This week’s roundup also features more NCAA drama, the evergreen Ichiro Suzuki and Football Italia nostalgia1) The Masters starts on Thursday, so let’s dip into the archive. Bob Goalby seizes the moment after a scorecard error by Roberto De Vicenzo’s partner meant the Argentinian signed for a 67 rather than the 66 he had gone round in. Tiger Woods’s return to form and prominence gives us an excuse, if one was needed, to relive that famous 16th-hole chip in 2005. And has a pressure moment ever been dealt with better than Sandy Lyle’s bunker shot at the last in 1988, which set him up for a remarkable victory? Two years earlier, Jack Nicklaus was on the charge, sealing victory with...
With research touting the benefits of sleep and recovery, teams are now paying more attention to recuperation. But is there such a thing as too much rest?Science sometimes seems so simple. Take rest for instance. With all the experts touting the benefits of recovery, the answer seems straightforward enough, protect players by resting them now or deal with the consequences later. After all, fortunes, literally, can change with a roll of an ankle or twist of a knee. With the host of factors that affect fatigue and stress, particularly a schedule that asks teams to fly across the country to play games in different time zones, playing time is one of the few factors that coaches can control. Related: Hacking...
Houston built their championship team on talented youngsters and undervalued castoffs. Other teams are now asking if it’s worth investing in superstarsEven before the last out was made, Carlos Correa proposed to his girlfriend and the Houston Astros poured their champagne a serious question had to be asked in the front offices of nearly every other Major League baseball team.Who needs the big free agent? Related: Astros' Carlos Correa wins World Series, proposes to girlfriend ... gets a yes Related: Is Dodgers v Astros the first all-computer World Series? Continue reading...
When Houston and Los Angeles take the field on Tuesday their players will have been picked by data and analytics, rather than scouts with years in the fieldThe future of the World Series does not wear Dodger blue or Astro orange. It won’t throw a strike, hit a home run or chase a line drive into the gap, though it can predict the probability of such things occurring with remarkable accuracy.The future of the World Series lives not in the mortal realm, but in mainframes and clouds and flash drives and smartphones carried by men with pedigrees much loftier than half a lifetime in the worn fields of the minor leagues. Related: Baseball no longer a supergiant but it is...
The World Series does not consume the US as it once did. But baseball still offers a window on the best and the worst of AmericaBaseball has long seen itself as America’s game, a game as great-hearted, humble and fundamentally decent as America itself. And for the better part of the 20th-century, at least in terms of the game’s popularity, baseball was indeed America’s game, and its biggest stars were famous in a way that athletes simply aren’t famous anymore. Fans in the 1920s traveled hundreds of miles just to see Babe Ruth, and the New York Daily News hired a journalist to write about Ruth, and only Ruth, 365 days a year. The most famous players of later eras...