baseball Page 87 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Shohei Ohtani’s performance last night was something to marvel
I’ve written about Shohei Ohtani before in this space. About how he almost certainly can’t be all that he teases, and the Angels are losing out on all he can be as a hitter or a pitcher by allowing him to be both. ...

Jalen Suggs turned a ho-hum NCAA Tournament into one for the ages
The NCAA men’s basketball tournament hasn’t really been all that exciting this year. Sure, there have been upsets, and a handful of close games, but particularly in a year without Duke and Kentucky in the field at all, and several other traditional powers in the doldrums, not to mention the whole to...

Ty Buttrey’s heart wasn’t in it, so he walked away — and good for him
Optioned to the minors by the Angels last week, a few days before his 28th birthday, Ty Buttrey decided that he was done with baseball. He’d accomplished his goal to “prove to every motherf***** who didn’t believe in me and doubted my ability to become an MLB player, that I could do it.”...

Could ‘Coors Cat’ find itself going from the alley to the front office?
Rockies fans have been looking for something to be excited about since the Nolan Arenado trade, and now they have it....

MLB umps play Keystone Kops in punishing wrong guy in bench-clearing non-brawl
Nicholas Castellanos was angry about being hit by a pitch from Cardinals right-hander Jake Woodford, so when the Reds’ right fielder came in to score on a Woodford wild pitch, sliding into Woodford in the process, he made his feelings known....

Francisco (not Frankie) Lindor, Roberto (not Bobby) Clemente, and the unintentional disrespect of Americanizing Latin names
Nicknames are endearing, but they’re not always respectful. ...

Once again the Atlanta Baseball Team proves itself a shrieking fraud on caring about Black people
You mean to say that a baseball franchise with a racially insensitive name, which does all it can to harm any argument that their name isn’t just insensitive, but outright racist, by encouraging its fans to do racist chants; which moved out of team’s location name’s urban core and into another count...

McDonald lifts Arizona over UConn, will face Stanford in all-PAC-12 Final
Stanford vs. Arizona will be the matchup for the women’s national title, and the Pac-12 will have its first national champion since 1992, when the Cardinal — then, as now, coached by Tara VanDerveer — won its second title....

Which team played the villain role best?
With the Houston Astros now wearing the crown as the most hated team in professional sports — as indicated by the chorus of boos and piercing screams of “CHEATER!” that rang through the Oakland Coliseum (whatever ridiculous name it has today) last night on Opening Day (ahh… welcome back baseball, an...

Moving All-Star Game out of Georgia is surprisingly right move by MLB
Major League Baseball is not generally an organization that you’d think of as progressive, but Rob Manfred made a big move on Friday, stripping this year’s All-Star Game (something Rob Parker called for Deadspin on Monday) and draft from Atlanta in protest of the state of Georgia’s new voting rights...

On Opening Day, the signs of how much we’ve lost were everywhere
After getting the coronavirus vaccine on Wednesday, I was pretty out of it on Thursday, which meant that Opening Day was a different experience than usual. I woke up in the morning, had breakfast and walked the dog, then went right back to sleep, setting an alarm to be able to watch the first inning...

Justin Fields, Dan Orlovsky, and the never-ending degradation of Black QBs with age-old stereotypes
I find myself often being perplexed by the way some things are happening. Currently, one of those situations is the seemingly-inexplicable decrease in draft stock of a quarterback prospect I love, Justin Fields, who before the season was the consensus second-best quarterback behind Trevor Lawrence. ...

At least Biden realizes that packed ballparks are still a bad idea
I know we all want to get back to normal, but Texas’ “fuck it all, we’re completely open” approach seems a Texas-sized amount reckless. We’re close. More people are getting vaccinated by the day, there’s light at the end of the tunnel, but we still need to be smart and do exactly the opposite of wha...

Miguel Cabrera hit the first home run of the season in the snow and thought it was a double
Miguel Cabrera now has 488 career home runs (350 as a Tiger), and it’s possible that none were as unique as this....

The ones that do the least during games make the most money. No wonder baseball is America’s pastime
When I was in elementary school, we used to take annual field trips to the old Tiger Stadium. One year, Detroit was playing the Royals. I remember those blue jerseys. Our school was sitting in the outfield and somebody who wasn’t in our group pulled a beach ball out from nowhere. It eventually bounc...

Once you can return safely, here are One Lucky Fan’s picks for the best at MLB parks
It’s Opening Day… and the vast majority of Americans are at least 550 days removed from their last trip out to the old ballgame. We all know about the 2020 shortened season and the cardboard cutouts and we are trying hard to forget it. As such, I know that I am looking heartily forward to my second ...
![Pesky pandemic won’t let baseball pretend it’s over just yet [UPDATE]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/mnaazwogehaxvxbdhb4l.jpg)
Pesky pandemic won’t let baseball pretend it’s over just yet [UPDATE]
It’s Opening Day, America. It’s time to get back to our national pastime, and to leave all our worries aside. It’s our day to just focus on what we all need, a game of baseball. And isn’t that what we deserve? Nothing can interfere with the sound of a line drive or the smell of — I’m sorry. Buster O...

Francisco Lindor extension shows Steve Cohen can’t go back on his promise to build a contender
In June 2019, right after drafting Tyler Herro and K.Z. Okpala, and before trading for Jimmy Butler, Pat Riley said the following:...

Negro League researcher Cam Perron talks about his new book, the Negro Leagues, and the times to come
In a profile over the summer, I asked Cam Perron what he’s up to next. At the time, the young Negro Leagues researcher, whose work of documenting players’ service time led to their receiving MLB pensions, was operating his memorabilia business and working on a book set to hit shelves in 2021....

Vlad, Fernando, Francisco and more: The players who’ll make this baseball season interesting
Every year we discuss how baseball’s become boring, how it could grow more enjoyable for younger fans, and how we long for legitimate progress of our national pastime. ...