league Page 196 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Brandon Crawford deserves more love than he’s been getting
When the 2021 MLB All-Star Game polls opened on June 3, I filled out five ballots. I’ve voted at least once every day since. And every time, I voted for pretty much the same team with a few minor adjustments. ...

Cubs’ City Connect jerseys advertise a neighborhood they killed
Spend enough time raging against the dying of the light and all you end up with is a sore throat and in the dark. Some things just can’t be prevented, no matter how hard you try and how right you are. The minute you learn that fact is probably the exact minute your childhood dies. ...

Euro 2021: Memphis Depay gets to try again
To make it to the very top levels of any sport as an athlete, it must take an unfathomable reservoir of self-belief. With all the obstacles, the sheer amount of work, and all the days where the dream must seem as close as one of Saturn’s moons, one would have to be able to call on a never-ending sup...

All the Ryan Tannehill slander is getting tired
Adam Gase had a winning record with Ryan Tannehill as his starting quarterback in Miami. Let that sink in for a second. ...

Things aren’t looking so hot in Green Bay
Have you ever seen “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly?” No, seriously. The 1966 Western starring Clint Eastwood is a classic, featuring horses and gunfights and bravado and all that toxic Hollywood macho “this is what a man is” stuff. The movie reaches a boiling point in a three-way standoff between E...

Ryan Fitzpatrick has been doing this football thing for a minute
With the 250th pick in the seventh round of the 2005 NFL draft, the St. Louis Rams (’memba them?) selected a quarterback out of Harvard — not exactly a football powerhouse. His name was Ryan Fitzpatrick, and of the 13 quarterbacks taken before him, only one (Aaron Rodgers) still plays in the league....

Do those MVP trophies come with a receipt?
No individual award in American sports generates more debate than the NBA MVP. No one cares about hockey, and half the awards are given to players where the voters don’t really understand why they’re voting for them. Baseball awards are too mired in the debate between how we view the game today and ...

Euro 2021: For the last time, is this Belgium’s time?
For European teams, the lack of opportunities to actually win a trophy can muddy the results they do get. There’s only a trophy on offer every two years (when there isn’t a pandemic), and perhaps Spain at the beginning of the last decade altered our perception of what’s success and what isn’t....

This hat has LOSER written all over it
Even apparel makers think the Detroit Lions are losers....

U.S. beats Mexico in some combination of soccer, whirlyball, and Fury Road
The CONCACAF Nations League isn’t really supposed to be anything. It’s something of a cheap mockery of Europe’s Nations League, which was really only conjured to get rid of meaningless friendlies in years between major competitions. So, even that’s not really a thing. The CONCACAF version is basical...

If Tannehill can make two reads, the Julio Jones Titans should be Super Bowl favorites
As everyone knows by now, Julio Jones is going to be a Tennessee Titan. ...

Euro 2021: Can Italy score enough to make some serious noise?
While the teeth-gnashing on these shores during the last World Cup were enough to drown out the laments of everyone else in the world, you may have forgotten that a true giant of the international game wasn’t in Russia either. That would be Italy, the first time they didn’t partake in the tournament...

The Hurricanes apparently can’t escape their nature
Weeks ago, I went against my instincts, and what years of facts had told me, to buy in with the Carolina Hurricanes. What I couldn’t have predicted was that they would be so desperate to return to their nature, like some leaden blanky....

So, Mariners' phenom Jarred Kelenic is having some trouble adjusting
About a month ago, the Jarred Kelenic era officially began in Seattle. In his second game in the big leagues, Kelenic went 3-for-4 with three extra-base hits including a dinger, and the baseball world — including myself — went wild...like Bear Grylls wild. However, perhaps declaring Kelenic the next...

Hockey writers and Auston Matthews are still jerks
Oops, they did it again....

16-year-old Taya Currie is first girl drafted in OHL history
Eventually, there’s an important question that needs to be answered, but for now, this is simply really cool....

Habs go up 2-0 on Jets as Scheifele whines about his suspension for dirty hit
The Canadiens sure did learn their lesson from Game 1 against the Jets: don’t try to score an empty-net goal, because that apparently is justification for trying to remove someone’s head from his body....

Eat it, Javy Baez! Here’s a Cinderella-saving squeeze-play, a ‘caught stealing/unassisted/by catcher,’ a dinger hitting a moving freight train & a buzzer beater
No unseeded team had ever won its first two games at the Women’s College World Series, so James Madison’s second straight triumph in Oklahoma City was historic in its own right on Friday night....

Meet MLB’s All-'Never-been an All-Star' Team
Nowadays, it seems like every baseball player under the sun has been an All-Star at some point in their careers. In 2019, there were four AL second basemen selected for the Midsummer Classic. FOUR! In total, there were 75 players awarded All-Star recognition in 2019. In 2018, 73 players were named A...

Date goes great for Avs fan, could open NHL's eyes to what actual inclusivity looks like
Sometimes sports are cute, and the last two days have been pretty freaking cute in one corner of the sports world. Much like a tweet to the Arizona Diamondbacks last month about a date taking place at their game, it started with a simple tweet to the Colorado Avalanche account on Tuesday....