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Question marks abound for Bucs, MLB as a whole

The 2020 Major League Baseball season will be like no other. After an offseason of unprecedented turbulence in which the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic and an extended, ugly contract dispute between the Major League Players Association and the league’s owners wiped out over half of the regular-season schedule, the season will finally get underway this week with no fans permitted in stadiums all across this virus-ravaged country. A truncated 60-game schedule for all teams that was put together by MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred will have every team playing games only against teams from ...

Point-counterpoint: Will any major college football be played this fall? Money will fuel season

Major college football will be played in some manner this fall, and there’s one major reason that will happen. Money. I just want to make it clear that this column, for me, is not about whether or not college football should be held. I’m not an expert in the medical field or politics. I am sticking with why I believe it will be played based off contracts and how other entities have handled the COVID-19 pandemic. The numbers I found for the college football television rights tell you all that you need to know. According to an article from Forbes.com that cited ESPN, the Sports ...

Point-counterpoint: Will any major college football be played this fall? US doesn’t deserve it

We wouldn’t even be having this debate if it weren’t for the money. The smartest guys in the room — those running the Ivy League — already made the right decision: no college sports at all the rest of this year. It’s just not safe, not when 140,000 people have died from a virus that’s still surging in most of the country and seems impossible to stop because our society is selfish and stubborn. Those Ivy folks don’t really have to worry about all the money stuff because they are in business to educate students. Hmm, what a novel idea for colleges. The major ...

UConn leaving Appleman without a racket

At 53 years old, Christian Appleman thought when he accepted the director of men’s tennis position at the University of Connecticut, it would be his last stop. After all, he had spent the better part of 30 years in college coaching, both basketball and tennis, dating back to his start as a graduate assistant with the Penn State men’s basketball program in 1989 under Bruce Parkhill. Instead, his UConn tenure lasted just seven months after the school announced June 24 that it was terminating its men’s program, one of five teams eliminated. The former Williamsburg athlete became ...

‘Y’ puts best foot forward with July 4 Race

Williamsburg’s Loc O outpaced seven-time 15K winner A.J. Kelly of Altoona by more than two minutes to win the 48th running of the Angie Gioiosa Memorial Fourth of July Race on Saturday. But the top two finishers didn’t gather on a medal stand to congratulate each other. In fact, no one really gathered anywhere. But, more than 300 competitors in three separate races and several more volunteers still enjoyed the holiday tradition in a time where many other events have been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Loc O’s winning time of 52:47.56, which he began running at 7 a.m., ...

Unheralded Davis blossoms into solid major leaguer

There haven’t been many players step into a batter’s box at PNG Field or its previous name of Blair County Ballpark wearing an Altoona Curve uniform who went on to play 14 years in Major League Baseball and lead the American League in a statistical category. In fact, there might only be one. But he wasn’t a member of the 20th anniversary all-time Curve squad, and you won’t hear him mentioned by local fans as one of the most successful MLB players to spend a full season in Altoona. That’s because Rajai Davis spent parts of only two seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates, in ...