Sports

HATBORO, Pa. — It’s the top of the ninth inning at Citizens Bank Park, and the Philadelphia Phillies’ relievers are at it again. They have already blown one lead, with Jeurys Familia and Seranthony Domínguez giving up homers in the seventh. Now after a comeback, the game has unraveled with closer Corey Knebel on the mound.The Miami Marlins win it, 11-9, and from his living room couch in the suburbs here, Matt Edwards sighs.“Celebrating some of these guys is really hard,” he said.Indeed it is: The Phillies are the only National League team without a playoff appearance in the last 10 years, and their bullpen is an annual adventure. Nostalgia can be an enticing escape (beer helps, too), and nobody celebrates the past quite like Edwards, a 45-year-old telecommunications salesman with a wife, C...

As the NBA offseason calendar shifted to September and there was no trade in sight to his preferred trade destination of the Miami Heat, Damian Lillard incorporated himself back into the Portland Trail Blazers’ ecosystem. For the last two weeks, team sources say Lillard has been working out at the Blazers practice facility, interacting with players and coaches.Nearly three months after his trade request, was there a reconciliation in the works? No, but Lillard wanted the Blazers to know he was willing to remain patient while his uncomfortable exit played out.On a call between Lillard’s agent, Aaron Goodwin, and Blazers general manager Joe Cronin earlier this month, it was communicated that Lillard would be content rejoining Portland for training camp. Lillard let the Blazers know he was wi...

European soccer’s governing body is facing angry criticism and open defiance from some of its member nations after a vote by its executive committee earlier this week partially lifted a blanket ban on Russian teams that was imposed after last year’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.The proposal to allow Russia’s teams to participate in qualifying for the European men’s and women’s under-17 championships that will be held next year, and for which qualifying has already begun, came as a surprise to many members of the governing body, UEFA. Its approval has reopened what many believed was a bitter but settled debate about solidarity with Ukraine.Ukraine’s national soccer federation quickly objected to the vote, arguing that allowing even Russian youth teams to return to tournaments “tolerates R...

On a sticky August evening at Citi Field, toward the end of a crucial Mets victory against division rival Atlanta, closer Edwin Díaz threw his last warm-up pitch and began his long, familiar journey from the right-field bullpen to the mound for the top of the ninth inning. But something unusual happened: The television broadcast did not cut to a commercial.Instead, the camera trailed behind Díaz as he walked through the bullpen door, broke into a jog and traversed the outfield grass. The trumpets of “Narco,” Díaz’s beloved entrance song, were fed from the stadium public-address system directly into the broadcast, making fans at home feel like they were watching it all happen in person. Or maybe that they were in a bullfighting arena in Spain. Regardless, there were chills.The broadcasting ...

What are we really looking for when we talk about Ryder Cup fashion? We love the ugly. Oh yes, we love having fun with the over-the-top, gaudy designs. We love poking fun at The Shirt from Justin Leonard’s famous 1999 putt. We live for the weird, uncalled for stripes or the bold colors.But what do we really want? We want sweaters. Light, athletic sweaters. Adam Scott-core. We want cozy feels in the European countryside as fall begins. We want clothes that feel like the 1960s but bring more polish and modern flair.Sometimes we get art. We get beautiful clothes that look like the mythical letterman jacket we’ll never get to be part of. But sometimes we get disasters. Crimes. Stylistic blasphemy that should be hidden from the archives.So ahead of this week’s Ryder Cup in the Italian countrysi...

All of the little things had been considered. The design was so painstaking that even the fine details seemed to possess explanatory power. The list of virtues on the wall, the way the light poured into the canteen, the communal spaces laid out according to Montessori principles. Everywhere inside the home of the Dutch soccer club Ajax, the human touches stood out.And yet, in essence, the youth academy known as De Toekomst was, and is, a factory, an industrialized production line geared for maximum efficiency. Its facilities might have been upgraded over the years, but in one guise or another it has been feeding players into Ajax’s team for decades. From there, its graduates have gone on to play for the Netherlands, to represent clubs across Europe. The clue, really, is in the name. De Toe...

The Philadelphia Phillies’ week began with three straight victories, and the team clinching a playoff berth. So far, so good.But if fans assumed the remaining games on the schedule would be pro forma, they were mistaken.An alligator was denied admission to the park. The team’s star hurled his helmet into the stands in fury. And now the Phillies are due to finish their season with three games in New York against the Mets, who already endured a long rain delay Thursday night that had players and coaches fuming. (The first of these, scheduled for Friday night, was postponed as heavy rain brought flash flooding to New York and the surrounding region.)The weirdness for the Phillies began on Wednesday when a fan named Joie Henney turned up at Citizens Bank Park. He was not alone. Accompanying hi...

By Shams Charania, Eric Nehm, Doug Haller, Jason Quick, William GuilloryThe Portland Trail Blazers traded All-NBA guard Damian Lillard to the Milwaukee Bucks in a three-team deal involving the Phoenix Suns, the teams announced Wednesday.The full trade involves the Blazers receiving Jrue Holiday, Deandre Ayton, Toumani Camara, the Bucks’ 2029 first-round pick and Bucks draft swaps in 2028 and 2030. The Suns are receiving Jusuf Nurkic, Nassir Little, Keon Johnson and Grayson Allen. Full trade, per sources: – Bucks: Damian Lillard– Blazers: Jrue Holiday, Deandre Ayton, Toumani Camara, 2029 first-round Bucks pick and Bucks pick swap– Suns: Jusuf Nurkic, Nassir Little, Keon Johnson, Grayson Allen — Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) September 27, 2023In a statement on behalf of the organization, ...

To win a World Cup, everything usually has to be perfect. The manager and the players have to exist in harmony. The squad has to be in delicate balance: between talent and tenacity, youth and experience, self-belief and self-control. A team needs momentum, and good fortune, and unity. Spain, in the year preceding this year’s Women’s World Cup, had none of those things.The squad was in a state of open revolt. More than half the team had walked away, withdrawing their labor in protest at their treatment not only by executives of the Spanish soccer federation but also by their coach, Jorge Vilda. The country’s great star, the leading light of its golden generation, had watched it all from the sideline, desperately willing her anterior cruciate ligament to heal.Even when a truce was found, a c...

Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.At the first modern Olympics, in Athens in 1896, The New York Times was there to chronicle the presence of the king of Greece and the duke of Sparta, the hills “black with spectators” too poor to pay for tickets and the triumph of American athletes (“they won their victories with much apparent ease”).Since then, hardly a milestone in sports history has gone by that a New York Times reporter has not covered.The sprinter Jesse Owens’s four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The “Miracle on Ice” during the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y. The Chicago Cubs’ World Series victory in 2016, which broke a 108-year drought.But there will be no Times sportswri...