softball Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Bryan Reynolds requests a trade — what is he worth?
Remember a few years ago when a power-hitting shortstop was all the rage? They were a dime a dozen, and securing a shortstop that could be a serious threat in your lineup was an enormous deal. Nowadays, every team has one of those. The Boston Red Sox had two in Xander Bogaerts and Trevor Story last ...

MLB needs to explain why Juan Soto is a Gold Glove finalist
A few days ago, Major League Baseball announced its finalists for the Rawlings Gold Glove Awards....

It’s OK to enjoy Albert Pujols’ 700th home run
I never know how to write about the teams or players I like. I could pen 2,500 words on Albert Pujols in 20 minutes, literally breaking Mavis Beacon records along the way, and none of it would be coherent or old-time-y poetic like in the days when you had to read sports writers to see a swing. ...

What is Urban Meyer’s first ‘Big Noon Kickoff’ going to look like?
Taking part in the age-old tradition of terrible football coaches landing on their feet, disgraced former Jacksonville Jaguars coach Urban Meyer is back on Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff show about eight months after a tenure that had pundits saying he should never coach or work in TV again. He was a part o...

How rare is the HR cycle?
Since 1900, a player has hit three home runs in an MLB game 624 times. Only 16 times has a player hit four. Nobody has ever hit five....

Our Conference Mock Draft: Pac-12 Edition
Picking in the middle of the rounds made strategizing to keep rivals together a challenge, but we’ve got the finances to thrive once we’re inevitably forced to categorize student-athletes as employees....

A.J. Brown is off and running in Philly after laying the smack down on Micah Parsons
Philadelphia Eagles’ new star wide receiver A.J. Brown is diving-in headfirst to the NFC East rivalry with the Dallas Cowboys. Brown participated in a charity softball home-run derby hosted by teammate DeVonta Smith. In the final, it was Brown against Micah Parsons, with A.J. coming away the victor ...

Won’t someone think of the UCLA volleyball team?
Damn. What a day yesterday. Before yesterday, I would have said that UCLA and USC joining the B1G was probably the last conference realignment on earth that could happen. Oh, how a few hours and some good TV money can change everything....

Girls’ high school sports: The most impactful legacy of Title IX
One of Title IX’s most significant triumphs in the last 50 years has been the soaring number of women competing in high school sports. The number of women in sports grew more than tenfold, from 294,015 in the 1971-72 school year to 3.4 million in 2019, according to a Women’s Sports Foundation study....

Jocelyn Alo and the unstoppable Sooners
Chicks do dig the longball. Specifically, Jocelyn Alo. She’s been blasting pitches for home runs since she arrived at Oklahoma. As the Sooners’ coronation as back-to-back national champions appears inevitable, she will take her final swings of college softball. She’s Thanos. But instead of snapping ...

We have a controversial NCAA baseball call!
This was bad baseball all around, except from home-plate umpire Jeff Head. Almost every bit of the most-important play from the final game of the College Park regional of the NCAA Baseball Tournament was absurd. ...

We need to talk about Oklahoma’s softball team
We complain about unbeatable, un-compete-able, unstoppable dynasties in college football, bemoaning how no one will ever be able to be on Alabama’s level, that any championship victory over them is but a blip in their seemingly god-given power. We shook our heads and shrugged our shoulders for years...

Oklahoma softball would like, nay, DEMANDS everyone’s attention right now
Thirty-six wins, zero losses. That’s what the Oklahoma softball team’s record is right now, breaking the all-time Division I record previously set in 1999 by UCLA at 35-0. Now, with a streak this absurd, this dominant, you’d think there have been hiccups. Perhaps there were a few games where Oklahom...

Coed sports can be a thing
For all the energy devoted to the Lia Thomas story, you’d think there was an army of transitioning athletes looking to snatch Division I titles from the women who rightfully won them. Laws have been written, passed, vetoed and passed again to prevent people assigned one sex at birth from competing w...

Baseball is back, but the DH is everywhere, and that’s awful
There’s only one bad thing about the MLB lockout being over: The game is changing forever....

Athletes Unlimited league arrives for women's hoops with new model
A new league of professional women’s basketball kicked off last night in Las Vegas with WNBA stars Lexie Brown, Mercedes Russell, and Odyssey Sims taking the court. Athletes Unlimited is hoping to change the game in the U.S. in more ways than one — the question is whether its unusual format and smal...

SEC out to conquer more than football as Auburn hoops is No. 1 for first time in school history
The Southeastern Conference doesn’t have a plan only to dominate in football. The league’s leadership believes a monopoly, like its 12 of the last 16 national gridiron championships, including the last three with a trio of different schools, can be achieved across the board....

The women are coming for baseball
It’s probably too early to call it a new era, but with names like Rachel Balkovec and Genevieve Beacom making the headlines, America’s pastime is definitely due for a change-up. Earlier this week, Balkovec was hired as the new manager of the Yankees’ minor league affiliate the Tampa Tarpons. This hi...

Baseball For All's message to women and girls: You don't have to stop playing the game you love
The 29 young women who gathered on the pristine green turf of the Centenary University baseball field in mid-August for Baseball For All’s first-ever scouting combine for women — a group looking to continue their baseball careers into college — all shared commonalities in their individual stories....

Should Major League Baseball have taken Olympic play more seriously?
Despite baseball making its triumphant return to the Olympics this year, nobody really seemed very excited to watch. There were probably a lot of factors that went into the lack of hype: general lack of public interest in the Olympics as a whole, the fact that Major League Baseball was going through...