— Rays 7, Guardians 3
Tampa Bay wins its third American League championship.
Diaz/Caminero homered for the Rays.
Freddy Peralta got 16 outs, will face his old team in World Series.
Rays-Brewers World Series starts Friday in Milwaukee.
— Tampa Bay DH/1B Yandy Diaz has batted over 700 times this season, and hasn’t challenged any called strikes against him. None.
— 49ers 23, Commanders 17
49ers first two drives: 17 plays, 136 yards, 14 points.
San Francisco led 20-3 at halftime.
49ers were 7-14 on third down, Washington 3-12.
49ers have converted 34 of 64 third down plays.
Commanders in first half: 17 plays, 72 yards, 3 points.
Washington had ball in SF territory in last minute, but didn’t score.
Washington ran the ball 17 times for only 53 yards.
QB Daniels threw ball for 300 yards, two TD’s.
— Eagles QB Jalen Hurts is expected to miss the rest of the season; he has multiple blood clots in his lungs. Hurts has deep vein thrombosis and bilateral pulmonary emboli, meaning a blood clot traveled from his legs to his lungs- treatment will take at least three months.
— Rams had lot of guys get hurt Sunday:
WR Davante Adams (hamstring) is out 8-10 weeks
K Blake Grupe tore his ACL
NT Poona Ford (ruptured triceps) is out for the year
DT Kobie Turner (groin) will miss several weeks
— Indianapolis Colts fired GM Chris Ballard Monday, after they lost at home to Tennessee; Colts are 2-4 so far this season.
Colts are 58-64 in regular season, 0-1 in playoff games since QB Andrew Luck abruptly retired seven years ago; they were 4-4 in playoff games with Luck playing under center.
— NFL divisional trends:
NFC East: 6-9 ATS in non-divisional games.
NFC North: 6-2 ATS as non-divisional road favorites.
NFC South: 1-9 ATS in non-divisional home games; 5-2 as road underdogs.
NFC West: 1-4 ATS as non-divisional road favorites.
AFC East: 7-1 ATS in non-divisional home games.
AFC North: 9-8 ATS in non-divisional games.
AFC South: 3-5 ATS non-divisional home games.
AFC West: 5-2 ATS in non-divisional home games.
— Famous birthdays, October 20th:
Juan Marichal, 89
Noland Smith, 83
Keith Hernandez, 73
Dave Krieg, 68
Juan Gonzalez, 57
Herman Moore, 57
Eddie Jones, 55
Jose Soriano, 28
Kenneth Walker, 26
— College football conference trends (in league games):
AAC- home favorites 9-5 ATS, home underdogs 5-2
ACC- home favorites 4-7 ATS, home underdogs 11-6
Big 18- home favorites 3-14 ATS
Big X- favorites 12-9 ATS
C-USA- home teams 11-5 ATS
MAC- home favorites 9-4 ATS
MW- home teams 8-7 ATS
Pac-8- home favorites 4-2 ATS
SEC- underdogs 18-15 ATS
Sun Belt- home underdogs 1-6 ATS
— 5-1 New Mexico Lobos have 21 takeaways this season, most in the country; they are +17 in turnovers. Their only loss was 14-6 at Oklahoma.
— Hawai’i’s football team has fifteen players from Bishop Gorman HS in Las Vegas; they have 11 more players from St Louis HS in Hawai’i.
— On a college football Saturday, you can bet on which team will score the first touchdown of the day. This week, it was the Pitt Panthers who scored the first TD, but they wound up getting upset by Boston College.
— If you like college/semi-pro basketball, YouTube shows some of the exhibition games that are being played around the country. Saw Syracuse play couple of games, saw St John’s-Drexel and several other games. College basketball starts for real November 2nd.
— A’s hired 31-year old Taylor Smith as president of baseball operations; he previously worked for Tampa Bay and the Red Sox. A’s play one more season in Sacramento, then its off to their new ballpark in Las Vegas.
— It isn’t a good thing when a team’s CEO is apologizing to fans. Tennessee Titans CEO Burke Nihill had this to say late last week:
“The first thing I would say back to the fans is just that we’re sorry. There’s nobody in this building that doesn’t feel … a sense of grief about it, because not only are we fans of the team as well, but we feel the sense of responsibility to deliver. And we’ve let our fans down because football is supposed to be fun.”
Titans then went to Indianapolis and upset the Colts. Titans have been firing a lot of people in their front office the last few years. Some stability might help.
