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🚨 Headlines
🏀 Finals rematch: The Aces beat the Liberty in last year’s WNBA Finals. Now, they’ll meet in this year’s semifinals after Las Vegas swept Seattle and New York swept Atlanta.
📺 Now streaming: Netflix’s “Mr. McMahon,” a six-part docuseries chronicling the rise and fall of WWE founder Vince McMahon, was released this morning.
🏈 Favre has Parkinson’s: Brett Favre revealed on Tuesday that he was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. The retired QB made the disclosure while testifying on Capitol Hill at a hearing about a welfare misspending scandal in Mississippi.
🏀 Sparks cut ties with Miller: Veteran head coach Curt Miller and the Sparks have “mutually agreed to part ways.” Miller went 25-55 in his two seasons with the franchise, which has had 17 coaches in 28 seasons.
🎾 Teen wins title: 19-year-old Shang Juncheng beat Olympic bronze medalist Lorenzo Musetti to win the Chengdu Open and become just the second Chinese player to win an ATP title. He’s also the youngest ATP winner this year.
⚾️ Clinched!
Los Angeles — The Padres clinched a playoff spot by turning a game-ending triple play (just the third in the past 30 years) that left Shohei Ohtani on deck. San Diego (91-66) is now just two games behind Los Angeles (93-64) in the NL West title race with five games left to play.
New York — The Orioles beat the Yankees, 5-3, to lock up a postseason spot and deny New York a chance to clinch the division. This marks the first time the O’s have made the playoffs in consecutive seasons since 1996-97.
Houston — The Astros beat the Mariners, 4-3, to clinch their fourth consecutive AL West title. The last team to do that? The Oakland A’s nearly 50 years ago (five straight from 1971-75).
MLB playoffs tracker: Standings, clinch scenarios, tiebreakers, postseason schedule
🎓 How the Power 4 stacks up academically
U.S. News and World Report’s annual college rankings are out. Here’s how the Power 4 conferences stack up.
ACC
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Average ranking: 51.7
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Schools in top 50: 9 of 18
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Schools in top 100: 17 of 18
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Highest ranking: Stanford (4)
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Lowest ranking: Louisville (179)
Full list: Stanford (4), Duke (6), Cal (17), Notre Dame (18), Virginia (24), North Carolina (27), Georgia Tech (33), Boston College (37), Wake Forest (46), Virginia Tech (51), Florida state (54), North Carolina State (58), Miami (63), Pittsburgh (70), Syracuse (73), Clemson (80), SMU (91), Louisville (179)
Big Ten
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Average ranking: 53.5
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Schools in top 50: 11 of 18
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Schools in top 100: 16 of 18
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Highest ranking: Northwestern (6)
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Lowest ranking: Nebraska (152)
Full list: Northwestern (6), UCLA (15), Michigan (21), USC (27), Illinois (33), Wisconsin (39), Rutgers (41), Ohio State (41), Maryland (44), Purdue (46), Washington (46), Minnesota (54), Michigan State (63), Penn State (63), Indiana (73), Iowa (98), Oregon (101), Nebraska (152)
SEC
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Average ranking: 114.2
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Schools in top 50: 4 of 16
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Schools in top 100: 5 of 16
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Highest ranking: Vanderbilt (18)
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Lowest ranking: Mississippi State (214)
Full list: Vanderbilt (18), Florida (30), Texas (30), Georgia (46), Texas A&M (51), Auburn (105), Tennessee (109), Missouri (109), South Carolina (121), Oklahoma (132), Kentucky (152), Ole Miss (171), Alabama (171), LSU (179), Arkansas (189), Mississippi State (214)
Big 12
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Average ranking: 125.2
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Schools in top 50: 0 of 16
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Schools in top 100: 2 of 16
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Highest ranking: Baylor (91)
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Lowest ranking: West Virginia (220)
Full list: Baylor (91), Colorado (98), TCU (105), BYU (109), Arizona (109), Arizona State (121), Iowa State (121), UCF (121), Utah (136), Houston (144), Cincinnati (152), Kansas (152), Kansas State (165), Oklahoma State (196), Texas Tech (214), West Virginia (220)
Reader shoutout: Thanks to Yahoo Sports AM reader Richard Rothschild for giving me the idea for this story last year and helping out again this year. Appreciate you, Richard!
🏈 NFL power rankings: Week 4
The Bills, led by early MVP favorite Josh Allen, headline our Week 4 NFL power rankings, courtesy of Yahoo Sports’ Frank Schwab.
The Bills have been consistently good during the Sean McDermott/Josh Allen era. Five straight playoff appearances, four straight division titles and a pair of 13-win seasons is an impressive run. And this might be the best team of the era, after an offseason of worry that their Super Bowl window had closed.
MVP odds (via BetMGM):
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Josh Allen (+200)
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Patrick Mahomes (+350)
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C.J. Stroud (+1300)
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Jalen Hurts (+1600)
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Aaron Rodgers (+1600)
The messy middle: The NFL’s parity has been on full display this season, with 25 teams at either 1-2 or 2-1. Five teams are 3-0 (Bills, Chiefs, Vikings, Seahawks, Steelers), and three are 0-3 (Bengals, Jaguars, Titans).
🎙️ Fresh pod: Dissecting the 3-0 teams (Football 301)
⚾️ Skubal vs. Sale: Down to the wire
Detroit’s Tarik Skubal and Atlanta’s Chris Sale are virtual locks to win the AL and NL Cy Young Awards, and the two southpaws have nearly identical stats this season.
By the numbers: Can you imagine if voters had to pick between these two?
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Skubal: 18 wins, 2.39 ERA, 142 hits, 35 walks, 228 strikeouts
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Sale: 18 wins, 2.38 ERA, 141 hits, 39 walks, 225 strikeouts
Triple Crown chase: Skubal and Sale are both in position to win the ultra-rare MLB Triple Crown by leading both leagues in wins, ERA and strikeouts.
Adding to the intrigue… They’re pitching in high-stakes games as their teams fight for their playoff lives. Skubal tossed seven scoreless innings on Tuesday as the Tigers inched closer to an improbable postseason berth, and his next start could come on the last day of the season (Sunday). As for Sale, he takes the mound tonight in Atlanta as the Braves (86-71) look to draw even with the Mets (87-70) in the NL Wild Card race.
📆 Sept. 25, 1965: Satch’s swan song
59 years ago today, Leroy “Satchel” Paige played the final game of his major league career, pitching three scoreless innings for the Kansas City A’s… at age 59.
By the numbers: Paige hadn’t pitched professionally in 12 years and was four decades removed from his debut, but he needed just 28 pitches to mow down the Red Sox lineup. The only hit he allowed came off the bat of future Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski.
“Whether he is 23, 53, 63, or 73 as some say, he really showed a lot of people that he still has that ol’ love of the game.”
— A’s broadcaster Red Rush after Paige exited the game
Why this happened: The Athletics, whose last winning season came 13 years earlier when they were still in Philadelphia, routinely struggled to draw big crowds (sound familiar?). So owner Charlie Finley devised “Satchel Paige Night” as a publicity stunt* to boost attendance, honoring the local legend who’d spent eight seasons with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues.
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Finley didn’t want to just celebrate Paige, though — he wanted him to pitch. So he signed Paige to a $3,500 contract and brought him on as a sort of coach and cheerleader for the month, which also gave him the service time he needed to qualify for MLB’s pension.
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The A’s really played up Paige’s age, setting him up with a rocking chair in the bullpen and bringing in a nurse to rub liniment on his shoulder before the game for the entire crowd to see.
A Hall of Fame career: Paige pitched professionally in the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, compiling a 124-82 record and a 2.73 ERA across 22 seasons. In 1971, he became the first former Negro Leaguer elected to the Hall of Fame.
*Not his first stunt: Earlier in the month, Finley had shortstop Bert Campaneris play all nine positions in the same game, making him the first of five major leaguers to do so.
📺 Watchlist: Elimination games
Caitlin Clark and Diana Taurasi — the best players of their generations — both face elimination tonight on ESPN.
The intrigue: This may be your last chance to watch Clark play basketball this season, and it may also be your last chance to watch Taurasi play basketball period. The 42-year-old has been coy about retirement, but it’s starting to feel like this could be it.
More to watch:
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⚾️ MLB: Mets at Braves (7:20pm, MLB.TV Free Game); Giants at Diamondbacks or Padres at Dodgers (9:40pm, MLB) … Can the Braves catch the Diamondbacks and Mets? Can the Padres catch the Dodgers? Lots on the line tonight.
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⚽️ U.S. Open Cup: LAFC vs. Sporting KC (10:30pm, Free on Apple) … Championship game of the nation’s longest-running soccer tournament.*
*95 entered, 2 remain: The 109th edition of the U.S. Open Cup began in March with 95 teams from all different levels of American soccer. The two finalists are, unsurprisingly, both from MLS. The last non-MLS club to win this tournament? The Rochester Raging Rhinos in 1999.
⚾️ MLB trivia
Aaron Judge smacked another home run on Tuesday to give him 56 on the season.
Question: Who are the only seven players to hit more HRs in a season this century?
Hint: Two are still active.
Answer at the bottom.
🇳🇴 Meanwhile, in Norway…
Norwegian club Bryne FK, famous for nurturing a young Erling Haaland, has come up with a unique way to appeal to fans in their agriculture-heavy region: Bring your tractors to the stadium!
Tractor suites: The second-division club is inviting fans to drive their tractors to their 4,000-person stadium, park them near the pitch and “watch the match from the cab.” Up to four fans can join the driver for the reasonable price of NOK 250, around $20.
Trivia answer: Barry Bonds (73 in 2001), Sammy Sosa (64 in 2001), Judge (62 in 2022), Giancarlo Stanton (59 in 2017), Ryan Howard (58 in 2006), Luis Gonzalez (57 in 2001), Alex Rodriguez (57 in 2002)
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