softball Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Girls’ high school sports: The most impactful legacy of Title IX
One of Title IX’s most significant triumphs in the last 50 years has been the soaring number of women competing in high school sports. The number of women in sports grew more than tenfold, from 294,015 in the 1971-72 school year to 3.4 million in 2019, according to a Women’s Sports Foundation study....

Jocelyn Alo and the unstoppable Sooners
Chicks do dig the longball. Specifically, Jocelyn Alo. She’s been blasting pitches for home runs since she arrived at Oklahoma. As the Sooners’ coronation as back-to-back national champions appears inevitable, she will take her final swings of college softball. She’s Thanos. But instead of snapping ...

We have a controversial NCAA baseball call!
This was bad baseball all around, except from home-plate umpire Jeff Head. Almost every bit of the most-important play from the final game of the College Park regional of the NCAA Baseball Tournament was absurd. ...

We need to talk about Oklahoma’s softball team
We complain about unbeatable, un-compete-able, unstoppable dynasties in college football, bemoaning how no one will ever be able to be on Alabama’s level, that any championship victory over them is but a blip in their seemingly god-given power. We shook our heads and shrugged our shoulders for years...

Oklahoma softball would like, nay, DEMANDS everyone’s attention right now
Thirty-six wins, zero losses. That’s what the Oklahoma softball team’s record is right now, breaking the all-time Division I record previously set in 1999 by UCLA at 35-0. Now, with a streak this absurd, this dominant, you’d think there have been hiccups. Perhaps there were a few games where Oklahom...

Coed sports can be a thing
For all the energy devoted to the Lia Thomas story, you’d think there was an army of transitioning athletes looking to snatch Division I titles from the women who rightfully won them. Laws have been written, passed, vetoed and passed again to prevent people assigned one sex at birth from competing w...

Baseball is back, but the DH is everywhere, and that’s awful
There’s only one bad thing about the MLB lockout being over: The game is changing forever....

Athletes Unlimited league arrives for women's hoops with new model
A new league of professional women’s basketball kicked off last night in Las Vegas with WNBA stars Lexie Brown, Mercedes Russell, and Odyssey Sims taking the court. Athletes Unlimited is hoping to change the game in the U.S. in more ways than one — the question is whether its unusual format and smal...

SEC out to conquer more than football as Auburn hoops is No. 1 for first time in school history
The Southeastern Conference doesn’t have a plan only to dominate in football. The league’s leadership believes a monopoly, like its 12 of the last 16 national gridiron championships, including the last three with a trio of different schools, can be achieved across the board....

The women are coming for baseball
It’s probably too early to call it a new era, but with names like Rachel Balkovec and Genevieve Beacom making the headlines, America’s pastime is definitely due for a change-up. Earlier this week, Balkovec was hired as the new manager of the Yankees’ minor league affiliate the Tampa Tarpons. This hi...

Baseball For All's message to women and girls: You don't have to stop playing the game you love
The 29 young women who gathered on the pristine green turf of the Centenary University baseball field in mid-August for Baseball For All’s first-ever scouting combine for women — a group looking to continue their baseball careers into college — all shared commonalities in their individual stories....

Should Major League Baseball have taken Olympic play more seriously?
Despite baseball making its triumphant return to the Olympics this year, nobody really seemed very excited to watch. There were probably a lot of factors that went into the lack of hype: general lack of public interest in the Olympics as a whole, the fact that Major League Baseball was going through...

Deadspin fixes: The Olympics
After the semifinals of the men’s 110-meter hurdles in Tokyo, eventual silver medalist Grant Holloway talked in an NBC interview about the challenge of sitting around the Olympic Village, waiting for what seemed like an eternity for his chance to take his spot on the grandest stage in athletics....

Look, I’d love to blame Tony La Russa too, but…
It makes for an easy narrative, and one all of us that wants to see baseball evolve into something more fun can easily grab onto. ...

Introducing the new Olympic sports that will totally bring in a new audience, dude
Back in 2016, the IOC added five new sports to Tokyo 2020. The move was seen by many as a way for Olympic organizers to appeal to the young people of the world — who are totally rad, bro....

Get to know your worldwide Olympic athletes!
There will be thousands of athletes at this year’s Olympic games. Some are international celebrities, some will go back to their main jobs by mid August. But all will get free condoms at the Olympic village....

Cat Osterman tells Deadspin about her return to Olympic softball ahead of the Games
Cat Osterman will wear a different number when she steps onto the Tokyo dirt this summer — 38. It was her tryout number for USA softball after taking a few years away from playing the game. She wore No. 8 when she won Olympic gold in 2004 and silver in 2008 and in her storied career at Texas. Now, i...

How many Tampa Bay Lightning players do you think Tom Brady can name?
It’s no big deal if Tom Brady isn’t familiar with anyone on the team, and he was just glad to agree to serve as the Bolts’ “fan captain” for Saturday’s Game 4 against the Carolina Hurricanes. It’s also hilarious to see the big-time Cameo video energy that Brady brought to the table to fire up the Ta...

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....

Blazers-Nuggets briefly bumped to ESPN2, still a far cry from tape-delayed 1981 Finals
The start of Trail Blazers-Nuggets was bumped to ESPN2 as Jose Ramírez and Josh Taylor fought for the undisputed junior welterweight title on ESPN, which is barely fathomable in 2021. Taylor won by unanimous decision, and ESPN switched over to the action in Denver with 6:40 left in the first quarter...