SI:AM | Baseball’s Biggest Villains Are Back

Plus, the No. 1 seed in the NCAA baseball tournament goes down.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I really need to find time to make it my first Yankees game of the season.

In today’s SI:AM:

⚾ Another blowout win for the Yankees

🏛️ The high school football coach at the center of a Supreme Court case

☘️ A big upset in college baseball

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The Yankees are great. Aaron Judge is even better.

The Evil Empire has returned.

After beating the Cubs yesterday afternoon, 18–4, the Yankees have won 11 of their last 12 and 15 of their last 18. They’re 44–16, 8½ games ahead of the Blue Jays in the division and five games ahead of the Mets for the best record in baseball. Their winning percentage is .733, which, if they could keep it up over the course of a full season, would work out to a ho-hum 119 wins.

So how are they doing it? The story is pretty much the same as when I wrote about the Yankees early last month, but with another 35 games in the books, we can say with more confidence that the results are for real and not just an early-season fluke.

I’ll start in the obvious spot. Aaron Judge is having the best season of his career. He’s currently hitting .318/.391/.686. His slugging percentage and OPS (1.077) are the best in baseball. His 24 home runs, in a season where hitters are complaining about the deadened baseball, are first in the majors by a wide margin (the Mets’ Pete Alonso is second with 18). If he keeps up that pace (one homer every 10.7 plate appearances) he could very well hit 60 dingers.

What makes Judge’s big season even more interesting is the fact that he’s set to become a free agent after this year. And as if his offensive numbers weren’t already driving up his price enough, he’s also seeing more time in centerfield in recent weeks. That’s right, the best player in baseball this season is a 6'7", 285-pound centerfielder who batted leadoff in two games this weekend.

But it’s not just Judge who’s carrying the New York offense. Gleyber Torres is having a rebound season. After hitting nine home runs last season, he already has 12 this year. Anthony Rizzo, Giancarlo Stanton, Josh Donaldson and DJ LeMahieu also boast OPS+ figures above league-average.

There are also two guys whose contributions at the plate come as a total surprise. One is Jose Trevino, who entered the season as the backup catcher behind Kyle Higashioka but has been splitting time more evenly of late. He’s hitting .309/.356/.505 this year, good for a 146 OPS+. (Trevino had a walk-off hit on his late father’s birthday last month and another on his son’s birthday on Friday.) The other surprise is Matt Carpenter, whom the Yankees signed after the Rangers released him from his minor league deal in May. Carpenter has played 10 games for the Yankees this year and picked up eight hits—six of which have been home runs. He’s the only player in Yankees history to have six homers in his first 10 games with the team.

That all adds up to one of the best offenses in the majors. The Yankees are averaging 5.12 runs per game, just a touch behind the Dodgers (5.15) for tops in baseball and have way more home runs (98) than anybody else (the Braves are second with 84). They’re also allowing just 3.0 runs per game, the best in the majors, thanks to an incredibly deep starting rotation and a stingy bullpen. I won’t go through the pitching staff in as much detail as the lineup, but the guys to watch are Nestor Cortes (1.96 ERA in 11 starts) and Clay Holmes (who has allowed just one run in 27 appearances out of the bullpen and may have supplanted the injured Aroldis Chapman as the full-time closer).

Don’t look now, but the Yankees’ crosstown rivals, the Mets, are the only other team with 40 wins this season. Could we be headed for another Subway Series?

The best of Sports Illustrated

In today’s Daily Cover, Greg Bishop explores the Supreme Court case concerning a high school football coach who prayed on the field after games:

“[Joe] Kennedy’s life is now part of the public domain, an emblem to be viewed, utilized and manipulated for others’ aims. He’s a human embodiment of a country that’s deeply divided; a religious movement that’s surging with momentum, even as organized religion becomes increasingly less popular; and, most of all, a powerful right-wing machine many say is employing a timeless division tactic: us vs. them. All morphed a man’s unremarkable existence into an extraordinary one and imbued Kennedy with elusive, far-reaching purpose. He’s no longer just a man. He’s now a symbol, for what his supporters term ‘religious freedom.’”

On the heels of LIV Golf’s first event, Bob Harig weighs in on the uncertain future of pro golf. … With Stephen Curry making a case for his first Finals MVP award, Howard Beck asked voters why no one picked him to win in 2015. … Conor Orr has a list of six NFL teams that could turn things around and make the playoffs this season.

Around the sports world

Top-seeded Tennessee was knocked out of the NCAA baseball tournament by Notre Dame. … Rory McIlroy took a clever shot at LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman after winning the Canadian Open. … Daniel Suárez is the first driver from Mexico to win a NASCAR race. … ESPN’s Joe Tessitore and Timothy Bradley had to apologize after making fun of a boxer who they were unaware had died after a fight. … Eagles rookie Devon Allen, who is making the transition back to football after a career in track, ran the third-fastest 110-meter hurdles ever yesterday. … Commanders defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio deleted his Twitter account after an ignorant post earned him a $100,000 fine.

The top five...

… things I saw yesterday:

5. Kyle Higashioka hitting a home run off of a 35-mph pitch by Frank Schwindel

4. ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian’s report that Joe Maddon got a mohawk haircut the day he was fired.

3. Red Sox outfielder Rob Refsnyder’s diving catch against the Mariners.

2. 16-year-old Olivia Moultrie’s first NWSL goal. (She’s the youngest goalscorer in league history.)

1. Sabrina Ionescu’s triple double. (She’s the the youngest WNBA player with multiple triple doubles and the first to record a triple double in three quarters.)

SIQ 

Giants pitcher Matt Cain threw a perfect game on this day in 2012, striking out 14 Astros hitters in the process. That’s tied for the most strikeouts in a perfect game with which other pitcher?

• Randy Johnson
• Catfish Hunter
• Félix Hernández
• Sandy Koufax

Friday’s SIQ: Who was the youngest player in MLB history, at 15 years, 316 days old?

Answer: Joe Nuxhall. His debut came in the ninth inning of a Reds blowout loss to the Cardinals. Cincinnati was already trailing 13–0 when he entered.

“Jeez God, I was scared to death,” Nuxhall later recalled. “I was throwing the ball all over the damned place.”

He retired two of the first three batters he faced but unraveled from there. After issuing back-to-back walks, Nuxhall was forced to face Stan Musial with the bases loaded. Nuxhall ended up allowing five runs on two hits and five walks while recording only two outs. Manager Bill McKechnie pulled him after three consecutive walks and a single scored five runs. It was his only big league appearance until 1952.

Nuxhall first got on the Reds’ radar as a 14-year-old a year earlier. The team had sent a scout to watch his father, Orville (better known as Ox), in a rec league game and stumbled upon the tall teenager pitching in a different game at the same time. Nuxhall attended a tryout and was offered a contract, though he didn’t sign until February, in order to maintain his amateur status so he could play junior high school basketball.

It was the height of World War II and, combined with the fact that the American and National Leagues were still segregated, teams were struggling to find guys to fill out their rosters. The Reds, meanwhile, insisted that signing Nuxhall had nothing to do with the war shrinking the talent pool.

“Nuxhall is a great prospect,” Cincinnati general manager Warren Giles told the Associated Press at the time. “We are not signing him because of the war situation. Two other clubs wanted him, and he would have been signed, war or no war.”

After Nuxhall got knocked around by the Cardinals, the Reds sent him to the Birmingham Barons of the Southern Association. He made just one appearance for the team, allowing six runs in one inning and made 23 appearances across two levels in 1945 before stepping away from pro baseball to finish school.

After graduation, Nuxhall started working his way through the minor leagues, beginning in Class D Muncie. He pitched well over the ensuing five years, showing the talent that the Reds saw when he was signed as a teenager, and earned a promotion back to the majors in 1952, where he remained for 15 seasons. After retiring, Nuxhall went on to become a popular broadcaster for the Reds until he died of cancer in 2007.

From the Vault: June 13, 2005

Michael J. LeBrecht II/1Duece3 Photography

Given that ESPN just came out with a documentary about the streetball craze of the late 1990s and early ‘00s, it seems like a great time to look back at this cover from ‘05 and the accompanying story about And1.

Alexander Wolff tracks And1’s progression from distributor of a one-off mixtape composed mostly of footage of Rafer Alston, to a full-blown nationwide sensation with a 30-stop coast-to-coast tour. In 2005, according to Wolff, And1 had 165 employees and was raking in $180 million in annual revenue. It all started with that first tape:

“​​And1 punched out 50,000 copies of Volume One and distributed them to so-called ‘influencers’ in the worlds of sports and entertainment, and the blurred borderland between the two: summer league operators, hip-hop moguls, editors at Slam and The Source magazines. That brought a first wave of buzz, whereupon the company cut a deal with the FootAction chain, offering a free tape simply for trying on a pair of And1s. … FootAction moved 200,000 pairs of footwear in three weeks, and BrandWeek named And1 its Guerrilla Marketer of the Year.”

The phenomenon morphed and grew over the ensuing decade to the point that streetball became big business for And1. The players who appeared on the tapes and at And1’s touring events became legitimate celebrities. The company’s market research in 2000 found that streetballers Main Event (Waliyy Dixon) and Hot Sauce (Philip Champion) had better name recognition in Houston than Steve Francis.

Wolff also makes an interesting observation about how the proliferation of the And1 mixtape made the crossover cooler than the dunk. “[A] dozen years ago kids wanted nothing more than to dunk over an opponent; now they'd rather beat ’em off the bounce.” Think about how the game today has trended more toward three-pointers and how guys like Stephen Curry, James Harden and Trae Young have made the long-range dagger the new ultimate highlight.

But if there’s one line from Wolff’s story that illustrates just how big And1 was at the time and how far it’s fallen, it’s this one from the second paragraph: “​​And1 now ranks second only to Nike in the number of NBA players who endorse its products.” Today, after Fred VanVleet dropped And1 in favor of Chinese brand Li-Ning, it looks like there’s only one NBA player repping And1: Norman Powell.

Check out more of SI’s archives and historic images at vault.si.com.

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