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“It’s the first time in my career being in that position to play spoiler,” Heyward said. “It’s a lot of fun playing good baseball, of course, but having some incentive to do it and go out there together, it’s really nice to see some results.”
That tournament allowed the world to begin to get familiar with her style of crisp, clean tennis, managing to attack early in points from the baseline without sacrificing accuracy. By the end against the 11th-seeded Bencic, a U.S. Open semifinalist in 2019, Raducanu had nearly twice as many winners as unforced errors, 23-12.
“We’ve got a lot of season; 24 games is a lot of games. A lot can happen, and we’re very respectful of that. If things look a lot better, then there is a different formula you can use. Right now, Eloy is not playing because his knee is sore. If it wasn’t, he’d be in there. Our attention, our priority right now (is) guys we’re playing with, play as hard as we can, win the game we’re playing, the series we’re playing.”
Seated in the front row right below him were his family, his father Charles, his mother Dorothy, his sister Charlee, his grandmother, his wife Hannah and his two young daughters. Behind them were his former Yankee teammates, Jorge Posada, Tino Martinez, Gerald Williams and his fellow iconic pal Michael Jordan. Seated further back were Hal Steinbrenner and club COO Lonn Trost representing the Yankees. And, of course, seated among the 34 returning Hall-of-Famers behind him were Mariano Rivera, Reggie Jackson and Joe Torre. “I thank you Mr. T, for trusting me [as a rookie in 1996] or at least making me think you trusted me,” Jeter said.
“I might describe something in a meeting and he’ll come up and say, ‘Coach, can you put together a cut-up of other players doing that?’ So I will and he does those things. Then if I see it in practice, I remind him, ‘There it is. That’s what you were talking about. You just did it.’ Now he has a feel for it.”
While Steele has been steady in maintaining his fastball velocity from start to start, averaging 93.4 mph compared to 94.2 mph as a reliever, Thompson’s velocity dips have been concerning. His stuff waned over the course of the game and has featured a fastball sitting at 92.4 mph in his three starts. As a reliever, Thompson’s fastball averaged between 93.8 and 96 mph during his 26 relief appearances for the Cubs this year. A decrease in velocity is expected when a pitcher goes from throwing shorter one or two-inning outings versus trying to maintain stuff over, ideally, five-plus innings. Even so, Thompson has visibly been out of whack at times in his starting role.
“He’s a super smart guy,” Gipson said. “But sometimes he thinks light years ahead. So sometimes when he first brings an idea to you, you say, ‘Sean there’s no way that’s going to work.’ … Then after he breaks it down to you, you’re like, ‘OK. Five minutes ago, there’s no way I would have put that together. But now it makes sense.’ ”
Everything about this game seems to point to Robinson, starting with the Texans defense, which gave up a league-worst 5.2 yards per carry last year. Of course, they’ve tried to improve but they may see the field a lot if Tyrod Taylor can’t sustain the offense. And the Jaguars may lean heavily on the run in Trevor Lawrence’s NFL debut.
The Bears are working fifth-round pick Larry Borom exclusively at left tackle, and it will be very interesting to see if he or Elijah Wilkinson is active Sunday night against the Rams. Typically, teams dress only three offensive tackles for a game, and Alex Bars, who I imagine will be active, has the ability to slot in anywhere on the line if someone is injured. I believe the Bears are grooming Borom as a potential starter at left tackle in the future. That doesn’t mean second-round pick Teven Jenkins is definitely headed to right tackle whenever he returns from back surgery, but it certainly indicates it’s a possibility. The Bears could use two young offensive tackles considering Peters is 39 and he and right tackle Germain Ifedi are on one-year contracts. Peters has struggled to remain healthy in recent seasons, so there is a good chance we see Borom at left tackle at some point. While it looked like the Bears might consider a rotation early in the season to account for Peters’ conditioning, coaches indicate he’s good to go. My hunch is the plan is for him to play the entire game Sunday night.
“He came out in the first inning, and he was nervous, which he should be,” La Russa said. “And what’s so impressive was once he got into the flow, he showed his reputation. He has a reputation for being a closer: He can finish innings, he can pitch deep into the game. And that’s exactly what he did. He got, actually, sharper and better and better as he relaxed and just pitched. So a very impressive game.