players Page 27 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Integrity is a funny word
The first rule for any professional sports athlete is that you can’t bet on the games. Technically it’s called Rule 21 and you can find it hanging in every Big League clubhouse. Pete Rose would walk past it every day for decades as a player and manager, paying it no mind, so his lifetime ban is the ...

Shades of 1994
As the MLB lockout turned from days to weeks to months with negative progress on the new CBA, it’s become abundantly clear that we’re not going to get the start to the MLB season anytime soon....

Joey Gallo: Will strike out for food
The Major League Baseball lockout isn’t ending anytime soon. There was some hope that the Jupiter meetings could lead to a new CBA, but those meetings proved as useless as Pat Light against anyone not named Mike Trout. Now, with Opening Day canceled along with the first two series of the season, som...

Hear me out: Derek Jeter for MLB Commissioner
We’re going to be without big league baseball for the foreseeable future, launching a sport that’s already been on the decline into what feels like its death throes....

We've been Robbed!
Rob “Piece of Metal” Manfred came out into the Florida sun, made an announcement that everyone knew was coming about the cancellation of Opening Day, as well as the first two series of the season, and then proceeded to tell some lies, which everyone should have known was coming....

What if Serena Williams did what Alexander Zverev did?
Before this week, for most sports fans, German tennis player Alexander Zverev’s name didn’t ring a bell. Others likely remember the domestic abuse allegations levied against him before the 2021 U.S. Open. But now, everyone should be aware as a recent video showed him cursing out an umpire and smashi...

Tennis menace Alexander Zverev whacks umpire with racket
When in doubt, blame the officials. It’s a common behavior in sports. When in doubt, smash a tennis racket against an umpire’s chair, nearly striking him, which could’ve caused major harm? Deeply disturbing and pitiful. And that’s exactly what German tennis player Alexander Zverev did Tuesday....

If the talks are productive, why are we back to square one?
The latest episode of the soap opera that is the MLB lockout featured a five-hour meeting between the players and owners to discuss a collective bargaining agreement for the upcoming season. The two parties have been at each other’s throats since the lockout began on December 2 of last year....

USWNT settlement was 30 years in the making
The U.S. Women’s National Team has spent its entire existence not just battling opponents from abroad, but its own soccer federation. After a nearly three-year-long legal battle, U.S. Soccer settled in court with the U.S. women’s soccer team. The settlement, which was agreed to six years after five ...

Angels exec found guilty of causing pitcher Tyler Skaggs’ death
Nearly three years after Los Angeles Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs was found dead in his Dallas hotel room on July 1, 2019, a jury found former team executive Eric Kay guilty of distributing fentanyl-laced narcotics and causing the death of the 27-year-old. ...

The trial of the man accused of causing Tyler Skaggs’ death is flying under the radar
Three years ago, Tyler Skaggs’ death rocked Major League Baseball. Yet, the trial of Eric Kay, the Los Angeles Angels’ ex-Communications Director who allegedly sold Skaggs the opioid he OD’d on, has taken place on the fringes of the sports media sphere. Kay is facing felony charges of distributing o...

Deion Sanders can’t make up his mind about how long he’ll be at Jackson State
No one has mastered the art of talking without saying anything like coaches. It’s called “coach speak.” Deion Sanders, however, is his own man. Instead of saying as little as possible, he always seems to find a way to say too much — even when it contradicts things he’s said in the past....

Rob Manfred claims he wants to help young players, then threatens to eliminate hundreds of MiLB jobs
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred claimed that while MLB and the MLBPA were far removed from an agreement on several key topics, one topic everyone supposedly agreed on was that minor leaguers were not paid well enough. ...

Novak Djokovic is still a selfish jackass
You would think that after watching Rafael Nadal become the first player to reach 21 grand slam wins, Novak Djokovic would have gained some sort of perspective, knowing that he himself had cost himself the chance to be the first one to do it, which he’ll never have again. That maybe, just maybe, he ...

A youth baseball coach accidentally ripped apart Mike Trout’s swing
Over the weekend, former Chicago White Sox hitting strategist Matt Lisle tweeted out a video of his “friends’ son” taking BP. ...

MLB owners are truly desperate for the strangest things
We would hardly be the first to point out that if the MLB owners had spent as much time talking to the MLB Players Association as they have trying to swing the PR war, the regular season just might start on time (we’re only about two or three weeks from Opening Day being delayed, and there is more h...

ESPN needs to put more respect on Albert Pujols’ name
This past Tuesday, ESPN started their MLB top-100 all-time list by revealing numbers 100-51. While there were some questionable choices to make the list (i.e.: Bryce Harper, but that might just be my bias showing up), the list was generally viewed fairly well. Nobody was too upset with where everyon...

Tennis is having the goldenest of all Golden Ages
It’s strange how normalized greatness is during something’s golden age. If you look at music for example, hip-hop peaked in the ’90s for a lot of people like classic rock did in the ’60s and ’70s. However, even when 2Pac and Biggie were at the apex, rappers like Nas and Jay-Z weren’t in the picture ...

Shohei Ohtani is on the cover of MLB the Show 22, much to the chagrin of Stephen A. Smith
When you talk about an audience gravitating to the tube, or to the ballpark, to actually watch you, I don’t think it helps that the number one face is a dude that needs an interpreter so you can understand what the hell he’s saying....

IDIOT OF THE MONTH: The usual suspects are back at it
Welcome to Deadspin’s IDIOT OF THE MONTH, the most electrifying ceremony in sports media. Following up on the hotly contested 2021 IDIOT OF THE YEAR awards, we have for you today, well, many of the same ninnies and twits who appeared on that vaunted list. The calendar year, it turns out, is not some...