Marcus Stroman displays big-game grit to stop Yankees’ skid
NY Post
There was no five-alarm fire in The Bronx. The Bronx was not Burning.
But manager Aaron Boone was looking for volunteers to extinguish the possibility of the season’s first four-game losing streak, and Marcus Stroman hosed down any embers of billowing hysteria among Yankees fans with an 8-3 win over the Braves.
Stroman surrendered a Marcell Ozuna first-inning homer, then held the Braves hitless following a second-inning Austin Riley single until Travis d’Arnaud’s opposite-field two-run home run with two outs in the seventh. Stroman held up his glove and applauded the fans who applauded him on his way off the mound into the dugout.
The Stro Show showed out at the best possible time.
Stroman rode the momentum boost that Aaron Judge’s two-run home run in the first gave him and never looked back.
If he had, he would have seen Judge marveling in center field at his Stro Show.
PHOENIX — You think of Tom Thibodeau, you think of defense.
It feels right that on the day we celebrate Aaron Judge joining an elite pantheon of athlete — the multi-time winner of the Most Valuable Player award — that we take a walk back to the beginning, when Judge was little more than a 6-foot-7, 280-pound curiosity who mostly specialized in striking out.
The NFL has warned its players to take precautions against a “transnational crime ring” that is suspected of orchestrating a number of break-ins of athletes’ homes including Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce.
Joel Embiid isn’t pleased with details of the 76ers’ team meeting after Monday’s loss being leaked, telling reporters after Wednesday’s road loss to the Grizzlies, “whoever leaked that is a real piece of s–t.”
PHOENIX — Jalen Brunson didn’t want to comment on the NBA looking into his father’s promotion and contract as a potential salary-cap circumvention, but the point guard certainly had a message to anybody questioning Rick Brunson’s coaching credentials.
PHOENIX — Wednesday brought some cautiously optimistic updates for the Knicks frontcourt.
The Greatest Escape in franchise history was perpetrated by Glen Sather, when the general manager extricated himself and the Rangers from the final five years of Scott Gomez’s contract by moving the $7,357,143-per-year center to Montreal on June 30, 2009 after two years in New York.
The Yankees publicly are on the same page: Hal Steinbrenner, like Brian Cashman and Aaron Boone before him, said that issues with the club’s fundamentals did not hover over the team all season.
The first day of the rest of Daniel Jones’ dwindling time with the Giants arrived Wednesday, with Jones in the building, in the meetings, on the practice field (although not doing very much) and not at all part of the game plan for the next game, relegated to a non-participant role for the remainder of the season.
There will be a little extra magic for Knicks-Spurs on Christmas Day.