• NLCS Game 4: Brewers 6-4 Dodgers

• Defending champions swept out of playoffs

• Milwaukee roar back from four runs down

• Brewers will face Rays or Guardians in World Series

Jake Bauers started the Brewers’ comeback with a two-run double and Garrett Mitchell hit a go-ahead home run to deliver a 6-4 victory ⁠over the Los Angeles Dodgers on Thursday and send Milwaukee to their first World Series appearance in 44 years.

Bauers added a bases-loaded walk to tie the game in the ⁠fifth inning as the Brewers ⁠rallied from an early ​four-run deficit to sweep the National League Championship Series in four games. The dominating performance came after Milwaukee were swept out of the NLCS by Los Angeles ⁠last season.

• Halpin’s first playoff homer puts Cleveland ahead

• Williams strikes out nine as Guardians win 3-2

• Cleveland bullpen retires 11 of final 12 Rays batters

Petey Halpin hit a go-ahead two-run homer, Gavin Williams struck out nine over five innings and the Cleveland Guardians beat the Tampa Bay Rays 3-2 in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series on Thursday to take a 2-1 lead.

Game 4 of the best-of-seven series is scheduled for Friday, though rain is forecast.

• Former QB says he is looking ‘for next landing spot’

• Aikman and Buck said to have argued over contracts

Longtime Monday Night Football announcer Troy Aikman said he is looking for his “next landing spot” with ⁠his ESPN contract set to expire after February’s Super Bowl.

“I’ll broadcast through this season, and I’ll be ⁠a free agent ⁠at ​the end of the year and kind of see what happens,” Aikman said in a radio interview ⁠with KTCK of Dallas on Thursday morning.

The lack of cohesion in the center of the park is evident for the US, with Emma Hayes continuing to try different combinations

The discourse around the US women’s national team may have been a harsh one if not for a fourth-half surge against Spain.

In the latest of their back-to-back bookings, where Emma Hayes’ team plays the same opponent twice, Spain looked far more confident and effective than the four-time champions. Both teams were missing a handful of crucial players; Naomi Girma and Sam Coffey headlining the US’s absentees, while Aitana Bonmatí, Mariona Caldentey and Clàudia Pina were among Spain’s.

With the season approaching its climax, we look at the players who have perfected the art of smack talking through the years

Today, even the most casual of WNBA fans have watched some of the league’s biggest stars talking trash on the court. But while the snarling convos look heated, most of the time, they are good-natured, competitive fun.

Still, we wondered, who are the best trash talkers in the game? Which players over the years have turned talking smack into an art form? Let’s explore.

• Milwaukee rally past Los Angeles for 3-0 NLCS lead

• Bauers and Mitchell homer back-to-back off Blake Snell

• Defending champions face elimination on Thursday

Jake Bauers and Garrett Mitchell hit back-to-back home runs off Blake Snell to reclaim the lead in the seventh inning as the Milwaukee Brewers beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 6-2 on Wednesday night to take a commanding 3-0 lead in the National League Championship Series.

The Dodgers had just taken a 2-1 lead in the bottom of the sixth before being stunned. The loss pushed the two-time defending World Series champions to the brink of elimination. They had trailed 3-0 in a best-of-seven postseason series only once previously in franchise history, when they were swept by the Baltimore Orioles in the 1966 World Series.

Image of state flag incorporating KKK hoods was sent to other schools participating in regional tennis tournament

The University of Maryland (UMD) has indefinitely suspended its club tennis team after a graphic featuring Ku Klux Klan imagery was circulated to other universities before a regional tournament, prompting widespread condemnation.

The controversy erupted after Toni Rachal, president of Howard University’s club tennis team, spotted the offensive material in a shared Google document sent to participating schools before last weekend’s tournament, WUSA9 reported.

The protests around an anti-ICE T-shirt show that politics can never be separated from sports, especially now

On 26 September, Daniela Silva was expelled from Austin FC’s match with San Diego FC for wearing a T-shirt reading “Abolish ICE”. She says she was banned from Q2 Stadium for a year (Austin FC said that the ban was issued by the Austin Police Department, not the club, and that they offered to rescind it but that Silva declined).

This happened, really, truly, and you cannot make this up, during Austin FC’s Hispanic Heritage Night. It also happened six days after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents shot a Venezuelan delivery driver, 28-year-old Wilber Garcés Pérez, in the torso in Austin, sparking protests in the city.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is the author of The Long Game: US Men’s Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts, which is out now. He teaches at Marist University.

• Receiver liable for two counts, not liable on eight others

• Lakeeta Vaccaro alleged abuse by NFL receiver

A Miami jury on Tuesday found Tyreek Hill liable for two counts of battery but not liable for the eight remaining claims made by Lakeeta Vaccaro – ending the high-profile civil trial involving the NFL wide receiver and his estranged wife.

Hill, who has played for the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins, was found liable for two counts of battery – one stemming from an incident in January 2024, and another from April 2025. The jury awarded Vaccaro $500,000 in compensatory damages but did not award her punitive damages.

The once heroic boxer showcases a frankness in this compelling new series but also an unwillingness to take accountability for his darkest moments

Mike Tyson never envisioned old age. And yet here he still is, having outlived his parents, Brooklynites of ill repute who died when he was a teenager, and the Brownsville tough guys who teased him for being scrawny and having a lisp. Here he is after doing hard time for rape in his prime, winning and losing great fortunes and battling addiction to drink, drugs and fame. Here he still is, 60 years old and a grandfather now, mixing it up with Jake Paul in the ring, opening up to manosphere-adjacent podcasters, bobbing into an impromptu White House press briefing – Māori face-tattoo unmistakably in the frame – while on a DC visit to buck up his old pal as his party faces a bleak midterm forecast. “I don’t have to exist,” the champ says in Tyson, the latest four-part vanity project on his turbulent life and times. “Some reason, something allowed me to exist.”

In his heyday, Tyson was a mesmerizing sporting event unto himself – the ruthless knockout machine who struck fear into opponents at first sight, felled them in seconds and looked back on the carnage with cool nonchalance. His darkest episodes – the combustive relationship with actor Robin Givens, the six-year prison sentence for rape, biting off Evander Holyfield’s ear – only deepened the public fascination with him, adding to the lore of boxing’s baddest man. In the winter of his life, Tyson’s self-reflection, so deep it tips into self-parody, is the enthralling spectacle now. And if generations of Black comedians have proved anything, it’s that the appetite for Mike Tyson impersonations is inexhaustible.

• Freddy Peralta pitches six scoreless innings in 3-1 win

• José Ramírez error opens door to three-run fourth

• ALCS heads to Cleveland at 1-1 for Thursday’s Game 3

Freddy Peralta pitched six innings of four-hit ball, Liam Hicks lined a two-run single after a fielding error by José Ramírez and the Tampa Bay Rays beat the Cleveland Guardians 3-1 on Tuesday night to level the American League Championship Series at 1-1.

Game 3 of the best-of-seven series is Thursday night in Cleveland.

The US were on the verge of losing two straight at home, but second-half goals from Ashley Sanchez and Mallory Swanson salvaged a draw

It was nearly time for the panic button. Maybe not to press it, but to acknowledge that it’s within reach. A listless, shorthanded US women’s national team were struggling against Spain, down 2-0, and facing the ignominy of two straight losses at home after being badly exposed in Saturday’s 2-0 defeat in Washington DC.

Then two players who had just returned to the team after long absences turned the tide. Ashley Sanchez and Mallory Swanson, after international goal droughts of 1,648 days and 801 days respectively, each scored in the second half to earn a 2-2 draw with the reigning World Cup champions.

• Recruiting report prepared for Raiders’ 2024 search

• Lawyers say assessment contains racial stereotypes

• Flores sued NFL over discriminatory hiring in 2022

A recently unsealed recruiting report on Brian Flores contains multiple examples of “racial stereotypes” and amounts to unlawful retaliation for the coach’s discrimination lawsuit against the NFL, according to his lawyers.

The Korn Ferry report, made public on Tuesday and obtained by the Associated Press, lists six strengths and seven weaknesses that Flores’ attorneys say demonstrate the league’s continued reliance on racial stereotypes in hiring and its retaliation against the coach for his lawsuit alleging racial discrimination.

• Former QB fought with 69-year-old last October

• Fox Sports parted ways with Sanchez over incident

• Sanchez was charged over Indianapolis confrontation

Former NFL quarterback and Fox Sports analyst Mark Sanchez has reached an agreement in principle with the truck driver who stabbed him during an altercation last October, according to the Athletic.

Sanchez was stabbed and pepper sprayed by Perry Tole, who was 69 at the time, during the incident in Indianapolis, where the former New York Jets star was due to cover an NFL game between the Colts and Las Vegas Raiders. Prosecutors said Tole used pepper spray and a knife to defend himself ​after Sanchez attempted to enter ‌his truck during an argument over a parking spot.

The winger is 28, and younger teammates are rising into the high-pressure spots he has usually occupied

Usually, the second weekend of October sees Christian Pulisic flanked by compatriots as the Star-Spangled Banner plays. Last year, he was involved in US friendlies against Ecuador and Australia. But this year, with Fifa having folded the October window into September, Pulisic didn’t have the chance. On Sunday, his pre-match music was O Generosa, the Serie A anthem, which he observed with a soft smile.

Mark Twain’s first visit to Italy left him describing the country as “a vast museum of magnificence and misery”, and it’s a fitting summary of Pulisic’s three-plus years with Milan. The magnificence: 43 goals and 25 assists in 138 appearances. The misery: just one trophy since he arrived in July 2023, a 2025 Supercoppa Italia held in Saudi Arabia.

• Buffalo Bills 37–34 Los Angeles Rams (OT)

• Allen was 0-7 in overtime coming into game

• Quarterback rushes for 121 yards on wild night

• Rams have field goal blocked in overtime

Josh Allen accounted for 331 total yards and two touchdowns, Tyler Bass made a 45-yard field goal with 1:55 left in overtime shortly after Greg Rousseau blocked the Rams’ own attempt, and the Buffalo Bills outlasted Los Angeles for a 37-34 victory on Monday night.

Allen passed for 210 yards and rushed for 121 more for the Bills (4-1), who rallied to win a frantic game befitting the teams with the NFL’s last two MVPs at quarterback. Allen won an overtime game for the first time in his career – he had previously been 0-7 – by besting Matthew Stafford, who passed for 383 yards and three touchdowns.

• NLCS Game 2: LA Dodgers 4-7 Milwaukee Brewers

• Reigning champions 2-0 down in best-of-seven series

• Guardians take Game 1 of ALCS against Rays

William Contreras hit a tying homer in the fifth and singled home the go-ahead run an inning later as the Milwaukee Brewers defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers 7-4 on Monday in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series.

Four relievers combined to retire the last 15 Dodgers batters in order as the Brewers took a 2-0 lead over the two-time defending World Series champions in this best-of-seven series, which heads to Los Angeles for Game 3 on Wednesday.

• Ernest Jones IV was not wearing helmet during incident

• Linebacker will miss game against Commanders

San Francisco 49ers linebacker Dre Greenlaw was suspended for one game after headbutting Seattle’s Ernest Jones IV in the wake of a late hit on the Seahawks sideline.

The NFL issued the suspension on Monday, saying the headbutt of a player without a helmet during Sunday’s 32-29 win against Seattle was “contrary to the generally understood principles of sportsmanship.”

• NBA star wore jersey during 1998 NBA finals

• Jordan memorabilia has attracted huge attention

A jersey worn by Michael Jordan during the 1998 NBA finals has been sold for $14m, an auction house announced on Monday, in what it said is the highest price ever paid for a piece of basketball memorabilia.

Hunt Auctions said Miami real estate investor Ron Firman had bought the jersey in a private sale. Jordan wore the red jersey in Game 2 of the 1998 finals; he and the Chicago Bulls beat the Utah Jazz that night to even the series at a game apiece. Jordan and the Bulls would go on to win the series in six games, the sixth and final title of his Hall of Fame career. That 1997-98 season was the subject of the Last Dance documentary series, which became a hit on Netflix in 2020.

It’s not just that the club’s recent charges themselves are unprecedented – it’s the language used to describe them too

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The language of football is a fine and highly nuanced dialect. The majority of people involved in the game speak it with a high degree of sophistication. Minor deviations from the familiar, almost imperceptible to outsiders, can set off alarm bells: what’s really going on there? Why isn’t he happy? What’s she hinting at? But it’s an argot developed to talk about football, and when applied to other subjects, it can sound extremely jarring.

Erling Haaland is one of the brighter, more engaging players. There’s an appealing quirkiness to him that suggests he has a higher-than-usual level of self-awareness. He doesn’t mind stepping outside the norms, being a bit different. But consider his assessment of Manchester City’s 3-0 win at Liverpool on Sunday.

After three straight game-winning drives, Cleveland’s quarterback was sacked eight times in a dismal defeat that punctured the hype surrounding him

I guess the New York Jets didn’t get the memo. This was supposed to be a Deshaun Watson lovefest. A day where, much to the chagrin of those of us with a moral compass and a functional memory, football fans worldwide could declare Watson was “so back” and that the Browns were in some blinkered, alternate universe, a Super Bowl contender. No such luck, as the Browns looked like the Browns – reminding an otherwise jubilant city of Cleveland that they are trapped in the sports equivalent of the Backrooms.

Limping along for 155 passing yards and one touchdown, Watson fell to Earth harder than David Bowie in a Nicolas Roeg film (yes, I just watched the Dennis Miller Monday Night Football documentary on HBO). He completed fewer than 50% of his passes and ended the day with a 69.6 passer rating. I should also probably mention he got sacked eight times. Yes, eight times. EIGHT TIMES. He only completed seven more passes than he received punishing hits behind the line of scrimmage. It was a performance NBC NFL writer Patrick Daugherty called “unspeakably bad.” Actually, I think the performance was very much speakable, as I’ve demonstrated here. Stick around for another 400 words.

• Turang homers off Skubal as Brewers take Game 1

• Lara’s fifth-inning single breaks 1-1 deadlock

• Milwaukee end seven-game playoff skid against LA

Brice Turang homered off Tarik Skubal and Milwaukee’s bullpen shut down the Los Angeles Dodgers after Jacob Misiorowski’s taxing outing, sending the Brewers to a 2-1 victory in the National League Championship Series opener on Sunday night.

Luis Lara hit a tiebreaking single off Skubal in the fifth inning as Milwaukee took Game 1 in the first NLCS matchup of 100-win teams since the Cincinnati Reds eliminated the Philadelphia Phillies in 1976. The Brewers had lost seven consecutive postseason games against the Dodgers, including a sweep in last year’s NLCS.

• Daniels’ late scramble leaves Washington unable to kick

• Giants rally from 14 down but settle for 27-27 draw

• Maye throws four TDs as Patriots rout Raiders 45-17

• Jaguars stun Eagles in London with one second left

Jayden Daniels took off on an ill-advised scramble in the closing seconds of overtime with the Commanders in field-goal range, and Washington were unable to stop the clock before time expired, settling for a 27-27 tie with the New York Giants on Sunday after both teams made critical mistakes in the extra period.

Washington (1-3-1) got the ball with two minutes left in overtime when Daron Payne stripped the ball from Cam Skattebo with the Giants in range for a game-winning field goal. Daniels quickly moved the Commanders to the Giants’ 24-yard line, but with 12 seconds left and Washington out of timeouts, he held on to the ball and went down for no gain. Washington lined up to spike the ball, but the clock ticked down to zero and coach Dan Quinn ripped off his headset in disgust.

The unbeaten 49ers edged the Super Bowl champion Seahawks 32-29 after the Packers thrashed the Bears 31-7 in week five of the NFL

TOUCHDOWN! Bengals 7-0 Dolphins 14:03, 1st quarter

J Burrow to M Gesicki for four yards

J Croskey-Merritt 33 yard rush

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.