sports Page 172 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Opening Day is a reminder of how little Major League Baseball thinks of African-Americans
Hot dogs. Peanuts. Cracker Jacks. Racism. It can only mean one thing — Opening Day of a new Major League Baseball season is here. And today, of all days, is a great example of how things haven’t changed and remain the same, or gotten worse. ...

Sean Gibson says MLB hasn't gone far enough when it comes to the Negro Leagues
With opening day in Major League Baseball upon us, there’s no better time to remember baseball’s heroes of yesteryear. Such nostalgia shouldn’t only extend to past eras of MLB but also to those who paved the way in the Negro Leagues for players of color to make their way into the Majors. One of thos...

8 Cy Young winners taking the mound on MLB Opening Day
It’s the most wonderful day of the year for baseball fans. Well, it’s one of them I guess — Opening Day! After the World Baseball Classic, the real fun begins, right Keith Olbermann? All 30 teams will have 161 games to go in the regular season after Thursday, with eight former Cy Young winners throw...

Minor leaguers get a historic deal that will double their pay…which still isn’t enough
When you’ve been earning next to nothing, and you get offered double that or more, it would take some brass balls to turn it down. That would seem to be the lesson of the MiLB Players Union’s first-ever collective bargaining agreement with MLB. ...

How every MLB division will shake out
Welcome to Opening Day! It was a long, cold winter, but Spring is, at last, officially upon us. Sure, the ivy at Wrigley might be sparse and brown, and your favorite broadcaster might be wearing Gore-Tex for the next few weeks, but baseball is back. As Bart Giamatti once said, “It breaks your heart....

The best and worst TV broadcasts in MLB: Your guide to watching other baseball
As hard as MLB tries, baseball remains pretty parochial. That’s mostly due to the daily nature of it. If you’re a fan of a team, you basically spend every day from the beginning of April to the end of September watching your team and then going to bed, or maybe cramming in some sort of worthless soc...

ESPN is set to be the next sports media company to get rocked with layoffs
Hard economic times have come for ESPN and its parent company — Disney. Like many companies, Disney is doing some downsizing. There have been rumors for a while and returning CEO Bob Iger dropped the hammer when he sent out a memo in which he states that the company is beginning the process of layin...

Trio of UConn players will compete in the Final Four and maybe eat before the game
UConn men’s basketball looks like the favorite heading into this weekend’s Final Four in Houston. Not only are the Huskies the highest seed remaining of the quartet, they’ve looked dominant in every March Madness game. Turns out UConn’s 15-point second-round victory over St. Mary’s was its closest m...

The fans Rob Manfred is trying to service are prudes
This year’s MLB Opening Day feels different than recent iterations because the media doesn’t have (most of) its usual talking points to complain about. The rule changes are going to shorten the games, discontinue the dialog about shifts, and provide baserunners with throw pillows to slide into. Yay!...

Twitter Action Jackson won’t back down anytime soon
Lamar Jackson is the NFL’s Shohei Ohtani. If this were Major League Baseball, he’d be demanding starting quarterback and starting veteran running back money, and some owner would oblige and airdrop whatever he demanded. Not only is the Baltimore Ravens’ one-man show on offense, but he’s also his own...

Cowboys star Micah Parsons thought he was the next Agent Zero
The No Fun League introduced some excitement this week when they announced players could now wear No. 0 moving forward. Players across the NFL scrambled in hopes of trading in their current jersey for zero. (Calvin Ridey, back from suspension, will wear it for Jacksonville.) While the older generati...

Connor McDavid isn’t going to get a better chance
Every generationally great player, or every player that can safely say they’re one of the five best of all time, eventually bores the public with their greatness. Or at least fails to spike the EKG when news of their latest heroics crosses the wires. Connor McDavid is there. ...

With NFL players being allowed to wear 0, here are my favorite athletes to don the number
Look at the NFL trying to be looser as an organization. First, it relaxed restrictions on player numbers in 2021, and the league has decided that in 2023 a forbidden number will be allowed. Certain players will be allowed to wear the No. 0....

Which NFL team has the most on the line in the Draft?
The NFL Draft is under a month away and how those three days go for teams will have a big say in how the 2023 season will play out. While many cornerstone pieces are set for almost every team, the depth needed for backups and special teams is critical in completing any franchise’s draft haul. Some t...

Does Roger Goodell even know when he’s lying anymore?
It’s never a good sign when John Mara, the answer to the question of what would happen if George Will ate paste, is the voice of reason. But that’s where the NFL, and Roger Goodell, found themselves at the owners’ meetings yesterday. Somehow, the owners were able to resist the urge to flex Thursday ...

Antonio Brown bought a football team — you’ve got to be kidding
Former NFL star Antonio Brown has been relatively quiet lately, not popping up on news feeds too much outside of our Jackass bracket tournament, for which he recently advanced to the Final Four. That should be considered a good thing because there hasn’t been any scandalous behavior out of AB this m...

Aaron Hernandez's brother lives the dream, chucks brick at ESPN headquarters
Who among us hasn’t wanted to whip a brick at an ESPN building, be it the headquarters in Bristol, Conn., or one of its few now-shuttered ESPN Zones? I know if I walked by the window where Get Up is shot in New York, I’d pick up the heaviest piece of refuse I could find and heave it at Mike Greenber...

The players aren’t allowed to hit mouthy fans, but somebody should
It has long been time to put fans in their place. An average human being would not normally scream “you fuck!” at a 6-foot-4, 200-plus-pound man. Make that person Bradley Beal, and all of a sudden the probability of that happening increases. ...
