• Williams fans 12 as Cleveland win decisive Game 5

• Ramírez’s two-run homer provides only scoring

• Guardians to face Rays for place in World Series

Gavin Williams struck out 12, José Ramírez homered on a pitch just above home plate and the Cleveland Guardians beat the Chicago White Sox 2-0 on Saturday night to complete a comeback from a 2-0 deficit in their best-of-five American League Division Series.

Cleveland open the American League Championship Series at Tampa Bay on Monday night, seeking their first World Series appearance since 2016. The Guardians/Indians franchise have not won the title since 1948, the longest drought among MLB teams.

• Sandell’s 47-yard kick seals 27-24 upset in Dallas

• Sooners overcome offensive struggles to stun Texas

• Manning throws three TDs but two costly picks

Tate Sandell kicked a 47-yard field goal on the final play and Oklahoma overcame their continued offensive ineptness with touchdowns on special teams and defense in a 27-24 win over No 1 Texas in the Red River rivalry game on Saturday.

The Sooners (3-2, 1-1 Southeastern Conference) beat a No 1 team for the first time since a 38-17 win over Missouri in 2007. They had been 0-4-1 when facing a top-ranked Texas team.

• Guijarro and Navarro score in opening 14 minutes

• US midfield and defensive lapses exposed by Spain

• Yohannes misses penalty as US fightback falls short

In less than a year’s time, the United States and Spain will almost certainly arrive in Brazil as the top two contenders to win the Women’s World Cup. Spain, holders of the top spot in Fifa’s rankings for the past 60 weeks, are the defending champions; the second-ranked US won gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

This month’s pair of friendlies between the two sides are taking place with caveats. Both sides are missing several of their most important players to injuries. The opening match in Brazil is 258 days away. Spain have booked their place, but the US still have to actually qualify for the World Cup, through a regional tournament that begins next month.

The sports-mad city has embraced its new superstar, even as he choppers in from Manhattan and makes no secret of the fact that Philly was never his first choice

Philadelphia has always had an instinctive affinity with athletes who embrace the grind over the glamour. In a place where sports mean a little too much, commitment has traditionally counted for more than celebrity. What it demands above all, sometimes unreasonably, is the sense that they have bought in, that the city and its fortunes matter to them as much as they do to the people who devote their lives to backing its teams.

Few embodied that ethic more completely than Lane Johnson, the Eagles’ revered right tackle and best player for more than a decade, who abruptly announced his retirement Tuesday after 14 seasons, two Super Bowl titles and a career spent neutralizing some of the most freakish physical specimens to walk the earth. Johnson’s quotidian greatness on the offensive line was almost perversely workmanlike. According to Pro Football Focus, he allowed just 10 sacks across close to 7,000 pass-blocking snaps in the last 13 years, going entire seasons without letting his man bring down the quarterback. The Eagles won nearly two-thirds of their games when he played and lost nearly two-thirds when he didn’t.

The first league of its kind in 70 years brought players from all around the world to Illinois for eight weeks, writing a new chapter in the history of women’s sports

On the morning of 14 September, Rocky Henley sat at her rental home’s dining room table amid scattered rulebooks, colorful markers and graph paper. The New York Heights manager drew a chart on a large poster – her method of sketching plays for the evening’s playoff game. Her assistant manager, Jackson, trudged in from the kitchen in flannel pajama pants and a Heights hoodie and watched her work. He also happens to be her son.

After years of mockery and doubts about her game, Reese has helped carry Atlanta to the WNBA’s biggest stage. Her critics might want to start forming an apology queue

A lot of folks owe Angel Reese an apology after Friday night. They should probably form an orderly queue.

Not that the bad-faith take merchants who have spent three years gleefully circulating her missed layups, likening her occasionally awkward footwork to “Bambi on ice” and marveling at the supposed comic genius of “mebounds” are likely to join it. The right-wing culture warriors who turned one of the WNBA’s most naturally gifted rebounders into a joke were never particularly interested in an honest assessment of her basketball abilities. But after Friday the punchline has never worn thinner.

Mike Ditka, the fiery former NFL player and coach who led the Chicago Bears to their lone Super Bowl title and became one of the most recognizable figures in American sports, has died aged 86

• Mike Ditka, legendary Chicago Bears head coach, dies at 86

• Hall of Famer led 1985 Bears to Super Bowl title

• Coach was known for tough, gruff demeanor

• The Super Bowl Shuffle to SNL: a life in pictures

Mike Ditka, who won NFL titles as a player and coach with the Chicago Bears, has died at 86, his family announced Friday.

“It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved husband, father, grandfather, and friend, Mike Ditka,” the family said. “While the world knew Mike as a Hall of Fame football player, legendary coach, and leader of the Chicago Bears’ Super Bowl XX championship team, we knew him as the heart of our family. Mike will be missed beyond measure and remembered forever.”

Crystal Palace’s American import had never lived anywhere but Utah before moving to London. Now, he’s aiming for more Premier League minutes

Much has changed in Zavier Gozo’s life since May.

Back then, Gozo was a day removed from learning he wasn’t among Mauricio Pochettino’s 26 selections for the World Cup, having just made what proved to be his third-to-last appearance with boyhood club Real Salt Lake.

• Irving rushes for career-high 165 yards and two TDs

• Rookie Daniels impresses in second NFL start

• Prescott throws two picks as Dallas fall to 2-3

Bucky Irving already had his first 100-yard game since his rookie year in 2024 when the Tampa Bay running back finished off the Dallas Cowboys with a run that gave him a career high.

Jalon Daniels, the undrafted rookie filling in for franchise quarterback Baker Mayfield, enjoyed the view while doing plenty himself to get the Buccaneers their first win of the season in just his second start.

• James scores 10 points in 18-minute Sixers debut

• Jaylen Brown leads Philadelphia with 18 points

• Nets pull away in third quarter for 114-108 victory

NBA superstar LeBron James delivered a solid first-half performance in his first pre-season game for Philadelphia on Thursday, but the new-look 76ers fell 114-108 to the Brooklyn Nets.

James, the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, announced in July that he had signed a two-year, $8m deal with the 76ers, ending weeks of speculation over where the four-time NBA champion would land as a free agent after eight seasons and one title with the Los Angeles Lakers.

How will the Buccaneers and Cowboys fare today? Here is what to know, including kick-off time, TV channels and live stream options

The bad news for the Buccaneers: Their 0-4 start has been an unmitigated disaster that, in normal circumstances, would have already evaporated their playoff chances. The good news for Tampa Bay, however, is that they play in the NFC South, meaning they’re still just two games out of a tie for the lead in what is often the worst division in the NFL. All is not quite lost yet.

If the Bucs want to join the 1992 Chargers and become the second team to make the postseason after an 0-4 opening, they’ll need to stop the bleeding on Thursday night in north Texas. They’ll have to do it without Baker Mayfield, who continues to nurse an injury to his throwing thumb.

The US have been defined for so long by the next singular player. This past perfect window shows that era may be over

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In 1990, then-United States men’s national team manager Bob Gansler made a critical and somewhat controversial choice. He left three of the program’s laureled veterans at home and brought a young and little-tested team to the World Cup in Italy, the USA’s first in 40 years.

As Gansler recalled later: “I was thinking not only for ’90, but I was thinking about the 90s.”

Teams have always symbolized division within America. And the Fever have come to prominence during a time of dark political intensity

It’s over for now, but no professional sports team spent more time receiving and drawing attention to itself than did the Indiana Fever this season. The Fever has broken, the team eliminated by the defending champion Las Vegas Aces for the second straight season, but Indiana succeeded in being the WNBA’s canary in the coal mine, embodying both the obvious and unintended consequences of rapid growth, while also allowing themselves to be a season-long distraction: part-time professional basketball team, part-time right-wing culture war centerpiece. Less than a decade ago, Atlanta and Minneapolis were praised for their unified political stances. Today, Trumpism has replaced social justice as the defining characteristic of the league – and as the curtain closed on the 2026 WNBA regular season, Indiana stood at its epicenter.

The Fever were the most polarizing team in professional sports, known less for their basketball than their culpability in pulling the league from its old cultural identity as a Black/queer league into its current climate of political divisiveness – a calculated and dangerous path to popularity. This season, there was the basketball of the WNBA, and then there was the Indiana Fever, the league’s Maga-friendly option.

This article originally appeared on Howard Bryant’s Substack. You can subscribe here.