layoffs Page 131 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Royals Defeat A's, Ned Yost In Epic Play-In Game
Sacrifice bunts are rarely the correct call in baseball, so of course Ned Yost's Kansas City Royals laid down four of them in Tuesday night's wild card play-in game against the Oakland A's. Despite Jon Lester displaying uncharacteristic shakiness and the Royals' offense performing uncharacterist...

MLB.com Runs "Royals Lose" Game Story
Live on MLB.com in the minutes immediately following the Royals' incredible extra-inning win was a version of the game story written in the ninth inning. In this version, which you can read below, the A's hung on to win and advance. ...

Chart: How Sabermetric MLB Forecasts Stacked Up Against Vegas
From Skidmore College statistics professor Michael Lopez comes the handy chart you see above, plotting the 2014 win totals of all 30 MLB teams against preseason predictions from Vegas and what Lopez calls his "Statsheads Prediction."...

TBS Baseball Crew Recreates "Boom Goes The Dynamite" Highlight Reel
To help ring in the playoffs, TBS had the crew from its studio baseball show do a new version of the famous "Boom Goes The Dynamite" highlight disaster. It's a pretty well-struck parody....

Jon Lester Vs. James Shields Is An Argument For The Second Wild Card
There are plenty of reasons to dislike the presence of MLB's second wild card teams, but tonight's matchup is not one of them. That's because we will get to watch two great pitchers—James Shields of the Kansas City Royals and Jon Lester of the Oakland A's—start the precise game that they were acquir...

Important WSJ Study: The Cardinals Are The Most Hateable Playoff Team
According to science, the Cardinals are the most hateable team in in the MLB playoffs. ...
![This Cardinals Fan's Playoff Music Video Makes Me Want To Fight Things [UPDATE]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/Image_Not_Found_1x_qjofp8.png)
This Cardinals Fan's Playoff Music Video Makes Me Want To Fight Things [UPDATE]
We know what time it is. The St. Louis Cardinals clinched a playoff berth, which means that St. Louis Cardinal fans—the worst, wackest, whitest fanbase in all of sports—are going to hit us with an indescribably corny music video....

The Royals' First-Ever Online Playoff Ticket Sale Didn't Go So Well
If you think you bought Royals playoff tickets today in anticipation of K.C.'s likely berth, you should probably check again. This sounds ominous:...

Adam Jones Pies Fans While Celebrating AL East Title
The Baltimore Orioles clinched the AL East last night, which is great news, because the Orioles are not the Red Sox or the Yankees. It is also great news because it gave Orioles all-star outfielder Adam Jones a chance to celebrate his team's division title by mashing pies into the faces of Orioles...

Rick Neuheisel Shreds His Way Through A "Stairway To Heaven" Cover
College football TV analyst Rick Neuheisel was on The Dan Patrick Show today, and he closed out his appearance with a special rendition of "Stairway to Heaven," called "Stairway to Playoffs." Neuheisel doesn't even need that TV job with his guitar skills....

The 2014 Heat Were Worse In The Finals Than LeBron's 2007 Cavs Team
At some point around the time Dwyane Wade was impaled, for the second time, on a doddering walkabout turnover in the paint, the wider basketball-viewing world realized that Dwyane Wade has been dead all this time, and was only now being told. But Wade was far from the only Heat carcass to wash up th...

The Spurs Were The Most Dominant NBA Finals Team Ever
With a 104-87 blowout in Game 5 last night, the Spurs became the most dominant NBA finals winners ever. ...

Tim Duncan And His Kids Were Adorable
Tim Duncan brought his ridiculously cute children to his postgame press conference, and they both gave ridiculously cute answers to a question about their dad....

Manu Ginobili Got The Brilliant Finale He Needed
So many of the San Antonio Spurs played perfect games last night that it's impossible to pick out a single performance as the one that sealed the franchise's fifth championship. You could point to Patty Mills raining threes, Kawhi Leonard's stunning two-way dominance, or even Tim Duncan's steady han...

The Kings Celebrate Stanley Cup Win Next To Devastated Henrik Lundqvist
The immediate aftermath of Alec Martinez's game-winning, double-overtime goal for the Stanley Cup on Friday night was a flash. Net, referee signals goal, and a Los Angeles mob around Martinez. It was great fun for the Kings, and absolute misery for the Rangers. Just look at all of these pictures of ...

Lego Kings And Rangers, Getting Wrecked In A Blender
This video, from the "Will it Blend?" folks, purports to predict a winner of Kings-Rangers by seeing whose Lego knockoff Lego players survive. On a more primal level, enjoy it as super-high-speed camera footage of little Lego men (and a little Lego zamboni!) getting destroyed in a blender. [via Puck...

Does It Make A Difference If NBA Players Miss Their First Shot?
During the playoffs, broadcasters love to pull out fact-like objects based on incredibly small samples. Before Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals, for example, announcers pointed out that, in the playoffs, Roy Hibbert had shot significantly better after making his first field-goal attempt. The ...

The Rangers' Unsung Heroes Are UFAs. Will NHL GMs Take Notice?
The Rangers are still alive. But they sure as hell wouldn't have gotten to Game 5, let alone the finals, if not for two quiet contributors who, if there's any justice or sense in this world, will cash in this summer....

Boris Diaw's Behind-The-Back Pass Was Just Incredible
We've already sung the praises of Boris Diaw and his intoxicating fat-guy game, but after the performance he put on during last night's beat down of the Heat, it's worth heaping a little more praise on the thick Frenchman....