From monkey elixir to fentanyl: Tyler Skaggs’s death is merely a chapter in baseball’s 136-year drug fix

As the LA Angels stand trial over the pitcher’s death in the quiet shadow of the World Series fanfare across town, a sport confronts a truth practically as old as the game itselfBefore steroids, before amphetamines and before fentanyl, baseball’s first documented chemical dalliance came from monkey testicles. In August 1889, a worn-down pitcher for the Pittsburgh Alleghenys named James Francis “Pud” Galvin, so nicknamed for his once-devastating ability to reduce hitters to “pudding”, was in need of a spark. He was 32, his right arm a rubbery relic of nearly 5,000 innings pitched, his career on the fade. Then came salvation in a syringe. A French-Mauritian doctor by the name of Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard published a paper – The Effects Produced on Man by the Subcutaneous Injections of a Liquid Obtained from the Testicles of Animals – in which he claimed that a few drops of an extract sourced from dogs and guinea pigs might well make ordinary men stronger and more virile

The Ravens’ doomsday clock inches towards midnight. Will their season survive?

The Ravens’ season is on the brink. Coming out of a bye week, Baltimore are 1-5 after a miserable start partly because their roster has been ripped apart by injuries. Next up are the Chicago Bears, who have come into some form. Beat the Bears, and the Ravens could turn the year around. If they lose, and they fall to 1–6, their season is effectively over, a huge disappointment for a team with genuine Super Bowl aspirations a few months ago

Premiership Women’s Rugby gears up to to surf England’s World Cup wave

New season given massive boost by Rugby World Cup that brought an England triumph, unprecedented attendances and a huge rise in TV viewersThe Premiership Women’s Rugby season begins at the Stoop on Friday, just across the road and almost a month on from England’s Rugby World Cup victory against Canada in the final at Twickenham.One of the most famous images of that day was the Red Roses captain, Zoe Aldcroft, jumping around with the trophy, an image her teammate Meg Jones has now had tattooed on her leg, and the Gloucester-Hartpury lock will be aiming to replicate the pictures if her club side defend the title they have won for the past three seasons come the PWR final on 28 June.Women’s rugby fever gripped England throughout the tournament with all 16 teams well supported before the Red Roses’ crowning moment. Attendance numbers and TV viewership was unlike anything the sport had enjoyed before and the hope is that interest will translate to the PWR. On an international level, the interest has not dimmed, with more than 30,000 tickets sold for England’s Six Nations opener against Ireland at Twickenham in April

‘Long overdue’: England players finally follow in footsteps of giants | Aaron Bower

The pantheon of players who have represented England and Great Britain in the past 22 years is a modern‑day who’s who of the game. Sam Burgess, James Graham, Sean O’Loughlin, James Roby … the list is long, storied and impressive.You could argue there is plenty dividing those players, not least their ferocious rivalries at club level in Super League. But the one thing they have in common is that they were never able to represent their country in the most intense series of them all, the Ashes. Since 2003 the concept has been on hiatus but, finally, on Saturday it returns in some style

Fide to investigate Kramnik over attacks on Naroditsky as chess reels from player’s death

The International Chess Federation (Fide) said on Wednesday it is examining former world champion Vladimir Kramnik’s public attacks on Daniel Naroditsky, the American grandmaster whose sudden death at 29 has stunned the chess world and laid bare fissures in the sport’s digital age.Naroditsky, among the most visible faces of chess’s pandemic-era renaissance, was one of the most popular players and teachers of his generation, a Stanford-educated prodigy who won the Under-12 world championship, became a grandmaster at 18 and went on to amass more than 800,000 followers across Twitch and YouTube. Known by his nickname Danya, the California-born Naroditsky’s mix of patience, humor, generosity and gift for communication made him a standard-bearer of chess’s online boom, helping to bring vast new audiences to a centuries-old pastime.In recent years, the explosion of online chess has fueled a parallel surge in cheating accusations, as players gained access to powerful computer engines capable of suggesting perfect moves in real time. The ecosystem became both democratized and combustible

Australia beat England by six wickets at Women’s Cricket World Cup – as it happened

I’ll leave you with Raf Nicholson’s match report. Goodnight!Yeah, very happy. The spinners did a fantastic job with the ball, we had a bit of a shaky start with the bat but then Bels and Ash were just world-class. It was clinical. I feel for Bels a bit, not getting a hundred – she thoroughly deserved it