Baseball

In the Cubs' 133 year old history, the team has been owned by one of the founders of the National League, a sporting goods mogul, a chewing gum company, and a media company. The newest owner to the list, a family of Cubs fans.

On Tuesday, Tom Ricketts officially took control of the Cubs and 25-percent of Comcast Sportsnet. The deal was valued at $845 million.

Family members Todd, Tom, Pete, and Laura will form a board of directors. The Tribune Company will hold a five-percent interest in the team and sit on the board. Tom Ricketts will be the chairman.

Old glory never dies—it just repeats itself into oblivion.

The World Series isn’t what it was. It’s also, thankfully, still what it is. As America limps its way out of the Great Recession, there’s reason to doubt whether We the People will ever regain our position of global preeminence—which would be worse news if we couldn’t at least find peace in the praxis of our national pastime.

Habit is what you do without thought.

Ritual, on the other hand, is what you do to stop thinking.

Not only does Cliff Lee compLEEte me, he pulled another compLEEte game out of his hat. His domination of the team with the best record in the majors, the most home runs, and the highest payroll was something out of a storybook.

Hey, they should act that out on Broadway.

Wait, they are.

For many years I wondered why so many people seem to have such a disgust for the Yankees.

You either like them or you don't. "They buy their players," people say, or, "They spend the most." Show-offs. Greedy.

I never believed it—until now.

I, myself, have been a Yankee fan since 1987. I watched them play through terrible seasons, paying over the hill sluggers until the mid '90s. They turned it around and eventually rode their core of players (Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, Bernie Williams) to a dynasty.

Adam Rubin of the New York Daily News is reporting that the New York Mets are close to naming former minor league manager and Arizona Diamondbacks base coach, Chip Hale, as their new third base coach.

The 44-year-old Hale, spent parts of seven seasons in the big leagues. Over the span of 575 career at-bats, he hit .277 along with seven home runs and 78 RBI.

A lot of people wonder what makes the Washington Redskins one of the worst franchises in professional sports. Surprisingly, the biggest reason isn’t fan censorship or poor management.

It’s the fact that iconic former Redskins are all too willing to drag the team through the mud on a daily basis.

When I think back to the old Yankee Stadium, the first thought that comes into my mind is an animal house.

The crowd was extremely loud, extremely rowdy, and the hostile environment they created made playing there unbelievably difficult for visiting teams.

At the new Yankee Stadium, however, those boisterous fans seem to still exist; only now you can’t see them because their seats begin a good 20 rows from of the field.

I find headlines like "Phillies stun Yankees in World Series Game One" comical because the Yankees are not the team to beat. It's almost like last year when the Tampa Bay Rays went through the Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox on their way to the World Series.

The Rays were never given a chance to beat the Red Sox after taking out the White Sox. Yet, if you were listening to the broadcast, you would automatically assume that the Rays were the wild card team and that the Red Sox had won the American League East.

Entering the 2009 postseason, only four pitchers in playoff history had recorded double-digit strikeouts while issuing zero walks.

Cliff Lee has now done it in back-to-back outings.

In Game Three of the NLCS, Lee navigated eight innings of shutout baseball while posting 10 strikeouts and zero walks against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Lee did it again on Wednesday night in Game One of the World Series, tossing a complete game six-hitter and recording 10 punch outs, with zero free passes, against the potent New York Yankees’ lineup.

Chase Utley hit two solo home runs and Cliff Lee pitched a complete game gem as the Phillies beat the Yankees 6-1 in Game One of the World Series. 
 
In what was billed as a pitchers' duel on a cold wet night in the Bronx, it was a lights-out Lee who came out on top over CC Sabathia to dampen the spirits of Murderers' Row. 
 
A dazzling Lee pitched nine innings of six-hit ball, striking out ten and walking none on 122 pitches. Lee pitched with confidence and swagger, seemingly unphased by the magnitude of the occasion.