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Major League Baseball signed its first national media partnership in China, a three-year deal that gives billionaire Jack Ma-backed Le Sports exclusive rights to live-stream games in the world’s most populous country. The deal fuses two of baseball’s top priorities under first-year commissioner Rob Manfred — cultivating new markets and delivering games digitally. It may also pave the way for China to host regular-season MLB games for the first time….

No Philadelphian need be reminded of the city’s awful sports performance in 2015. But we’ll go ahead and do the honors anyway. The perennially rebuilding Sixers were a ghastly 17-69 during the past calendar year. The 2015 Phillies had the worst record in baseball (63-99). The Eagles just fired head coach Chip Kelly, whose many offseason moves backfired. The Flyers missed the playoffs. It was enough to drive Philly’s famously…

RELATED: Top moments in Gordon’s career Well of course it was a fellow named Jeff Gordon who discovered a fellow named Jeff Gordon‘s celebrated inaugural NASCAR winning car – the debutante drive of what would become a Hall of Fame racing career.   And now — after years of effort to historically and meticulously restore the former Busch Grand National car that Jeff Gordon first drove to a NASCAR Victory Lane in 1992,…

SANTA CLARA — In a blow to the youth sports community, a judge on Tuesday denied the Santa Clara Youth Soccer League’s request to temporarily kick the NFL out of a soccer park next to Levi’s Stadium — the latest salvo in what’s become an all-out legal war pitting soccer parents against the city and the NFL just one month before the Super Bowl lands in the Bay Area. The…

Organizers of a pond hockey tournament on Lake Minnetonka say it will go ahead as scheduled — with or without the pond hockey. The North American Pond Hockey Championship is set for Jan. 21-24. If the mild winter means there’s not enough ice for hockey, the event still will offer music and other winter games. The organizers plan to decide about hockey by Jan. 14. J. Lindsay, a tournament organizer,…

The National Baseball Hall of Fame has two new members. Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza have both been voted into the Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers Association of America, it was announced Wednesday evening. Induction weekend will be held July 22-25 this summer, at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. The induction ceremony itself will be held Sunday, July 24, at 1:30 p.m. ET. Griffey…

Alan Trammell at Tigers spring training in February 2015.(Photo: Julian H. Gonzalez, DFP) Alan Trammell’s days on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot are over. In his 15th year of consideration from the Baseball Writers Association of America, the longtime Tiger legend once again fell short of the 75% needed for induction to Cooperstown, earning 40.9% of the vote. “It’s flattering and honoring just to be talked about it,” Trammell…

Sports fans are always looking for the next big thing, hoping on a special young player and attempting to foreshadow all-time greatness before credentials dictate that moniker. ALSO: Why Tim Raines deserves Hall of Fame nod Every once in a while, that approach works and the future can be predicted or inferred based on the trajectory of a special group of players. With the announcement of the 2016 Baseball Hall of…

SANTA CLARA — In a blow to the youth sports community, a judge on Tuesday denied the Santa Clara Youth Soccer League’s request to temporarily kick the NFL out of a soccer park next to Levi’s Stadium — the latest salvo in what’s become an all-out legal war pitting soccer parents against the city and the NFL just one month before the Super Bowl lands in the Bay Area. The…

Ronda Rousey dazzled in the 2015 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue She was shot on Captiva Island by famous photographer Walter Iooss Jr SI Swimsuit editor MJ Day shared a behind-the-scenes photo on Tuesday Rousey’s derriere appears to be the subject of Day’s Instagram post during the publication’s current, exotic body paint shoot See more news on Ronda Rousey and her Sports Illustrated cover  By John Downes For Mailonline Published: 06:02…

More What FIFA Can Learn From the Biggest Scandal in Baseball History How Night Games Changed Baseball History On Wednesday, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America will announce the inductees for the 2016 class of the Baseball Hall of Fame. The new additions will join a list that has been growing since Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson made up the first class, in 1936….

Last month, the Baseball Hall of Fame announced that nobody was elected in this round of Pre-Integration Era Committee balloting — the second straight year that one of the Hall’s era-based Veterans Committees failed to induct a player from before 1973. Nobody elected on pre-integration ballot. Silly to have an exclusive Vet committee for the most overrepresented part of baseball history. — Dan Szymborski (@DSzymborski) December 7, 2015 We don’t…

CLEVELAND, Ohio — On Wednesday evening, we’ll learn the identities of the next baseball stars to earn induction into Cooperstown. While we wait for the results of the 2016 Baseball Hall of Fame balloting, let’s examine the cases for each. Take part by casting your vote on each member of the ballot and voicing your opinion in the comments section below. Jeff Bagwell Year on ballot: 6 Career numbers: .297/.408/.540…

CLEVELAND — The Browns have made an out-of-the-batter’s box hire. Owner Jimmy Haslam has brought in Paul DePodesta, a baseball executive and analytics expert with 20 years of major league experience, to be the team’s new chief strategy officer. Haslam, who fired coach Mike Pettine and general manager Ray Farmer on Sunday night after a 3-13 season, pulled DePodesta away from the New York Mets to help the Browns’ organization…

Two Major League Baseball players have filed defamation lawsuits against Al-Jazeera America over statements made in a documentary about performance-enhancing drugs in sports. Ryan Zimmerman of the Washington Nationals and Ryan Howard of the Philadelphia Phillies filed the suits Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Washington. The suits refer to the documentary “The Dark Side: Secrets of Sports Doping,” which Al-Jazeera America broadcast Dec. 27. The suit alleges that Charles…

Sports fans all over the world have never had it so good. If a person is willing to forego a bit of sleep and take a few days off from work, he or she can watch live sports round the clock, unless the person is too choosy about what to watch. What is more, with the omnipresence of the new media — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram — not only does the…

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Ronda Rousey may be the Obi-Wan Kenobi of MMA: Strike her down, and she will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. You thought Rousey was big before she headlined UFC 193 against Holly Holm in Australia in front of a new UFC record of more than 56,000 fans. But after Holm pulled off the sport’s all-time upset, Rousey hasn’t fallen far. She is as big a crossover star…

Underdogs had their days, plenty of them, in 2015: Leicester City snapping at the heels of England’s Premier League giants, Japan beating South Africa at the rugby World Cup, Roberta Vinci derailing Serena Williams‘ drive for a calendar year Grand Slam. All of which showed that the only solid prediction to be made about sports is to expect the unexpected. But that won’t stop us from trying. Here, for fun…