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Welcome to today’s daily fantasy post! Remember that you can find our posts on the brand-spanking new DFS home page, as well as the fantasy page. Bookmark those sites now! Let’s get to today’s interesting facts, using DraftKings prices. We’ll cover the night slate of games, leaving out only Pirates-Tigers (1:10 p.m. ET) and Diamondbacks-Dodgers (4:10 p.m.) from today’s schedule. Five things to watch 1. So you think Noah Syndergaard is the…

The traditional baseball bat’s characteristics are as universal as they are simple – a cylinder of wood, wide at the barrel and narrow at the handle, with a circular knob at the base. But for the first time in decades, baseball’s most recognizable piece of equipment is getting a major makeover. Continue Reading Below Zepp Labs and Baden Sports are among multiple upstart manufacturers that are tinkering with the…

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The BBC and BT Sport have extended their deal to air the FA Cup until 2021 and pledged to increase coverage of women’s football. The three-year extension to the existing £200m-plus deal, which was struck in 2013 and brought the world’s oldest knockout cup competition back to the BBC after seven years, is crucial for the increasingly cash-strapped corporation. The BBC’s sports right budget has been a major target of…

Photo credit: Lloyd Belcher Visuals See the steam rising off Nepali mountain runner Mira Rai? Sweet effect, right? “Well, the truth is that we tried to film the same scene the day before, but Mira was bitten by a wild dog on that hillside & so we had to cut filming short & get her to a clinic in Kathmandu for rabies shots,” filmmaker Lloyd Belcher detailed on his Facebook…

European governing body Uefa consider BT Sport’s exclusive coverage of the Champions League ‘a mistake,’ according to a report. The channel signed a record £897million, three-year deal with Uefa in November 2013 to show exclusive coverage of Europe’s premier club competition but, according to the Daily Mail, declining viewing figures have Uefa bosses considering a return to terrestrial television. The report states that while Uefa believes BT Sport are delivering…

Sports Direct is to pay £108m for a refurbished property on Oxford Street to become the first London branch of its upmarket Flannels chain, in a deal done by the boyfriend of founder Mike Ashley’s daughter. The sports retailer has agreed to buy the freehold of Academy House on the corner of Oxford Street and Soho’s Poland Street. It will open a flagship 20,000 sq ft Flannels store and use…

The Chinese government has unveiled an ambitious blueprint to get 50 million children and adults playing soccer by the end of this decade, with the broader objective of becoming a “world football superpower” by 2050. Despite boasting the world’s largest population and excelling at many sports, particularly athletics, China woefully underperforms at soccer and has only ever qualified for one World Cup. A statement published Monday also outlines plans to…

The sun is setting behind the San Gabriel Mountains, turning California’s mid-spring hillsides to gray and then, steadily, to black. The Dodgers have just earned the tying run against the Angels and I am making healthy progress on my garlic fries and souvenir-size Sprite, my Dodger Dog a distant second-inning memory. To my left, two fans — one in an Angels cap, the other in Dodger blue — argue about…

PHILADELPHIA lost its most influential sports figure in history with Monday’s passing of Flyers co-founder and Comcast Spectacor creator Ed Snider at 83 after a long battle with bladder cancer. The icon was a sports “futurist” who played some kind of role in virtually every major sporting occurrence in Philadelphia over the past five decades….

  The Twins struck out only seven times Monday. We say “only” because they have lofty standards when it comes to whiffs. The Twins have become flag-bearers for flailing, Kings of the K’s. They swing and miss more than a blindfolded golfer. The Twins didn’t reach their quota for strikeouts in the home opener, but they whiffed enough to keep their offense toothless in a 4-1 loss to the Chicago…

Connor Benge HOUSTON – A boy who loves baseball lies in the neurology unit of a Houston hospital after a weekend ballgame in Beaumont where a line drive struck him in the head. Connor Benge threw a fastball from the pitcher’s mound Saturday that a batter hit into the infield. “He pitched, threw a pitch, fastball,” recalled his father, John Benge. “And a kid caught up with it, line-drived right…

You might be tempted to say baseball’s biggest first-week team surprise was the Orioles — the majors’ last remaining undefeated squad. You’d be wrong, however. That distinction instead belongs to the Reds, who just took two of three from the Pirates to improve to 5-1. Sure, the O’s had a messy offseason and were a trendy pick to finish last in the American League East. But the Reds? They were…

There are a lot of objectively and definitively great organizations in baseball. The Royals, Cubs, Pirates, Cardinals and Dodgers are right at the top of the list. The Astros might be up there too. The best of them, though, might be the San Francisco Giants. If you want to know why the Giants have won three titles in the last five seasons, look no further than what they did on…

PHILADELPHIA lost its most influential sports figure in history with Monday’s passing of Flyers co-founder and Comcast Spectacor creator Ed Snider at 83 after a long battle with bladder cancer. The icon was a sports “futurist” who played some kind of role in virtually every major sporting occurrence in Philadelphia over the past five decades….

Connor Benge HOUSTON – A boy who loves baseball lies in the neurology unit of a Houston hospital after a weekend ballgame in Beaumont where a line drive struck him in the head. Connor Benge threw a fastball from the pitcher’s mound Saturday that a batter hit into the infield. “He pitched, threw a pitch, fastball,” recalled his father, John Benge. “And a kid caught up with it, line-drived right…

You might be tempted to say baseball’s biggest first-week team surprise was the Orioles — the majors’ last remaining undefeated squad. You’d be wrong, however. That distinction instead belongs to the Reds, who just took two of three from the Pirates to improve to 5-1. Sure, the O’s had a messy offseason and were a trendy pick to finish last in the American League East. But the Reds? They were…

The Hurricanes didn’t get to play as many games this weekend as they wanted. But the one they did get in — a 10-2 victory over Notre Dame in chilly South Bend — helped make them the nation’s top-ranked baseball team. Miami, which has won nine straight games and 20 of its last 22, took the top spot in the most recent Baseball America Top 25 which was released early…

Fun fact: Bill Dugan, 39, of Roseville caught 5 fouls at today’s @Tigers game, and it’s only the 5th inning! @freep pic.twitter.com/J1DNc8kyek — Robert Allen (@rallenMI) April 11, 2016 This is Bill Dugan, and he did something today you never ever will — caught a total of five balls, and counting. Everyone yearns to catch a single foul ball. People spill drinks over them, risk…