ESPN Search

Gio Gonzalez gave Team USA its best start yet, and David Wright provided a big finish.

United States 7, Puerto Rico 1

Joe Blanton pitched effectively into the eighth inning for his first win with the Los Angeles Dodgers and A.J. Ellis hit his first career grand slam in a 10-8 win over the Colorado Rockies on Wednesday.

Ramon Hernandez hit a two-out, three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning Thursday, rallying the Cincinnati Reds to a 7-6 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers in an opening-day flashback to their NL Central title season.

Tony Lee asks which team most needs a new stadium, and doesn't have much trouble coming up with the answer. Lee's big finish: All but eight of the 30 current stadiums in use in the majors were opened in the last 20 years, but those that are older ar...

J.C. Bradbury mounts a (half-hearted) defense of the Jayson Werth deal, and Beyond the Boxscore fisks the defense. BtB's big finish: Perhaps there are a lot of fantastic reasons that contract got so high, but I think the crowd has this one right. I...

Earlier today, I quoted George Vecsey on George Steinbrenner. Among the things I left out was Vecsey's big finish: Everybody makes more money because of Marvin Miller. But voters have tended to ignore Miller because baseball people have a bad case ...

HOUSTON -- Chicago Cubs chairman of the board Tom Ricketts flew to Houston on Sunday before their season finale to thank the players and coaches for their contributions this season, particularly over the last 35 games under interim manager Mike Quade...

Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts flew to Houston to thank team for its effort this season.

Reds-Rockies Preview

From close up, Larry Stone writes about where the Mariners went wrong and he's exactly right. The big finish: It's time for the Mariners, in the wake of this disastrous season, to step back and realize that to leap forward, they must not get lured ...

The deal is finally done, and before I had time to jot down my first thoughts I happened across Calcaterra's. His big finish: This deal is a coup for the Phillies. They got a starter who would slot in as a number one on a great many teams and they ...

Boston slugger David Ortiz has won his first Home Run Derby title, hitting 10 homers in the final round to beat Florida's Hanley Ramirez at Angel Stadium.

Following up his survey of run production in 2010 (summary: It's down), Jay Jaffe digs into strikeouts and young pitchers and what that means this season. Jaffe's big finish: My guess is that this is where a good bit of the talk about the Year o...

Sean Forman on how great teams acquire talent. Forman's big finish: The four primary ways teams acquire players are the draft; free agency; amateur free agency (which accounts for most of the players from Latin America); and transactions with other ...

Good stuff from Rational Pastime about competitive balance. The big finish: So there you have it--based on win distributions, the MLB is clearly the most balanced American sports league, and the NFL the least balanced, contrary to popular opinion....