The 3 plays in sports everybody will be talking about today
Good morning! Here are the plays everybody will be talking about on Friday:
Serena Williams loses on a double fault. Serena's run at the U.S. Open once again comes to an end in the semifinals and the match was perfectly encapsulated by match point. Williams simply beat herself, double-faulting to give Karolina Pliskova a straight-sets win. The loss also cost Serena her No. 1 ranking, which now goes to Angelique Kerber (read more here).
Cam Newton had a rough night. The Carolina Panthers lost the season opener to the Denver Broncos when they shanked a field goal as time expired. Prior to that, the Broncos had several questionable hits on Newton and only one was called. Amazingly, that one was waved off by an offsetting foul by the Panthers. The worst of the hits came when Newton approached the line of scrimmage, threw a pass, and Brandon Marshall clearly launched himself and hit Newton. Not only was it late, but it was clearly launching and it was clearly helmet-to-helmet. Somehow, there was no flag.
This is how you score 2 runs on a foul ball and get the other manager ejected. The Astros are in the thick of the Wild Card race and every game counts. So it hurts even more when an umpire misses what seems like an obvious foul ball and instead rules it a wild pitch allowing two Cleveland players to score. Astros manager AJ Hinch would eventually be ejected and the umpires were not allowed to review the play, so it stood. They eventually lost the game 10-7.
The Shaq-looks-small bonus. The newest members of the Basketball Hall of Fame received their jackets on Thursday and Yao Ming enlisted another big man to help put his on. But what is amazing about this scene is just how average-sized Shaquille O'Neal looks standing next to Ming. It is no surprise that Ming is tall. But he is no longer as thin as he was during his playing days and that extra size seemingly emphasizes his height even more. Incredible.