The 2025 Home Run Derby is underway Monday night, eliciting plenty of excitement from MLB fans. What rubbed some fans the wrong way, however, was the fact that Pat McAfee was doing player introductions before the event in his signature, rowdy and occasionally crass style.

When it was Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh's turn to be introduced, McAfee may have taken Raleigh's "Big Dumper" nickname a little too far.

"Hailing from Cullowhee, North Carolina, a man who's doing something that no catch has ever done in the history of the sport, with the fattest ass in all of professional sports… Ladies and gentlemen, Big Dumper! Cal Raleigh!" McAfee said.

Just another day at the office for the ever-colorful color commentator.

Raleigh, who's the first catcher to start an All-Star game in Mariners history, entered the All-Star break with 38 homers and 82 RBIs in just 94 games and is still chasing MLB history—regardless of what anyone says about his behind.

England boss Gareth Southgate has revealed that international coaches are in conversation with UEFA over increasing squad sizes for Euro 2024.

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• Southgate reveals talks with UEFA
• Coaches want to take 26-man squads
• Could be a boost for fringe players

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  WHAT HAPPENED?

  Managers have always been forced to choose a squad of 23 players for major European international competitions, however, teams in the postponed Euro 2020 were put together with 26 players as a precaution against Covid limitations. For this summer's European Championships, though, it has become more and more probable that UEFA will go back to the original 23-man regulation. However, Southgate has revealed that there is a push among coaches to continue with the 26-man eligibility for the European Championship.

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• WHAT SOUTHGATE SAID

  Talking to the media, Southgate said [via Daily Mail]: "Increase in squad size for Euro 2024? It seems to be. There is one more UEFA meeting (in a fortnight) where there's been a little bit of talk amongst some of the coaches about possibly increasing that. Given where we are now.

  "We've got to make the best decisions with what we know and some of those currently are going to be medical decisions. And we've been able to get those right in the previous tournaments. We've been able to give people time, but with 23 that's definitely more difficult."

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  THE BIGGER PICTURE

  The increase in roster size could be a major announcement for fringe players on all national sides as they will get to travel to Germany and have another shot at breaking into their coaches' ideas for the tournament. This could be very good news, particularly for Chelsea winger Cole Palmer and Aston Villa striker Ollie Watkins who have been stuck to the fringe of Southgate's squad so far but have been in the conversation for selection for the Euros.

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• WHAT NEXT FOR SOUTHGATE?

  The 53-year-old has claimed that he is still unsure as to which players will be travelling with the England squad due to a line of injuries to key players. He has reportedly set up a loose plan to name an extended squad of around 30 players towards the end of May ahead of the tournament training camp at St George's Park.

Cristiano Ronaldo's Al-Nassr are ready to table a fresh bid for Emerson Royal this summer after seeing a £20 million ($25m) offer rejected in January.

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Nassr made January bid for Tottenham right-backBayern Munich and AC Milan also monitoring defenderUnclear if Spurs are willing to sellWHAT HAPPENED?

Per , Al-Nassr will try again for the Brazilian when the transfer window opens, after their advances were rebuffed in January. Emerson has fallen down the pecking order at Tottenham under Ange Postecoglou and has made just 11 Premier League starts this season, with Pedro Porro regularly preferred at right-back.

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Along with Nassr, there is said to be interest in Emerson from both AC Milan and Bayern Munich. The latter, of course, have done business with Spurs recently, signing both Harry Kane and Eric Dier.

DID YOU KNOW?

Emerson's contract with Spurs expires in 2026, and it remains to be seen if the club will be willing to do business, given that he provides useful backup for Porro. He has played at both right-back and left-back this season, but rumours have linked Tottenham with a deal to re-sign former star Kyle Walker-Peters from Southampton, suggesting they may be open to the Brazilian's departure.

Getty ImagesWHAT NEXT?

Spurs conclude their season on Sunday against Sheffield United. A win will ensure they finish fifth, and qualify for the Europa League next term.

The nomad Athletics finally appear to be doing something right.

On Wednesday, the franchise announced it will be wearing a uniform patch honoring franchise great Rickey Henderson during the 2025 season. The emblem will be a circle containing the name Rickey and his number, 24.

This was a no-brainer.

The Oakland Athletics selected Henderson in the fourth round of the 1976 MLB draft and he made his big league debut in 1979. He played 14 seasons for the franchise in four separate stints, from 1979 until '84, then from '89 to '93, '94 to '95, and again in 1998. He won a World Series with Oakland in 1989 and was named American League MVP with the franchise in 1990.

The A's retired Henderson's number and he is a member of the franchise's Hall of Fame. In 2009, the 10-time All-Star was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame as a member of the Athletics.

Henderson died on December 20, 2024, after battling pneumonia.

He is MLB's career leader in runs (2,295), stolen bases (1,406), leadoff home runs (81), unintentional walks (2,129), most consecutive seasons with a home run (25) and most seasons leading the league in stolen bases (12).

Henderson is an all-time great and it's right of the A's to honor him this season.

Being an MLB announcer has its own workplace hazards, too.

A scary moment occurred during MLB spring training when Seattle Mariners radio broadcaster Rick Rizzs was suddenly hit by a foul ball while in the booth for Monday’s Cactus League game against the Milwaukee Brewers.

The incident happened in the fifth inning of the Mariners’ 7-5 loss, when Brewers’ Rhys Hoskins fouled off a 1-2 fastball and sent the ball hurtling backward. The ball soared over the net at American Family Fields of Phoenix and toward the Mariners’ visiting radio booth, where Rizzs and broadcasting partner Gary Hill were sitting.

Rizzs could be heard saying, “A swing and a foul,” on the radio call before getting hit in the head by the foul ball, leading to what sounded like grunts of pain from the longtime Mariners broadcaster.

Here’s audio of the scary moment: 

Thankfully, Rizzs didn’t sustain any major injuries and will reportedly be back on the call on Wednesday when the Mariners play the Kansas City Royals.

“Folks, I want to let you know that I took a pretty good shot to the back of my head with a foul ball up here in the radio booth,” Rizzs said on the air after getting checked out by medical staff. “I got a good-sized bump on my head, but I’m going to be O.K. My mom always said I’ve had a hard head, Gary, so it paid off today. I could not believe that ball got up here that quickly.”

Asked earlier this week about her next game, Caitlin Clark politely reframed the terms of the question.

“It’s not Caitlin Clark versus Paige Bueckers,” the freshman guard said. “It’s Iowa versus UConn.”

She’s correct: The bracket does, in fact, read No. 5 seed Iowa versus No. 1 seed UConn. It’s not “Big Ten Freshman of the Year and national scoring leader Caitlin Clark versus Big East Freshman of the Year and national win shares leader Paige Bueckers.” But you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. The hype for Saturday’s game is at a rare level for the Sweet 16, and all of it is focused on Clark and Bueckers, the two most dynamic freshmen in the game.

For much of the year, the national discourse has coalesced around Bueckers, and justifiably so. She entered this year as one of the most hyped recruits in years. She came on campus with talk of restoring a dynasty at UConn—four years without a title might not sound like much, but in Storrs, that’s a veritable drought—and with more than half a million followers on Instagram. (She also graced a flip-cover of as the Gatorade high school female athlete of the year back in August.)

The expectations were high, but she met them every step of the way, putting together a stellar regular season filled with highlights and accolades—First-Team All-America, a finalist for Naismith College Player of the Year, all of it. ESPN compiled a package on Bueckers that ran frequently during the first round of the tournament (even during halftime of Clark’s first-round game with Iowa). If you hadn’t watched much of the women’s game, Bueckers might have seemed to you like not just the best freshman in the country, but the freshman in the country.

Which would be a monumental disservice to Clark. She entered college with a résumé comparable to Bueckers’s—the two won gold medals as teammates at the 2019 FIBA U19 World Cup and 2017 FIBA Americas U16 Championships—and put up a roughly equal freshman season. She led the nation in scoring with 26.8 ppg. She was third in assists with 7.1 apg. Yet she ended up Second-Team All-America to Bueckers’s First-Team, and a bit of narrative seemed to develop, particularly in a national media environment that still tends to focus on just one women's basketball storyline at a time, that there was Bueckers, and there was Clark.

But that’s wrong, and so far in March, there’s been plenty from Clark to disprove that idea. In No. 5 seed Iowa’s second-round win over No. 4 Kentucky—a tough matchup that was by no means supposed to be a smooth win—Clark outscored the Wildcatsin the first half. (She eased up in the second half and still finished with 35 points, seven assists and seven rebounds.) In Iowa’s first-round win over Central Michigan, WNBA legend Sue Bird came onto the ESPN broadcast to call Clark “the most exciting player in college basketball right now,” and the freshman made the compliment look completely deserved.

To get a matchup of Bueckers and Clark in the Sweet 16, then, is to be almost spoiled by such a tantalizing contest so early in the tournament. It’s not just a matchup of two players at the top of the game, but of two players who stand to be in that position for a long, long time—for the next few years in college and, ideally, far beyond that as pros. UConn, unsurprisingly, is favored on Saturday. Bueckers has a stronger supporting cast than Clark—though don’t sleep on her teammate Monika Czinano—and UConn is a much better defensive team than Iowa. But when it looks like we might be asking “Bueckers or Clark?” for years to come, be glad that, at least for one day, we can watch Bueckers Clark.

At its heart, March Madness is not a spectator sport. The NCAA men's and women's tournaments are meant to be experienced viscerally—whether through your team's participation, neutral observation, or the simple joy of filling out a bracket.

Because of the tournament's simplicity—68 teams, single elimination—it lends itself well to the attention of fans who normally have no interest in sports. This has given rise to the phenomenon of the "mascot bracket," in which the basketball agnostic in your life fills out their bracket based solely on mascot quality.

If that's you, we are here to help. For the second straight year, has ranked the field's 68 mascots on a scale from creepy to commendable. Here they are, with scattered commentary where appropriate.

Teams without mascots

Illinois and San Diego State, for fairly intuitive reasons, do not have school-sanctioned mascots. Ole Miss, in the tournament for the first time in six years, also does not have one at the moment. Michigan has not had one in almost a century (shout-out to Biff the live wolverine). This gives us a tidy 64 for this year's rundown.

64. The Tiger (Clemson)

Duh. The feline whose psychotic eyes have launched a million off-color jokes. He'll be here until the Last Judgment.

63. Purdue Pete (Purdue)

62. Gael (Saint Mary's)

May actually have been overrated last year (you'll notice that some modest reshuffling has taken place for returnees). His head and torso simply do not jive. Look for him in the next edition of .

61. Rodney (VCU)

The worst of the newcomers, although the above profile suggests he hasn't always looked like a creepypasta character. If VCU leads him out of the uncanny valley, he could rise.

60. The Lobo (New Mexico)

59. Cy the Cardinal (Iowa State)

58. The Wildcat (Kentucky)

An oddly muted mascot for one of the sport's most iconic programs.

57. Rowdy (McNeese State)

56. T-Roy (Troy)

55. RoMo (Robert Morris)

These mascots are grouped together for a reason: all are from otherwise anodyne mid-majors, all are humans with questionable grins, and all have the vague menace of Robbie Rotten from .

54. Raider Red (Texas Tech)

53. Boomer, Sooner and Top Daug (Oklahoma)

A significant gulf exists here between the slightly offputting Boomer and Sooner and the adorable, elegentaly hatted Top Daug.

52. Brusier and Marigold (Baylor)

51. Prowler (High Point)

Not his fault that purple isn't a flattering color on a panther.

50. Lou the Bison (Lipscomb)

49. Johnny the Thunderbird (St. John's)

(But let's face it, Rick Pitino is the real St. John's mascot).

48. Sammy C. Hawk (UNC Wilmington)

We're starting to move out of "overtly unnerving" territory now. Sammy's mask-like coloring stirs memories of John Collins at the 2019 Slam Dunk Contest.

47. Thunder the Antelope (Grand Canyon)

46. Boss and Blitz (Wofford)

45. Spike the Bulldog (Gonzaga)

44. Durango (Omaha)

This year's recipient of the "Fiercest Puppet Facsimile" award, won last year by UAB.

43. Billy the Bluejay (Creighton)

Getting docked a bit from last year as we face up to the reality that the old Billy might've been better.

42. Monte (Montana)

41. Joe and Josephine Bruin (UCLA)

As it did in the 1975 tournament, UCLA comes out on top in the battle of the bears.

40. Eddie the Cougar (SIU Edwardsville)

A good, nice, solid mascot with enough pull to get his own staff directory page—more than most critters can say!

39. Mr. Commodore (Vanderbilt)

A more bombastic version of the Robbie Rotten group—look at that elegant coat.

38. Wilbur and Wilma (Arizona)

37. Stinger (Alabama State)

36. Iggy (Marquette)

35. Shasta (Houston)

34. Tusk (Arkansas)

Some pig, even if he is a little on the grimy side.

33. Emmit S. Burg (Mount St. Mary's)

Absolutely a contender for the cleverest name on this list; Mount St. Mary's is located in Emmitsburg, Md.

32. Sparky (Liberty)

31. Clawed Z. Eagle (American)

Slight edge to Clawed in this battle of the Eagles for his snazzy getup, although there's something to be said for Sparky's flame-themed name.

30. Spiro the Spartan (Norfolk State)

Would be higher if there were not a second Spiro the Spartan. Let them fight!

29. Pouncer the Tiger (Memphis)

28. Truman the Tiger (Missouri)

Tie to the president.

27. Big Blue (Utah State)

26. Louie the Cardinal (Louisville)

Yes, he is a cardinal with teeth. Yes, he is ranked way ahead of the other cardinal with teeth, Cy the Cardinal. Yes, it's because cyclones are not birds.

25. Big Jay (Kansas)

24. Blue Devil (Duke)

23. Big Al (Alabama)

Underranked in last year's edition—he effectively walks the cute/fearsome line like few other mascots.

22. Rameses (North Carolina)

21. Cam the Ram (Colorado State)

20. Testudo (Maryland)

A school symbol as much as a mascot, he gets props for having a giant "M" on his stomach lest he be mistaken for another college's diamondback terrapin.

19. Bevo and Hook 'Em (Texas)

18. Aubie (Auburn)

17. Bucky Badger (Wisconsin)

16. Tupper (Bryant)

15. Jonathan (UConn)

14. Handsome Dan (Yale)

13. Griff (Drake)

The Good Pooches section, joined by new arrival Tupper—isn't he perfect?

12. Frankie the Friar (St. Francis)

An objectively bonkers mascot on a list full of them—maybe even more so than Providence's Friar Dom. If a character from Nickelodeon's golden age embraced the monastic life, we'd probably see him in Loretto, Pa.

11. Smokey (Tennessee)

10. Bully (Mississippi State)

9. Reveille (Texas A&M)

8. Uga (Georgia)

The list of Good Pooches Who Function as Regional Cultural Symbols is joined by Uga, back after a 10-year hiatus. As the star of a Clint Eastwood film, he is probably the most famous mascot on this list.

7. King Triton (UC San Diego)

It might be heresy to put a mascot five years into its Divison I life ahead of , but King Triton has earned it (even if he is not, technically, a king outside of Disney auspices). The combination of attention to detail (look at that well-manicured beard) and silliness (what appears to be a foam or foam-like trident) set him apart.

6. Sparty (Michigan State)

How many mascots are used as a credible stand-in for their team's name?

5. Albert and Alberta Gator (Florida)

Unfortunately for Albert, a different Albert the alligator has spent the last year in the news.

4. Cosmo the Cougar (BYU)

Flirted with danger during football season; mercifully survived to see hoops.

3. The Oregon Duck (Oregon)

Flies into the top three after a box-office 12 months that saw him a) draw the attention of fellow Pacific Northwest native Sydney Sweeney, b) fight with Deion Sanders Jr. over the Heisman race, and c) star in a legitimately funny Allstate ad. At least one Disney property is still drawing.

2. Zippy (Akron)

She was No. 1 last year, and she is now the owner of her own NIL deal. Any other year, she'd be the champion, and she remains Ohio's only native kangaroo and a trailblazing female mascot. Unfortunately for her…

1. D'Artagnan and the Blue Blob (Xavier)

…she is up against a true juggernaut. D'Artagnan by himself would be a top-20 mascot, being immaculately rendered and named for history's most famous Musketeer.

However, at Xavier, the secondary mascot is the main attraction. That would be the Blue Blob, introduced as a kid-friendly alternative to D'Artagnan. A star of stage and screen, the ever-huggable, unflappable Blue Blob is as Cincinnati as Over-the-Rhine and Skyline Chili. Long may he roll.

The Penn Quakers are set to hire former Iowa coach Fran McCaffery as the program's new head basketball coach, according to a report from Matt Norlander of CBS Sports.

News of McCaffery's imminent hiring was first reported by college basketball reporter Sam Federman.

McCaffery, who is a Penn alum, lands the Ivy League job just weeks removed from his dismissal from Iowa, where he coached the Hawkeyes for 15 seasons. The 65-year-old is the winningest coach in school history, but was in the midst of a program downturn over four consecutive seasons that culminated with Iowa missing the NCAA tournament each of the last two seasons. He went 297–207 at Iowa with seven NCAA tournament appearances. It likely would have been eight had the 2020 NCAA tournament not been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

McCaffery will take over for Steve Donahue, who was fired after going 8–19 this season in his ninth year on the job.

Sidharth Monga03-Aug-2018

As a host of candidates circled around the rare opportunity to becomes chief executive of Cricket Australia, the most obvious choice may well have been hiding in plain sight

Daniel Brettig23-Jul-2018In the hours and days following James Sutherland’s resignation announcement in early June, a host of names were thrown around as possible successors to the chief executive’s position at Cricket Australia. One name didn’t figure much, a name that should not be discounted.Among the cricket fraternity, most of the names that came up were familiar. CA chief operating officer Kevin Roberts. Former New South Wales chairman and Westfield executive John Warn. WACA chief executive Christina Matthews. ICC operations chief Geoff Allardice. Former national captain and CA game development executive Belinda Clark. Even CEOs from the National Rugby League and the Football Federation Australia (Todd Greenberg and David Gallop) were briefly mooted before withdrawing. Undoubtedly, the corporate recruits at Egon Zehnder had a long list of possibles to sort through.The level of secrecy around the appointment process is indicative of its significance, but that name that figure cannot be ruled out from the list. He has been both chief executive and chairman of the Australian Formula One Grand Prix, CEO of the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games, CEO of the South Australian Cricket Association (SACA), and CEO of the wildly successful 2015 ICC World Cup. Since April 2016 he has also served as a CA Board director. He was even born a mere 16 days apart from Sutherland himself in 1965.ESPNcricinfo Ltd

John Harnden, a civil engineer by trade, found himself as one of many beneficiaries from the Formula One Grand Prix’s celebrated decade as an end-of-season party in Adelaide. Starting as a member of the project management team in 1989, he moved throughthe ranks and found himself moving with the event to Melbourne in 1993.Key to his contribution were oversight of the design of both tracks, as well as the set-up and dismantling of F1 precincts built temporarily, first around the streets of Adelaide and then Melbourne’s Albert Park. After Martin Brundle’s out-of-control Jordan hurtled into the wall shortly after the start of the 1996 race, there was no one happier than Harnden to see the Englishman dust himself off and resume the race in the team’s spare car. Two years after the deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger at Imola, Melbourne had avoided a similar tragedy in its very first race.By 1998, Harnden had been promoted to chief executive of the Melbourne Grand Prix Corporation, a role he filled until 2002 when he was appointed to helm the city’s hosting of the Commonwealth Games, an undertaking that would overtake the 1956 Olympics as the largest sporting event ever held in the Victorian capital. There was some disquiet at ticket giveaways being required to ensure the MCG was brimful for the opening ceremony, but the Games were ultimately considered successful.Cricket was to nab Harnden at a critical time when he replaced Mike Deare as the CEO of SACA. Amid labyrinthine and sensitive negotiations for an AUD 535 million upgrade of the Adelaide Oval from a picturesque cricket ground to a globally-envied multi-purpose stadium, Harnden was a key link between previously warring parties over the redevelopment.Glimpsed pacing nervously and looking at his phone as SACA’s members voted on whether to approve the redevelopment in May 2011, Harnden and the association’s then president – former government minister Ian McLachlan – were perhaps the two most relieved men in Australian sport when an overwhelming “yes” vote not only opened the way to a rebuild but also wiped out AUD 85 million in SACA debt. “It was just hard to believe,” Harnden said at the time. “There has been so much talk about it and quite frankly it was quite unbelievable.”That bridge crossed, a still larger project loomed – a World Cup jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand for the first time since 1992. Harnden was unveiled as the organising committee’s CEO in November 2011, beginning the four-year road to an event that would ultimately be watched by more than a million spectators at the grounds and an estimated 1.5 billion on television. If the final between the two host nations was ill-tempered and one-sided, the MCG attendance of 93,014 made for a spectacular backdrop and outstripped the 87,182 who had seen Pakistan defeat England 23 years before.Within a few months of the tournament’s conclusion, Harnden was back at the Melbourne Grand Prix, this time as chairman. The Victorian state government, after a moment’s hesitation, chose Harnden on the strength of his skills, rather than choosing a candidate more politically motivated. Intriguingly, given the current vacancy at CA, it was for a three-year term expiring in August 2018. One link to cricket was re-established in April 2016, when he filled the South Australian spot on the CA Board left by the death of John Bannon (a former Australia premier) in December the previous year. At the time, CA chairman David Peever gave a glowing assessment of his “outstanding business credentials and experience,” and his “genuine passion to grow the game”. Harnden, he said, was an “elite sporting administrator”.A question surrounds the suitability of choosing a Board director for the chief executive’s role, given that CA is currently in the midst of dual cultural reviews. A similar query would be made of Roberts, widely considered the frontrunner from the moment he left the Board to become Sutherland’s second-in-command in September 2015. There is also the matter of last year’s MoU standoff with the Australian Cricketers’ Association, a saga that left CA and the players at a distance when they needed, if anything, to be closer. Roberts was ultimately sidelined from the brokering of a compromise, hardly an endorsement of his “stakeholder management” credentials.Those who have worked with Harnden refer to his diplomacy, his engineer’s attention to detail and a relative lack of ego. They also point to the diversity of his experience, and runs on the board helming major events when Australia is due to host dual ICC tournaments – the women’s and men’s World T20s – in 2020. It is also thought that, given a free hand, Harnden would be capable of the sort of cultural change desired within the four walls of CA’s Jolimont headquarters, while managing the complex web of international relationships that underpin Australian cricket’s comfortable position in the global game.Also significant is the fact that in the weeks preceding Sutherland’s announcement, the Board approved Peever’s continuation as CA chairman for three more years. It’s a role that, at one point, might have been suitable for Harnden. But the way events have unfolded, the chief executive’s berth may now be the best one for an administrator who, to many, has flown quite adroitly under the radar.