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Photo by Topps, Inc. 1968 Topps Johnny Bench These days a 1909 Honus Wagner tobacco card in good condition will set you back about $690,000. A near mint 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle can be yours for about $145,000. Of course, very few collectors or investors are players at these prices. So I asked Jonathan Celona, co-owner of the Boston-based Champions Sports Cards and Collectibles, to recommend five fun and affordable…

Welcome back to another installment of “If the First Half Didn’t Exist,” an annual tradition that serves two purposes. The first is to remind you that we pay far, far too much attention to everything that happens in the first half of the season. The other is to acknowledge that we might not pay enough attention to what’s been happening in the second half of the season. The first half…

HARI SREENIVASAN: Baseball has a history of teams trying to gain advantage against a pitcher by occasionally stealing signs from the team it’s playing. The idea is to relay information to the hitter about what kind of pitch he will face. There are ways to do it that are acceptable. But the Boston Red Sox are accused of going too far with it last month against their rivals, the New…

Yan Gomes had plenty of hands to slap after hitting a three-run homer Tuesday – the Indians are playing with a 36-man active roster.(Photo: Jonathan Daniel, Getty Images) It is the most asinine rule in all of sports. It’s ruining the fairness of baseball’s playoff races, turning fans and viewing audiences away from the game, and leaving Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred stuck watching four-hour contests. MLB’s archaic September…

More than a half-dozen professional baseball players with ties to St. Johns County finished the minor league baseball season this week. While no one from the county appeared in a major league game this summer, the local athletes ranged all the way from rookie leagues to Triple-A. Here is a rundown of their seasons: High Schools Ricky Karcher (Reds): 7 appearances, 4 starts, 0-3 record, 10.67 ERA, 14.1 innings, 14…

Sports. Jess Flynn/Courtesy of the artist hide caption toggle caption Jess Flynn/Courtesy of the artist Sports. Jess Flynn/Courtesy of the artist There should be an industrywide rule that only acts of quality are allowed to name their project something wholly impossible to Google. Luckily for Sports — a Philadelphia-via-Gambier, Ohio twee-punk four-piece — it makes the cut. It’s been two years since we last heard new music from this young…

Blizzard’s ever-growing e-sports ambitions will soon have a new home. Today, the game developer announced plans for an e-sports arena in LA. Officially called Blizzard Arena Los Angeles, the new space will be situated at legendary TV production facility Burbank Studios, and will open next month. Blizzard says the arena “has been custom-tailored to support an exciting live-event experience for local attendees and broadcast audiences around the world.” In addition…

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Urban Meyer knows a thing or two about respectfully replacing legends. Twelve years ago, Ohio State’s current coach started a successful run at Florida just four seasons after Steve Spurrier left the Gators. In late 2011, he became the first permanent coach following the firing of Jim Tressel. On Saturday, Meyer will coach against Oklahoma’s Lincoln Riley, who himself is three months into taking over for the…

The sign indicated curves ahead. The road was so newly paved it didn’t have a dividing line. The asphalt undulated left and right, with an occasional dip before the far-off turn. There were no houses or driveways, just woods on one side, a meadow on the other. It was the perfect road for the Honda Civic Si. At another time in another place, the vestiges of rain dried on the…

StatMuse, the sports statistics database that can be queried using natural language inquiries, just announced that it’s become the second startup accepted into the NFL Players Association’s accelerator. As a refresher the accelerator, called The One Team Collective, was built to help smaller startups get access to player licensing rights in return for equity. We first wrote about Statmuse when it was accepted into Disney’s accelerator in 2015, then again…

A woman considered to be one of the top up-and-coming female drivers in NASCAR said she would “love to have a tampon on the side of my car.” Julia Landauer, who competes in NASCAR’s K&N Pro Series West, made the statement to Bloomberg Businessweek magazine in a profile of her and her racing career in its Sept. 4 edition. Her point: Female and unisex family brands are missing out by…

HARI SREENIVASAN: Baseball has a history of teams trying to gain advantage against a pitcher by occasionally stealing signs from the team it’s playing. The idea is to relay information to the hitter about what kind of pitch he will face. There are ways to do it that are acceptable. But the Boston Red Sox are accused of going too far with it last month against their rivals, the New…

A woman considered to be one of the top up-and-coming female drivers in NASCAR said she would “love to have a tampon on the side of my car.” Julia Landauer, who competes in NASCAR’s K&N Pro Series West, made the statement to Bloomberg Businessweek magazine in a profile of her and her racing career in its Sept. 4 edition. Her point: Female and unisex family brands are missing out by…

HARI SREENIVASAN: Baseball has a history of teams trying to gain advantage against a pitcher by occasionally stealing signs from the team it’s playing. The idea is to relay information to the hitter about what kind of pitch he will face. There are ways to do it that are acceptable. But the Boston Red Sox are accused of going too far with it last month against their rivals, the New…

A woman considered to be one of the top up-and-coming female drivers in NASCAR said she would “love to have a tampon on the side of my car.” Julia Landauer, who competes in NASCAR’s K&N Pro Series West, made the statement to Bloomberg Businessweek magazine in a profile of her and her racing career in its Sept. 4 edition. Her point: Female and unisex family brands are missing out by…

This is it – after eight months of racing, we’ve finally reached the regular-season finale. Thirteen drivers will suit up in Richmond with their fates secure. They range from regular-season points champion Martin Truex Jr. to Austin Dillon, whose victory at May’s Coca-Cola 600 in Charlotte was the first of his Cup Series career. But 16 drivers make the playoffs, meaning there are three slots up for grabs at Saturday…

The London 2012 bid team have defended themselves against any suggestion of corruption, insisting they are “as close to certain as possible” the right to host the Olympics in the capital was won cleanly. A deepening of the bribery scandal engulfing the International Olympic Committee has led to questions about how the Sochi 2014, Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 Games were awarded. Sir Keith Mills, the former chief executive of…

NASCAR handed the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing team in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series an L1-level penalty following the race last weekend at Darlington Raceway for violating sections 20.14.2 (rear suspension) of the NASCAR Rule Book. Crew chief Mike Wheeler was fined $50,000 and suspended for two races, the team was assessed with the loss of 25 owner points and 25 driver points, and Denny Hamlin’s first-place finish…

To make the World Cup every four years, the United States men’s national team needs to do the bare minimum — that usually entails not being worse than teams from a couple of Central American or Caribbean countries that have a GDP roughly 0.1 percent the size of ours. In Honduras on Tuesday night, the USMNT delivered on that promise: They accomplished the bare minimum. A late Bobby Wood goal…

By late Saturday night, the season-long speculation surrounding the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs will be over, along with the final regular season race. Through the first 25 races of the season, 13 drivers of the 16 total locked themselves into the playoffs from a win and have a shot at the championship. And when the Federated Auto Parts 400 at Richmond Raceway concludes, those three remaining spots will be officially…