jack Page 56 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Ted Cruz’s performative outrage over MLB is laughably disingenuous and toothless
Major League Baseball’s decision to move the All-Star Game out of (suburban) Atlanta as a response to Georgia’s racist voting law generated a response of its own from two of the Senate’s leading shitposting insurrectionists, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee: a threat to draft legislation to revoke baseball’s a...

In one Texas town, a dead Black man and a hockey team’s divisive ‘thin blue line’ jerseys
Marvin Scott III’s family wasn’t notified of his death in the Collin County Detention Agency until nearly 15 hours later, and then only by a text message from the medical examiner....

Jazz and Suns give us a sensational late-night cookie in a season lacking real drama
I’ve used this space to try and quiet any meaning to NBA regular-season games. It’s been especially acute this season, when teams have rarely been at full-strength, and they seem more intent on just being intact for the playoffs, which they know are what counts and are more likely to have at least s...

Of course the PGA won’t stand against Georgia by boycotting the Masters
And then there’s the PGA....

With Jets trading Sam Darnold, Zach Wilson should be scared to death
If there were any questions about if the Jets were all in on Zach Wilson, they got answered on Monday....

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....

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...

Headbutts and failed theatrical delays: Sunderland rallies for zany win over Oxford
Sunderland took another step in its quest to get out of England’s League One and back to the Championship on Friday, but the Black Cats’ 3-1 win over Oxford United wasn’t without controversy....

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. ...

Let Russell Westbrook’s comments be a lesson: Athletes don’t have to meet your expectations
Russell Westbrook had 35 points, 21 assists, and 14 rebounds in a 132-124 victory over the Indiana Pacers on Monday night....

AL East Preview: Baseball Royalty? Let's discuss
The American League East is full of baseball history and royalty, with the likes of the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees often reigning from on high. Last year, the Tampa Bay Rays stole that crown, winning the division in a shortened season by a commanding seven games. The Red Sox, contrastin...

NL Central Preview: Smell the glove
The teams in the NL Central seem to be going completely anarchist punk these days. In a league where everyone is trying to hit more homers and amass more power, the top of this division’s strength is going to be defense, the absence of runs and hits, the cooler. When is that the case with one baseba...

Brian Cashman was ‘heartbroken’ about Masahiro Tanaka’s experiences with racism, but such reactions insult people of color
The ability to feign disbelief can be more harmful than the act that caused the initial shock. It’s a skill that some white people are either born with or have acquired over time. It’s a classic argument of nature vs. nurture, and Brian Cashman is the latest example....

MLB and MLBPA need to pull All-Star Game out of Georgia after passing ‘Jim Crow’-era voting laws
Major League Baseball should take action....

Taylor Hall runs from the living and the dead
Taylor Hall is for sale again. It seems he’s destined for this, toiling away on an also-ran while the speculation about his next stop, and his impending free agency, consumes all the oxygen around him. He has become a drifter, the object of blame for an organization-wide failure. Is it merely coinci...

Jack Leiter nearly twirls second no-no in a row, but (rightly) pulled on pitch count
Tim Corbin is the only person in college baseball who can stop Jack Leiter right now, and on Friday night, he did....

The NFL is hell-bent on returning to normal, starting with a live draft in scenic Cleveland
We’re kinda sorta trending towards normalcy, and the NFL Draft on April 29 in Cleveland will lean into that, consequences be damned. The NFL announced today in a press release that the draft will be live, in person, with actual live people, including commissioner Roger Goodell, prospects, and fans. ...

Al Leiter’s kid Jack is a chip off the old ‘no-no’ block
The Yankees knew what they were doing when they drafted Jack Leiter in the 20th round two years ago. But they also couldn’t convince Al Leiter’s son to forego college. Pretty much everyone in college baseball outside of Vanderbilt wishes they had....