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For the past few years, the Apple Watch has dominated the fledgling smartwatch world. But while Google’s Android Wear platform has gone through fits and starts, Samsung has built an extensive wearable lineup running on its own platform with the Gear watches. The latest is the new Gear Sport, a $299.99 smartwatch that works with both iOS and Android smartphones. The Gear Sport blends some of the features of last…

IOWA CITY – You can see their silhouette in the windows of the children’s hospital from a distance. Sick kids and their parents watching a college football game from rooms that overlook Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium. You’ve probably heard or read about the Wave, the new tradition that takes place at the end of the first quarter of Iowa home games. Fans turn toward the hospital and wave to those kids…

As Major League Baseball’s postseason is nearing the biggest celebration of all — the Houston Astros need one more victory to win the World Series, the Dodgers need two — it seems appropriate to ask: Where does this ritual come from? “Great question, but I have no idea,” said Cubs reliever Pedro Strop, who celebrated a lot last year when his team snapped a 108-year drought and finally won the…

Drumbeats roar and electric music plays as people dressed in uniforms swing to the rhythm together. At first, it may seem like a rock concert, but this is actually what a South Korean baseball game is all about. South Korean baseball’s “cheer culture” is in many ways just as important as the game itself. Fans wear team uniforms and hit balloon sticks together to make some noise as cheerleaders dressed…

NBC expects ad revenue in its upcoming coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympics to surpass the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi by a low double-digit percentage, and says commercial time in the Super Bowl is “extraordinarily well sold.” “Our marketplace is healthy and sales for both Super Bowl and Winter Olympics games is brisk,” Dan Lovinger, executive VP of advertising sales at NBC Universal Sports Group, said during a press…

HOUSTON — In the end, after more than 400 pitches and more than five hours, after the Astros had somehow managed to make one Dodger lead after another disappear before the Astros made a three-run lead of their own disappear in the 9th inning, what you felt at Minute Maid Park was not just the power and magic of the World Series. You felt the amazing, timeless power of…

Nick Swisher makes his prediction for Game 3 of the World Series 2 hours ago

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A St. Charles woman accused of attacking her sleeping husband with a baseball bat has been charged with attempted murder. St. Charles police said a review of their records showed no previous domestic-related calls at the residence on the 400 block of Valley View Drive, where Donna J. Black, 58, is charged with trying to kill her 57-year-old husband. Police aren’t sure what the motive may have been, said Deputy…

HOUSTON — Ruth and Gehrig. Mantle and Maris. Ramirez and Ortiz. Altuve and Correa? Maybe it’s just the fatigue kicking in after a crazy-long and just plain crazy night at Minute Maid Park. But is there any other middle-of-the-lineup combination in baseball you’d rather have right now — and in whose future you’d invest — than the Astros’ Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa? Especially when you consider their defensive value?…

Susquehanna International Group has always embraced game theory, taking employees to baseball games and using poker as a tool for teaching its traders. Now the U.S. firm is betting that gambling on sports could be its next winning investment strategy. Susquehanna has set up a unit at its Dublin office to wager on sports including basketball, American football, soccer and tennis. The business, called Nellie Analytics, has advertised to hire quantitative analysts…

For the past few years, the Apple Watch has dominated the fledgling smartwatch world. But while Google’s Android Wear platform has gone through fits and starts, Samsung has built an extensive wearable lineup running on its own platform with the Gear watches. The latest is the new Gear Sport, a $299.99 smartwatch that works with both iOS and Android smartphones. The Gear Sport blends some of the features of last…

DUBAI — Saudi Arabia will for the first time allow women to attend sports events, preparing special sections in three selected stadiums from early next year in another step toward opening public spaces to women. The stadiums in Jeddah, Dammam and Riyadh will be set up to accommodate families from early 2018, said the statement from the General Sports Authority, carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency late on Sunday….

That’s where the Astros are after playing another spectacularly entertaining donnybrook of a baseball game, a captivating 10-inning, 13-12 victory over the Dodgers in Game 5 of the World Series on Sunday at Minute Maid Park. • Dress for the World Series: Get Astros postseason gear All times ET | *- If necessaryShop for postseason gear: Astros | Dodgers • Complete Postseason coverage “This is the craziest atmosphere I’ve ever…

Ohio State’s 39-38 win over Penn State on Saturday didn’t just have Big Ten East division ramifications. It changed nearly the entire top four in the updated CBS Sports 130 with the College Football Playoff Selection Committee set to release their first rankings on Tuesday. The Buckeyes climb just two spots to No. 3 but that gets them into the all-important top four. Meanwhile, the Nittany Lions fell from No….

Chase Elliott wrecked late in a NASCAR Monster Energy Cup playoff race in Martinsville, Virginia. (Photo by Sarah Crabill/Getty Images) NASCAR now has a template for regenerating some of the interest in stock-car racing that had faded away: Put on more shows like the First Data 500, Sunday’s race at Martinsville, Va., which ended with a frenzied finish, a pile of crumpled cars and four seething drivers hollering in one…

Discovery and Eurosport will shun traditional TV ratings and use a broader metric to gauge the success of its coverage of next year’s PyeongChang Winter Olympics and possibly of programming beyond that, the company said as it unveiled plans for coverage of the event. Discovery, which owns Eurosport, scooped up European rights to the Summer and Winter Olympics in a $1.4 billion deal inked in 2015. The PyeongChang Games will be…

HOUSTON — Ruth and Gehrig. Mantle and Maris. Ramirez and Ortiz. Altuve and Correa? Maybe it’s just the fatigue kicking in after a crazy-long and just plain crazy night at Minute Maid Park. But is there any other middle-of-the-lineup combination in baseball you’d rather have right now — and in whose future you’d invest — than the Astros’ Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa? Especially when you consider their defensive value?…

HOUSTON — Words fail. Analogies go limp. A common refrain for a game like Game 5 of the 2017 World Series is that baseball is drunk. Baseball is not drunk. Drunk people don’t fall up the stairs, through a window, and explode upon contact with the moon. This is not a movie. Movies have plots, logical progressions from A to B. This is not an avant-garde movie, either, where the…

The racist gesture made by the Houston Astros’ Yuli Gurriel toward the Dodgers’ Yu Darvish on Friday night called for somebody in power to swing for the fences. Instead, baseball bunted. After a nation witnessed Gurriel tugging on the corners of his eyes while using an ethnic slur about Darvish, Commissioner Rob Manfred needed to make a powerful statement Saturday that included an immediate suspension. Instead, he offered words backed…