This is one of those amusing barroom-type arguments, except this one has comment from experts.
Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest human, record holder in both the 100 meters and 200 meters …
Would he be any good in the mile?
Could he keep up a fraction of his momentum from a 200-meter run and still be moving along quickly while finishing the 1,609 meters that comprise the mile?
We have no idea. And why is that?
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We tend to think of a baseball team as 25 guys. A group that hardly changes from Opening Day to securing a World Series championship seven months later.
In reality, we find four dissimilar stages for the modern World Series contender. Which tends to leave fans discombobulated and ticket-purchasers angry.
This is how “one team” wins a World Series in four phases.
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An important part of fantasy sports leagues is how it brings a fan improved awareness of the players — particularly those on his or her team. Some “owners” even do a sort of scouting of players — just like the professionals!
Huston Street of the Los Angeles Angels was the third of four relief pitchers I drafted, back in March, using the 91st pick — a fairly high pick in our league, which features 324 players.
Street muddled through most of April — OK, but not overpowering, and then he got an oblique injury and was out five weeks.
Since he returned, on May 31, he has been a fairly significant problem, the sort of performer you begin to worry about.
Such as last night, when I felt doom closing in on him … and me … and the Angels. And I communicated that angst to another league owner.
And here it is … as it happened today.
It starts in the bottom of the fifth inning in the Angels’ home game with the Boston Red Sox. The Angels have just scored three runs to take a 3-0 lead behind Tyler Skaggs, who also is a pitcher on my team.
Here we go:
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If you’re going to be an ass in dealing with a visiting team … perhaps you first should make sure your case is watertight before you launch on your taunting.
A Mets fan, maybe 14, 15 years old, reached over the railing in left field to catch a long fly ball hit by Mets infielder Wilmer Flores. With a glove he presumably brought along for the purpose.
Then it got annoying.
The kid waved the globe back and forth, giving Colorado Rockies outfielder David Dahl, a sort of nyaa-nyaa treatment for the Rockies rookie.
Then it got worse.
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I’m not sure a little camera will do justice to how interesting this particular sunset was, here in France.
We sometimes talk about the “European sky” and it is different from what you see elsewhere in the world. It just is.
Fantastical and malleable, likely to filter the light in odd and wonderful ways, ready to give us three shades of blue in the same cloud.
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Brothers in Major League Baseball … not at all unusual, as this massive story makes clear.
MLB brothers having big years in the same season … quite a bit more unusual, and MLB brothers also having very similar big seasons … even more rare.
Looking, in this case, at the Seager brothers, Kyle and Corey.
Let’s start with the numbers, as of this writing.
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England’s latest international soccer tournament ended in such a disaster — going out in the Euro 2016 round-of-16 against Iceland — that things concerning the Football Association got weirder than usual.
Following the 2-1 disaster versus tiny Iceland, England coach Roy Hodgson resigned, as he had to, for professional reasons but also because he seemed about one piece of bad news away from going catatonic.
Which prompted a crazy, half-arsed, English-inflected search for a new coach to lead the “Three Lions” in qualifying for the 2018 World Cup and (one would hope, wouldn’t one?) to lead England at the 2018 World Cup, in Russia.
How crazy and half-arsed was the search? At one point, Jurgen Klinsmann was the betting-line favorite to get the job, much to the astonishment of American soccer fans … and career mediocrity Sam Allardyce, whose main qualification for the job undoubtedly was that he is English, got a two-year contract to run England’s most important team.
And I like Sam Allardyce.
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We expected “warm” in southern France.
We did not expect “hot”.
We thought we had left behind “hot”, back in Abu Dhabi. And in a sense we did. No highs of 118 Fahrenheit with high humidity, here in the Languedoc.
However, perceptions of heat are impacted by considerations we had not necessarily considered.
To wit:
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This is according to Gael Clichy, a veteran midfielder from France who plays for English Premier League side Manchester City.
Clichy says City’s new coach, Pep Guardiola, formerly of Bayern Munich and Barcelona, is barring pizza from the diet of City’s players.
And the club can produce as many experts as it likes, but telling players what they can or cannot eat seems a little … invasive, doesn’t it?
Clichy also said Guardiola will not allow players who are overwight (by his accounting).
What’s next? Club nannies telling the players when to sleep and reminding them to stop after one beer?
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The two players voted into the Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers Association of America were formally inducted today in Cooperstown, New York.
Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza had long and productive careers and their numbers indicate they deserve a place in baseball’s ranks of immortals.
But my personal recollections of the two of them mostly diverge.
–A sense of joy and ease highlighted Griffey’s playing style, and I also felt a small bit of personal ownership in his career.
–As opposed to the memories of the effective but somewhat crude slugging by the stiff-limbed Piazza — who also blamed Vin Scully (!) for Dodgers fans turning against him in 1997.
First, Griffey,
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