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The Chicago Cubs acquired hard-throwing reliever Aroldis Chapman in a trade with the New York Yankees on Monday, giving the N.L. Central leaders a boost as they try for their first World Series title in more than a century. The Cubs paid a steep price, parting with top shortstop prospect Gleyber Torres, versatile pitcher Adam Warren and minor league outfielders Billy McKinney and Rashad Crawford. Chapman, who was rumored to…

By Dan Jenkins@DanTJenkins Sometimes it’s hard to sift through the internet and find inspiring things in today’s world, but every now and then there’s a story that captures people’s hearts. This video from over the weekend shows how rewarding having children can truly be. A dad from Oakland, California pretends like he completely forgot about his son’s birthday as they head off to the boy’s little league baseball game. The boy…

Mike Berman No one at WMAQ-Channel 5 is saying when — if ever — we’ll see the return of veteran sports anchor Mike Adamle, who’s been on personal leave since mid-March. But on Monday, the NBC-owned station announced the hiring of a new sports reporter and fill-in anchor. Mike Berman, a Chicago native who grew up in Northbrook and most recently worked at WTTV, the CBS affiliate in Indianapolis,…

The IOC’s ruling against a blanket Olympic ban for Russia was met with disappointment by many.(Photo: James Lang, USA TODAY Sports) Thomas Bach asserted, reiterated and repeated that, yes, indeed, the International Olympic Committee’s decision not to ban Russia from the Rio Olympics was in the interest of clean sport. In delegating the decisions about the eligibility of athletes in a state-sponsored doping program, the IOC was respecting the rights…

Having the Rio 2016 Olympics in a country with an ongoing Zika epidemic has some athletes and physicians concerned. But a growing number of scientists are predicting few new infections from the virus during the Games. A new report, published Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, predicts that in a worst-case scenario there will be between six to 80 new cases of Zika among travelers at this summer’s…

The IOC was banking on the federations adhering to the criteria laid down and not putting forward individuals whose subsequent expulsion would cause them huge embarrassment. As of Monday, only three of the 23 governing bodies affected had announced they were satisfied the Russians in their competitions met the IOC criteria, those of tennis, triathlon and archery. World Archery said the country’s three qualified archers, Tuiana Dashidorzhieva, Ksenia Perova and Inna…

Kyle Busch has done it all—at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, anyway. The reigning Sprint Cup champion started on the pole and dominated both the Combat Wounded Coalition 400, the featured event, and Saturday’s Xfinity Series race, the Lilly Diabetes 250. No one else has ever done that on the same NASCAR weekend. The race today was boring…i love Indy but a 330 start, 100+ degrees and coupled with no…

We had a pretty strange Brickyard 400 Sunday that only saw three cautions in the first 130 laps. Then in the last 40 laps, because we did go into “Overtime”, we had five cautions. We had a red flag and two overtimes. When the checkered flag finally did wave, we had Kyle Busch and his No. 18 Toyota team kissing the bricks. That No. 18 was as close to flawless…

Stewart-Haas Racing will field a full-time, single-car team in the NASCAR XFINITY Series in 2017, the organization announced Monday.   The driver and sponsor of the team will be announced before the end of the 2016 season, SHR said. The team will be run from SHR’s headquarters in Kannapolis, North Carolina.    “In order to maintain the competitiveness that has earned SHR two championships since our debut in 2009, we…

For those who are unfamiliar with my thought process, I aim to add as many home run hitters as possible to my daily fantasy baseball lineups. One way of doing that is to look at a player’s isolated power numbers (ISO). The ISO statistic removes singles and provides a larger weight for each extra-base hit. I also use the weighted on-base average (wOBA) metric. This stat takes every positive outcome into consideration. Last year,…

Two players who began their careers at opposite ends of the spectrum nearly three decades ago ended up in the same place on Sunday — with their names etched on plaques at the Baseball Hall of Fame. For Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza, the culmination of their long journeys was tinged with tears all around. “I stand up here humbled and overwhelmed,” Griffey said, staring out at…

Few things in baseball make me more uncomfortable as a television viewer than when a pitcher is making his Major League debut and the camera is trained on his parents. It’s not as big a deal when a hitter plays in his first big league game, because if he strikes out, hey, strikeouts happen all the time — get back out there, rook. But when a pitcher takes the mound,…

The IOC’s ruling against a blanket Olympic ban for Russia was met with disappointment by many.(Photo: James Lang, USA TODAY Sports) Thomas Bach asserted, reiterated and repeated that, yes, indeed, the International Olympic Committee’s decision not to ban Russia from the Rio Olympics was in the interest of clean sport. In delegating the decisions about the eligibility of athletes in a state-sponsored doping program, the IOC was respecting the rights…

Yulia Efimova won gold in the women’s 100m breaststroke at the World Championships in August Seven Russian swimmers have been banned from competing at the Rio Olympic Games by swimming’s governing body Fina. Those deemed ineligible for Rio include Yulia Efimova, a 200m bronze medallist in London, who had a provisional ban lifted by Fina last week. It said the McLaren Report has showed anti-doping rules were “not properly applied”…

Another year and another lackluster Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, particularly when it comes to action on the track and fans in the grandstands. With NASCAR’s new five-year sanctioning agreements in place, there is little use pondering the thought of the race leaving anytime soon – if ever. So, that basically leaves us with one question. Pardoning the election year pun, but can anything be done to…

The IOC’s ruling against a blanket Olympic ban for Russia was met with disappointment by many.(Photo: James Lang, USA TODAY Sports) Thomas Bach asserted, reiterated and repeated that, yes, indeed, the International Olympic Committee’s decision not to ban Russia from the Rio Olympics was in the interest of clean sport. In delegating the decisions about the eligibility of athletes in a state-sponsored doping program, the IOC was respecting the rights…

India, a country with second largest population, has struggled to win medals at Olympics. India dominated the hockey field in which it has won eight gold medals so far. But after 1980 Moscow Olympics, the hockey team failed to snatch a single medal. India first participated at the Olympic Games in 1900, with a lone athlete Norman Pritchard. The nation first sent a team to the Summer Olympic Games in…

RIO DE JANEIRO—Olympics organizers on Monday rushed to fix bad wiring, broken plumbing and other problems in the athletes’ village after several foreign teams complained that accommodations were dirty and in disrepair less than two weeks before the start of the Games. The complaints started on Sunday when dozens of foreign athletes and staff began moving into the new residential complex near the Olympic Park, which is in the western…