League Baseball season, as the yearly league is much more important to those who don’t see value in the global tournamen...

March Badness: Scandals defined the year in college hoops

In a year devoid of a dominant blue blood or player, college basketball stayed in the headlines for the worst reasons. Preseason No. 1 UNC whiffed on the season and missed the tournament entirely. Gonzaga is relying on a normal supply of veteran talent, but is less interesting to watch for casual fa...

The most Mets thing ever? [Updated]

If I asked you, before the WBC, which team might have a player seriously injured not just during the World Baseball Classic, but doing something non-play involved during the WBC that feels like the baseball gods got loaded and said, “Hey watch this!”, there would only be one answer, right? You could...

Deadspin presents: The Great Debates tournament

Welcome to the Great Debates bracket, where we’re trying to find out what is life’s greatest argument. The queries below have stumped philosophers, presidents, priests, and peasants alike. They’ve inspired books, memes, Twitter threads, and even entire fields of study....

The UGLIEST baseball uniforms ever

Baseball is getting increasingly liberal with the term ‘perfect game’

There was a perfect game in the World Baseball Classic on Monday. The Puerto Rico pitching staff, led by a perfect 5.2 innings from journeyman José De León, didn’t surrender a baserunner to Israel. Normally, that’d be pretty amazing, even by modern-day pitching standards. But — and I definitely fore...