by Eric Fulton The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup kicks off early Thursday morning (our time) in Australia and New Zealand. For the next month, the best national women’s soccer teams will compete to see who the best in the world is. The United States Women’s Team has been the most successful women’s international team in the World Cup, winning four titles, including the previous World Cup in 2019. However, coming into this year’s World Cup, they will go through some adversity with a couple of key players not available for the entire tournament due to injuries and a new head coach taking over the team. Players Becky Sauerbrunn and Mallory Swanson will not participate in the World Cup due to injuries. While both players will be sorely missed on the team, they will have a new voice as former FC Kansas City head coach Vlatko Andonovski takes over the head coaching duties. With a lot going on, the focus is to win, and they still have what it takes to extend their record by winning a fifth World Cup. Here are five players everyone should focus on during the U.S. run toward that fifth World Cup. 5. Alyssa Naeher – Goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher is the most experienced goalkeeper on the roster. She has made 91 appearances for Team USA with 53 clean sheets. Naeher ranks third all-time in caps, wins and shutouts for a goalkeeper in U.S. history. Her shutout in the CONCACAF final helped the United States clinch this year’s World Cup appearance and the Summer Olympics in 2024. 4. Crystal Dunn – Defender Crystal Dunn has made 132 appearances, scoring 24 goals and 19 assists in international play. Dunn is also a two-time Olympian. In the last World Cup in 2019, Dunn played a key role in defense against host country France shutting down France’s attack and helping the U.S. win that match. Dunn started all six matches in 2019, scoring one assist in the tournament. 3. Rose Lavelle – Midfielder Lavelle has made 88 appearances, scoring 24 goals and 20 assists in international play. In 2021 and 2022, Lavelle played 38 matches for the United States, scoring nine goals and 11 assists, while playing 2,518 minutes. In the 2019 World Cup, Lavelle won the Bronze Ball as the third-best player in the tournament. She scored the clinching goal in the 2-0 victory over the Netherlands in World Cup Final. 2. Alex Morgan – Forward Making her fourth World Cup appearance, Alex Morgan is one of the best women’s soccer players of all time. Last year, Morgan became just the 13th player in USWNT history to reach 200 matches played. She is also a two-time United States Female Soccer Athlete of the Year, a four-time CONCACAF Player of the Year, and a three-time Olympian. Her performance in the 2019 World Cup was one of the greatest of all time. She scored six goals and added three assists in France. Five of her six goals came in one game alone against Thailand, which tied a single-game record for the United States. Morgan will look to continue to add to her 121 goals and 49 assists in Australia and New Zealand. 1. Megan Rapinoe – Forward Rapinoe announced recently that this year will be her final World Cup as she plans to retire at the end of the year. You know she would love to finish her career in a blaze of glory. Rapinoe is one appearance away from reaching the 200 matches played milestone. She has scored 63 goals and 73 assists in her international career, both rank in the top 10 in USWNT history. Her play in the 2019 World Cup was memorable and unforgettable. She won the Golden Ball and Golden Boot as the most outstanding player in the World Cup with her six goals and three assists. She scored a penalty kick goal in the World Cup Final, which was her 50th career goal. Rapinoe has even made a tremendous impact off the soccer field, advocating that her teammates and women’s soccer, in general, should have equal pay to men’s soccer. The two-time World Cup champion received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022. The United States Women’s National Team will be in group E of the 2023 Women’s World Cup. Teams in Group E include Vietnam, Netherlands and Portugal. The United States and the Netherlands played in the final in 2019, with the U.S. winning the match 2-0. The USWNT’s first game will be against Vietnam on Friday, July 21 at 8 pm Central time and can be seen in the U.S. on Fox. The championship match will be on Sunday, August 20 on Fox.
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by Julian Spivey The second half of the Major League Baseball season gets underway tomorrow with two and a half months of tight pennant races and wild card fights ahead of us. It should be a thrilling second half, but before the first pitch of it is thrown let’s take the time to recognize the best (and a worst) from the first half of the season. Best Team: Atlanta Braves Shortly before the All-Star break, the Atlanta Braves became the first team of the season to reach the 60-win mark. The Braves are 60-29 and hold an 8.5-game lead on the Miami Marlins in the National League East Division. The team has a +147 run differential, meaning they are absolutely demolishing teams on the offensive side of the game while keeping runs at a minimum from the mound – which is wild as their two best pitchers of 2022 – Max Fried and Kyle Wright – have combined for just 10 starts this season due to injury and both have been out since the first month of the season. Fried, the team’s ace, should return by the end of the month and Wright is slated for about the end of August. That will be like adding two big arms at the trade deadline for the squad. The offense has been lights out for the team all season with six players (Matt Olson, Ozzie Albies, Ronald Acuna Jr., Sean Murphy, Marcell Ozuna and Austin Riley) all at 16-plus home runs. Acuna and Olson are both in the top five in baseball in On-Base Plus Slugging percentage and Olson and Albies are the top two in the National League in Runs Batted In. Acuna also leads the N.L. with 41 stolen bases, which is 17 more than the next-closest player in the league. Things can change in the game’s second half and especially in the postseason, but as of July 13, the Braves are far and away the scariest team in baseball. Biggest Surprise: Miami Marlins You may have said, “Really?” in the previous paragraph when you saw the Miami Marlins were in second place in the National League East Division at 8.5 games behind the Braves. After all, the N.L. East is the division of last year’s N.L. champion Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets, by far the highest payroll in Major League Baseball this season at over $348 million. You’d be really surprised to find out – if you didn’t already know – that the Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara, who ran away with the N.L. Cy Young Award in 2022, has been pretty disappointing this season with a losing record and Earned Run Average of 4.72 (his ERA was 2.28 last season). Now, the Marlins aren’t the only surprising team in baseball this year – not even close. If you take a look atop the National League Central Division standings you’d likely be stunned to see the Cincinnati Reds with a one-game lead over the Milwaukee Brewers, but what truly makes the Marlins a surprise is they have the second-best record in the National League at the All-Star break, despite allowing five more runs to their opponents this season than they have scored. That kind of makes me believe the Marlins are somewhat pretenders this season, but as of now, they are three games ahead in the N.L. Wild Card standings and might just stick around for the postseason. Biggest Disappointment: New York Mets OK, so the San Diego Padres have been massively disappointing this season. They are four games under .500 with the third-highest payroll in the game at over $246 million with a lineup of perennial M.V.P. candidates like Manny Machado, Juan Soto, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Xander Bogaerts that should be absolutely crushing its opponents. However, their 8.5-game deficit to the National League West Division-leading Los Angeles Dodgers and six-game deficit in the Wild Card hunt isn’t insurmountable and what’s going on in Queens, N.Y. is even more embarrassing. The highest payroll in baseball – by A LOT – shouldn’t be 18.5 games back in its division at the season’s midway point, but that’s exactly where the Mets find themselves at 42-48 and with disappointing seasons from usually stud pitchers Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer and their two biggest offensive stars in Pete Alonso and Francisco Lindor both hitting under .240. Mets owner Steve Cohen has been attempting to buy himself success with this franchise and it’s been a nightmare thus far. A.L. MVP: Shohei Ohtani Baseball’s unicorn Shohei Ohtani just keeps on growing more mythical by the game. Not only has he been the American League’s best hitter overall with a .302 batting average, league-leading 32 home runs and 71 RBI (second in the A.L.) he’s been statistically the hardest pitcher in the league to hit with an opponent’s batting average of .189. There is absolutely no way, whatsoever, anyone can take the A.L. M.V.P. from him this season. The only thing keeping Ohtani was three consecutive M.V.P.s is the fact that New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge set the A.L. single-season record for home runs last season. There is one thing that could potentially keep Ohtani from winning M.V.P. this season and that’s if the Angels trade him to a National League ballclub before the trade deadline in just over two weeks (which would likely be the smartest thing for the franchise but seems unlikely at this point) as he’s set to be a free agent after the season and some team is going to break Fort Knox open to pay the game’s most unique player in its 150-plus year history. N.L. MVP: Ronald Acuna Jr. While the National League M.V.P. race may not be as over as the A.L. one is at the midway point of the season I’d say that Atlanta Braves right fielder Ronald Acuna Jr. should be damn close to having it on lock. Acuna leads the N.L. in On-Base Plus Slugging, is second in batting average, eighth in home runs, 11th in RBI (but remember he’s a leadoff hitter), first in stolen bases by a mile, first in runs scored, second in hits, third in On-Base Percentage and second in slugging percentage. Los Angeles Dodgers teammates Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman are probably the closest competition to him for M.V.P., but not only are their numbers not better but they likely would split the vote. A.L. Cy Young: Gerrit Cole There are a handful of pitchers deep in the American League Cy Young hunt at the season’s midpoint, including Shohei Ohtani (Los Angels Angels), Nathan Eovaldi (Texas Rangers), Framber Valdez (Houston Astros), Shane McClanahan (Tampa Bay Rays) and Gerrit Cole (New York Yankees). The two frontrunners right now are likely McClanahan and Cole, but I’m giving Cole the edge simply because his WAR (Wins Above Replacement) is almost a full point higher than McClanahan’s, likely because Cole strikes out more batters. I do like that McClanahan is on the A.L.’s top team at the All-Star break and that his ERA is more than 30 points lower than Cole’s. He also has a slightly better winning percentage, but I’ve got to go with the analytics here. N.L. Cy Young: Clayton Kershaw The National League Cy Young race is even more wide open than the American League’s, but the pitchers aren’t as big of names (for the most part) and don’t quite seem to be having as dominant of seasons as their counterparts. My six contenders at this point in the season are Clayton Kershaw (Los Angeles Dodgers) – the outlier on the not-big-names thing -, Marcus Stroman (Chicago Cubs), Justin Steele (Chicago Cubs), Bryce Elder (Atlanta Braves), Blake Snell (San Diego Padres) and Zac Gallen (Arizona Diamondbacks). Gallen has the best record at 11-3, but the highest ERA of the bunch at 3.04. Steele and Elder don’t strike out nearly as many batters as the others and Ks are sexy to Cy Young voters. Snell has a losing record and the lowest WAR of the bunch but leads them in strikeouts. Stroman and Kershaw have the highest WAR at 3.1, but I’m going to give the edge to the elder of the bunch in Kershaw as his ERA is 40 points lower than Stroman’s. Kershaw already has three Cy Young wins in his career, but his most recent came in 2014 when he was 26. He’s now 35 and arguably still the best pitcher in his league. His longevity is amazing. He did, however, land on the injured list shortly before the All-Star break with shoulder soreness, which could play a major role in his second half. A.L. Rookie of the Year: Josh Jung Josh Jung’s first half was so good that he was voted by the fans as one of five Texas Rangers ballplayers to start for the American League team at the All-Star Game manning the hot corner at third base. Jung, who was probably behind Gunnar Henderson (Baltimore Orioles), Masataka Yoshida (Boston Red Sox) and Anthony Volpe (New York Yankees) on most people’s A.L. Rookie of the Year prognostications prior to the season has been a huge part of the surprising upstart season for the Rangers. Jung has hit .280 with 19 home runs, 56 RBI and a 2.7 WAR. N.L. Rookie of the Year: Corbin Carroll Corbin Carroll had such a breakout first half of the season for the Arizona Diamondbacks that he was rightfully voted into the starting outfield for the National League’s All-Star squad. The D’Backs’ center fielder has hit .289 with 18 home runs, 48 RBI, 26 stolen bases and a 3.7 WAR. He’s running away with the N.L. Rookie of the Year Award at the midpoint of the season and it seems like the Diamondbacks will have a really good one patrolling center for them for the next few years or hopefully longer. by Julian Spivey NASCAR’s first foray into racing in the streets last weekend in downtown Chicago was a complete success when it comes to the actual NASCAR Cup Series race on Sunday, July 2. The overall weekend, which was billed as something more akin to a festival than a sporting event, was a pretty big failure – though it was all the fault of the weather and nothing to do with NASCAR or the city of Chicago itself. The sight of NASCAR cars going around the streets of downtown Chicago with the city skyscape in the background, images of traffic on nearing streets and the ‘L’ train going by in the background made for the most unique backdrop in the sport’s history, or at least since the days of driving around on the beaches of Daytona. It gave hope of the sport, which has seen a drop in the number of fans from its early-to-mid-‘00s heyday, could capture a new audience with the bulk of people attending the Chicago street race saying it was their first time at a NASCAR race. The race was the most-watched one televised on NBC in six years, which includes every championship race of the last six seasons, which was amazing considering the race was delayed by more than an hour due to heavy rain and flooded streets. The Chicago street race gave me hope that NASCAR could do anything. As a fan of more than two decades, I’d started to wonder if the sport could do anything right, let alone anything it set its sights on. The race was historical, not simply because it was the first of its kind in the 75-year history of the sport, but also by how it ended. Three-time Australian Supercars champion Shane van Gisbergen came over from his homeland of New Zealand to run the race for Trackhouse Racing’s Project 91 team, which is sort of a special team used on a very select basis that brings champions from other types of racing into the sport for one-offs. The car had run last year’s Watkins Glen race and this season’s Circuit of the Americas race in Austin, Texas with former Formula 1 champion Kimi Raikkonen, with a top finish of 29th place. van Gisbergen didn’t just come over to run this race – he came over and won this race. He looked like one of the best on track from the opening minutes of practice, which he led, qualified third and after some pit strategy and the race being shortened by 25 percent (mid-race) due to impending darkness placed him back in the pack he was able to almost cruise from 18th position to the win by the end of lap 75. It was a dominant performance that frankly in the minds of some may have left the regulars of the sport looking a tad embarrassed. van Gisbergen was the first debut winner in a NASCAR Cup Series race since open-wheel star Johnny Rutherford won a qualifying race (which at the time were points-paying races) at Daytona International Speedway in 1963, 60 years ago. He was the first New Zealander to ever win a NASCAR race and just the sixth non-American winner in the series’ 75-year history. Pretty much everyone within the sport and the majority of the fans – at least those who didn’t already have it out for the sport doing a street race or the event being held in Chicago – deemed it a success, which was something that felt like a miracle given how the rest of the weekend and the day leading up to the race on Sunday early evening went. Most want to see the sport continue with a street course into the future and the sport is contracted to hold another one next summer in downtown Chicago, but unlike with most tracks, its future isn’t set in stone. The deal for NASCAR to compete in downtown Chicago was agreed to under a previous city administration and the current mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, doesn’t seem to be as gung-ho about the event taking up city streets and affecting local businesses, despite the excitement the event garnered. The city has until 180 days (six months) before the next race to decide whether it wants to bring the NASCAR race back to the city, which means there’s a chance the 2024 race will appear on the NASCAR schedule and still not happen. If the race is canceled for the 2024 season it would make it nearly impossible for NASCAR to run a street race in 2024. Either way, the sport will likely look into holding street races in other major cities across the country, though it’s doubtful any would be bigger than Chicago, the third largest city in the United States – though don’t think NASCAR wouldn’t try to ask about the two larger ones – New York City and Los Angeles (where the series has held an exhibition race to open the season the last two years in the L.A. Coliseum). As for the rest of the Chicago weekend, that turned into a disaster, sometimes the weather just wins. That’s likely the biggest issue with the sport running races on city streets, postponements could be tricky or even non-existent based on the length of them. The Xfinity Series race, the NASCAR support series that typically runs the day before the Cup Series’ premiere event, was delayed before the halfway point (which typically would make a race official if weather or other issues arose) due to lightning strikes and postponed to the next morning. The next morning came record-setting rain for the time of year for the city of Chicago and NASCAR made the unprecedented decision to call the Xfinity Series race official despite reaching the halfway point, awarding the win to Cole Custer, the leader at the time of the postponement. The NASCAR weekend, which as previously mentioned was billed more like a festival than a sporting event, was to feature multiple concerts by megastars like The Chainsmokers on Saturday and Miranda Lambert among others on Sunday. Every single concert during the weekend was canceled either due to lightning or torrential rain and flooding. I can see how those who paid ticket prices, which were among the highest, if not the highest in the sport’s history, would’ve been disappointed to the point of cursing NASCAR for the rest of eternity – and I hope the sport was able to reimburse fans in some way, though with Sunday’s race happening I’m not sure the sport will believe there are grounds to do so. It’s the risk you take when purchasing tickets for a sporting event, even if it was billed more as a festival. As a sporting event, the NASCAR Chicago race was a major success by all metrics – entertaining race, historic winner, huge TV ratings, beautiful images, etc. It would be a shame if racing in the streets doesn’t continue. by Julian Spivey
Every year I like to do this sort of exercise where I select my Major League Baseball All-Star Game starting players simply by looking at the information given to me on the MLB All-Star Game ballot itself at mlb.com/all-star/ballot. That info includes a player’s batting average, home run total, RBI total and OPS. Now, if I happened to know something about a player – like for instance Atlanta Braves outfielder Ronald Acuna Jr. has 30 stolen bases already – it may sway my vote, but for the most part, I’m going off those four categories given. We are a little less than a month away from the MLB All-Star Game, taking place at Seattle’s T-Mobile Park on Tuesday, July 11. Phase one voting for the MLB All-Star Game ends on Thursday, June 22 at 11 a.m. Here are my current selections to start that game… *All stats shared in this article will be as of June 16. Catcher: American League: Salvador Perez (Kansas City Royals) Some of these positions are pretty hard to decide with players with comparable numbers. American League catcher is one of those spots because I don’t think you can go wrong with Baltimore Orioles backstop Adley Rutschman (who is the current vote leader) or Texas Rangers catcher Jonah Heim (who is the current runner-up in the vote). But I’m going with Royals veteran Salvador Perez, who has a bit higher power numbers than the other two, though Heim does have more RBI. Perez’s OPS of .816 is higher than Heim’s, where he has more homers and RBI than Rutschman. Also, if the fans could pick a Royals player (they’re currently the worst team in baseball) it means their likely lone representative at the game is taken care of. National League: Will Smith (Los Angeles Dodgers) When I made my first ballot (which I didn’t publish here) a few weeks ago I believe I had Atlanta Braves catcher Sean Murphy (who is the leading vote-getter right now) as my choice, but I believe he’s been surpassed in my mind since then by Dodgers backstop Will Smith (who is the runner-up in the vote). Smith has a slightly higher OPS and a batting average that’s eight points higher. Though, Murphy does still have him beat in homers and RBI. Colorado Rockies catcher Elias Diaz should be in the conversation too. First Base: American League: Yandy Diaz (Tampa Bay Rays) Yandy Diaz of Tampa Bay isn’t exactly a household name, so it might be a bit harder for him to win a fan vote – especially with Tampa Bay likely having one of the smaller fan bases in baseball. Though, he’s not too far behind leading vote-getter Vladimir Guerrero Jr. of the Toronto Blue Jays. Guerrero has a few more RBI than Diaz, but Diaz has him beaten in every other statistical category shown on the ballot. National League: Freddie Freeman (Los Angeles Dodgers) The first base selection for the National League should be 100 percent clear and that’s Freddie Freeman of the Dodgers, who’s likely the leading MVP candidate right now in the league (either him or Acuna Jr. for Atlanta). Freeman is hitting .325 this season with 13 homers (third among first baseman), 46 RBI (second among first baseman) and an OPS of .961 (highest among first baggers). Second Base: American League: Marcus Semien (Texas Rangers) Marcus Semien is currently the leading vote-getter among second baseman in the American League and I think the fans have gotten this one right, so far. Semien combined offensive numbers are far and away the best of any second baseman in the league right now with a .283 average, 10 homers, 53 RBI and .821 OPS. National League: Luis Arraez (Miami Marlins) Luis Arraez should be a no-brainer to start second base for the National League at this point – he may be the best pure hitter in the game right now. Sure, he has almost no power, his two home runs are 13 fewer than Ozzie Albies of the Braves and Nolan Gorman of the St. Louis Cardinals, but he’s hitting nearly .400 two-and-half months into the season. His OPS is quite a bit higher than anyone else at second base too. Arraez is the current leading vote-getter. Third Base: American League: Jose Ramirez (Cleveland Guardians) On my first ballot a few weeks ago, I had Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Matt Chapman as my starter, but he’s fallen off quite a bit since then. A lot of others must’ve been doing the same because he’s the current vote leader. Josh Jung has been putting his name on the map for the Texas Rangers this season and is second in the vote-getting, which is right where I think he should be at this point. My current selection to start the game is Jose Ramirez of the Guardians, who’s been on a tear lately and has been one of the most unsung players in baseball over the last half-decade or more now. Ramirez is currently hitting .292 with 11 homers, 41 RBI and a .869 OPS, higher than Chapman in all categories and better than Jung in everyone but homers. National League: J.D. Davis (San Francisco Giants) Here’s where name recognition or lack thereof can hurt a player in the MLB All-Star Game fan vote because I think J.D. Davis of the Giants is having the best season thus far at third base in the National League and isn’t among the top two in the fan vote – whereas perennial superstars like Nolan Arenado of the Cardinals and Austin Riley of the Braves are. Arenado’s numbers are worthy of the spot, but I feel like the major disappointment of the Cardinals’ season should be considered. Davis has a higher batting average and OPS than Arenado. Riley has been a bit of a disappointment for Atlanta this year. Shortstop: American League: Corey Seager (Texas Rangers) It’s possible that the Texas Rangers double-play combo of Marcus Semien and Corey Seager will start the All-Star Game for the A.L. It would be the first since 2017 when Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa did so for the Houston Astros. Seager is currently second in the fan vote behind Toronto’s Bo Bichette, whose numbers are really nice too. Seager is hitting .344 with nine home runs, 36 RBI and 1.030 OPS. National League: Orlando Arcia (Atlanta Braves) Potentially the biggest surprise among All-Star Game hopefuls in the first half of the season has been Orlando Arcia at shortstop for the Atlanta Braves. He really wasn’t expected to be the starting shortstop of the team following Dansby Swanson’s departure to the Chicago Cubs during the offseason. Many thought 22-year-old Vaughn Grissom would take over the position, but with his defensive struggles in Spring Training, it became clear Arcia should have the job. He has never for one second made the team think otherwise. Arcia is hitting .329 with five homers and 23 RBI and his numbers would likely be even more impressive without a three-week stint on the injured list early in the season. Braves’ country must be showing out to vote for him because he doesn’t exactly have household name recognition. He’s currently the leading vote-getter at N.L. shortstop over Francisco Lindor of the New York Mets. Outfield: American League: Aaron Judge (New York Yankees), Yordan Alvarez (Houston Astros) & Randy Arozarena (Tampa Bay Rays) How much fun would it be watching an outfield of Aaron Judge, Yordan Alvarez and Randy Arozarena in the All-Star game? They’re currently all in the top four of the fan vote, but the massive popularity of Los Angeles Angels outfielder Mike Trout currently has Arozarena as the odd man out. Judge is currently on the injured list, but I’m not going to let that impact my current vote when he’s hitting .291 with 19 homers, 40 RBI and a 1.078 OPS. He may not be back in time for the All-Star game. Alvarez, one of the scariest men at the plate in the entire game, is hitting .277 with 17 homers, 55 RBI and an OPS of .977. Arozarena, one of the leaders of baseball best Tampa Bay, is hitting .285 with 13 home runs, 48 RBI and a .891 OPS. National League: Ronald Acuna Jr. (Atlanta Braves), Corbin Carroll (Arizona Diamondbacks) & Nick Castellanos (Philadelphia Phillies) Ronald Acuna Jr. might be the most exciting player to watch in all of baseball and the fans realize that which is why he’s the overall National League vote-getter with already more than a million votes. Acuna is hitting .327 with 15 home runs, 45 RBI and a .970 OPS to go along with the previously mentioned N.L. leading 30 stolen bases. The Arizona Diamondbacks have been one of the surprises of the first half of the 2023 MLB season and one of the biggest reasons is the play of outfielder Corbin Carroll, who is hitting .308 with 14 homers, 36 RBI and a .977 OPS. Nick Castellanos of the Philadelphia Phillies is my third outfielder selection with an OPS of .851, an average of .315, with eight homers and 42 RBI. Carroll and Castellanos are not currently among the outfield fan-vote leaders with Carroll’s Arizona teammate Lourdes Gurriel Jr. in one of the spots and the massively popular Mookie Betts of the Dodgers in the other position. Designated Hitter: American League: Shohei Ohtani (Los Angeles Angels) Shohei Ohtani is the leading vote-getter among all American League players and is likely well on his way to being named to the game as both a designated hitter and pitcher, as he was for last year’s midsummer classic. Ohtani is hitting .301 with an A.L. leading 22 homers, 54 RBI and an OPS of .1.006. National League: J.D. Martinez (Los Angeles Dodgers) There really isn’t a clear-cut favorite for the starting designated hitter slot in the National League thus far. I’ll agree with the fans’ choice thus far and go with J.D. Martinez of the Dodgers. Martinez is actually leading the N.L. in slugging percentage this season. He’s hitting .257 with 16 homers and 48 RBI. by Eric Fulton & Julian Spivey JS: The Miami Heat finally put away the Boston Celtics in the NBA Eastern Conference Finals to advance to the NBA Finals to face the Denver Nuggets, who put away the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Finals more than a week ago. Let’s break down the NBA Finals matchup - which sees a no. 1 seed facing a no. 8 seed for just the second time in league history. The last time was 1999 when the No. 1 seeded San Antonio Spurs put away the No. 8 seed New York Knicks in 5 games. The Heat are just the second 8 seed to ever reach the Finals. This is the first Finals appearance in Nuggets franchise history. Let’s start with the best player on each team, even if they don’t play the same position. The Nuggets have two-time MVP Nikola Jokic at center, and he may very well be the best player in the entire NBA right now. The Heat have Jimmy Butler, who’s put his team on his back for most of the postseason to get them to this almost unprecedented point. Even if the two don’t defend each other much if ever in the series, which team has the superstar advantage? EF: I love Jimmy Butler's game. I have always had respect for his game and the way he plays basketball. But I have to say that I am choosing Nikola Jokic because I have never seen a big man who can be walking triple-double and do it with ease. Butler plays the better defense of the two, but the way Jokic can impact the game and make the right play offensively is a total game-changer. JS: Butler has likely been, with the exception of some of the games in the ECF against Boston when Miami tried to give the series away, the MVP of the postseason. He's averaged 28.5 points per game in the postseason and has absolutely willed the Heat this far. He may continue to will them even further, but there's no way I could take him over Nikola Jokic. Jokic is an absolute unicorn in the way he plays basketball as a big man. He's one of the best passers in the league and isn't afraid to take and hit long jumpers. Jokic has averaged just under 30 points per game this postseason, while leading all players in the playoffs with 10.3 assists per game (again, as a center!) and he's been second in rebounding (behind only Anthony Davis of the Lakers) with 13.3 a game. JS: Caleb Martin has played some big games for the Heat in the postseason, but I'd have to say the No. 2 guy for Miami behind Butler is center Bam Adebayo. And Denver's second-best player is its point guard Jamal Murray. Which team has the advantage with its second-best player? EF: I am going with Jamal Murray. He has been really good so far in these playoffs. Murray had a serious knee injury during the 2021 playoffs and he miss all of last season. He has come back stronger than ever. In the Western Conference Finals, he averaged over 30 points per game while shooting 50% from the field, 40% from three, 90% from the free throw line. That's only the second time any player has ever put those kinds of numbers in a playoff series. He is averaging 28 a game the entire playoffs. Murray has definitely become a great player on his own terms. JS: Yeah. I truly mean no offense toward Bam Adebayo, who can be a big threat for Miami scoring inside and redirecting shots on defense, but Jamal Murray is clearly the best No. 2 of this series. Not only has he been putting up massive scoring numbers he's also averaging six assists and nearly two steals per game. Adebayo has been averaging roughly 17 points per game with 9.2 rebounds as Miami's second-best player. JS: OK, let's talk about the rest of the starters for these two teams. Denver has Aaron Gordon at power forward, Michael Porter Jr. at small forward and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope at the two-guard position. Miami has seen Caleb Martin play big at forward - some even feel he should've been ECF MVP. They've been starting Gabe Vincent at point guard and Max Strus at two-guard. Which team has the advantage? EF: I have to think Denver still has the advantage on this one. Gordon can be a machine at the power forward position, Porter Jr is right now a top-five small forward when healthy, and KCP has a new edge to his game since leaving the Lakers. Martin, Vincent, and Strus have been nice stories for the Heat. All of them have helped Miami get better as the playoffs continue, but I think that the Denver three compliments the duo of Jokic and Murray. That is a really good starting five. JS: Denver does have a really solid starting five and I agree they have the advantage here too. Porter has been averaging 14.6 points per game along with eight rebounds. Gordon has been averaging 13 points a game and Caldwell-Pope nearly 12. That comes out to 100 points per game just with Denver’s starting five. If Martin can play as well in the Finals as he did in the ECF that’ll be a huge boost for Miami, but overall, the Nuggets probably take this matchup too. JS: What about the benches? I know when it comes to the playoffs and finals teams tend to shorten up their bench and play the starters more minutes but will either bench play a big factor? And if Tyler Herro is able to return from his injury how do you see him impacted the series for Miami? EF: If Tyler Herro returns for Miami, that would be huge for the Heat because of Herro's outside game. He is their best shooter. The Heat may steal a game because of their good shooting and it would be led by Tyler Herro. As far as the bench is concerned, Denver does not use their bench as much. There will probably be just an additional three guys for the Nuggets: Jeff Green, Bruce Brown and Christian Brown. Green is the vet while the other two are young players. I don't really expect much from their bench. The Heat will be fully stocked with guys with a ton of experience like Kyle Lowery, Kevin Love and Cody Zeller. I see the Heat having a much more efficient bench than the Nuggets. So, I will give them the advantage on this one. JS: Brown has been the Nuggets’ fifth-highest scorer this postseason. But I’ll agree with you on the Miami bench, especially if Herro could return (with that possibility happening around game three). The veteran presence of Lowry and Love could be huge for Miami. Love has now made the Finals all five times he’s reached the postseason in his career. I assume Erik Spoelstra has the advantage at coaching simply because this is his sixth Finals appearance and it’s the first for Michael Malone. EF: Bonus stat: This will be the 19th NBA finals for Pat Riley as either a player, coach, or executive. He's been involved in 25% of the NBA Finals. JS: Do you think the almost week and a half layoff for the Nuggets will have any impact on them? EF: I think they will be rusty early in game 1 but I do think they will have the maturity to pick themselves up and play better late. I expect game 1 to be close and I don't think it will be a sweep. Miami can steal one of the first two games in Denver. But once they get things together, the Nuggets are going to show they are the better team. JS: All right, so do you think the Nuggets will win the series in 5 games or do you see it going longer? EF: I debated whether it would be five or six games. I am leaning toward six games. JS: My first inclination was to predict the Nuggets to win the title in five games, but I don’t want to underestimate the sheer determination of Jimmy Butler, which might be big and good enough on its own to take multiple games in the series. So, not to bore our readers too much, but I’m going to agree with you on the Nuggets in six games prediction. We’re both taking Denver to win its first-ever NBA title. by Eric Fulton Yet another team with a historic regular season does not end that season as the champion of its league. By now, all sports fans should know that the regular season and the playoffs are not the same. The 2022-2023 Boston Bruins completed the greatest regular season in the history of the National Hockey League. They won 65 games during the regular season for a total of 177 points. They were the only team to have a goal differential of over 100 (+128 with the next closest team: Dallas Stars having 67). Of the Bruins’ 65 wins, 54 came in regulation. So, what exactly went wrong for the Bruins to have a historic regular season and not be able to get out of the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs? While some picked Boston to win it all, recent history has shown that the best team in the regular season does not end up winning hockey’s ultimate prize. The Bruins’ opponent in the first round, the Florida Panthers, made the playoffs in the 81st game of the season as the last spot in the Eastern Conference. The fact that Boston was hardly tested throughout the regular season on its way to the Stanley Cup Playoffs whereas Florida was in playoff mode late in the regular season may have played an impact in the historic loss. The historic Bruins regular season was led by all-star forward David Pastrnak. Pastrnak led the team in goals, assists and points (61 goals, 52 assists, 113 points), has been one of the best players in the NHL the last few years and is also a finalist for the Hart Trophy (NHL MVP). Emotionally, Boston is led by two veteran leaders, Brad Marchand and team captain Patrice Bergeron. Both players were a key part of the team’s 2011 Stanley Cup championship run and were also a part of the 2013 and 2019 teams that made the Stanley Cup Final. In goal, Linus Ullmark had a career year as the main starting goaltender. Ullmark won 40 games for Boston, with a 1.89 goals against average, and a .938 save percentage. Backup goalie Jeremy Swayman won 24 games and had more shutouts than Ullmark (4 for Swayman, 2 for Ullmark). It seemed like the first round would be good for Boston, but when you do not have many meaningful games to play late in the regular season, the focus of the team can be off. Injuries were also a factor, including Bergeron, who missed three games of the series against the Panthers. It also did not help having the backup goaltender start in game 7 as Ullmark did not play in the winner take all game. The Bruins did have a chance to eliminate the Panthers in at least five games with a 3-1 series lead. Florida finished 43 points behind Boston in the regular season point standings. That was the second-largest point differential in a series upset behind the 1982 Los Angeles Kings, who upset the Wayne Gretzky-led Edmonton Oilers (Edmonton had a 48-point lead over Los Angeles at the time of that series). Prior to the Bruins’ first-round collapse was another historic regular season team that surprisingly lost in the first round. The 2018-2019 Tampa Bay Lightning dominated the NHL regular season winning 62 games, which was the NHL record before Boston broke it this season. Unfortunately, the Lightning became the first Presidents’ Trophy winner to get swept in the first round of the playoffs when they lost to the Columbus Blue Jackets. The Lightning would recover from that abrupt end by participating in three straight Stanley Cup Finals, winning back-to-back in 2020 and 2021. I don’t know if the Bruins will accomplish that feat. There is a possibility that Bergeron will retire and the question as to whether or not Ullmark can be a consistent number one goaltender. While the 2019 Lightning collapse was historic, what can we say about this collapse by the 2023 Bruins if the team they lost to makes it to the Stanley Cup Final and win? As of the publication of this article, the Panthers are one win away from making the Final. Maybe this year’s Bruins could be the ultimate regular season disappointment in terms of having a historic regular season, only to lose it unexpectedly. No matter how the rest of the playoffs pan out, Bruins players, coaches and fans have got to be asking, “What if?” by Eric Fulton & Julian Spivey The 2023 Sports Emmy Awards (44th annual) will be held on Monday, May 22 in New York City. There are 47 categories in total, but Eric Fulton and I are going to pick our winners in what we consider to be eight of the night’s biggest categories. Julian: Inside the NBA (TNT) The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch wrote a year or two ago that TNT’s “Inside the NBA” studio show should be inducted into the Pro Basketball Hall of Fame and he’s absolutely right. The term G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time) gets bandied about a lot in the sports world, but “Inside the NBA” is the absolute G.O.A.T. of sports programming. The thing is, it might not be the most knowledgeable program on the game of basketball, but few who watch it really seem to care because it’s so entertaining, especially almost any time Charles Barkley opens his mouth. And the show’s ringleader Ernie Johnson Jr. is one of the all-time best to ever do what he does. TNT’s “Inside the NBA” is the biggest reason I wish the league would give the NBA Finals to TNT over ABC. Eric: Inside the NBA (TNT) It is still a shame that TNT does not have coverage of the NBA Finals. Imagine what “Inside the NBA” would be like after every NBA Finals game. That’s how good the show really is every single week. To me, "Inside the NBA” has become the gold standard of what every pre-game and post-game should be. The competition is not even close. Julian: MLB Tonight (MLB Network) Here’s the thing – I can’t watch MLB Tonight anymore. My television provider YouTubeTV lost MLB Network due to a carriage dispute shortly before the 2023 Major League Baseball season began and it hasn’t come back yet and honestly, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to. I miss MLB Tonight, which was the most knowledgeable and interesting of any of the sport-specific broadcasts on television – now full bias showing I am a baseball fan over any other sport. Eric is absolutely right about ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption” though. Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon are still at the top of their games more than two decades later. Eric: Pardon the Interruption (ESPN) One of the best sports shows on television for over 20 years, “Pardon the Interruption” has been one of ESPN’s true sports daily shows. Hosts Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon provide true sports commentary with loads of comedy. It’s a very nice show leading into the early evening “SportsCenter.” Eric: Kenny Albert (Fox/FS1/NBC/TNT/TBS) Kenny Albert may not be everyone’s favorite play-by-play announcer, but the fact he does cover NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL for multiple networks is outstanding. Sometimes, he is in two different places on consecutive days calling different sporting events. Albert is a rare announcer who can indeed cover every single ground and not feel like a homer when calling the games. Julian: Mike Breen (ESPN/ABC) I prefer almost everything about TNT’s NBA coverage to ESPN/ABC’s, but I have to hand it to ESPN/ABC play-by-play announcer Mike Breen that he’s probably the best in the business. No disrespect meant toward TNT’s Kevin Harlan, who’s also really good. But I absolutely can’t stand ESPN/NBA color commentator Jeff Van Gundy and while Mark Jackson, the other analyst for the network, isn’t nearly as annoying as Van Gundy, he doesn’t do much to make me enjoy the broadcast. So, you know Breen has to be pretty impressive to make me choose him here when I believe the overall product of the NBA on his network is lacking compared to others. Julian: Scott Van Pelt (ESPN) The best sports show moment I saw on television in all of 2022 had nothing to do with sports at all. It was Scott Van Pelt paying tribute to his family’s dog Otis. It was one of the most emotional and brilliantly written monologues I’ve ever had the privilege to see and showed everything about the type of man Van Pelt is. When he’s not making us cry with stories about his dog he’s frequently making us laugh with his anchoring of “SportsCenter.” I think he may have made a decent comedian. His personality is effervescent and you really just want to hang with him for an hour – no matter the night’s biggest subjects. Eric: Scott Van Pelt (ESPN) The early late edition of “SportsCenter” is ESPN’s most important show. Having someone like Scott Van Pelt is valuable to the franchise. For the past several years, Van Pelt has been doing the show solo but has really thrived on his own. He deserves this Emmy just for doing such a great job and still making “SportsCenter” relevant. Eric: Charles Barkley (TNT) No matter how right or wrong he can be, anytime Charles Barkley speaks, people listen. To me, he can be outspoken, but it is real and authentic. I just enjoy him talking about the game of basketball or just anything about life because you just never know what he is going to say. Julian: Ryan Clark (ESPN/ESPN2/ABC) Charles Barkley is the greatest studio analyst in the history of sports broadcasting and if he won this award every year you wouldn’t get an argument from me. If you wanted to give it to him and his Inside the NBA cohorts Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal as a three-way tie I also wouldn’t mind. There’s no unworthy nominee in this category, which also includes legends in ESPN’s Jay Bilas and MLB Network’s Tom Verducci, as well as Nate Burleson with CBS who’s always fun to watch. But I think Ryan Clark wrapped this one up the night that Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered a life-threatening injury on the field during a late-season NFL game between Buffalo and Cincinnati. The game would end up canceled and it left ESPN with hours to fill about a tricky subject. Clark, who suffered multiple serious health events during his NFL career, was the best person to speak on such a dramatic topic and he absolutely owned the screen that night. Eric: Peyton Manning (ESPN/ESPN+) Peyton Manning was born to become an analyst once his football career ended. His “Peyton’s Places” series on ESPN+ is tremendous. Peyton, alongside his brother, Eli has done a great job with the “Monday Night Football” alternate broadcast where they talk with celebrities and current and former NFL players. Julian: John Smoltz (Fox/FS1) I understand that John Smoltz isn’t very popular among many baseball fans – Twitter is honestly the only reason I know this – but I’ve always found him to be a very knowledgeable and smart broadcaster. He should be as a Hall of Fame pitcher for so many years. I honestly just don’t have many nominees in this category I enjoy. Cris Collinsworth (NBC) annoys me, I don’t watch enough college football to know Gary Danielson (CBS) well and I loathe Peyton Manning’s (ESPN) personality. I’ve always enjoyed Bill Raftery’s March Madness work with CBS and the Turner networks and this would make a great retirement gift for him, but I’ve got to go with the sport I watch the most and Smoltz is lightyears better than the Fox MLB analysts that came before him. Eric: Greg Olson (Fox) Greg Olson, a former NFL All-Pro tight end, has seen it all during his great career. Now he has become one of the best NFL analysts on television. Paired with Kevin Burkhardt, the top NFL on FOX broadcast team has incredible talent and chemistry between the two. They called a great Super Bowl together in February and look like they will be best team for a long time (IF Tom Brady backs out of his deal). Julian: Greg Olson (Fox) I actually don’t think this is a necessary award, and I believe it’s new, but as long as it’s a category I think the obvious choice is Fox NFL lead analyst Greg Olson. In such a short amount of time, Olson has already become the NFL’s best lead analyst, though all it really takes is being less annoying than Tony Romo (CBS) and Cris Collinsworth (NBC). I guess Troy Aikman (ESPN) is still around, but I don’t have time for Monday Night Football. With the love of all things Manning by those within sports, I suspect Eli Manning is going to win this honor. Julian: Tom Rinaldi (Fox/FS1)
I’ve long admired Tom Rinaldi’s work for many years while he was at ESPN and over the last few years since moving over to Fox Sports. Rinaldi does the kind of investigative, in-depth reporting that I love as a journalism nerd. One of the best sports products I consumed in 2022 was Rinaldi’s eight-part podcast series “Wesley,” based on the life and death of Lyman Bostock, the only Major League Baseball player to ever be murdered during a season. I highly recommend checking it out. Eric: Holly Rowe (ESPN/ESPN2/ABC) Holly Rowe has been an excellent reporter for ESPN for over 10 years. She has been doing women’s sports from the WNBA to women’s college sports. Her resume has now been added to college football on the week’s biggest game. EF Let us know in the comments below who your choices would be! by Julian Spivey Angel Reese vs. Caitlin Clark Shows Double-Standard The biggest story after the NCAA women’s basketball championship game yesterday should’ve been the champion LSU Tigers, the Tigers dominated the Iowa Hawkeyes 102-85 to win its first title after all, but we can’t really have nice things now can we. The story immediately became some white folks, mostly white men bitching about LSU star Angel Reese’s trash-talking (some would call it taunting) of Iowa star Caitlin Clark. People were immediately calling Reese, who mind you is not even old enough to legally drink yet, classless (and other much worse stuff). Though Reese’s actions looked exactly like Clark’s in previous games during the tournament in which the Iowa superstar was essentially treated like Basketball Jesus. So, if the actions by Reese and Clark were similar, what are the differences between the two? Well, the key difference is Reese is black and Clark is white. And it brings up a double-standard we’ve seen from time to time in sports, particularly college sports – one that a tweet from journalist Brian Krassenstein reminded me of on Monday: “When a white woman from Iowa, Caitlin Clark, taunts the other team during a game it’s ‘funny’ and ‘part of competition.’ When a black woman from Louisiana, Angel Reese, decides to do it back, she’s ‘not showing sportsmanship’ and ‘disgusting.’” When Clark does the trash-talking or taunting it’s either ignored or seen as celebration. When Reese does it in the title game in response to Clark doing it previously it’s all of a sudden a classless display of unsportsmanlike behavior? I would love to say: “I’m sorry, but if you believe this then your racism is showing?” But, then I see someone like veteran broadcast journalist Keith Olbermann tweet: “what a fucking idiot” as a response to a SportsCenter video of Reese doing the pointing at her ring finger and “you can’t see me” hand waving in front of face gesture toward Clark (though Clark says she didn’t see it and video evidence seems to confirm). I certainly have never viewed Olbermann as racist. So, maybe it’s also a generational thing? But that still doesn’t really explain how when Reese does it there’s outrage, but when Clark does it’s crickets. Maybe the second part of that Krassenstein tweet holds the answer: “If you ever needed an example of systemic racism in American culture and why books on such should not be banned from schools, THIS IS IT!” So, maybe some people are just instinctively bothered by a black person doing it and not a white person because this country for centuries has ingrained in them that white people can get away with stuff and black people taunting white people is bad and so the fragile, pissed off white man will do the only type of lynching they can still do – verbally and behind a computer or phone screen. UCONN Was Clearly Miss-Seeded, Best College Basketball Program of Last 25 Years On Monday night (April 3), the University of Connecticut Huskies finished off their run to the NCAA men’s college basketball title with a 76-59 over the San Diego State Aztecs. The championship capped off one of the most dominant NCAA Tournament runs in the history of college basketball – somewhat surprisingly as UCONN was merely a four-seed and it was a wacky and wide-open tournament this year. UCONN won all six of its tournament games by double-digits with the University of Miami Hurricane getting the closest to them in the Final Four matchup on Saturday (April 1) losing by only 13 points. UCONN even beat the higher seeded Gonzaga (3-seed) by 28 points in their Elite Eight matchup. After UCONN beat St. Mary’s (5-seed) in the second round I began to say I thought the Huskies were miss-seeded by the NCAA selection committee, even if they were 25-8 and 13-7 in conference play during the season and began the year unranked. When they dominated Arkansas (8-seed), which had just knocked off a 1-seed in Kansas, by 23 points in the Sweet 16 and then that demolishing of Gonzaga I knew they were miss-seeded. There is simply no way there were 12 better teams in this NCAA tournament than the UCONN Huskies and the Huskies proved that along the way. Something the Huskies also proved with their net-cutting on Monday night was they’re the most dominant program in college basketball, at least when it comes to winning titles, over the last quarter-century. In 1999, UCONN won its first men’s college basketball title and on Monday they won the school’s fifth. That’s two more titles than the next closest programs in Duke and University of North Carolina during that stretch. Duke and North Carolina are considered college basketball “blue bloods.” As is Kansas, UCLA, Kentucky, but I’ve never really thought of UCONN as one of those high standard college basketball programs. Well, I obviously should have, because the record books show nobody has been better over the last 25 years. MLB Pitch Clock Immediately Working Wonders The Major League Baseball season began on Thursday, March 30 and completed its first series of games of the year over the weekend with the high profile rules changes, with the most notable being the addition of a pitch clock to help speed up the often slow sport. Over the first four days of the 2023 MLB season compared to the 2022 season, the average length of baseball games is down 31 minutes. That’s amazing. That’s the type of thing that can save baseball in the long run. It will hopefully lead to folks, particularly younger people, watching a game they once thought moved too slowly and took too long. How many people have three-plus hours to dedicate to anything in the modern world where some people won’t even watch a half-hour sitcom because it’s easier to watch bite-size TikTok videos? And for those of us who were going to watch baseball no matter how long it took – that’s me – we have so much extra time now for other things! The action has already noticeably picked up too due to some of the other rules like the bigger bases (there have been 41 more over the first four days of the season than last year) and the average batting average across the league is 15 points higher than at the same time last year, this is probably mostly due to the rules regarding infield shifts. The season is very young and some of these rules will take some getting used to and opinions are always subject to change, but as of now I’m thrilled with baseball attempting to do something to both build the sport and make it more exciting and interesting – and this is coming from a life-long fan of our national game. PGA/LIV Feud Changes How I Watch Golf The great thing about sports is hard-fought competition and the feuds that can come from it. This leads to fans having athletes and teams that they like and dislike. Golf is the one sport I watch where I’ve never really had golfers I disliked, well lately there was Patrick Reed, but for the most part there were golfers I liked and there was hundreds of others who were just there. I think this is mostly to do with golf kind of being a sport where the biggest competition is the course itself and you as a golfer yourself. You can only control what you do. And, then came LIV Golf. I freakin’ hate LIV Golf. There are numerous reasons. The murders Saudi prince funneling money into the league in a sportswashing effort. The smarminess of Greg Norman (its CEO). But mostly I hate that it has tried and to some extent succeeded in hurting the game of golf. LIV Golf has mostly been a bust in its one-plus years in business, but what it has managed to do is take some of the biggest names and best players from the PGA Tour like Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and Cameron Smith. LIV players don’t compete on the PGA Tour anymore. They didn’t really want to anyway, that’s then point of LIV Golf. But golfers from both leagues will meet up at at least some of the major tournaments, including the Masters Tournament in Augusta, Ga. this week. Now there’s a feud in golf and it’s a big freakin’ feud. There’s trash-talk and there’s general hatred among some of the competitors. This week at Augusta should be an interesting watch for me. I’ll be rooting hard for a PGA (or any other non-LIV league) golfer to win and I’ll be rooting hardcore against DeChambeau, Koepka, Johnson, Smith, Sergio Garcia, Kevin Na, Louis Oosthuizen, Charl Schwartzel and Phil Mickelson (something that just two years ago I never thought would be possible). It should be fun and then if a LIV golfer wins it will suck incredibly. Denny Hamlin: The Hypocrite Denny Hamlin is a NASCAR legend. He’s a future Hall of Famer. In February, I ranked him as the 22nd greatest driver in the sport’s history (and it’ll certainly keep climbing). But I’ve also known for years that Hamlin has been the whiniest driver in the sport in the 22 years I’ve been watching it and he’s also a hypocrite. Almost all season, and for a decent part of the 2022 season, one of the biggest topics of discussion within NASCAR by the drivers themselves has been driver etiquette and who needs to be taught a lesson. Hamlin has been one of the drivers calling out others the most for their aggressiveness on the track. It’s even easier for him to do so now that he hosts a weekly podcast “Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin,” which is funny because I believe he’s the only Cup Series driver to actually be penalized for “actions detrimental” this season when he admitted to intentionally “taking out” Ross Chastain at Phoenix Raceway. Yes, one of the drivers talking about how he’s raced admitted to taking out another driver on his own show. And, then came this weekend’s race at Richmond Raceway where Hamlin obviously intentionally dumped the No. 15 Rick Ware Racing Ford driven by J.J. Yeley seemingly out of frustration at being back in the pack with slower cars after being busted for speeding on pit road. Hamlin’s No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota was faster than Yeley’s Ford and Hamlin could’ve easily passed him with no contact at all. After the race, Yeley called Hamlin out for his hypocrisy to Frontstretch saying: “From a guy who’s been preaching respect for the last couple weeks [it] seemed really silly on lap 32 knowing it was going to be a short run. And obviously, he had no worries or issues.” Well, that’s just who Hamlin is and has always been. He wants all your respect, but he’s never going to give you any. by Julian Spivey I’m reminded on this very early Friday morning of a great quote from Brad Pitt’s portrayal of former Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane in the terrific 2011 film “Moneyball.” “It’s hard not to be romantic about baseball.” It feels this way to those of us who love the game because it feels like more than a game. Many baseball players play for the multi-million dollar contracts offered by the bright lights of the major leagues. They play for the championship rings and the accolades and the hopes of one day being cast in bronze in Cooperstown. Every so often they get to play for the name of their country on their chest, not the one on their backs that belongs solely to them. Players from 20 countries are doing just that this week in the World Baseball Classic, which began on Wednesday. Some of them have been there before – coming from baseball hotspots around the world like the United States, Japan, and many Caribbean island nations. And then there’s the Czech Republic, not exactly known for baseball, which qualified for its first WBC tournament this year (Great Britain and Nicaragua are also making their WBC debuts). Many teams in the World Baseball Classic have a handful of Major League Baseball players. Some teams, like the United States roster which looks like an All-Star team have an entire squad of big leaguers. Then you have Czech Republic. They have one big leaguer on the squad – Eric Sogard, a 36-year-old infielder who played parts of 11 seasons with five teams but hasn't played in MLB since 2021. The rest of the team is filled with normal guys (or normální chlapi in their native language), most of whom have full-time jobs outside of baseball and suit up with Česko across their chest to represent their homeland or at least their family’s homeland, a landlocked Central European country bordered by Austria, Germany, Poland and Slovakia. There’s Martin Schneider, a combination shortstop/relief pitcher, who is a firefighter forced to miss one out of every three games in the Czech ExtraLiga due to his 24-hour shifts. There’s Marek Minarik, a combination pitcher/outfielder who once played in the Philadelphia Phillies and Pittsburgh Pirates farm systems, who’s now a real estate agent. There’s Arnost Dubovy, the team’s center fielder, who is a high school geography teacher who according to MLB.com gives his students extra credit when they can name the weekend’s ExtraLiga scores. The captain and designated hitter of the team is Petr Zyma, who’s a financial analyst by trade. Pitcher David Mergans is a magazine moderator, outfielder Matej Mensik a sports manager and third baseman Felip Smola an auditor for KPMG. Maybe most impressively? The team’s manager Pavel Chadim isn’t just some high-profile baseball coach. He has a day job too – he’s the leading neurologist in the city of Brno, the country’s second-largest city after its capital Prague. As you might imagine in a tournament featuring rosters filled with professional baseball all-stars, the Czech Republic team isn’t expected to go very far in the tournament, which might be a good thing for the citizens of their cities needing fires put out and brain doctors (!!) but it’s already been a Cinderella story for the team and they just finished their first game within the last 90 minutes of this writing. They faced China in their first game of the pool round of the tournament in Tokyo late Thursday night into early Friday morning here in America. The Czech pitchers, which included Schneider the firefighter, held China hitless through the first five-plus innings of the game. The team would end up giving up some hits and five runs to the Chinese team, but with a home run from Mensik, the sports manager, in the third and more importantly a go-ahead one from first baseman Martin Muzik, who played college baseball at Wake Tech Community College in Raleigh, N.C. from 2016-2018, in the ninth to seal the nation’s first WBC win in its first-ever WBC game. Minarik, the real estate agent who once had big league dreams, pitched the final 2.2 innings and got the win. The Czech team will play again at 4 a.m. (CST) on Saturday against Japan, where they will have to face Major League Baseball phenom Shohei Ohtani in the lineup and most likely Nippon Professional Baseball (Japan’s pro league) pitcher Roki Sasaki, who nearly pitched back-to-back perfect games last year, on the mound. Whatever happens the rest of their time in this year’s World Baseball Classic nothing will ever change the fact that the Czech Republic team are WBC game winners. They’ll go back to their day jobs as national heroes. It’s hard not to be romantic about baseball. by Julian Spivey Every year during the broadcast of the Daytona 500, which has been broadcast by Fox every year since 2007 and three of the six years before that, you could probably see the same joke on social media feeds (and made among friends before that). “Daytona 500 Commercials – am I right?” It’s a joke made because commercial breaks are a major nuisance to fans watching NASCAR from home because, unless they are during a caution break, you are missing the action. Auto racing, which NASCAR is the most popular form of in America, is the only sport truly affected by commercials when it comes to missing the action. Baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer, tennis, etc. all have either natural breaks that allow for commercials or what’s known as TV timeouts to accommodate commercials. Professional golf will continue through commercials, but networks have gotten so good about pre-taping shots and effortlessly cutting them into the live broadcast that it’s not problematic. In NASCAR – and other forms of racing like IndyCar – commercial breaks are often problematic, especially when they’re being shown on average every nine laps during a sport’s biggest event as was the case during the Daytona 500 on Fox on Sunday, February 19. And that average was actually aided by the network airing the majority of the final 20 percent of the race commercial-free. During the race and after the race on Sunday the actual event and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. winning the race seemed to play second fiddle to complaining about the number of commercial breaks and action missed by fans as a result. Many of the complaints I saw were via Twitter, which is certainly a medium where you’re prone to see much complaining, but that doesn’t mean the complaints or wrong or unwarranted. It’s a sport and a broadcaster of that sport’s number one priority to please its fan base. According to the Twitter user @GPLapsJake, the 2023 Daytona 500 featured 23 commercials breaks, accounting for 78 total laps (of the 200-lap race) missed with 58 of those being green flag laps (while racing at speed or actual action was taking place). This means 29 percent of the green flag racing during the sport’s biggest event was either completely missed by fans or shown on a side-by-side small screen with commercials beside it. @GPLapsJake compared these numbers to past races broadcast by Fox and found that the numbers were nearly the same throughout the network’s run with the race – but he did admit “somehow feels so much worse now.” It certainly does feel much worse now and there are many reasons for this, I believe, and I’ll get into some of the reasons why I believe this to be the case. A) Attention spans are getting shorter. This point doesn’t interest me a whole lot but it’s true. According to a CNN article, Dr. Gloria Mark, professor of informatics at the University of California – Irvine, has studied how digital media impacts our lives. Mark found that in 2004 the average attention span on a screen was 2 ½ minutes. Years later, they found it had slipped to about 75 seconds. Now she finds the average to be 47 seconds. B) We don’t view television the same way we did two decades ago. In 2001, the first Daytona 500 broadcast on Fox, we had just one option. We had to watch the race live (or record it on a VHS!) and we had to take it the way the network gave it to us. So, if we missed 35.50 percent of the race, as @GPLapsJake figured up, that year we knew no better. That was the way TV worked and it had always been that way. But it wouldn’t be too long before innovations came around in DVRs that allowed us to realize we didn’t have to put up with the annoyance of commercials anymore. In 2001, commercials were just a way of life. In 2023, they’re seen as something that can and should be avoided. I’ve been so annoyed by commercials during NASCAR events (and at times boring competition on the track – which was aided a lot in 2022 by the new Next Gen Racecar) that I began DVRing races a few years ago and waiting 90 minutes to two hours before starting so I could fast-forward through these nuisances. I understand, though, many fans don’t want to watch races this way. C) We’ve seen it doesn’t have to be this way. There has been a much talked about boom over the last few years about the rising popularity of Formula 1 among American audiences, despite the fact that most of the events in that series are held in countries across the globe with time zones that see many races held in the wee hours of the morning or rarely in what are accustomed normal sporting event viewing times in America. ESPN, the broadcaster of F1 races in America but uses the Britain-based Sky Sports feed for coverage, airs all of the F1 races commercial-free. Sure, F1 races are generally about half of the broadcast time of a NASCAR race, which honestly probably has also aided in its boom among American audiences, but we’ve seen it can still be done. People within the sport swear NASCAR can’t be broadcast in the same way due to broadcasting expenses. Fox NASCAR play-by-play commentator Mike Joy told a fan on Twitter: “It’s a fraction of the cost of televising NASCAR Cup on Fox, NBC, FS1 and USA” when asked about ESPN’s F1 coverage, though he didn’t explain the reasons why. But all fans truly see here is that it’s being done elsewhere, and it should be done for NASCAR – and in 2023 fans should have the right to see more than just 71% of the event’s action. Even if NASCAR broadcasters could utilize the side-by-side method more often or better yet completely it would be bucket loads better than currently. D) It doesn’t help that the broadcasters don’t seem to care. One of the worst things you can do if you’re a sport or the broadcaster of the sport is to make the fans, upset already, feel like they’re wrong for being upset or like they don’t have the right to be upset. And I saw this time and time again from NASCAR on Fox commentators and others affiliated with the sport like former Texas Motor Speedway President Eddie Gossage and Cup Series spotter Freddie Kraft on Twitter on Monday, the day after the race. The easiest way to lose a fan is to act like their complaints don’t matter, but it feels like NASCAR on Fox commentators have taken the overall Rupert Murdoch/Fox News policy of gaslight, gaslight, gaslight when it comes to the wave of complaints about the broadcast on Sunday – and there were more complaints about the broadcast besides the commercials, but that was the biggest irritant for sure. All sports are trying to figure out how to fit into the modern world. This has led to numerous changes from minor to major in a multitude of sports, for instance, baseball is trying to speed the game up in hopes of appealing to more and younger viewers. NASCAR’s current TV deal ends after the 2024 season and the sport desperately needs to figure out ways to appeal to modern TV audiences and younger audiences, as well. Beaucoups of commercials are not going to be the way to make this happen. Fox Sports’ coverage of the sport, in general, is not a great way to make it happen either – but that’s perhaps a story for another time. |
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