bay Page 50 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Clay Matthews Takes Comebacker To The Face In Charity Softball Game
Clay Matthews was pitching in a charity softball game in Wisconsin Saturday when a sharply hit comebacker nailed him directly in his face, in front of the mound:...

Oh No, Call The Cops, Someone Is Having Fun Playing Baseball Again
Rays right fielder Carlos Gomez tracked down a shallow fly in foul territory in the top of the sixth inning today, and made a fantastic sliding catch. But that is no excuse at all for what happened next: Gomez gave a visible indication that he was enjoying himself, instead of solemnly trotting to th...

The Capitals Rained Fire On The Lightning<em></em>
It was a dream start for the Washington Capitals tonight—or for any team on the road in a Game 7. Just a minute into the deciding match-up of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Lightning, the Caps’ all-time best player dramatically announced his importance. On a cross-ice pass from Tom Wilson...

Braydon Coburn Made The Mistake Of Trying To Fight Tom Wilson<em></em>
A small scrap in the first period of the Capitals-Lightning Game 7 sent Tampa’s Braydon Coburn and Washington’s Tom Wilson to the box for two minutes each. When that time was up, Wilson wanted to escalate the violence, and Coburn foolishly decided to try and stand his ground in an old-fashioned hoc...

The Capitals Were Finally Flawless
It wasn’t Andrei Vasilevsky’s fault, but it’s hard to beat perfection. The Tampa Bay Lightning goaltender stopped 31 of 33 Capitals shots tonight in Washington’s 3-0 win over the Bolts in Game 6. Several of those saves were spectacular—though unsurprising for anyone who had seen Vasilevsky’s previou...

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...

The Lightning Power Play Is A Thing To Behold
The numbers are intimidating. The Tampa Bay Lightning had the league’s third best power play during the regular season, at 23.9 percent. They have the best power play of any team left alive, at 30.8 percent. They are 6-of-14 on the power play against the Capitals. They have scored a power-play goal ...

The Lightning Scored Three Beautiful Goals And The Capitals Only Scored Two
It might seem a bit tedious to go through all the goals in the Lightning’s 4-2 Game 4 win over the Capitals on Thursday night, which evened the Eastern Conference Finals at two games apiece. But bear with me—in the tensest game of the series so far, every scoring play (minus the empty netter with tw...

It Was Never Going To Be Easy For The Capitals
The Washington Capitals came crashing back down to earth tonight in a 4-2 loss to the Lightning in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals, shrinking the series lead of these briefly unbeatable-looking Caps down to 2-1....

Adeiny Hechavarria Turned Elastic To Dodge An Easy Tag<em></em>
Rays shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria, fully recovered from his freak injury last week, blasted straight through his third-base coach’s stop sign while attempting to score a go-ahead run against the Royals, but redeemed himself with an elastic slide that eluded a cannon throw from Jorge Soler and a tag ...

The Capitals Look Unbeatable And I Don't Know What's Happening
I’m sorry, what? The Caps spanked the Lightning last night. That’s two consecutive spankings! What is going on here? It would be a little too psychologically neat to posit that all the Ovechkin-era Capitals ever needed was to be underdogs, finally without pressure. Or that once they were finally abl...

Adeiny Hechavarria Leaves Game After Being Hit In The Face By Ball That Ricocheted Off A Speaker, And Then The Ground<em></em>
Adeiny Hechavarria left tonight’s game against the Braves in the top of the eighth inning when a Ronald Acuña Jr. pop foul struck a speaker suspended from the stadium roof, ricocheted back into the field of play, then bounced off the turf and struck the Rays shortstop square in the face as he attemp...

It Has Come To This: Coach Orders Brad Marchand To Stop Licking Opponents
A request from the league didn’t do the trick. A sternly worded letter has been sent; an NHL bigwig also delivered the message to the player and his team’s manager. Now we are here: Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy ordering his player to stop licking the faces of his opponents before the start of today’s ...

Holy Shit, Joel Embiid Dunked Aron Baynes Off The Face Of The Earth
Aron Baynes has to retire now, those are the rules....

Blame Bayern Munich, And All The Rest Of Them
If, after watching Bayern Munich’s appalling display of simultaneous superiority and ineptitude that granted the evil white empire of Real Madrid entry to the Champions League final, you found it a little difficult to maintain the furious, righteous anger in your belly once you saw the agonizing, te...

Historically Horrendous Boner By Bayern Munich's Keeper Gifts Real Madrid A Goal
If ever there were any doubt that Real Madrid are the luckiest team in the history of the world, this staggering gaffe by Bayern Munich’s Sven Ulreich that set up Karim Benzema for the easiest goal he’ll ever score in his life should remove all doubt:...

Soulless Avatars Of Late Capitalism Set Up Nicely To Acquire Another European Cup
European Soccer Market (ESM) analysts the world over are still abuzz about the big step Real Madrid (ESM:RMD) took on their path to consolidating their ownership of the European Cup for the third consecutive year....

After Six Years And Three Surgeries, Jonny Venters Is Back In The Big Leagues
For a couple of years now, Jonny Venters’s Baseball-Reference page has read as a confusingly short story. You see the reliever receiving a handful of Rookie of the Year votes after his debut in 2010, and then being named an All-Star in 2011. But following that initial burst of success, his 2012 sea...

Report: Aaron Rodgers Is "Frustrated" With Packers For Icing Him Out Of Personnel Decisions
Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is “frustrated” because the team’s front office didn’t consult him about a couple of personnel decisions this offseason, according to a report from Yahoo’s Charles Robinson. Quarterbacks coach Alex Van Pelt walked after last season because he believed he had a bett...

Elgin Baylor Is Finally Ready To Tell People He Was Great
Elgin Baylor’s gotta be the most underappreciated superstar of all time, in basketball or any major sport. The guy was NCAA Final Four MVP and NBA Rookie of the Year. He was First-Team All-NBA 10 times and an NBA All-Star 11 times. Baylor led his team, the Minneapolis/Los Angeles Lakers, in the trif...