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The Major League Baseball season reaches its unofficial midpoint with Tuesday night’s All-Star game, and the story of the year, so far, is Aaron Judge. As the New York Yankees’ rookie right-fielder, Judge has produced jaw-slackening moments with such regularity that it’s hard to single one out, but a good example came on June 11, when the Yankees hosted the Baltimore Orioles in the Bronx. The game before, Judge had hit his league-leading 19th home run of the season, and that day he padded his total even further. In the sixth inning, he sent an inside pitch soaring 495 feet over the left-field

RANK 8 KEVIN DURANT COUNTRY USA TEAM WARRIORS ENDORSEMENTS $36M FACEBOOK FOLLOWERS 10.3M TWITTER FOLLOWERS 15.5M He chose the house in the hills because it provided the most expansive view: the Bay, the bridge, his new city, his new home. But now Kevin Durant feared it would be just another vantage point to sustain him through yet another injury. It had all been going so well too. Fifty-eight games into his maiden voyage with Golden State, he’d been averaging a tidy 25.8 points and 8.4 rebounds, shooting a career-high 53.8 percent. It was Feb. 28, a date he’d circled on his calendar—th

ENTREVISTA POR ELAINE TENG THE MAG: ¿Cuando eras niño, qué idioma hablabas con tus padres? MACHADO: El español era el principal idioma. Mi abuela no hablaba inglés, así que yo le tenía que hablar siempre en español. Mi tía y mi mamá entendían inglés. Algunas veces les hablaba en inglés y me respondían en español, para que hablara más español, para que no se me fuera. ¿Qué tipo de comida comías? Siempre la bandeja dominicana. La hacía mi abuela. Mucho arroz, bistec, pollo, caldo, mariscos, pescado. Nunca faltaba el arroz. ¿Cuál es tu plato favorito? Arroz blanco con bistec. ¿Cuál idioma

Major league baseball is in an era of enlightenment in which organizations are filled with the bright minds of men and women who won’t accept the status quo without examination. The phrase That’s the way it’s always been done is routinely ignored, and more informed decisions are now made about defensive positioning, pitch selection, bunts, platoons and trade value, as well as about whether it’s worth sacrificing an All-Star catcher to the act of blocking home plate just to prevent one run in one game in a 162-game season. But as the sport has evolved, the practice of retaliation—through the u

Alshon Jeffery WR | EAGLES If he remains healthy and on the field, Jeffery (4,549 yards and 26 TDs in five seasons with the Bears) will be an immediate upgrade for QB Carson Wentz and the Philadelphia offense. He has the size and frame (6-foot-3, 218 pounds) to run inside breaking routes and cause matchup problems in the red zone. His skill set is a perfect match for coach Doug Pederson’s system. —MATT BOWEN DeSean Jackson, Calais Campbell WR | BUCCANEERS DT | JAGUARS Few non-quarterback free agents are good enough to add victories to their teams by themselves. But if you look at effici

The Golden State Warriors earned their second NBA title in three years with a 129 to 120 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers in Oakland Monday night, led by All-Star forward Kevin Durant's 39 points and strong bench scoring. Durant's stellar play all season and throughout the playoffs vindicated Golden State's massive payout to the superstar in a controversial off-season deal. Fellow All-Star Stephen Curry added 34 points. But it was Durant, who left Oklahoma City for Oakland at the end of last season, who carried the team. The capacity crowd, most dressed in Warrior gold T-shirts, cheered and sa

For those too young to remember the NBA's Michael Jordan era, you're living it now. The Golden State Warriors are the new Michael Jordan. When Jordan ruled the earth's hardwood, everyone else played for second. That's where we are today with the super team from the Bay Area that just wrapped up its second title in three years. So why even play games for the next 3 to 5 years? Just build a permanent trophy case in Oakland's Oracle Arena, right? WRONG. Sports, if anything, represent hope. It's why they play the games. On any given Sunday. David did beat Goliath. Which brings us to today's annual

BASEBALL. MAN, SUCH a brutal game. Such a mean game. Sadistic, really, the way it runs itself up under your skin and makes you miserable. Hang around a baseball clubhouse and you’ll start to wonder why anyone plays the damned thing. Sometimes it seems everybody in the game wakes up each morning trying to decide whether to be angry or bitter. Fittingly, the ballplayer’s favorite word is grind, as if coursing through 162 games is the sporting equivalent of an 18th-century polar expedition. Even good moments are dismissed as untrustworthy, because if ballplayers know one thing about the grind—thi

We see a good number of classic alternate rosters for NBA 2K, but there’s an even more impressive list of fan-made custom rosters available for download for MLB The Show 17. If you’re into legends, you’ll want to download the roster created by SC73Ray. In all the years The Show has had a roster share feature, this set of legends may be the best. The collection of stars are based on the Wins Above Replacement (WAR) statistic. SC73Ray has compiled the 25 players with the highest WAR for each organization and placed them on the associated team. For example, the New York Yankees team has Mariano

Colin Kaepernick still doesn't have a job — and according to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, that has nothing to do with his high-profile national anthem protest last year. "It did spark conversation, which I think is a part of what Colin Kaepernick intended to do," Goodell said onstage Thursday at the NFL Network's "Rams All-Access" event in Los Angeles. "I don't think that's going to affect people from saying, 'I'm going to do what's in the best interest of my football team and give my team the best chance to win,' because that's what every team wants to do." Goodell's remarks came as all 32

On Thursday, the Sony San Diego Studio development team took to Twitch to address the hot-button issues surrounding MLB The Show 17. Servers, hitting difficulty and realism took center stage. A quick scan of Reddit and the Operation Sports forums will give you an idea of what people are saying about both aspects of the game. Since MLB The Show 17 released on March 28, it has been plagued by intermittent server issues. Much has been done to correct the problem, but as detailed in the stream, some impediments have still lingered. I played two games online in Diamond Dynasty prior to publishing a

With the first pick in Thursday night’s NBA draft, the Philadelphia 76ers took Markelle Fultz, the sure-thing guard from the University of Washington. The high selection continued a recent league tradition. Last year, too, the Sixers picked first; the two years before that, they picked third. This is by design. Philadelphia’s strategy, installed by the former analytically minded general manager Sam Hinkie, has involved fielding overmatched squads that lose at record or near-record rates and give the team the best chance to attain high picks in the league’s draft lottery. Those picks, the think

Intel plans to sponsor the Olympics through 2024 in the company's latest bid to show off its technology through high-profile sports events. The chipmaker said it will partner with the International Olympic Committee to bring Intel's technology, such as virtual reality, 360-degree video, artificial intelligence and drones, to enhance the Olympic Games. Intel is signing on at a time when global interest in the Olympics is waning. TV ratings have fallen and cities have dropped out of the running to host the games as costs spiral. Yet for Intel, the sponsorship is part of a broad push into sports

Ryan O'Callaghan, a former NFL offensive tackle for the New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs, came out as gay in a powerful profile in Outsports, published Tuesday. O'Callaghan, who said he used football as his "beard," revealed to the publication that he had abused painkillers and planned his suicide after his career was ended by injury in 2011. "I just didn’t worry about being gay when I took the Vicodin. I just didn’t worry," O'Callaghan said. "I started spending all my money to put myself in a position where it would be impossible, or at least extremely difficult, to back out of k

At one point Saturday, it looked as if Simona Halep was on her way to her first ever major victory. She'd won the first set of the French Open against her unseeded opponent, and despite fierce play from Jelena Ostapenko, few onlookers expected the unseeded Latvian to mount a comeback. So much for that. On the strength of an unrelentingly aggressive attack, hitting just about as many unforced errors as she did winners, Ostapenko ultimately wore down Halep, taking the second and third sets in thrilling fashion. Ostapenko, only a few days removed from her 20th birthday, upset Halep to take home h

Any seasoned watcher of the NBA knows that stockpiled talent brings its own drawbacks. Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal won three consecutive titles together for Los Angeles in the 2000s, but they sniped at each other in the media and eventually presented an ultimatum to the front office: Choose one. LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, when they joined forces in Miami in 2010, found that giving up some control to accommodate each other was not as simple as it sounded; they limped to a slow start in their first year together and lost that season’s Finals in dispiriting fashion. Basketball requires ba

Women and men will compete together in mixed relays at the next Summer Olympics, the International Olympic Committee says, announcing a slate of changes for Tokyo 2020. The IOC says it will get close to gender balance among Olympic athletes, boosting women to nearly 49 percent, from 45.6 percent in Rio. The Tokyo games will feature 18 mixed events, up from 9 at the Rio Olympics. Both swimming and track will hold mixed relays, as well as a triathlon team relay; other sports will also allow national sporting federations to blend their male and female athletes, from mixed doubles in table tennis

The Cleveland Cavaliers came into the third game of the NBA Finals in a dispiriting but familiar position after two Golden State blowouts. Last year, that led to one of the most stunning comebacks in NBA history That remained a possibility the entire game Wednesday night — until the closing minutes, when the Warriors ripped the Cavaliers hearts out. Now Cleveland, which last year became the first team to recover from a 3-1 Finals deficit, faces historically long odds again. Golden State closed the game in Cleveland on an 11-0 run to win 118-113, with perhaps no basket bigger than Kevin Durant'

After spending the better part of the NBA playoffs bemoaning the state of modern basketball while talking up his long-standing love of hockey, TNT analyst Charles Barkley on Monday night continued to serve as a goodwill ambassador for the 2017 NHL Stanley Cup Final -- often at the expense of pro hoops. Sitting in with NBC announcers Liam McHugh and Mike Milbury during the second intermission of Game 4 of the Predators-Penguins series, Barkley threw shade at the NBA while heaping praise on the NHL. "I'm just glad to be here because the NBA playoffs have not been great, while the Stanley Cup pla

If a sort of looming inevitability seems to have cast a Kevin Durant-shaped shadow over the 2017 NBA Finals, the relative lack of drama thus far hasn't had a dampening effect on the TV ratings. According to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data, the first two games of this year's Cleveland Cavaliers-Golden State Warriors title tilt delivered an average audience of 19.2 million viewers and a 10.6 household rating, up 4% from the year-ago 18.4 million viewers and up a tick versus last season's 10.5 rating. Another 410,000 average-minute viewers have tuned in to the Finals via ESPN's streaming app, acc

On September 19, 1976, the Atlanta Braves owner Ted Turner promoted a man named Bill Lucas to vice president of player personnel. Though Turner, somewhat oddly, kept the official title of general manager, Lucas assumed the job's responsibilities, overseeing the Braves’ roster. As a former minor-league player who had climbed through Atlanta's front office, Lucas was a typical hire, except for one fact: Unlike every other man to ever run a Major League Baseball franchise until that point, he was black. Nearly three decades after Jackie Robinson had become the first black player in the modern Maj

Early in one of the Golden State Warriors’ conference semifinal games against the Utah Jazz, Rudy Gobert, Utah’s 7’1” center, cut unimpeded toward the basket. The defense had lapsed; all the Jazz needed to do was toss the ball near the rim and let Gobert collect and dunk it. The pass was made, and the dunk was imminent—but then Golden State’s Draymond Green appeared. A half-foot shorter than Gobert, with far less leaping ability, Green nevertheless timed his jump, wedged his hand between ball and cylinder, and blocked the shot. He would go on to compile a characteristically assorted stat line—

Seventy-four years ago, Joel Platt says, Babe Ruth came to him in a dream. “Don’t give up,” Ruth told Platt, then 4 years old and recovering from injuries suffered in a gasoline explosion. “You can be a baseball player or open a museum to sports legends.” Platt turned out to be a decent shortstop and an even better collector. Over decades, some of history’s best athletes and their families gave him mementos—in many instances, before there was a market for such items. Platt also bought from other collectors, eventually amassing more than 1 million pieces, some of which are on display at the Spo

ONE OF THE MORE absurd, madcap musical chairs of recent Mets vintage—and, boy howdy, have there been plenty—was April’s foofaraw involving an injury to pitcher Noah Syndergaard. Last year, the Asgardian ace threw his fastball harder on average than any starter in baseball, a blazing, terrifying, that-doesn’t-really-seem-fair thunderbolt that consistently ran to an almost-impossible-to-believe 97.6 mph, the highest in baseball history. This spring, he showed up to training camp boasting that he’d added 17 pounds of muscle that would allow him to throw still harder. And he was as good out of th

An anonymous sports fan once said, “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the places and moments that take our breath away.” OK, I don’t know if the guy who said that was a sports fan (or even a guy), but I do know that for those of us who love sports, the thrill of seeing an epic event or storied arena can be close to the meaning of life. We fans are thrill-seekers. We are also memory collectors—memory hoarders, to be more precise—and as we check items off our bucket list, those checks become prized mementos. And our personal sports bucket list becomes an impatiently t

Road to the Show in MLB the Show 17 has a storyline this year, but don't let that distract you from constructing a sound plan for building a beastly character. Asking yourself who you want to be is very important question at the outset of your RTTS journey. Do you want to be a speedster like the Cincinnati Reds' Billy Hamilton, or a masher like the New York Yankees' Aaron Judge? Once you know, choose your starter attributes accordingly. Go big on power if that's your objective, or do the same for speed if that's where you plan to make your mark. You could upgrade your player after every game,

Joe DiMaggio, according to teammate Lefty Gomez, was famous for running down a pitcher’s mistakes. As a rookie, though, the usually tight-lipped Yankee Clipper told his much younger friend Dr. Rock Positano, he made some of his own. “Back in 1936, my rookie year, [there] was a big story in one of the papers about Tris Speaker [that] called him the greatest center fielder who ever lived. I read that Tris played very shallow and still could go back on the ball. Later that Sunday, I caught a ride with Lefty … I told him that I would be the greatest center fielder who ever played the game. I said

It's been nearly 1,000 days since Derek Jeter played for the New York Yankees, not that we're counting. Now he's officially getting his due as his number, 2, is set to be retired by the team Sunday. Two days before the ceremony, Budweiser honored the retired shortstop in a fitting tribute, "This Bud's For 2." The video, created by Budweiser and produced by VaynerMedia, begins with highlights from Jeter's final game in the Bronx, then shows various twos being removed around New York: a lighted 2 outside an entrance to the subway, a neon 2 in the window of a 24-hour establishment, a chalk-drawn

From the wheelbarrow hurled amid a riot in Mexico City's Estadio Azteca to the scooter sent somersaulting from an upper tier at a match in Milan, football fans have launched a bewildering array of objects from the terraces over the years. Few, though, were as grisly as the severed bull's head that landed beside the pitch at a match between bitter east German rivals Dynamo Dresden and RB Leipzig last August. The Dresden fans' protest against the Red Bulls, as RB Leipzig are nicknamed, was just one of many. In the nearly eight years since they came into being in a sleepy town on the outskirts of