Chris Sale of the Atlanta Braves said he will do his job when it comes to being a starting pitcher and will allow umpires to do their jobs when it comes to calling balls and strikes with the the Automated Ball Strike Challenge System being instituted in MLB this season.
Every team will have two challenges to begin each game. Only batters, catchers and pitchers will be allowed to challenge ball or strike calls and they must signal their intent by tapping their heads immediately after the pitch to initiate the challenge.
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The 36-year-old Sale has thrown over 30,000 pitches in his 15-year career with the Chicago White Sox, Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves. What he won’t do for the remainder of his time on the mound is challenge any called ball he believes is a strike.
“I will never challenge a pitch. I will never do it. I won’t do it,” Sale told reporters on Friday. “I’m not an umpire. That’s their job. I’m a starting pitcher. I’ve never called balls and strikes in my life. Plus, I’m greedy, and I know that. I think they’re all strikes.”
Sale added that catchers, like teammates Sean Murphy and Drake Baldwin, are so good at framing pitches that a lot more pitches appear to be strikes than they used to, especially ones on the corner of the plate. The nine-time All-Star and 2024 pitching Triple Crown and Cy Young Award winner said he’ll trust the umpire’s call so as to not risk a challenge that could be used later in the game during an important at-bat.
“I’ve dealt with it before, across all games in my entire career there’s been balls called strikes and strikes called balls and you just deal with it,” Sale said.
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If Murphy or Baldwin disagree, however, that’s a different story.
“If my catcher has something to say about it, I’ll leave that to him,” Sale said. “I’ve dealt with both sides and I’m fine to keep dealing with it.”
Seton Hall outfielder Justin Ford was forced to leave the game after he hit a home run in the fifth inning of his team’s loss to Boston College on Friday night.
Ford suffered a gruesome lower left ankle injury after he rounded first base and was celebrating his home run. As he faced his dugout, his left ankle rolled outward with his foot on the ground and he fell to the dirt.
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(Warning: the video below shows Ford’s injury.)
Ford’s injury was so serious that a stretcher was brought out on the field. A pinch runner was allowed to replace him and score Ford’s run from the homer.
Friday was college baseball’s first day of the season and the two teams were playing in the Puerto Rico Challenge. A junior in 2026, Ford appeared in 17 games as a sophomore with 12 starts. He had a .171 average and his home run against the Eagles was the third of his career.
Boston College won the game 6-4 and will play Houston on Saturday while Seton Hall takes on Manhattan.
The 25-year-old Pinheiro Braathen, who is ranked second in the world in slalom and giant slalom, recorded a combined time of 2:25.00, 0.58 better than 2022 gold medalist Marco Odermatt to win the event.
“I just wanted to share this with everyone watching in Brazil, following me, cheering for me,” Pinheiro Braathen told TV Globo. “This can be a point of inspiration for the next generation of children, showing them that nothing is impossible. It doesn’t matter where you’re from. What matters is what’s inside. What the heart does. I bring Brazilian strength today to bring this flag to the podium. This is Brazil’s.”
Born to a Norwegian father and Brazilian mother, Pinheiro Braathen began his career representing Norway where he won five World Cup slalom and giant slalom races, while making 12 podiums. He competed at the 2022 Beijing Olympics in the slalom and giant slalom, but did not finish either event.
Brazil’s gold medalist Lucas Pinheiro Braathen leaps onto the podium flanked by Switzerland’s silver medalist Marco Odermatt, and Switzerland’s bronze medalist Loic Meillard during the podium of the men’s giant slalom alpine skiing event during the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games. (Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP via Getty Images)
(FABRICE COFFRINI via Getty Images)
After abruptly retiring in October 2023, Pinheiro Braathen returned to competition five months later representing Brazil. He has one World Cup victory and now made 11 podiums since switching to Brazil ahead of the Milan Cortina Olympics.
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Following his parents’ divorce when he was 3 years old, Pinheiro Braathen lived with his mother in Brazil before moving to Norway to live with his father when he got older.
“I was introduced to sports in the streets of São Paulo, playing with my neighbors, my family, my friends. I fell in love with sports over there,” Pinheiro Braathen said in 2024. “To be able to come full circle and to be able to represent [Brazil] in a World Cup of a sport, it truly means a lot. To be able to bring the dance to the snow is what I’m seeking to do.”
Pinheiro Braathen, who was one of Brazil’s flag bearers for the Opening Ceremony, is now an Olympic history maker and joins previous athletes from his country such as Isadora Williams, who became the first Brazilian and South American in the women’s figure skating final at the 2018 Olympics; five-time Olympic cross-country skier Jaqueline Mourão; and bobsledder Eric Maleson.
LIVIGNO, Italy — In the mad rush to find an answer for Friday night’s Malinin Meltdown, blame is already scattering across social media like a virus.
It’s NBC/the media’s fault for making Ilia Malinin the face of the Winter Olympics.
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Or he was tired from the team event.
Or it was the influence of social media and the “Quad God” bit over-inflating his ego.
Or it was his father’s coaching.
Or, as Malinin let slip during an unfiltered moment in the “Kiss and Cry” area awaiting a score he knew would be awful, it was U.S. Figure Skating’s fault for not bringing him to Beijing four years ago so he could taste the Olympic experience and get the nerves out of his system.
Choose your own adventure as to why Malinin went from overwhelming favorite to off the podium entirely in a matter of minutes. Maybe there’s an element of truth in each. Maybe it’s all nonsense.
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But sports exist inside an ecosystem where there’s no way to definitively diagnose why someone who has been the best in the world at their craft reached the Olympic stage and choked. We can come up with all kinds of good theories for why someone that talented and successful reaches the biggest moment of their career and doesn’t perform, but they’re simply theories.
We’re talking about human beings, not machines. Things happen.
Ilia Malinin reacts at the end of his program after competing during the men’s free skate program. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
And we should be thankful for that. Because even if we can’t fully explain it, seeing failure occasionally is the only way we can know what greatness truly looks like.
Most people who have played sports competitively know what it’s like to choke. Maybe it was a missed free throw that lost the high school conference championship or a 5-foot putt that lipped out with $20 on the line in your weekly golf foursome or falling apart in the finals of your local club’s tennis tournament after serving for the match.
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No matter how big or small the stakes in a larger sense, they’re huge to everyone in those moments. You don’t need months of media coverage or a full stadium to put yourself in those shoes, to have a small sense of what Malinin must have been feeling as he skated onto the ice Friday night.
Pressure does not come from NBC ad campaigns or Instagram comments. It comes from the knowledge of what you’ve invested in yourself and, for any Olympian, the understanding that four years is a very, very long time to wait for another opportunity.
Malinin falling apart is more relatable than anything he can do on the ice. It’s those who mostly seem impervious to the weight of the moment that offer a far more interesting psychological study.
Tiger Woods is probably, to this point, the greatest clutch athlete of my lifetime. He didn’t win every major golf tournament, of course, and he didn’t always come through when put under pressure. Nobody does.
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At so many flashpoints of his career, though, Woods delivered the shot or made the putt that others could not in a sport where choking is pretty common. As much reverence as we had for his achievements and his brilliance, it helped us recognize what a unique athlete he was because we had seen Greg Norman choke away the Masters or Phil Mickelson make one bad decision after another when he got in contention at a U.S. Open.
Their failures provided the context for what’s normal. They helped explain why Woods was one of a kind.
And perhaps four years from now, if Malinin returns and wins gold in France, his own greatness will emerge in the contrast between what he was Friday night and what he’ll become.
But, in the end, this stuff is supposed to be hard. The hype and the media pressure is part of the journey. If none of that existed, you could hold these events at a local park, nobody would notice, sponsors wouldn’t invest money in athletes and nobody would have much incentive to spend their life training to be a part of it.
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That wouldn’t be the Olympics, though. And guess what? Athletes would still choke because they still care. It’s maybe the only part of the human experience of sports most of us can understand.
It’s because the Olympics are so big, so rare and so difficult to win that anybody gets drawn into watching in the first place.
That means every day, you see a dozen people whose lives are changed by winning a gold medal. You see dozens more who leave in devastation. You need both sides of that emotional spectrum to understand why we hold winning on this stage in such high regard.
This collapse is now part of Malinin’s story, but it’s not the end of it unless he wants it to be. The search for a reason may be useful to him when he regroups and looks toward 2030, but it is not necessarily a solution either.
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He choked on Friday for reasons that will be hard to pinpoint, and it absolutely stinks for him, for his fans and for those in his orbit who banked on him winning a gold medal. But in the end, we have to be thankful for all of it.
Because without an occasional failure this epic, it would be hard to know what true greatness really means.
Jimmie Johnson has three races left in his NASCAR Cup Series career.
The seven-time Cup champion said Saturday that the 2027 Daytona 500 would be his final race in NASCAR’s top series. Johnson is competing in this season’s Daytona 500 on Sunday and will also race in the inaugural San Diego road course race this summer.
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Johnson will assuredly get a NASCAR provisional to race in next season’s Daytona 500 again. NASCAR granted Johnson a provisional for the 2026 race under a rule implemented a season ago that gives the sanctioning body the right to add a spot to the starting grid for a notable driver. The rule was put in place as Helio Castroneves, the former IndyCar driver who attempted the 2025 Daytona 500 for the first time.
Sunday’s race will be the 701st Cup Series start of Johnson’s career. He hit No. 700 in the Coca-Cola 600 last May, but crashed out of the race after completing just 111 of 400 laps.
Johnson retired from the Cup Series at the end of the 2020 season but has returned to run part-time schedules in each of the past three seasons as he’s now a co-owner of Legacy Motor Club. The Toyota team is the former Richard Petty Motorsports and fields full-time entries for Erik Jones and John Hunter Nemechek. Legacy is expanding to three full-time cars in 2027, and Johnson will drive a fourth car in the Daytona 500.
Johnson was the dominant driver of the 2000s in the Cup Series. He won five straight championships from 2006 through 2010 before winning titles in 2013 and 2016. Johnson won 35 races during his five-season championship streak and didn’t have fewer than 22 top-10 finishes in any of those five seasons.
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He’s one of three drivers — along with Petty and Dale Earnhardt — to win seven Cup Series titles. Johnson’s 83 Cup Series victories are sixth all-time as he’s tied with Cale Yarborough. Only Petty, David Pearson, Jeff Gordon, Bobby Allison and Darrell Waltrip have more.
Sweden’s chances at a gold medal in the women’s 4×7.5 km relay on Saturday were derailed following a pair of crashes that opened the door for Norway.
The Norwegian team of Kristin Austgulen Fosnæs, Astrid Øyre Slind, Karoline Simpson-Larsen and Heidi Weng finished with a time of 1:15:44.8, 50.9 seconds ahead of the Swedes, who ended up with silver.
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Gold was potentially lost during the second leg when Ebba Andersson crashed twice and was forced to race with one ski for 30 seconds. A ski tech who was hustling to get her a replacement also fell in the slushy snow.
The Norwegians took advantage and went ahead thanks to Slind in Leg 2. That put a lot of work in front of the Swedes with Frida Karlsson beginning 78 seconds behind. She would make up time to keep them in medal contention despite Andersson’s trouble.
“I actually didn’t realize there was so much drama,” Slind said afterward. “They were just ahead of us, but I wasn’t paying much attention. I could see we had a really good gap, so we hoped for the gold already. We are so proud.”
Jonna Sundling anchored for Sweden and ended up passing Finland for silver, finishing over 23 seconds ahead in second place.
The Super Bowl has come and gone, which means the Daytona 500 is right around the corner. The race will take place Sunday at the Daytona International Speedway in Florida, and Kyle Busch will start from the pole position after earning the top spot in Wednesday’s qualifying.
However, Ryan Blaney is the co- favorite, along with Joey Logano, at 12-1 to win the race at BetMGM sportsbooks, followed by Denny Hamlin and William Byron at 14-1. Busch currently has 18-1 odds. Hamlin has the most wagers (6.9%) and total dollars wagered (9%) of any driver, and is also the biggest liability to win the race at the sportsbook.
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Here are the odds for every driver at the Daytona 500:
The veteran is owed the $20 million remaining on his $100 million contract, which allows the Padres to sign him for the $780,000 major-league minimum with the Phillies picking up the difference.
“A lot of times when a good player has their role change with the club, it can cause some friction, and his role changed last year from where it was,” said Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski this week. “I mean you played every single day for a lot years in a row, and so sometimes that can contribute to it. Sometimes then people have debates between themselves where they’re not all on the same page. But when you put all that together, sometimes you just need to make sure that you have a change of scenery.”
In a goodbye message to Phillies fans, Castellanos posted a handwritten letter on social media on Thursday. In it, he admitted that he brought a beer into the dugout after being removed from a June game in Miami by manager Rob Thomson with friends and family in attendance.
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Castellanos said that he met with Thomson and Dombrowski afterward and the conversation ended with him apologizing.
That incident led to a one-game benching for Castellanos, who was in the midst of a streak in which he started 236 consecutive games.
“I’m proud of him because he owned up to what he did and, hey, we all make mistakes,” Thomson said. “Nick had helped us out in a lot of ways here. He’s had some big hits and big plays and helped us win a lot ballgames. So I do, I wish him all the best.”
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Padres also signing pitcher Griffin Canning: Report
In addition to Castellanos, the Padres are also signing pitcher Griffin Canning, Lin reports. The deal is pending a physical exam.
Canning, 29, made 16 starts for the New York Mets last season before rupturing his left Achilles tendon. He finished with a 3.77 ERA and 7-3 record with 70 strikeouts in 76 1/3 innings.
Prior to signing with the Mets as a free agent, Canning pitched five seasons for the Los Angeles Angels. In 99 appearances (94 starts), he compiled a 4.78 ERA with a strikeout rate of 8.4 per nine innings. Canning missed the 2022 season due to a stress fracture in his lower back.
LIVIGNO, Italy — When the IOC added dual moguls to the Winter Olympic program, this is exactly what they signed up for.
Unpredictable mayhem. Head-to-head drama. Big crashes. Stunning visuals. An event that, in some ways, deconstructs the complexity of a scoring system casual fans might have a hard time following.
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Saturday, they got all of it. And it was spectacular.
“Dual moguls breeds excitement and chaos. Anything can happen,” American Tess Johnson said. “I’m buzzing right now.”
Jakara Anthony of Team Australia and Jaelin Kauf of Team United States compete in the Women’s Dual Moguls Big Final on day eight of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic games at Livigno Air Park on February 14, 2026 in Livigno, Italy. (Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images)
(David Ramos via Getty Images)
And she didn’t even win a medal.
Two of her teammates did: Jaelin Kauf got her second silver of these Olympics, while 20-year-old Elizabeth Lemley added a bronze medal to the gold she won in women’s moguls a few days ago.
But the path to getting there? Pure, unadulterated madness.
In the more traditional moguls event that has been in the Olympics since 1992, the skiers are scored on one run by judges who consider various elements of the run — the technique with which they navigate the moguls, their speed coming down the hill and the aerial component of jumping off two ramps during the run.
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In dual moguls, the skiers are placed in a single-elimination, March Madness-style bracket and keep racing each other until one winner emerges. While judges’ scoring ultimately determines the winner of each race — you can make up for losing on time with a superior aerial element and better turns — it feels like a human drag race on skis with danger lurking over every move.
“That’s dual moguls for sure,” said Olivia Giaccio, the American who lost to eventual gold medalist Jakara Anthony of Australia in the quarterfinals. “Like, you never know what can happen and it’s often pretty crazy. That’s why it’s so fun to watch as a spectator.”
By the time they got to the semifinals, things got wild. Facing France’s Perrine Laffont, Kauf advanced on a technicality as both skiers crashed. But Laffont, who got stuck trying to keep her balance after landing her first trick, had to ski the wrong way around a gate, which essentially resulted in a disqualification for failing to stay on course.
Kauf saw Laffont had spun out but almost immediately tripped over a mogul herself. Suddenly, they were both trying to pick themselves up off the snow and keep going. Nobody was quite sure what happened until they both got to the bottom of the hill.
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“I just didn’t want to let off,” Kauf said. “And next thing you know, [things] exploded, and had to just pick myself up and try to get back to it as soon as possible.”
Moments later in Lemley’s semifinal against Anthony, she lost her ski landing on the second jump and skidded down the hill on her stomach, allowing Anthony to cruise across the finish line.
That pitted Lemley against Laffont for the bronze.
“I came in super short and under-rotated my elbow, but I was able to go up and ski another run so I’m super happy,” Lemley said. “If there was [pain], I was just blocking it out. I’ll deal with that later. It’s time to win a medal.”
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In that race, Laffont crossed the finish line .99 seconds ahead of Lemley. But Lemley, knowing she was behind, attempted a more complex trick off the second ramp. Laffont playing it safe ultimately cost her. When the judges announced that Lemley had won the bronze, 18-17, her mouth was agape — and Laffont was furious.
Elizabeth Lemley (left) and Perrine Laffont look on as the scores reveal Lemley won the bronze medal. (Photo by Oliver Weiken/picture alliance via Getty Images)
(picture alliance via Getty Images)
“We’re doing a sport where skiing counts for 60% of the score. It’s hard to do a judged sport in moments like this,” she said. “Especially when I gave it my all in the skiing [component], when I had the time points. It’s hard to understand.”
Lemley admitted to being surprised by the score.
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“I definitely had a few mistakes,” she said. “It was not a perfect run. I was definitely a little frazzled at the top but I trust my skiing and trust my air.”
Then it was Kauf’s turn.
Though the run began with a lot of promise, a tiny bobble midway down the course caused her left ski to slip out for a split second. That ultimately allowed the chasing Anthony to catch up, win on time and on style. The final score was 20-15.
“Every competitor out here is going for gold,” Kauf said.” But to walk away with the first-ever silver medal from dual moguls at the Olympics is pretty special. And ‘three-time Olympic medallist’ isn’t bad either.”
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In the end, the question we should all be asking is why dual moguls wasn’t added to the Olympics sooner.
“It makes the sport so much more accessible to the everyday person who doesn’t fully understand every [element] of moguls skiing,” Canadian skier Jessica Linton said. “It’s a little easier to watch, it’s easier to see, ‘Okay, that one’s faster, this one’s cleaner.’ I’m really hoping it’s gonna make moguls skiing a lot more popular because it’s an awesome sport and duals is crazy. Anything can happen.”
Time will tell whether it sparks more overall interest in moguls skiers, which tend to not get as much attention as their counterparts in other disciplines. But after the show they put on Saturday, there should be no doubt that it’s in the Olympics to stay.”
Northern Iowa announced that tight end Parker Sutherland died Saturday morning.
Sutherland was a freshman in 2025 and played in four games. He was a native of Iowa City, Iowa.
“I’m heartbroken,” Northern Iowa coach Todd Stepsis said in a statement. “No words can express my condolences to [parents] Adam, Jill and [sister] Georgia. Parker embodied everything we look for in a UNI Football Panther. His talent and potential excited us on a daily basis, but it failed to compare to the type of person and teammate he was. His character, humility, toughness and genuine love of others are what champions are made of. While I’m saddened that our time together was short, we will celebrate the bright light that he brought to our football team for the rest of our lives.”
On Thursday, a spokesperson for Northern Iowa said in a statement to the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier that “Cedar Falls Fire & Rescue responded to a call at the UNI Athletics facilities on Thursday. There are no further details that can be shared at this time.”
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Saturday morning, CBS 2 in Cedar Rapids reported that “multiple sources tell Iowa’s News Now that Sutherland collapsed during a workout that day.”
Sutherland appeared in games against Utah Tech, North Dakota, Illinois State and Murray State. He was a second-team all-state player at Iowa City High School as a senior in 2024.
“It is a heartbreaking day for our Panther Athletics family with the passing of Parker Sutherland,” athletic director Megan Franklin said. “He embraced the opportunity to play Panther football and represent the university through sport. We are devastated — just devastated. The blessing is that we have a Panther family who will hold the Sutherland family, our football team, and our athletics staff close as we grieve.”
