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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Let’s check in on the politics of a sport that has steered clear of politics. We’ve heard a lot about football players protesting racial discrimination. Major League Baseball players have mostly stayed off to the side. Rhiannon Walker is following baseball’s quieter course. She is associate editor for ESPN’s The Undefeated, which examines sports, race and culture, and she’s a good person to ask, how has baseball…

“Look, Portland’s a great soccer market, there’s no question about it,” said Merritt Paulson, the owner of the Thorns and their affiliated Major League Soccer club, the Portland Timbers, who have sold out 122 consecutive home games and counting. “But there are other great soccer markets in this country. The N.W.S.L. can succeed, and succeed well, in a lot of markets. We don’t have fairy dust that’s unique to Portland.”…

COLLEGE SPORTS North Carolina can move forward, closing one of the most embarrassing chapters in the school’s history now that the long-running NCAA academic case has ended with UNC facing no penalty. Still, even with what had to be the best possible outcome – a weight being lifted that has loomed over the Chapel Hill campus for years – school officials greeted the news more with cautious relief than exuberance….

<!– –> VISIT CNBC.COM Home Entrepreneurs Leadership Careers Money Specials PRIMETIME Careers Careers 23 Hours AgoCNBC.com Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has spent the past 25 years of his career working at the software giant. But he says he learned a critical lesson about leadership not during his time as an executive in the tech industry, but from his experience playing high school sports in India. As a junior at Hyderabad…

In the early hours of Friday the 13th in the 13th season of the Nationals in Washington, you could hardly blame even the team’s most sensible fans for wondering if something had gone cosmically awry with a club that has mastered the art of merely getting close. Unlike some other cities, Washington has no cute anecdotes about baseball jinxes – no “Curse of the Bambino,” no billy goats said to…

COLLEGE SPORTS North Carolina can move forward, closing one of the most embarrassing chapters in the school’s history now that the long-running NCAA academic case has ended with UNC facing no penalty. Still, even with what had to be the best possible outcome – a weight being lifted that has loomed over the Chapel Hill campus for years – school officials greeted the news more with cautious relief than exuberance….

“Look, Portland’s a great soccer market, there’s no question about it,” said Merritt Paulson, the owner of the Thorns and their affiliated Major League Soccer club, the Portland Timbers, who have sold out 122 consecutive home games and counting. “But there are other great soccer markets in this country. The N.W.S.L. can succeed, and succeed well, in a lot of markets. We don’t have fairy dust that’s unique to Portland.”…

After a crisp and brisk-by-2017-playoff standards (three hours and 20 minutes) Game 1, a 2-1 Astros win, Houston now has a 1-0 lead on the Yankees in the ALCS. Game 2 comes at 4 p.m. ET on Saturday; here are a few quick thoughts before the quick turnaround: Kid Keuchel was in control: Is it just me, or did circa-1991 Tom Glavine take the hill Friday night for Houston? Lefty…

Only a month after Los Angeles was officially named host of the 2028 Summer Games, U.S. Olympic Committee officials expressed their desire to put forth another American bid in the near future. “I think I put a stake in the ground and said we are interested in hosting the Winter Games,” USOC Chairman Larry Probst said in a teleconference on Friday. The next Olympics up for grabs would be 2026,…

“We’ve got a lot of things on our agenda, including a World Cup bid that is due in the end of March, and a decision in June,” Gulati said when asked, repeatedly, why he was not resigning. “And so I don’t plan to do that.” Arena’s departure, which was revealed Friday morning in a statement from the coach, was hardly a surprise. He was under contract only through next summer’s…

NASCAR’s business model keeps downsizing to the scale of Groupon and Overstock.com, with a dash of the Dollar Store. Everyone wants to pinch pennies. Faced with drops in sponsorships, the inability to pay top drivers, sagging attendance and drops in TV viewership, NASCAR is in scramble mode going into the 2018 season. But that’s not just me talking. NASCAR Chairman Brian France admitted over the weekend that the sport could…

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of four feature stories on this year’s Betty Jane France Humanitarian Award Presented by Nationwide finalists. Julian Maha’s story is interesting and inspiring — and quite unique. A Malaysian who became an Alabaman with an evolving affinity for NASCAR as part of the deal, Maha is one of four finalists for The NASCAR Foundation’s Betty Jane France Humanitarian Award Presented by…

In the early hours of Friday the 13th in the 13th season of the Nationals in Washington, you could hardly blame even the team’s most sensible fans for wondering if something had gone cosmically awry with a club that has mastered the art of merely getting close. Unlike some other cities, Washington has no cute anecdotes about baseball jinxes – no “Curse of the Bambino,” no billy goats said to…

Conserving his best fastballs for later in games was not Verlander’s plan, at first. Summoned to the majors in 2005, just a year after the Tigers chose him from Old Dominion with the second overall pick in the draft, he learned that major leaguers would wear him out quickly if they saw the same speed all the time. “I was having a lot of trouble with foul balls, and I…

Today is Friday the 13th, a date long associated with bad luck, which was certainly the case in the wee hours this morning for the Washington Nationals and their fans. Bad umpiring, too, which hardly salves the wound. “Baseball has the largest library of law and lore and custom and ritual,” former Major League Baseball commissioner and classics scholar A. Bartlett Giamatti once noted. For that reason, he added, “in…

“Look, Portland’s a great soccer market, there’s no question about it,” said Merritt Paulson, the owner of the Thorns and their affiliated Major League Soccer club, the Portland Timbers, who have sold out 122 consecutive home games and counting. “But there are other great soccer markets in this country. The N.W.S.L. can succeed, and succeed well, in a lot of markets. We don’t have fairy dust that’s unique to Portland.”…

NASCAR’s business model keeps downsizing to the scale of Groupon and Overstock.com, with a dash of the Dollar Store. Everyone wants to pinch pennies. Faced with drops in sponsorships, the inability to pay top drivers, sagging attendance and drops in TV viewership, NASCAR is in scramble mode going into the 2018 season. But that’s not just me talking. NASCAR Chairman Brian France admitted over the weekend that the sport could…

“We’ve got a lot of things on our agenda, including a World Cup bid that is due in the end of March, and a decision in June,” Gulati said when asked, repeatedly, why he was not resigning. “And so I don’t plan to do that.” Arena’s departure, which was revealed Friday morning in a statement from the coach, was hardly a surprise. He was under contract only through next summer’s…

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of four feature stories on this year’s Betty Jane France Humanitarian Award Presented by Nationwide finalists. Julian Maha’s story is interesting and inspiring — and quite unique. A Malaysian who became an Alabaman with an evolving affinity for NASCAR as part of the deal, Maha is one of four finalists for The NASCAR Foundation’s Betty Jane France Humanitarian Award Presented by…

American soccer fans were stunned this week when their men’s team failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia—the first time since 1986 the US men’s national team will sit out the event. While the US women’s team, the defending Women’s World Cup champions and the far more important American squad, are a lock to qualify for their 2019 cup in France, the men’s failure was a complete…