mo Page 189 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The warm glow of MLB Hot Stove’s warming glow — AL East
The GM Meetings are in the books, the Winter Meetings aren’t in the distant future, and the rumors are beginning to fly. You can be sure your favorite team is talking to agents for players! Does that mean anything? Nope, sure doesn’t! But you’ll take anything at this point, and they know that. So we...
The casual American soccer fan's guide to the best international players ahead of the World Cup
For the fair-weather soccer fan, and let’s be real, that’s 99 percent or more of American sports fans, the World Cup is the one event taking place over multiple weeks where general interest is at a high. The United States men’s national team didn’t make the world’s best 32 in 2018, and a huge chunk ...
Cristiano Ronaldo goes to Kevin Durant’s school
You’d be severely challenged to come up with a duo more up their own ass than Cristiano Ronaldo and Piers Morgan, so it was kind of perfect and perfectly puke-worthy that Ronaldo carefully chose Morgan for his tactical masterplan to get booted out of Manchester as soon as possible. It was right as t...
World Cup 2022 Preview: Group D — Can Denmark be the midnight bomber what bombs at midnight?
If you ascribe to the theory that this will be a truly goofy World Cup — that the short run-up, the injuries everywhere (not clear the amount of injured is all that abnormal but let’s go with it), the odd setting — and that some team from out of nowhere could make a run, you’re probably sizing up yo...
Can someone please explain how Josh Bell won a Silver Slugger award?
At the end of October, MLB announced their finalists for the Gold Glove awards. Every MLB fan collectively put palm to face at the sight of Juan Soto being named a finalist for the NL right field Gold Glove. Thankfully, he didn’t win the award. MLB coaches and managers dodged a huge bullet with that...
This ESPN video should put a smile on your face
We have something that just might make your day, weekend, or month, depending on how things are going in your life....
Albiceleste of Steel? World Cup 2022 Group C Preview: Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Poland
OK, I’m stretching to get a Rush reference into these. But the heart wants what it wants. ...
Grizzlies broadcasters got so mad they couldn’t even call the game, and it was wonderful
There is a charm to a local sports broadcast. Sports is about energy, and passion, and a way to draw that out of fans is with the MCs of the event....
Jacob deGrom and Bruce Bochy are a match made in heaven
The MLB hot stove is not officially underway, but it’s warming up, and arguably the biggest name on the pitching market is two-time Cy Young Award winner Jacob deGrom. Earlier this week, deGrom officially opted out of his Mets’ contract — a decision most people saw coming — and almost immediately th...
The warm glow of MLB Hot Stove’s warming glow: NL Central
It’s officially the offseason now, as we’ve gotten Scott Boras’s Fozzy Bear-in-the-college-dorm act at the GM Meetings. So let’s keep this record spinning right round and move to the NL Central, which I don’t feel personally about at all....
UNSUNG GENIUS: Dissecting Dusty Baker's bullpen brilliance for his sabermetric critics
Dusty Baker “ought to be part of the conversation around MLB’s best-ever managers,” concluded Neil Paine from FiveThirtyEight after studying the most overachieving managers, and “shouldn’t need a ring to validate his career.” Agreed. Let’s go further....
Why are the Warriors looking so shaky this year?
The Golden State Warriors are far from the only team in the NBA that’s surprisingly struggling. Hell, there are surprises all over the league. The Utah Jazz gutted their team and have the best record in the Western Conference....
Shockingly, Californians don’t want sports betting
With so much election news flying off the shelves, you might have missed this stunner out of California as voters rejected two propositions that would have brought sports betting to the state....
Gregg Berhalter is getting loose
Any coach hired by U.S. Soccer, at least for the men’s side (though Vlatko Andonovski isn’t winning many fans these days either), is never going to have 100 percent buy-in. They just haven’t gotten it totally right in… well, ever? Berhalter being related to an exec at the time of his hiring didn’t h...
Jacque Vaughn is Brooklyn’s next man up or their next sacrificial lamb
Mere hours before a nationally televised matchup against the New York Knicks, the Brooklyn Nets opted for a semblance of stability, or at least a stable shoulder to lean on, when they removed the interim tag from assistant coach Jacque Vaughn’s title....
Here's the USMNT's roster for the 2022 World Cup
Well, it’s official. Here’s the merry band of men that will head to the deserts of Qatar…unless they get hurt this weekend and have to be replaced. But let’s be positive. After eight years, we now have an actual World Cup squad to debate! Get to know them and love them before you curse their name wh...
Some day, not now, Jabari Smith Jr. will know what it’s like to have a true point guard
For as much tanking and general thirst that the top three picks of the 2022 NBA Draft garnered, they haven’t merited that attention quite yet. In Chet Holmgren’s case, it’s impossible because he’s out for the season. Paolo Banchero is going to win Rookie of the Year, and little else on an Orlando Ma...
The Lakers should’ve listened when Anthony Davis said he didn’t want to play the 5
Basketball fans always wondered why the pre-Kevin Durant Golden State Warriors didn’t start its vaunted Death Lineup but instead opted to begin games with Andrew Bogut at center. The combination of Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala, Harrison Barnes, and Draymond Green finished the 73-win se...
The warm glow of MLB Hot Stove’s warming glow: AL Central
We continue our whip around the baseball offseason by looking at the American League’s worst division, which was won by a team that wasn’t even trying to win, the AL Central....
Who will be stepping into the limelight this NBA season?
When a new wave of players becomes NBA relevant, it usually happens over time, never all at once. It’s a gradual increase in relevance, sometimes under the radar, because it’s guys who reach their potential in small markets and losing situations. When a lottery pick hits early and fast, like Paolo B...