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NEW YORK — A baseball pioneer who has rested in an unmarked grave since he died in 1899 will finally get the recognition he craved when a cemetery unveils his gravestone. The home-plate-shaped monument honoring James Whyte Davis will be unveiled at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn on Saturday. Davis started playing baseball in the 1840s at the dawn of the game and was president of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of…

Thomas Paine, hell-raising writer and Founding Father, today would have had to write it in reverse: “These are the souls that try men’s times.” Look what they’ve done to my game, Ma, Part I: The biggest big league baseball stories continue to make little news and noise as Rob Manfred and his Merry Band of Team Owners continue to rob from The Game and keep it. Sunday, the latest in…

John Lackey has had a great career renaissance over the past few years. This season with the Chicago Cubs, he has had a really nice start going 4-2 with a 3.54 ERA in seven appearances. But on Wednesday night, the 37-year-old showed why he’s exactly what’s wrong with baseball right now. Lackey was cruising against the San Diego Padres, having retired the first 14 batters he faced, when catcher Christian Bethancourt stepped…

A spot in history is now within the sights of the Plum baseball team. It’s a “perfect” spot for the Mustangs — right next to Joe Namath. You may ask what in the name of Broadway Joe would a WPIAL baseball team have in common with a Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback? It’s about a baseball story with the perfect ending. …

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x Embed x Share USA TODAY Sports’ Jeff Gluck previews the top story lines at the upcoming AAA 400 Drive for Autism. usa today sports Brad Keselowski has two victories in 2016, including the Kobalt 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.(Photo: Stephen R. Sylvanie, USA TODAY Sports) As the freshness of the new NASCAR season wears off, there’s renewed concern over the Chase for the Sprint Cup’s impact on the…

A Canadian public health expert wants to delay or move the 2016 Olympics in Brazil because of the Zika threat. “But for the games, would anyone recommend sending an extra half million visitors into Brazil right now?” wrote University of Ottawa Professor Amir Attaran for the Harvard Public Health Review. He is a biologist and lawyer who researches health issues. Zika, which is spread by mosquitos, has been linked to…

John Lackey has had a great career renaissance over the past few years. This season with the Chicago Cubs, he has had a really nice start going 4-2 with a 3.54 ERA in seven appearances. But on Wednesday night, the 37-year-old Lackey showed why he’s exactly what’s wrong with baseball right now. Lackey was cruising against the San Diego Padres, having retired the first 14 batters he faced, when catcher Christian Bethancourt…

print LOS ANGELES — The dump will jump no more. The Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, the building Bruce Springsteen affectionately dubbed “the dump that jumps,” was sent off with one last national anthem and a champagne toast from city leaders on Thursday. In recent decades, it has lived in the shadow of the younger, sexier Forum and Staples Center. But the Sports Arena was once home to the Lakers,…

Two-time world cross-country world champion Emily Chebet is among the Kenyan athletes to have been banned for doping offences Kenya has been declared in breach of global anti-doping rules. The surprise move will mean some of the world’s top athletes are at risk of missing August’s Olympic Games in Rio. Kenya, one of the major forces in world athletics, has already missed two World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) deadlines to show…

A lab director at the 2014 Olympics says that he provided athletes with a three-drug cocktail of banned substances mixed with liquor in a systemic and state-run doping operation by Russia, according to an investigation by The New York Times. The operation reportedly involved 4 members of Russia’s cross-country ski team and two bobsledders who won two gold medals. Russian antidoping experts and members of the country’s intelligence services would…

As the opening ceremony to the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro fast approaches, Brazil faces a slew of problems that could overshadow the highly-anticipated games. Here are some of the major issues plaguing Brazil less than 100 days before games commence: The Zika ‘Health Disaster’ Unless the Olympics are postponed, the games could cause a “full-blown public health disaster” due to the Zika virus, according to a…

Will lug nuts — or the lack thereof — be an issue again this week at Dover International Raceway, site of Sunday’s AAA 400 Drive For Autism NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race (FS1, 12:30 p.m. ET)? Maybe, maybe not. After receiving numerous complaints from drivers about racing on just three or four lug nuts, on April 24, NASCAR sent a bulletin to all teams, stating, “All tires, wheels and all…

Media playback is not supported on this device Everton: Are you Wigan in disguise? Everton have sacked manager Roberto Martinez after three years in charge. Martinez’s side, 12th in the Premier League, were beaten 3-1 by champions Leicester on Saturday and lost 3-0 at Sunderland on Wednesday. The Toffees lost in the semi-finals of the FA Cup and League Cup this season. The club praised the Spaniard, 42, for his…

Three NASCAR personalities have made TheDrive.com’s list of top 10 most influential car people in sports.    It’s a curious list, to be sure, with an eclectic selection of athletes and others on it.    Coming in at No. 7 was Hendrick Motorsports driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. “Since the death of his father in 2001, Junior has been the most popular and, arguably, the only ubiquitous race car driver, in…

Here’s a look at some of baseball’s notable knuckleballers (you can find an extensive list here): Jim Bouton Though this righthander did not always throw the knuckleball, he began develop it about a third of the way into his career after being plagued by injuries. Tom Candiotti Advertisement After Tommy John surgery, Candiotti switched to the knuckleball full time after signing with the Cleveland Indians for the 1986 season. R.A….

https://serve.castfire.com/s:5L8r1/audio/2752096/whatsthepoint_2016-05-12-144336.64k.mp3?ad_params=zones%3DPreroll%2CPreroll2%2CMidroll%2CMidroll2%2CMidroll3%2CMidroll4%2CMidroll5%2CMidroll6%2CPostroll%2CPostroll2%7Cstation_id%3D3138 Subscribe: iTunes | Download | RSS | Video Some people daydream about becoming professional baseball players. Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller daydream about being general managers. The two co-host the “Effectively Wild” podcast for Baseball Prospectus (Ben is also a writer for this site), and last summer they learned that one of their listeners was the media relations director for the Sonoma Stompers, an independent minor-league baseball team in…

Joel Alterman’s love affair with baseball began innocently that night. He was 9 years old, and his father thought a boy his age needed to know the game. Joel didn’t know a home run from a first down. But it didn’t matter. It was early in the 1954 season, and Ponce de Leon Park was the place to be — even if you knew nothing about baseball — because the…

In answering whether the NFL would allow betting in Las Vegas should the Oakland Raiders relocate to Las Vegas, the director of the largest sports book operation on The Strip may have created the town’s new catchphrase. “You come to Vegas, you take Vegas the way Vegas is,” said MGM Resorts’ Jay Rood, who sets the betting lines at some of its best-known properties, including MGM Grand, Mirage, Mandalay Bay…