sam Page 28 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Texas Rangers are doing what the Mets were supposed to
If the New York Mets are going to fumble the torch for those who want teams to try and spend money (or more accurately watch it simply fall from a great height and break), we must find a new bearer to keep the dream alive. Never mix your dreams with the Mets anyway. Sure path to heartbreak. The Padr...

This time for sure!
When I was growing up, it was understood that the Chicago Cubs would never have a third baseman. Or center fielder as well, but the third base gap was the more hallowed one because it followed Ron Santo. There was no universally beloved centerfielder whose legacy the team could never tread upon and ...

Stop praising Sports Illustrated’s N-word-using, criminal swimsuit cover model
There’s only one real reason to be mad about Martha Stewart gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition, and it’s not that they opted to showcase an 81-year-old woman — it’s that they went with a racist felon. I don’t find her personality redeeming, or her crime all that innocent. ...

The final Brick for Vic stock report: NBA Draft Lottery edition
Stand on your head for one night because this is when everything gets flipped upside down so the NBA bottom feeders can plant the flag on a summit. Tuesday’s NBA Draft lottery is an especially important inflection point in NBA history. There won’t be any wavering over who will be the top pick in nex...

I don't know why the Seattle Kraken were good, and because of that I’m glad they’re gone
At this time of year, when the NHL gets down to the brass tacks, it’s best to know why teams are in the conference finals and why you’d want to watch. It should be easily identifiable what these teams do and/or who they have that makes them worthy of the time of the year, and have left the proletari...

The Toronto Maple Leafs are about to do something stupid
The rest of the employees of the Springfield Power Plant gathering around the control center of Sector 7-G, with Lenny narrating for everyone the normal practice, “Get ready everyone, he’s about to do something stupid…” is what the NHL is now, gathering around The Six and wondering just what the Tor...

Sunday was yet another banner day for ESPN being morons
Perhaps ESPN spent Sunday tripping over its own dick simply to distract from all the people they’re firing. After all, make yourself look like a truly stupid and balloon-handed organization and the masses might feel that those you’ve let go are actually better off (believe me I know). That would be ...

For the Sixers, it’s never sunny in Philadelphia: 'The Process,' 10 years on
On a Tuesday afternoon in May of 2013, the Philadelphia 76ers officially entrusted their organization’s rebuild with a Stanford-educated egghead who had a bold vision for the future....

Pickleball at the mall? Sounds like a good time for all
Are you sick of the Johnny-come-lately groups at your tennis court playing a game that sounds like batting practice? Fear not, local American malls are working on getting those people into proper courts that are being built where the Home Depot-sized Old Navy was once located....

Ilkay Gündoğan joins the chorus line and cinches another title for Manchester City
A lot of the joy of sports comes from watching men and women do things we can’t possibly do, or would never have been able to do. We live to be amazed, and sometimes can’t even conceive of how a particular play is made. The logistics just don’t add up, with where the ball was landing or the speed it...

Here’s a shovel, Mauricio Pochettino
If you’re a manager who loves to tell players to do one out of a club, especially as an example to the rest of the squad how things are going to work under your leadership, then boy is Chelsea the place for you. And as Mauricio Pochettino, now the new manager at Stamford Bridge, is known to wield on...

Jayson Tatum, Boston Celtics avoided the longest summer possible just in time
No one eats their young quite like Boston. Only Tom Brady and David Ortiz seemed to have gotten out of there alive. No matter what you do, if The Hub feels like you didn’t deliver when it counts they’ll not only send you out of town but they’ll make sure the road is paved with manure as well. Ask an...

Jon Moxley-Kenny Omega is AEW's biggest rivalry for company's biggest summer
Even four-plus years into its existence, AEW still has that magic of being able to get its fans excited by just having two guys step into the ring. Just the sight of a certain matchup coming to fruition — be it simply a fantasy booking dream, a high point in another well-told story, or some combinat...

Chicago Cubs skipper David Ross is clueless
Modern baseball thinking has it that the manager in the dugout is just an extension of the front office. He pressed the buttons he was told to, and if he can help manage personalities and keep a bunch of millionaires from knifing each other over seven hot months, so much the better. So maybe David R...

The Toronto Maple Leafs disappoint their fans by winning
No one does a post-mortem like the Toronto Maple Leafs. For the past six years, it’s been an April tradition. The Leafs spit up all over themselves in the playoffs, and then the next week the rest of the playoffs are drowned out by the wailing from southern Ontario about who needs to be traded, who ...

Real Madrid and Manchester City trapped each other, or so they’d have you believe
When you’ve been as dominant in the Champions League as Real Madrid have for the past decade, or as dominant in the Premier League as Manchester City have, you can convince everyone that whatever you do is part of the plan, part of a higher genius we can’t quite understand. It must be, otherwise, ho...

Shohei Ohtani isn't this generation's Babe Ruth — he's even better
It’s easy to connect Shohei Ohtani to Babe Ruth, because Ruth is the only figure that we think even compares to Ohtani. Baseball hasn’t had a dominant two-way player since the Great Bambino, so that’s what the numbers have to be compared to. It used to be that Ruth’s pitching exploits were kind of a...

Gabriel ThreeYaksAndADog will miss all of next season, and the Colorado Avalanche era may already be over
In the salary-capped NHL, you get one, or two shots with one roster, and then you basically have to reshuffle everything around your core stars, and hope that new hand still produces a flush. It’s a constant game of draw poker. ...

The Chicago Blackhawks, the worst team you know, got all the luck
Tanking isn’t a plan, at least in leagues with a lottery. It’s a wager. A GM or front office or owner isn’t putting up money, other than the lack of tickets and merch they’ll sell while their team is shit. They’re putting up a season or many of complete haplessness with rosters devoid of useful play...

The WNBA finally gets the sports documentary it deserves
In the early days of the WNBA, it wasn’t a given that the league was going to make it. A new film set for theatrical release this weekend, Unfinished Business, goes back to the first year through the lens of the New York Liberty, to lay out the stakes those young players experienced....