Baseball

A major professional team playing in a minor league venue would've been unheard of just a few years ago. That is what the Oakland Athletics likely will do if they move to Las Vegas. There is recent precedent. The Chargers played in an MLS stadium after moving from San Diego to Los Angeles. The Arizona Coyotes call a college arena home while awaiting what they hope is a new building of their own. A's president Dave Kaval has said he would like to break ground next year and move into the Las Vegas stadium in time for the 2017 season.

After decades of supporting poor, young baseball players as they began their professional careers, minor league host families have officially been phased out. As part of their first collective bargaining agreement with Major League Baseball this spring, minor league players negotiated an end to the practice. Players are now guaranteed furnished housing, something they are celebrating as a more professional arrangement.

Don Denkinger, a major league umpire for three decades whose blown call in the 1985 World Series overshadowed a three-decade career of excellence, died Friday. He was 86. Denkinger died at Cedar Valley Hospice in Waterloo, Iowa, Denise Hanson, one of his three daughters, said. Denkinger joined the American League staff in 1969. He worked four World Series over three decades in the big leagues but was remembered most for a mistaken call that helped Kansas City win Game 6 of the 1985 World Series against St. Louis.

WASHINGTON — Max Scherzer had what the Mets described as a “strenuous” workday Friday, which was a positive indicator for the right-hander and his management of neck spasms. The right-hander threw a 30-pitch bullpen at Nationals Park and is on track to start Sunday against the Washington Nationals. But while the neck spasms might be under control right now, the issue doesn’t appear to be a ...

The St. Louis Cardinals are last in the NL Central with a 13-25 record in a surprisingly lackluster start for one of baseball's winningest franchises. It's the worst 38-game start for the team since it was 13-25 in 1925, according to Sportradar. The Cardinals haven't finished with a losing record since they were 78-84 in 2007, and the franchise has just two losing seasons in the past 25 years. Alongside the losing, St. Louis also has experienced a bit of dysfunctiona departure for a franchise that typically sails along with very little of the choppy water it has publicly navigated already.

“It Ain’t Over” aims to elevate Yogi Berra's playing career alongside his persona as a cultural icon. The 98-minute Sony Pictures Classics documentary premiered last June at the Tribeca Festival and in theaters in the New York tri-state area and Los Angeles on Friday, which would have been his 98th birthday.

Automatic balls and strikes could soon be coming to the major leagues. Much like the players themselves, the robo-umps are working their way up through the minors with the goal being promoted to the show. The goal is to eliminate the individual and sometimes inconsistent strike zones that vary from umpire to umpire, and with it the possibility that a game can turn on a bad ball/strike call. Disappearing with that are the complaints that an umpire's strike zone was too wide or a pitcher was getting squeezed, followed by the helmet-slamming, dirt-kicking dustups that are practically as old as the sport itself.