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Kidnapped Mexican soccer star Alan Pulido was found and rescued safely by police, according to authorities in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Pulido, 25, was kidnapped over the weekend by armed men after he left a party in his hometown of Ciudad Victoria in northern Mexico, officials said. The rescue happened shortly before midnight involving federal and state forces, the Tamaulipas Coordination Group said in a statement released early this…

Mixed Leagues Adam Lind, 1B, Seattle Mariners Aaron Hill, 2B/3B, Milwaukee Brewers Brad Miller, 2B/SS, Tampa Bay Rays Jurickson Profar, 2B/SS, Texas Rangers Coco Crisp, OF, Oakland Athletics Hyun-Jin Ryu, SP, Los Angeles Dodgers Danny Duffy, SP/RP, Kansas City Royals Archie Bradley, SP, Arizona Diamondbacks   AL-Only Paulo Orlando, OF, Kansas City Royals Whit Merrifield, OF, Kansas City Royals Matt Boyd, SP, Detroit Tigers Pat Dean, SP, Minnesota Twins Tim…

Lost in an offseason slog, dreaming of those fall afternoons spent arguing online about the existence of an SEC bias? Don’t worry, the NCAA baseball tourney has your fix! No conference in tournament history has ever earned more than three of the available eight national seeds (which means you get to host the first two rounds at your home park), but the SEC looks poised to do so when…

Monday’s MLB schedule is packed with games starting at different times, so those in daily fantasy baseball contests will have to double-check every entry to make sure the players they want are available in that specific FanDuel or DraftKings tournament. The late-afternoon contests have the most interesting splits (at least on FanDuel, where the Dodgers-Cubs and Rangers-Indians are included on that slate), with the Twins, Reds, Astros, Cubs, Indians and Rangers all…

I was a horrible lacrosse player in high school: bad at catching the ball, slow, and not very aggressive. Yet I’d spend hours at a handball wall with my stick: throwing, catching, repeating. I played on winter leagues, and woke up early for 6 am pickup games. Freshman and sophomore years, I made it on to the junior varsity team — a miracle. By 11th grade, it was time to…

Beginning this fall, low-income student-athletes will not be able to get grants to offset the cost of playing sports, because legislators did not reauthorize a sales tax exemption on tickets for high school sporting events. Legislators did not include the comparatively minuscule measure in the chaotic final days of the legislative session, where it got lost amid proposals for billions of dollars in spending and borrowing. Gov. Mark Dayton said…

Time and history have long since confirmed Maxim Gorky’s dim view of the Soviet Union. So perhaps we ought to pay a little more attention to something the Russian novelist said about sports. “Sport,” Gorky wrote in 1928, “has a single clear purpose: to make people even more stupid than they are.” (Before anyone asks,…

WBC cruiserweight champion Bellew comforts Makabu after his third-round knockout win at Goodison Park The inside of Tony Bellew’s head must have been a wild place on Monday morning. What’s real? What’s fantasy? Did that actually happen? Certainly did. Ask any one of 17,000 fellow Everton fans who screamed you to victory. Or ask Ilunga Makabu, the poor bloke whose head you almost took off. Come to think of it,…

Marcus Rashford and Cameron Borthwick-Jackson (right) both made their first-team debuts this season Manchester United’s 18-year-old striker Marcus Rashford has signed a new deal which will keep him at Old Trafford until June 2020. He scored twice on his first-team debut against Midtjylland in February and finished the season with eight goals in 18 appearances. Rashford was selected in England’s 26-man squad for Euro 2016 and scored on his debut…

(Photo: The Associated Press) CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico (AP) — Mexican authorities say soccer player Alan Pulido, a forward with Olympiacos in the Greek league, has been rescued safe and sound after an hours-long kidnapping in the northeast border state of Tamaulipas. The Tamaulipas security coordination group for Mexico’s security forces says in a statement early Monday that the rescue occurred shortly before midnight. The statement says Pulido is being medically…

As soccer powerhouses like Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay gear up for the prestigious Copa America tournament this weekend and England, France, Germany and Spain prepare to compete at Euro 2016 just a few days later, a World Cup is already under way — albeit with slightly lesser known “national” sides like Kurdistan, Somaliland and Northern Cyprus — in the autonomous region of Abkhazia in eastern Europe. A total of 12…

CONCORD, N.C. — Richard Childress and Rick Hendrick have more in common than being long-time car owners in NASCAR. Both men have seen their teams win multiple championships. Both have fielded entries for some of NASCAR’s most talented drivers. And both are going into NASCAR’s Hall of Fame as members of the Class of 2017. Their friendship has been built on respect for each other’s accomplishments as well as years…

(Photo: The Associated Press) CONCORD, N.C. (AP) — Lee Greenwood’s patriotic anthem was almost lost to bad timing. Greenwood was at Charlotte Motor Speedway to sing his anthem, “God Bless The USA” before the start of the Coca-Cola 600 on Sunday night. He said that when the song was out its first year on the “You’ve Got A Good Love Comin’” album, its release missed a natural tie in with…

Time and history have long since confirmed Maxim Gorky’s dim view of the Soviet Union. So perhaps we ought to pay a little more attention to something the Russian novelist said about sports. “Sport,” Gorky wrote in 1928, “has a single clear purpose: to make people even more stupid than they are.” (Before anyone asks,…

Beginning this fall, low-income student-athletes will not be able to get grants to offset the cost of playing sports, because legislators did not reauthorize a sales tax exemption on tickets for high school sporting events. Legislators did not include the comparatively minuscule measure in the chaotic final days of the legislative session, where it got lost amid proposals for billions of dollars in spending and borrowing. Gov. Mark Dayton said…

Texas A&M won an SEC Championship in baseball today almost three months after clinching the regular season title for basketball. That only adds more pressure on Kevin Sumlin.  Athlon Sports came out with its early predictions on arguably Sumlin’s most important season. In the article, the Aggies are picked to finish 5th in the SEC West. In addition, Athlon Sports previews A&M’s offense, defense and special teams as well as what to expect this…

Andy Murray beat Roger Federer to win Olympic gold in London in 2012 Andy Murray will seek medical guidance on the Zika virus before travelling to Rio for the Olympics. The 29-year-old British defending champion said he had been influenced by recent reports of scientists saying it was “unethical” for the summer Olympics and Paralympics to go ahead. “I will speak to a couple of doctors about it and see…

Olympic chiefs have announced 23 competitors at the London 2012 Games have failed retrospective doping tests. Those athletes are from five different sports and six different countries. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) retested 454 selected doping samples from the 2008 Games in Beijing and a further 265 from London 2012. It said the retests, conducted using the latest scientific methods, were focused on athletes who could take part at this…

Mexico City –  Alan Pulido, a striker for Mexico’s national soccer team and Greek top side Olympiakos, was reportedly kidnapped early Sunday in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the violence-plagued northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas. The abduction was initially confirmed to local media by state officials and to sports website MedioTiempo by Pulido’s brother Armando, who is also a professional soccer player. “Yes, it’s true that Alan was kidnapped,” Armando…