ick Page 253 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Roger Angell knew baseball was about people, not stats
Roger Angell loved baseball in its purest form. Throughout over half a century of covering the sport for ‘The New Yorker’, Angell saw the game dip, duck, dive, and dodge its way through rule changes, scandals, and fundamental changes, yet his love for America’s pastime never faded....

Hey, Nick and Jimbo, the NCAA is on line one
Now that the tornado of dust whipped up by that Jimbo Fisher press conference has somewhat settled (don’t worry, there’s still plenty of other kinds of dust still floating around), the reality of what just happened is setting in. As thrilling as it was to watch adult men worth millions get up in fro...

Yankees minor leaguer cut for running alleged memorabilia scam
Can you imagine signing a $597,000 contract to play in the New York Yankees minor league system right out of college, only to ruin it all by scamming fans and stealing bats, gloves and equipment? Jake Sanford, the Yankees third-round pick in 2019, was cut by the club on May 12 for multiple infractio...

Nebraska high school QB could usher in next evolution at the position
Football has seen many evolutions in its time, and a kid in Nebraska may be introducing the next one to the game. Mikey Gow (class of 2025), Bellevue East QB in Bellevue, NE, started on varsity as a 14-year-old freshman last season and can throw the ball with either arm. Yep, that’s right. Gow could...

For a little bit we were complimenting or condemning Derrick White, then it was just time to celebrate Rihanna’s baby
For a second there, Derrick White’s child was going to be the most interesting and discussed birth in the world. The Boston Celtics tweeted out shortly before 10 a.m. that Derrick White would be missing Game 2 due to personal reasons. That’s quite a blow to their roster the morning of Game 2 of the ...

Jimbo Fisher declares war on Nick Saban in press conference for the ages
You know what? Maybe everyone getting along wasn’t so great after all. When you think about it, there haven’t been any real true, deep-down, openly public, hate-filled coaching rivalries in college for awhile. Jimbo Fisher blew all of that up today in about 11 minutes, between 10:04 and 10:15 a.m. c...

Baseball is less fun when NO ONE MOVES THEIR BACK ROW
Sporting leagues should enact a per game minimum of fun-yet-stupid plays attempts. For the NBA, each squad should be required to take at least 15 30-foot plus jumpers. There should be at least two trick plays per team in NFL games. I don’t know what it is for soccer or hockey. Maybe it’s something a...

An incomplete list of people we’d like to see at the 2023 Tom Brady Netflix roast
Tom Brady’s love affair with the spotlight will take yet another form come 2023 — Netflix announced yesterday that the recently unretired QB will be the executive producer and first subject of a new series, Greatest Roasts of All Time....

Who would win? Pitchers or position players?
Baseball is wacky nowadays. Just a few nights ago we watched Tampa Bay outfielder Brett Phillips pitch to reigning AL MVP Shohei Ohtani. The very next day, Ohtani was on the mound pitching to Phillips. When was the last time something like that happened? We’ve got a universal DH now. This stuff shou...

Put Aaron Judge in center field, you cowards!
This is going to sound like a conspiracy theory, but hear me out. If you only put your best players in your lineup, you tend to do well. I know, right! Insane! Call me crazy, but so too did they call Galileo crazy when he said the Earth wasn’t the center of the universe, and look where we are now. B...

Thunder, Magic luck out in a top-heavy NBA draft
After three years of embarrassing tanking, GM Sam Presti and the Oklahoma City Thunder have returned to relevance. They came into the NBA Lottery with the sixth-best odds at the top pick in the 2022 NBA Draft and ended up with the second pick in the draft. The Orlando Magic won the first pick and wi...

Timberwolves huffing fumes of playoff berth instead of coasting off them
The Minnesota Timberwolves were eliminated from the playoffs on April 29, and with that 114-106 loss to Memphis, we thought all aspects of the T-Wolves franchise would be gone until next season. For those of us who enjoy Anthony Edwards putting guys on posters and stupid fouls from Karl Anthony-Town...

Tale of the tape: Battle of Alberta vs. Battle of Florida
The second round of the playoffs worked, in part, the way that the NHL dreamed up when it went to this postseason format of divisional brackets. You can question the wisdom of it happening in the second round, but we’re getting the Battle of Alberta and the Battle of Florida now....

Is there something wrong with Dallas that we don’t know about?
I think it’s fair to say that Dallas isn’t going to get the press that Boston has been getting since about a month into its second-half turnaround. Jayson Tatum has been unbelievable, which is new for him because he’s lacked the consistency that’s demanded of great players. What Luka Dončić is doing...

The Saudis are having trouble finding golfers to give garbage bags of cash to
Despite Phil Mickelson sticking his foot so far down his throat it almost came out the other end, LIV (read: Saudi-backed league) golf continues to press forward with their plan of an eight-event series that begins this June in London and includes five tournaments in America. The only problem? Micke...

It’s time for the yearly symposium on whether this is finally it for the Penguins
This is yet another distasteful side effect of the NHL’s salary cap. Fans and observers of a certain team, especially a successful one, have to start judging just how much sand is left in the hourglass. They have to weigh the age of the best players, salaries of those players, when contracts run out...

We're seeing an NBA coaching reformation
If the success of Boston’s Ime Udoka and New Orleans’ Willie Green has taught NBA ownership anything, when it comes to hiring coaches, it should be out with the old, in with the new. These two rising coaching stars stepped into dysfunctional messes, with Udoka trying to bring together a team that wa...

Those Game 7s were a dud, but that doesn’t dilute the outstanding performances from the second round that deserve recognition
That was quite an exhilarating second round of NBA Playoff action… until it wasn’t. ...

The sky’s the limit for Ja Morant
There are one or two players who make the leap toward legitimate superstar status every playoffs. This year it was Jason Tatum and Ja Morant. To those who have been watching, Luka Dončić was finally given the opportunity to show what he could do in the second round, which is much of the same domina...
