Senior writer ESPN Magazine/ESPN.com Analyst/reporter ESPN television Has covered baseball since 1981 Seventy years after making his major league debut, Willie Mays is still one of the greatest baseball players of all time: the most spectacular combination of power, speed and defense the game has ever seen. And yet, when he graduated from Fairfield Industrial High School in Fairfield, Alabama, […]

AURORA — Rashad Caldwell needed just one catch to prove why he’s the most electric high school wide receiver in Colorado. On Thursday night, with Denver South visiting Aurora Central, the Ravens junior lined up in the slot trailing early by a touchdown. But not for long. Caldwell broke on a shallow crossing route, snatched the football, and burst 70 […]

ESPN MLB insider Author of “The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports” HOUSTON — The manager needed to disappear for the man to reappear. Alex Cora didn’t realize it at the time, because survival tends to outweigh self-reflection when the world is collapsing around you, when everything you’ve built — respect, loyalty, acclaim — […]

Jesse joined ESPN Chicago in September 2009 and covers MLB for ESPN.com. BOSTON — Sisu. It’s a Finnish word that, according to Finland’s tourism website, typifies the enduring spirit of all Finns: “stoic determination, hardiness, courage, bravery, willpower, tenacity and resilience.” It’s also the word Houston Astros pitching coach Brent Strom used with his pitchers in a meeting before Game […]

Dodgers reliever Evan Phillips made really quick work of the first batter he faced Thursday night: a one-pitch strikeout. How did that happen? Well, Phillips benefited from baseball’s official scoring rules, which include a lot of arcane things like one-pitch Ks. FAGAN: Dodgers on brink because circle of pitching trust too small Here’s the explanation: Phillips was called upon with […]

This feels eerily familiar, doesn’t it?  In both the 2020 NLCS and the 2021 NLCS, the Braves grabbed a surprising 2-0 series lead against the favored Dodgers, and then Los Angeles responded with an emphatic momentum-shifting Game 3 victory. Last year, the Dodgers scored 11 runs in the first inning of Game 3 and cruised to a 15-3 win. This […]

There’s missing a strike here and there, and then there’s having a total off night behind home plate. That was the case on Tuesday in Game 4 of the ALCS between the Red Sox and Astros. Home-plate umpire Laz Diaz missed 21 calls in the matchup, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan and ESPN Stats and Info — the most of […]

Boy, that escalated quickly. I mean, that really got out of hand fast. One moment, the Red Sox are tied 2-2 with Houston in the top of the ninth. The next, they’re trailing 9-2 in Game 4 of the ALCS. Following Houston’s win by that margin, the Red Sox and Astros are tied 2-2; there’s one game left in Boston […]

There are missed strike calls, and then there’s this. Dodgers’ starter Walker Buehler — and everyone at Dodger Stadium and everyone watching from home — thought he had strike three against Braves outfielder Joc Pederson with a perfectly placed cutter on the low-inside corner. Instead, the pitch was called a ball to make it a 1-2 count. It unraveled from […]

In the opinion of the Yankees’ decision makers, Gleyber Torres is “best served” as a second baseman from now on. And that means finding a new shortstop is an “area of need.” Brian Cashman, the Yankees’ long-time general manager, said “we have to address it.” So there you go. The Yankees are in the market for a shortstop for the 2022 […]