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MLB cracks down on Caballero’s plate routine

NEW YORK — New York Yankees shortstop José Caballero was targeted by Major League Baseball for some pest control, sparking yet another squabble. Weary of Caballero's routine of waiting to acknowledge the pitcher just before the pitch clock reaches eight seconds, MLB told umpires Wednesday ...

Scheffler seeks to stay sharp in 3M Open debut

BLAINE, Minn. — Scottie Scheffler left the British Open with some frustration after another near miss in a major championship and traveled straight to Minnesota for his first appearance in the 3M Open. A week off after the last major of the season would have made sense for the world's ...

WNBA approaches all-star weekend

NEW YORK — The WNBA has grown at an exponential rate during Cathy Engelbert's tenure as commissioner, a stewardship that at times has been tumultuous during her nearly seven years at the helm. Engelbert, the second-longest tenured WNBA president or commissioner, helped negotiate a transformative collective bargaining agreement this past spring that gives the WNBA its first core of million-dollar player salaries. "There's not a lot of jobs where you can make over 30-plus millionaires instantly, right?" Engelbert said in a phone interview with The Associated Press heading into this ...

Another sham deal with Iran comes undone

An early period of World War II was known as "the phony war." What we may be witnessing now in the U.S.-Iran war is the end of a "phony peace." The nearly five-month-long conflict has featured a couple of sham ceasefires, each marked by supposed Iranian pledges to reopen the Strait of Hormuz that came to nothing. With the Iranians firing on shipping in the Strait again, Trump has declared the so-called memorandum of understanding signed about a month ago to be a dead letter. After lifting sanctions on Iranian oil and ending the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, Trump has ...

Government is still ‘too big’ for America

The French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr knew what he was talking about when, in 1849, he coined the phrase "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose." (The more things change, the more they remain the same.) It has been repeated and attributed to different people, but he appears to have said it first. The quote is especially true when it comes to modern politics. I recently found an interview I conducted with Dr. Ron Paul (the father of Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul) in April 1976. I was a reporter for the local NBC station in Houston and Ron Paul appeared to have won a ...

MLB, union meet in NYC

NEW YORK — Baseball players proposed expanding eligibility for the amateur draft rather than decreasing it, maintaining 20 rounds of selections and moving it back to June in a signal the sport is heading to a labor confrontation this offseason. During a two-hour bargaining session Tuesday at Major League Baseball's headquarters, the union proposed allowing college sophomores to be eligible for the draft along with those finishing their junior years, a group eligible under the current rules along with high school seniors. Players proposed moving the draft back to June, when it was ...