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The Premier League on NBC Sports is here to stay. On Monday, NBC Sports Group announced that it will remain as the exclusive home of the Premier League in the U.S., as a six-year extension has been signed with the Premier League to continue the coverage which began ahead of the 2013-14 season. [ MORE: Latest news from Premier League ] The partnership will be extended through the 2021-22 Premier League season and once…

UPDATED: 3:40pm ET – Additional clarity added in tables to show viewership numbers for year 2 of each network As the cliché goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day. For 24/7/365 sports channel FOX FOX Sports 1, the climb to catch Walt Disney Walt Disney-owned ESPN ESPN won’t be either, but there are clear signs there is progress being made. FOX Sports 1 launched in August of 2013 with just a…

Buddy Baker competed on NASCAR’s premier circuit for more than three decades, running 700 races and winning the 1980 Daytona 500.(Photo: AP) NASCAR has lost one of its greats. Buddy Baker, who announced last month he had inoperable lung cancer, died early Monday morning at 74. Baker, known as NASCAR’s ‘Gentle Giant’ as he towered over most of his competitors at 6-foot-6, won the 1980 Daytona 500, was a NASCAR…

The decision to host some finals after midnight at the Rio 2016 Olympics has come under fire from word swimming’s governing body as well as leading coaches and swimmers. Finals will begin at 10pm local time in Rio – about four hours later than swimmers are used to. To compensate, what are usually known as “morning” heats will begin at 1pm. Related: World swimming championships 2015: five things we learned…

Chris Graythen/Getty Images One week after running out of gas on the final laps at Pocono, Joey Logano won a chaotic Cheez-It 355 at Watkins Glen when he was able to pass Kevin Harvick, who himself ran out of gas, in the final turns of the final lap of the road course. Things started to get hairy with about 15 laps to go. During the next five laps, several in-car…

Manuel Rebelo said Bello’s Pub and Grill on Market Street normally plays host to a group of New York Red Bulls faithful, who gather on the bar’s second floor to cheer on the team, which plays its home games just miles away in Harrison. Just before the Red Bulls were set to take the pitch, however, more than 20 fans of their new rivals across the Hudson arrived and began…

While the big boys and girls were over in Russia competing in the 2015 world championships, the last major international competition before next year’s Olympics, Michael Phelps was relegated to swimming a not-as-big, but still-important national meet in San Antonio as part of his six-month suspension for DUI that ended four months ago but for some reason included August’s worlds. And though I, like many others, questioned the seemingly arbitrary suspension…

More kids are playing baseball at a younger age these days, leading to a rise in injuries that one local doctor called an epidemic. App Users: Watch Mobile Video Injuries have always been a risk of playing sports, but in this case, medical professionals are not talking about the bumps and bruises that come with playing the game. The repetitive motion of baseball, specifically pitching, can cause a variety of…

Whether following bloodlines or the white-chalk base lines, Red Land baseball’s success story resembles a family tree. At the top is the undisputed father of Red Land baseball, Brandt Cook, who later this month celebrates his 75th birthday. Fifty years after Cook created the baseball program at the brand new Red Land High School, the area’s Little League team is embarking on a historical run. And Red Land’s legion baseball…

0 Shares Print Buddy Baker, noted for a 34-year career in NASCAR’s top series that produced 19 victories, including the 1980 Daytona 500, died Monday morning from lung cancer. He was 74. Buddy Baker won 19 races and ranks 14th in NASCAR history with 38 poles in his 700 career starts from 1959 to 1992. ISC Images & Archives/Getty Images The 6-foot-6 Baker, the son of NASCAR Hall of Famer Buck…

Depending on whom you ask, professional baseball could be on the precipice of an important technological advancement, or it might be flirting with an “I, Robot”-style takeover. The San Rafael Pacifics and Vallejo Admirals, two independent (not major league-affiliated) minor league teams, recently played two games using a computer system, rather than the home plate umpire, to call balls and strikes. The automated system, called Pitchf/x, uses three cameras to…

Pedro Bragan has seen a lot in his 31 years with his family’s business ties to minor-league baseball in Jacksonville. His family has presided over 2,300 wins and 2,063 losses in Jacksonville — and he has plenty of memories and treasures to prove it. Bragan’s office resembles something of a baseball museum. It is filled to the brim — and beyond — with antique jerseys, autographed baseballs, vintage pennants and…

Diamondbacks win in wild ending Chris Owings lifted a ball to deep center field and was mobbed by his Arizona Diamondbacks teammates just before reaching second base. The Diamondbacks continued to celebrate their way back to the dugout when they looked across the diamond and saw some of Cincinnati’s players gathering around the umpires. Owings’ first career game-ending hit would have to wait. It took awhile to sort out the…

In 1997, Luke Dowdney bumped into a young man carrying a Colt AR-15 rifle as he came round a corner in Rocinha, a favela in Rio de Janeiro. “It was an awkwardly polite moment,” Dowdney recalls. “I said sorry and he said sorry and then I walked on.” Related: 13 ways to inspire climate action through culture and sport The sight of a young man, probably 15- or 16-years-old, armed…

Nobody ever called Elzie Wylie Baker Jr. by his real name. To most, he was simply Buddy. Some of his fellow racers nicknamed him “Leadfoot,” for obvious reasons, while he was also dubbed “The Gentle Giant.” But whatever you chose to call him, two things above all else stood out about Buddy Baker: He was a ferocious racer and one of the kindest human beings in all of NASCAR. On…

The city calling itself “Russia’s sports capital” isn’t Moscow, St. Petersburg or even last year’s Winter Olympic host Sochi. Instead it’s Kazan, a provincial city with global ambitions. The venue for U.S. swim phenom Katie Ledecky’s record-breaking exploits at this month’s world championships, Kazan wants to use the event as a springboard to bring the Summer Olympics to Russia for the first time. In this traditionally Muslim city, where minarets…

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ENLARGE Aug. 9, 2015 7:06 p.m. ET “Listen, it really sucks,” Jonathan Vaughters said. It had been a rough week for Vaughters, the high-profile boss of the Cannondale-Garmin cycling team, ever since he looked at his phone on the night of Aug. 2 and saw a flurry of messages from his veteran rider Tom Danielson. Danielson would soon announce via his own Twitter account that he had received notice from…

Pedro Bragan has seen a lot in his 31 years with his family’s business ties to minor-league baseball in Jacksonville. His family has presided over 2,300 wins and 2,063 losses in Jacksonville — and he has plenty of memories and treasures to prove it. Bragan’s office resembles something of a baseball museum. It is filled to the brim — and beyond — with antique jerseys, autographed baseballs, vintage pennants and…

(Charles LeClaire, USA TODAY Sports) The dog days of summer are when the true champions can withstand the heat and make their move. But in addition to concentrating on their own teams, fantasy owners might be doing a little scoreboard-watching as well. At this stage of the season, every move must be viewed not only through the prism of what it does for your team … but also how it…