Guardian sport blog — US sports RSS

In a sport where patriotisim makes up the fabric of the game, Adam Jones is right to be concerned. Plus, three cheers for Yasiel Puig, Big Papi prepares to bow out, and Joe Maddon rides the CowboyAdam Jones works in a city that continues to experience racial upheaval, so perhaps it’s no coincidence that baseball’s most outspoken player on African American social issues calls Baltimore home. Baseball is the sport that helped break barriers for black people across the United States, starting with Jackie Robinson’s debut in 1947. Nearly 70 years later, the participation of African Americans in the game, on the field as players, in the dugout as managers and in front offices as executives – where progress was...

When the Strikers were bought by an ownership group that included the World Cup winner, hopes were high. But many are now disenchanted with the projectFew names in American sport spark a reaction like the original North American Soccer League of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, a subject to be revisited each time the need arises for a lesson on how badly things can go wrong for football in the United States.The kitschy sexiness of the old NASL essentially collapsed under its own weight, a failed attempt to ramp up popularity for a very European brand of football in a recalcitrant United States. Some of those team names still cling on to life, in the MLS and modern incarnation of...