bpl Page 1 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Tuesday night should’ve been only celebratory for this Texas Rangers fan. It wasn’t
Last night should’ve been pure, unadulterated joy. I haven’t been shy when it comes to the Texas Rangers and writing about my favorite baseball team. It swept the 101-win Orioles and advanced to the American League Championship Series for the first time in a dozen years. I was a sophomore in college...

Tampa Bay Rays fans have plenty of reasons to take a WFH day — even during the playoffs
Call it an all-around epic fail. ...

I can’t with this Juan Soto swing
If you spend too much time arguing about the macro, you miss out on the micro. And it is in the micro that the real enjoyment can be found in any sport. Whether it’s a silky drive to the hoop and layup, a cross-seam pass to set up a one-timer, a perfectly-timed tackle, the sort of things top-tier at...

TBS sets new standard for cringiest promo of all time during Game 1 of the ALDS
One of the less glamorous parts of being a professional play-by-play commentator is being handed a cringy script and being told to act enthusiastic about a show you don’t watch or a product you don’t use just so you can appeal to your boss and finally get back to calling the game. It’s such a forced...

For its next trick, the Mariners will juggle orcas while unicycling over a volcano
It takes a lot for the sporting public to notice a Saturday highlight other than a football one in early October. It has to be especially good on a weekend when Alabama staves off an upset, but my god what the Seattle Mariners are doing is beyond good. ...

Week 4 NFL Takeaways: Start spreading the news!
Look at the state of New York through the first four games of the season....

Screw the celebrity boxing nonsense, let’s get Canelo Alvarez and Jermall Charlo in the ring ASAP
The biggest attraction in legitimate boxing, Canelo Alvarez, could be announcing his next major championship fight soon. The bout that seemed like a pipedream just a few short months ago, pitting Canelo against Jermall Charlo, now has the chance of coming to fruition by May. According to ESPN’s Mike...

Kamaru Usman needs to ignore Dana White’s advice about Canelo Álvarez, especially if he’s not going to pay the champ more money
The week of UFC 268, ESPN’s Max Kellerman interviewed UFC Welterweight champion Kamaru Usman to preview his then-upcoming championship defense against Colby Covington — whom he beat for the second time on Saturday — but then Kellerman asked Usman what was next after UFC 268. Kellerman made logical s...

Canelo-GGG III needs to be the next big fight on deck, but is it the best option for Álvarez?
Canelo Álvarez not only fulfilled his promise of becoming the first undisputed 168-pound super middleweight champion in boxing Saturday night, but Canelo also inflicted the pain and damage on Caleb Plant he promised before the fight....

Did we learn anything from Friday night’s TV wrestling war?
While it’s been fun to project the battle between AEW and WWE as a TV war, the reality has been that they’ve really been separate. Sure, AEW has vacuumed up a lot of talent that WWE left out in the alley when it was perfectly serviceable or better (is this just a Chicago thing? Every one of us had a...

Deadspin Fixes: the MLB playoff format
I noticed Dodgers fans were already bitching to protect themselves even before first pitch about the unfairness of the playoff system that saw their team win 106 games yet faced with the indignity of having to play in the Wild-Card Game. Followed nicely with Yankees fans complaining last night, beca...

That dumb MLB moon ad was just about crypto
Nothing could possibly be more fitting than Major League Baseball being sponsored by currently-plummeting cryptocurrencies. FTX is now the “Official Cryptocurrency Exchange brand of MLB,” according to a release, because apparently MLB thinks they’re cool and hip and “with it.” ...

This is where the Dodgers get to be the Dodgers
It’s rare when a team is favored to win a series when down 2-1. But then teams that are down 2-1 aren’t usually the Dodgers. Hell, the Dodgers might have still been favored before Game 3. After putting up 15 runs in the span of six outs over two games (four in the 9th of Game 2, 11 in the 1st of Gam...

MLB Playoffs gets signature moment in 'Bellinger-robs-Tatis' — the problem is sport doesn't have enough of them
You knew it as soon as you saw it. It’ll be a play that MLB will try and dine out on for years to come. ...

Division Series playoff preview: Where the hell are we?
Baseball has gotten back to the playoff rounds we remember, sort of. The wild card round, which everyone thought was going to produce some real chaos and be totally unfair, only threw up one true upset: the Marlins beating the Cubs, because the Cubs can’t hit fastballs, which seems like it’s on the ...

The Heat is off in NBA Finals; Time is a flat circle in WNBA Finals; Central teams all spit bit in MLB playoffs
The Lakers and Heat did indeed play a basketball game...

MLB’s day of 'madness' an excellent showcase of 2020 baseball* (*not necessarily a compliment)
When the powers that be dreamed up this expanded playoff system/money hunt for baseball’s season-in-a-can, this was the day they were probably thinking of most. The full March Madness treatment in September, with playoff games from noon until past midnight with no break (hell, even the NCAA Tourname...

It’s time to ban the A’s and Twins from MLB playoffs
Major League Baseball began it’s playoff key party yesterday, with all the American League wild-card series kicking off. And while this season has been weird/a farce/an abomination to the sport and really all logic (if you lean that way), there was something exciting about having a day full of baseb...

Padres’ Clevinger could be lost for the postseason, and that sucks
Because it’s 2020, the most fun team in baseball just has to take a gut-punch to its title hopes....

Expanded Playoffs Suck, But Here’s a Way to Fix It
Rob Manfred says this season’s expanded baseball playoffs are likely to remain in place for 2021 and beyond, and everybody hates it....