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If you want a reason why Tom Werner was nothing more than a cardboard-cutout candidate for commissioner, forget the more famous and infamous flaws on his baseball resume: gutting the ’93 Padres, Roseanne’s itchy anthem, NESN’s Comedy All-Stars, all of that. Just remember this: The 2010 Red Sox had Adrian Beltre in their midst. And let him go in part because Werner thought the team needed to be more entertaining….

Tony Stewart will qualify for the Chase for the Sprint Cup if he wins this weekend at Atlanta or next weekend at Richmond.(Photo: Kevin Liles, USA TODAY Sports) NASCAR officials never like to get too specific about their rules, lest they back themselves into a corner about decisions like the one they made Friday. Thanks to a NASCAR wavier, Tony Stewart will now be eligible for the Chase for the…

Maty Mauk, a redshirt freshman quarterback for Missouri, is the son of Mike Mauk, the new football coach at Glendale High School. Getty Images Maty Mauk kept the Tigers rolling along after senior starter James Franklin went down injured. Getty Images COLUMBIA, MO – NOVEMBER 2: Maty Mauk #7 of the Missouri Tigers looks to pass against the Tennessee Volunteers defense in the first quarter on November 2, 2013 at…

SAN ANTONIO — Texas high school football is back, and we’re in the game with a brand new High School Sports website. KENS 5 Sports has teamed up with USA TODAY to put the spotlight on San Antonio-area teams. High School Sports offers all high schools a chance to be recognized here in Texas and across the nation. San Antonio high school team pages are now live! You can find…

NASCAR president Mike Helton(Photo: Jerry Markland, Getty Images) HAMPTON, Ga. — NASCAR president Mike Helton said Friday that Tony Stewart will be granted a waiver to participate in the Chase for the Sprint Cup if he were to win one of the final two races before the cutoff. “This has been a very unique set of circumstances to Tony and our sport,” Helton said. In clearing a return for Stewart,…

Ben McGrath of The New Yorker has the latest Baseball is Dying story. And, actually, it’s a good story, as you might expect from a good writer at a good publication. In it he makes a good distinction — one I should do better about making when I cover my currently favorite beat — about how the metrics of baseball and the cultural zeitgeist of baseball are two different things….

It’s tough to figure out exactly what’s going on in the video above because it’s in Japanese, but we know the important stuff: That’s former Nippon Pro Baseball home-run king Takashi Yamasaki guesting on some sort of funny Japanese TV show. His goal is to try to hit a 186 mph fastball from a pitching machine. Yikes. You know how fast that is? It’s so fast Yamasaki couldn’t even swing before the ball passed…

NASCAR driver Tony Stewart will return to competition this weekend for the first time since being involved in a crash that killed another driver. A schedule on Stewart’s website says the driver will compete in the ORAL-B USA 500 at the Atlanta Motor Speedway this Sunday. Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR executive vice president, said Stewart “has received all necessary clearances required to return to all racing activities, and therefore is eligible…

As the city of Chicago celebrated its Little League U.S. champions, Chicago Cubs president Theo Epstein said Wednesday that Jackie Robinson West’s success should be a “rallying cry” to bring more inner city kids back to baseball. Podcast: ‘Carmen & Jurko Show’ Cubs president Theo Epstein joins “Carmen & Jurko” to discuss the Jackie Robinson West team, the progress of Javier Baez and the arrival of Jorge Soler. Listen “At…

(CNN) — Tony Stewart, who hasn’t raced since his car struck and killed a fellow driver during a dirt track race earlier this month, will return to NASCAR racing at Atlanta, his team announced on its Twitter feed. Stewart opted out of three races after his car hit Kevin Ward Jr., who was walking on the track during an Empire Super Sprints series race August 9 in New York. “NASCAR…

As the city of Chicago celebrated its Little League U.S. champions, Chicago Cubs president Theo Epstein said Wednesday that Jackie Robinson West’s success should be a “rallying cry” to bring more inner city kids back to baseball. Podcast: ‘Carmen & Jurko Show’ Cubs president Theo Epstein joins “Carmen & Jurko” to discuss the Jackie Robinson West team, the progress of Javier Baez and the arrival of Jorge Soler. Listen “At…

As the city of Chicago celebrated its Little League U.S. champions, Chicago Cubs president Theo Epstein said Wednesday that Jackie Robinson West’s success should be a “rallying cry” to bring more inner city kids back to baseball. Podcast: ‘Carmen & Jurko Show’ Cubs president Theo Epstein joins “Carmen & Jurko” to discuss the Jackie Robinson West team, the progress of Javier Baez and the arrival of Jorge Soler. Listen “At…

St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Shelby Miller and Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Wil Myers have launched an iOS baseball game called Wil and Shelby’s Baseball Battle. The gameplay appears reminiscent of classic 8- and 16-bit console baseball games, but it’s 2014 now so it allows you to log in via Facebook and challenge your friends. Most importantly, the game includes customizable equipment, stadiums, and characters, so you can play as an…

Credit Photograph by Ted S. Warren / AP If Mike Trout walked into your neighborhood bar, would you recognize him? Let me rephrase: If the baseball player who is widely considered the best in the world—a once-in-a-generation talent, the greatest outfielder since Barry Bonds, the most accomplished twenty-two-year-old that the activity formerly known as the national pastime has ever known—bent elbows over a stool and ordered an I.P.A., would anyone…

Alexis Pavlinec of Jackson is shown in this undated photograph. A stray ball hit the girl in the face on Sunday at FirstEnergy Park in Lakewood, her parents said. (Photo: Photo courtesy of Ken Pavlinec. ) LAKEWOOD – Ken Pavlinec of Jackson remembers the sound a stray baseball made as it slammed into his 10-year-old daughter’s face on Sunday, fracturing her skull and leaving an imprint of the ball’s stitches….

- – Binghamton Mets’ third baseman David Wright throws a runner out during a game Thursday with the Norwich Navigators.(Photo: Wayne Hansen, Copyright 2004) Story Highlights Ken Harrelson has the record for most home runs (38) in a season by a Binghamton player John Montgomery Ward threw every pitch for the Crickets in 1878 Jay Payton was the first B-Mets player to win the Eastern League MVP Some were future…

20 Sports-Related Jobs With Double-Digit Growth Quarterbacks and sideline commentators may grab the bulk of the airtime, but sports-related jobs span a broad spectrum of interdependent occupations–and some of them are growing faster than ever. Jobs across all sports-related industries are up 12.6% since 2010–more than double the growth in the national job market, according to a report released today by CareerBuilder and Economic Modeling Specialists. Average earnings across these…

As the city of Chicago celebrated its Little League U.S. champions, Chicago Cubs president Theo Epstein said Wednesday that Jackie Robinson West’s success should be a “rallying cry” to bring more inner city kids back to baseball. Podcast: ‘Carmen & Jurko Show’ Cubs president Theo Epstein joins “Carmen & Jurko” to discuss the Jackie Robinson West team, the progress of Javier Baez and the arrival of Jorge Soler. Listen “At…

Alexis Pavlinec of Jackson is shown in this undated photograph. A stray ball hit the girl in the face on Sunday at FirstEnergy Park in Lakewood, her parents said. (Photo: Photo courtesy of Ken Pavlinec. ) LAKEWOOD – Ken Pavlinec of Jackson remembers the sound a stray baseball made as it slammed into his 10-year-old daughter’s face on Sunday, fracturing her skull and leaving an imprint of the ball’s stitches….

The Texas Rangers are almost certain to shut down Yu Darvish for the season, because that’s what a smart team would do, and the Rangers are no dummies. They don’t cater to the whims of a manager who after all these years doesn’t care to acquaint himself with the intricacies of arm injuries, and they don’t kowtow to media members looking for some bright light in this Alaska winter of…