Let’s not talk about the end of the 2015 Rangers season. We’ve dissected it too much already. The Rangers should not have made the playoffs. They had the American League’s seventh best run differential. They were lucky, outperforming their Baseball Prospectus third-order record expectation by almost eight wins. The Blue…
The Texas Rangers have never been through anything like the seventh inning of Wednesday afternoon’s ALDS Game 5 with the Toronto Blue Jays. Neither have their fans, not in the 43 years the team has been in Arlington. It was, from the first pitch thrown to Rangers second baseman Rougned…
During the first week of August, when we first starting thinking that the Rangers might conceivably make the playoffs, we were talking about the possibility of a possibility. That they might be able to sneak in if everything broke right, grab the second American League wild card and get lucky…
On Sunday afternoon, with a 9-2 drubbing of division rival Los Angeles Angels, the Texas Rangers clinched the American League West title. Given the Rangers’ performance since their second consecutive World Series appearance in 2011, this should have been cause for unbridled celebration. But as slugger Adrian Beltre was shrieking girlishly under…
Correlation does not equal causation. We know that. But it’s certainly beginning to appear that whenever an SMU athletics program is on the verge of a national breakthrough, it’s also likely on the verge of NCAA sanctions. In the 1980s, the football team that achieved prominence built on the backs…
Ignore it. Ignore (almost) everything that happened in the Cowboys 39-28 loss to the Falcons. Joseph Randle, the team’s newly minted starting running back, is not as good as he looked Sunday. He’s not going to score three touchdowns a game — he may not score six more this season…
Putting a list together of Dallas most psychically painful sports injuries was no easy task. For injuries to matter to fans — let’s stipulate that every injury matters to the player to whom it happens, especially in the NFL, where contracts aren’t guaranteed — the team being affected needs to…
College football players get scrutinized on social media. That’s one of the anti-perks of taking the world’s highest-profile unpaid internship. Ohio State quarterback Cardale Jones, perhaps the 2015 Heisman Trophy front-runner, is probably most famous for his brutally honest 2012 tweet about not being at Ohio State to “play school.”…
The road is filled with hazards. The Cowboys, having won the NFC East last year, have been gifted with a first-place schedule. They play the two defending conference champions (Seattle and New England), the team that knocked them out of last season’s playoffs (Green Bay) and face a trip to…
When last we checked in on the Rangers on August 7, they were taking in their first full breaths since the end of the 2013 season. Buoyed by the acquisition of erstwhile Philadelphia Phillies ace Cole Hamels, they’d put together eight wins in nine games, hauling themselves from 47-52 to…
The fight, the one that’s at least temporarily shut down all horse betting in the state of Texas, is over the ability of Texas horse track bettors to wager on the outcome of races that have already happened. Tracks want so-called historical racing terminals because they’re almost identical, at least…
On a chilly December night, in the wake of a 38-27 win at home over ninth-ranked Kansas State to close out the 2014 college football regular season, Baylor head coach Art Briles stood amid his jubilant bunch of Baylor Bears on a makeshift stage in the middle of McLane Stadium…
Dez Bryant, as vividly illustrated in last week’s Rolling Stone cover story, is a man who emerged, barely, from a trauma and pain-filled childhood to become one of the best receivers in the NFL. Growing up in Lufkin, Bryant dealt with a crack-addicted grandmother, a mom who sold crack and…
When they woke up week ago Wednesday, the Rangers were effectively dead. They’d lost to the Yankees 21-5 the day before. Martin Perez, just returned from more than year off after Tommy John surgery, had gotten smoked in his Tuesday start, giving up eight runs while getting only three outs…
Jordan Spieth is halfway to doing something no golfer has ever done before. With a one shot victory at Chambers Bay Golf Course near Tacoma, Washington, the Dallas-bred Jesuit grad won the U.S. Open Sunday, following up his record-setting win at the Masters in April. The 21-year-old became the first…
Rangers prospect Joey Gallo played in his first major league game last night. It went very, very well. Facing the expectations that come with being perhaps the Rangers’ most highly touted minor league hitter ever, the third baseman somehow didn’t disappoint. He knocked in two runs with a single in…
Allen High School’s $60 million shrine to high school football, shuttered by a structural failure less than two years after it opened, will reopen next month. Despite the recent rain, Eagle Stadium will reopen for June 5’s Allen High School graduation, AISD officials said at Monday’s school board meeting. All…
Normally, the Cowboys helping fill out their roster with the post-draft signing of an undrafted free agent would barely be news. With some notable exceptions, rookies not taken in the draft end up being scout team or training camp fodder. Dallas’ signing of LSU offensive tackle La’el Collins is anything…
Calling the transaction that was ironed out over the weekend between the Los Angeles Angels and the Rangers a trade is misleading. The Angels are just giving Josh Hamilton to the Rangers, in addition to paying the vast majority of the $80 million left on Hamilton’s contract. No players are…
Greg Hardy, pass rusher and asshole extraordinaire, will miss the first 10 games of the NFL season. The former Carolina Panthers defensive end was signed by the Cowboys in March after a 2014 season that saw him miss 15 games. Hardy was placed on the commissioner’s exempt list — read:…
Texas High School athletes shouldn’t be tested for steroids any more, the state’s Sunset Commission says, because the state’s “steroid testing program is no longer effective.” Since 2008, the year the program started, it has confirmed 40 positive tests — less than one-half of 1 percent of all students tested…
SMU is out of the NCAA Tournament. After trailing by as many as 10 in the second half, the Ponies led by two in the final minute against UCLA. The Bruins Bryce Alford chucked up an off-balance three that had no chance. As it approached the plane of the front…
