LOS ANGELES — When Seattle Mariners third baseman Eugenio Suárez misses a ground ball, he shoves his face into his glove and has a few choice words for his leather companion. “I’ll say, ‘Come on, come on,’” he recalled recently in Spanish. “‘If I don’t eat, you don’t eat.’” Yes, Suárez talks to his glove. … Read more
EDMONTON, Alberta — The pandemic shifted one of Canada’s longstanding holiday rituals, the World Junior Championship, from December to the middle of summer. But even allowing for that, the absence of a crowd before the Canadian team’s first game this week was striking. In a fan zone with sprawling television screens outside of the NHL … Read more
Sue Bird peeked upcourt as she caught the outlet pass. Her Seattle Storm teammate Natasha Howard had streaked ahead of her like a wide receiver, as she usually did whenever Bird was running the offense in transition. Howard realized that she was open under the basket and braced herself. Bird, she knew, would find her … Read more
How the tournament – with more than one million visitors expected to visit – will be secured also still has not been articulated. Qatar has signed policing agreements with several nations, notably Turkey, which in January said it would be providing more than 3,000 security personnel, including riot police, for a tournament in which fans … Read more
The concept of a cycle is familiar to most fans, even if the event is not particularly common: A player collects a single, double, triple and homer in the same game. But have you heard of a home run cycle? There’s no shame if you haven’t. Before Wednesday night, it had happened, as far as … Read more
SAN DIEGO — Juan Soto had barely landed, Josh Bell had just sat down and Josh Hader was starting to learn his new teammates’ names when Peter Seidler, the Padres’ owner, declared that “the art of the possible is here.” But just as quickly as the Padres had reset all expectations for their season — … Read more
With talk earlier this year about this possibly being the best New York baseball season ever, it had seemed clear that there was at least a small divide between the city’s major league teams. The Yankees were still the big dogs, and while the Mets were having a great season, they seemed less threatening. After … Read more
Qatar has 12 years to plan for the World Cup. Now, with the first games of the tournament just over 100 days away and the intricate match schedule announced months ago, organizers have requested changes that would see the event start a day earlier so the host nation can have a featured place in the … Read more
If Matt Carpenter’s season is over after he fractured his foot on Monday in Seattle, he at least joined some elite company. His shocking resurgence at age 36 has put his name alongside some of the best hitters in franchise history. In 47 games and 154 plate appearances this season, Carpenter, an outfielder and designated … Read more
NEW YORK — It has been more than three years now, but Unai Emery still remembers the moment as if he had just witnessed it. When he brings it up, all the frustration he felt on that day in March 2019 comes rushing back. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has just claimed the ball, the clock has ticked … Read more