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Why play games with Zika? That’s what players from the Pittsburgh Pirates and Florida Marlins are asking Major League Baseball. The teams are scheduled to play a two-game series on May 30-31 in San Juan’s Hiram Bithorn Stadium. The Puerto Rico Health Authority has reported more than 700 cases of the virus. On April 29, federal officials reported that the first U.S. death linked to Zika virus disease occurred in…

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The Blues hosted a very special fan at Tuesday night’s playoff game against the Stars. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson) How does someone go from never having seen a hockey game to rinkside seats in just a couple of weeks? By (hilariously) live tweeting your first hockey-watching experience. Anthony Holmes, a self-proclaimed newcomer to the sport, was trying to catch the St. Louis Cardinals game April 25 but instead found himself watching the Blues’s 3-2 Game 7…

Updates a story posted Wednesday at 4:40 p.m. Springfield appears to be back in the American Hockey League, thanks to a group of local investors who are buying the Portland franchise with plans to bring it to the MassMutual Center. “I can confirm that a broad-based local investor group has signed a letter of intent to purchase the Portland Pirates,” said Frank Fitzgerald, attorney for the investors’ group. Fitzgerald said…

MOORESVILLE, N.C. — When Dale Earnhardt Jr. previewed the first installment of the upcoming three-part series “NASCAR: The Rise of American Speed,” the Hendrick Motorsports driver said he was amazed at what he witnessed.   “The first part I watched like a kid at Christmas,” the Hendrick Motorsports driver said Tuesday, adding that he kept thinking, “This is cool; I love what I’m seeing. I didn’t know it was like this; this is awesome.”…

Via @NHLonNBCSports Nascent Blues fan Anthony Holmes, who learned about hockey when he watched Game 7 of Blackhawks-Blues last week, was St. Louis’s guest for Tuesday’s Game 3 against the Dallas Stars. He had better seats than you’ll ever have. http://deadspin.com/man-discovers-… Man Discovers Hockey, Loves It Man Discovers Hockey, Loves It Man Discovers Hockey, Loves It The NHL convinced one more person to please like its sport last night. A…

RELATED: Buy Darlington tickets | ’16 throwback schemes | SHOP: ‘Dinger gear AJ Allmendinger’s Darlington throwback paint scheme will honor Kansas native Bruce Hill’s 1970s-era No. 47 with a Kroger/Kingsford red, white and blue theme, JTG Daugherty Racing announced today. Allmendinger will drive the car in the Bojangles’ Southern 500 on Sept. 4 (6 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).   Allmendinger and Hill, the 1975 Cup series Rookie of the Year, will meet for the…

RELATED: Cast your vote now   The Sprint Fan Vote is underway, and now, we have updates on (perhaps) your favorite driver.   There’s still plenty of time left to vote but, so far, the top-10 vote-getters are as follows, in alphabetical order: AJ Allmendinger, Trevor Bayne, Ryan Blaney, Clint Bowyer, Matt DiBenedetto, Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson, Casey Mears, Danica Patrick and Brian Vickers.   Patrick, who won the Sprint Fan Vote last year and in 2013, is the first two-time Sprint Fan Vote…

The No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team of Jimmie Johnson will lose 15 minutes of practice time this week at Kansas Speedway after NASCAR posted penalties coming out of Talladega weekend. The No. 48 team failed template inspection three times during pre-race for Sunday’s GEICO 500. NASCAR also gave written warnings to the No. 44 Richard Petty Motorsports team of Brian Scott and the No. 98 Premium Motorsports team of Cole Whitt, each for two failed pre-race inspections. In…

From a distance, an ocean away, it looks a cool breeze, doesn’t it? In truth, the line from European soccer star to NFL kicker is about as linear as a Christopher Nolan plot, a path lost in translation. There? The one that gets the girl. Here? The one that gets the water. There? Pecs on billboards. Here? Nipple envy. “There aren’t many underwear models that are a kicker,” Nate Kaeding…

Under Armour is betting big on baseball. The athletic-apparel maker extended the contract of Washington Nationals’ Bryce Harper Tuesday in what ESPN says is the largest endorsement deal in history for a baseball player. Harper has endorsed the company since 2011, months after the Nationals chose the 23-year-old right fielder in the first round of the Major League Baseball draft. Under Armour would not disclose the length of the deal…

image via Henry Holt and Company The following is excerpted from The Only Rule Is It Has To Work, the wonderful new book in which two sabermetrically-inclined baseball writers—Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus and Ben Lindbergh of ESPN—recount their experience running baseball operations for the Sonoma Stompers, an actual, real-life ballclub. As it begins, the authors—who will be joining us for a live chat Friday afternoon—are preparing for the annual…

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SAN MATEO — The past two years have been full of transitions for the player ranked among the nation’s top high school baseball prospects by ESPN. Hunter Bishop changed schools, from St. Francis to Serra. Changed positions in football, from quarterback to wide receiver. Changed his primary focus, from football to baseball. And, most significantly, changed his contributions to Serra’s baseball team, going from a lightly-used transfer outfielder his junior…

Note: Don’t whiff on this special FanDuel offer. Win your first contest or get your money back (up to $10) to keep playing. Try FanDuel now! Someone asked me Tuesday night if continuing to stack the Toronto Blue Jays was a form of the gambler’s fallacy. That fallacy states basically that because something has happened more frequently in the past it will happen less frequently in the future. It’s a…

This election has had a little bit of everything: alums turning on their schools to pander to primary voters in other states, candidates destroying children with footballs to the head, ACC teams burning candidates on Twitter, and governors trying to let you know how much they care and sometimes misspelling the names of the iconic players they’re trying to convince you they adore. As Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton…

RELATED: Buy Darlington tickets | ’16 throwback schemes | SHOP: ‘Dinger gear AJ Allmendinger’s Darlington throwback paint scheme will honor Kansas native Bruce Hill’s 1970s-era No. 47 with a Kroger/Kingsford red, white and blue theme, JTG Daugherty Racing announced today. Allmendinger will drive the car in the Bojangles’ Southern 500 on Sept. 4 (6 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).   Allmendinger and Hill, the 1975 Cup series Rookie of the Year, will meet for the…

College baseball teams from Minnesota won’t have a chance to advance to two national tournaments. The Minnesota State College and Universities system (MnSCU) announced that all sports travel is nonessential, meaning any future trips to North Carolina would be prohibited. The NCAA Division II national baseball tournament and NJCAA Division III World Series are scheduled to be played in North Carolina this spring. The announcement follows Gov. Mark Dayton’s statement…

Engagement Official, Kate Upton Destined For Baseball WAGs Hall Of Fame After years of speculation and public appearances together, Kate Upton and Justin Verlander took their relationship to the next level. The 23-year-old super model and former Sports Illustrated cover girl showed off her glamorous engagement ring at the Met Gala while with new fiancé Justin Verlander, a former Cy Young Award winner and MVP pitcher for the Detroit Tigers….

Note: Don’t whiff on this special FanDuel offer. Win your first contest or get your money back (up to $10) to keep playing. Try FanDuel now! It’s May, you know, which means at least one thing: We can no longer use the excuse “it’s only April.” A quick survey of the leaderboards, though, tells us the excuse was justified. Even now, there’s still plenty of statistical weirdness going on —…