Dallas Cowboys coach Jason Garrett said Wednesday that team officials have spoken about quarterback Tony Romo’s role next season. As one of the league’s top trade targets, speculation has been swirling about Romo’s status ever since he lost the starting job to rookie Dak Prescott last season.
Dallas Cowboys coach Jason Garrett said Wednesday that team officials have spoken about quarterback Tony Romo’s role next season. As one of the league’s top trade targets, speculation has been swirling about Romo’s status ever since he lost the starting job to rookie Dak Prescott last season.
Chicago White Sox first baseman Jose Abreu told a Miami federal jury Wednesday that he ate a chunk of a fake passport while flying to the U.S. to cover up his illegal travel as part of a Cuban ballplayer smuggling operation. Abreu testified he ordered a beer on an Air France flight from Haiti to Miami and slowly consumed the page containing a false name and his photo. Abreu said he traveled illegally because he was worried he would miss an October 2013 deadline and lose the $68 million contract he later signed with Chicago.
Jamaal Charles needs a new home. The Eagles want to add depth to the running back position. Given the tailback’s familiarity with Doug Pederson, the match makes almost too much sense
Yet to pitch in an exhibition, Chris Sale threw a two-inning simulated game Wednesday morning in preparation for his first spring training action for the Boston Red Sox. While the Red Sox traveled to Sarasota to face the Orioles, Sale faced teammates Dan Butler and Steve Selsky, with catcher Sandy Leon behind the plate and David Price and Steven Wright watching from the third base dugout. After two innings, Sale threw to three additional batters as pitching coach Carl Willis, vice president of pitching development and assistant pitching coach Brian Bannister looked on along with former Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield.
MEXICO CITY – Two potted palm trees bookend the dais inside the interview room at the WGC-Mexico Championship, each about 4 feet tall. They are purely decorative, but they’re also a reminder that the best golfers in the world are hardly the only towering figures at Club de Golf Chapultepec. The real stars may end up being the 6,038 trees that define the course. There are ball-eaters and shot-blockers, pines and eucalyptus—as well as white cedars, cypress and roughly 25 other species that create narrow chutes and put a premium on accuracy. “It is very narrow,” world No. 1 Dustin Johnson said before detailing his strategy this week of severely curtailing his use of the driver, normally his best club in the bag. In playing the back nine Tuesday, he hit 2-iron or even less club than that on every tee but one. Could a long hitter like Johnson theoretically take the driver right out of the bag, a la Phil Mickelson? It was mentioned as a joke, but Johnson said, “Yeah, I mean I really could.” Chapultepec is not long at 7,330 yards, but it’s hardly defenseless. One look at the sight lines off the tees will tell you that. Many tee shots look like golf’s answer to kicking field goals. Rickie Fowler, who is coming off a win at last week’s Honda Classic, echoed Johnson’s sentiments, explaining that discretion will be the better part of valor with so much bark around. “There’s only going to be a few drivers,” Fowler said. “For the most part I’m going to play fairly conservative off the tees. The big thing here is getting the ball in play.” Although Dustin Johnson seemed unperturbed, as usual, some of the game’s biggest hitters have looked pensive if not outright worried as they try to come up with a plan B. “It’s kind of an old‑style tree‑lined golf course,” said Henrik Stenson, who admitted that such tracks aren’t a natural fit for his game. “It’s a bit tricky.” “It’s going to be about precision this week,” Adam Scott said. “There’s certainly—although it’s short, the penalty for missing a driver is quite severe. Trees.” If it seems like there’s a lot of greenery on the course now, consider that over the last two years the club has gotten rid of roughly 400 trees, part of a long-term plan to improve overall agronomic conditions. This, according to head pro Manuel Inman, who says the club will keep removing trees gradually over the minimum seven years this WGC will be here. Still, Inman says, “It could be the most trees on a course some of these guys have ever seen. If you miss a fairway, you’re in jail. It’s a lot of punching out.” That is, if the ball doesn’t fly into the trees and get stuck in there, the way Lee Westwood’s memorably did at the 2012 U.S. Open at Olympic Club, leaving Westwood looking like a frustrated birdwatcher as he searched for his missing orb with a giant pair of binoculars. An old adage has it that trees are 90 percent air, but just as that’s not the case at Olympic Club, it’s not the case here, either. If anything, Chapultepec feels like it’s 90 percent trees. “The trees are really thick,” Inman says. “Dense,” Fowler says of the foliage. “When you hit a limb,” Inman adds, “it is dropping down, not going through.” And so there will be many strategies this week—some devised in order to cope with the 7,500-foot elevation, others concocted to try and neutralize the roller-coaster greens. The trees, though, will necessitate that all players, regardless of style, start with one strategy above all … Get it in play.
Mike Glennon is set to hit free agency next month. Even though the Tampa Bay Buccaneers would love to have him back, two teams have already emerged as potential landing spots.
Nashville has made one final move at the trade deadline, trying to tweak a team that has piled up the NHL’s third-most points since Jan. 1. The Predators have added forward P.A. Parenteau from the New Jersey Devils for the price of a sixth-round pick.
The real killer of two men in a hail of gunfire at a stoplight was not former NFL star Aaron Hernandez but rather the government’s star witness in his double murder trial, his attorney charged Wednesday in opening statements, revealing the defense strategy for the first time. Jose Baez, who is known for winning an acquittal for Florida mom Casey Anthony, said prosecutors want to convict his client so badly that they made ”a deal with the devil,” referring to Hernandez’s former friend Alexander Bradley. Bradley has said he was with Hernandez the night of the shooting and is scheduled to testify against him, but Baez counters that Bradley fatally shot Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado over a drug deal.
Browns executive Sashi Brown has been in touch with suspended wide receiver Josh Gordon since he entered rehab, but does not know if the troubled former Pro Bowler will apply to the NFL for reinstatement. Gordon’s business manager, Michael Johnson, told ESPN that the 25-year-old will appeal to Commissioner Roger Goodell to allow him back in the league. League spokesman Brian McCarthy declined comment on Gordon’s situation.
