players Page 53 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Jose Ramirez Utterly Baffled By Utility Man Brandon Dixon's 10th Straight Curveball
This is wonderful. Reds utility man Brandon Dixon made his first career pitching appearance Monday night, in the ninth inning of an eventual 10-3 loss to the Indians. His pitching line was great: Dixon threw 10 total pitches; no one of them was harder than 74 miles per hour; the slowest came in unde...
Outfielder Carlos Gomez Takes Mound, Pitches Exactly Like Non-Pitcher
The position-player-as-pitcher trend continues piling up numbers at a record pace. Three more position players took the mound Friday night; the total across MLB is now up to 45, by far the most ever for a full season, and it’s still July. One of the recent unfortunate fellows was Rays outfielder Ca...
Too Many Position Players Are Pitching Now
41 position players have pitched in a big-league game this season. By my count, 28 different position players have taken the mound since the start of June. This is too many! A good thing is being spoiled, here....
Wednesday Night Blowouts Produce A Bonanza Of Position Players Taking The Mound
These are truly the dog days of summer. Baseball has slipped into that surreal midseason phase where absolutely nothing seems to matter at any given moment, and the reason to watch is to doze off to the hypnotic lull of half innings breezing by uneventfully. We have hit the part of the year where ev...
D-Backs Catcher Jeff Mathis Pitches, Serves Up A Juicy Homer, Loses
With a depleted bullpen in Sunday’s 16-inning showdown against the Padres, the Diamondbacks turned to backup catcher Jeff Mathis to pitch in a tie game. Seeing a position player pitch is always fun—hey, they’re not supposed to do that!—but it’s not often that they actually determine the outcome of t...
NBA Union Chief Is Tired Of Everyone Complaining About The Cap Spike
The head of the NBA Players Association, Michele Roberts, has read and heard the resurgence of opinions that blame the current state of the NBA—one in which the Warriors are an invincible superteam, DeMarcus Cousins can be had for the mid-level exception, and solid free agents can’t get reasonable o...
Coach: 25-Year-Old Who Posed As High Schooler To Play Basketball Was “Average Player”
High school was a fun time for many people. But would you actually want to go back and relive it? Maybe, if you could star on a school’s basketball team!...
Brooks Koepka Drops In A Ridiculous 208-Yard Albatross
Brooks Koepka shot a course-record-tying 63 today in the final round of The Players, which was good enough to bring him into the top five of the leaderboard. Lots of good stuff in a 63, but the true highlight of his day was an amazing 208-yard approach shot on the par-5 16th hole. Check this shit ou...
This Is How To Pay College Athletes<em></em>
For all that the ongoing FBI investigation into college basketball’s underground economy has and could yet reveal, nothing is more obvious and undeniable than this: The on-stage performers in a multimillion-dollar entertainment industry do, in fact, have value beyond athletic scholarships and small ...
The 1987 NFL Players Strike Created The Modern NFL
The darkest day in NFL history began with several Philadelphia Eagles players arriving at Veterans Stadium at midnight, some 13 hours before the scheduled kickoff of a game against the Chicago Bears. They weren’t there to play; they were there precisely not to play. More specifically, they were ther...
What The Hell Is The Hopewell Fund?
The NFL PR playbook is so obvious at this point that it’s shocking the league’s executives are still impressed by the idea: When people get upset, throw money at the problem. ...
Eric Reid: NFL's Social Justice Donation "A Charade," With Plan To Shift Money From League's Other Charitable Causes
Eric Reid confirmed that the NFL’s $89 million commitment to social justice causes isn’t as directly positive a move as it might seem—telling Slate on Thursday that the league presented players with a plan to make the donation by diverting money from other charitable ventures, like breast cancer awa...
The NFL's Proposal To End Anthem Protests Gives The League All The Power
The Players Coalition, the group of about 40 NFL players who have been negotiating with the league on its response to social justice issues raised by the anthem protests, is falling apart. Several prominent members of the coalition backed out yesterday, and the NFL has taken a PR offensive by leakin...
Steph Curry: Talking About "Supporting Our Troops" Isn't Enough
This afternoon The Players’ Tribune published a long, thoughtful post from Steph Curry, about Veterans Day, and the responsibility of people with prominent public platforms and voices to advocate on behalf of marginalized groups. It’s good! You should read the whole thing, in fact....
Here Are Some Young NBA Players Who Are Butt
Many of the NBA youths are fun and good. Kristaps Porzingis, Ben Simmons, et cetera. Good youths. But in addition to the fun and good ones, there are also some youths who are sorry butt scrubs. Here is a list of some of that latter group....
Brian Bowen Is A Bargain At $100,000<em></em>
Rick Pitino couldn’t believe his good fortune. For months, high school basketball star Brian Bowen had been pursued by the sorts of programs that would ordinarily pursue such a talent—Texas, Arizona, Michigan State. Then, in early June, the lanky, 6-foot-7 small forward suddenly and unexpectedly com...
Jim Boeheim Has Plenty Of Half-Thoughts On Why Colleges Players Shouldn't Get Paid
Jim Boeheim spoke with the press on Friday, per Syracuse.com, touching on Syracuse’s upcoming attempt to bounce back from a 19-15 NIT campaign, UNC’s last-minute dodging of NCAA penalties, and the fact that, actually, jersey sales aren’t really that high, so college athletes should probably be happy...
These Are My Favorite MLB Jersey Nicknames
August 25-27 will officially be known as “Players Weekend” in MLB, but let’s be real—no one will ever think of it as anything besides Nickname Weekend....
Catcher Carlos Ruiz Pitched And Struck Someone Out
Carlos Ruiz had played 1,109 games in his career before Tuesday. The longtime Phillies catcher, now with the Seattle Mariners, had only played two other positions: An inning at third base during extra-inning games with the Phils in 2008 and 2011, and an inning at first earlier this season. Last nigh...
Let Us All Marvel At Andrés<em></em> Blanco’s 70 MPH Fastballs
The Phillies, already the worst team in baseball so far this year, trailed 12-0 in the bottom of the eighth last night. So why not bring in an infielder to pitch? Utility man Andrés Blanco toed the rubber for the first time in the majors....