East

“Baseball is better when you don’t keep score,” Epstein said. “We teach kids from an early age that it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game. It’s time to practice what we preach. This is all about the kids.”

Perennially lost at the bottom of the NBA standings, the Washington Wizards are attempting to get people into the stands anyway they can. This year that has included trying to lose so badly and comically they make their opponents look like Globetrotters, which has drawn legal action from the Washington Generals.

Breakout Knicks guard and Harvard grad Jeremy Lin has given hope to college graduates from around the country that they too can succeed in the NBA, long seen as a place where only men who didn't complete -- or in some cases never even attended -- college could flourish.

"Undrafted, twice-cut, Chinese-American, Christian, couch-surfing, Harvard-graduates don't just fall out of the sky," said an indignant Dolan. "Yao Tebow, as I like to call him, came at a price. My eternal soul, to be specific."

Former Celtics star Larry Bird was voted onto his 34th consecutive Eastern Conference All-Star team earlier this week, barely edging out LeBron James as the starting forward for the team—showing that the legend’s stranglehold on the position may be compromised sometime within the next half century.

"I could hardly believe my eyes when I opened that box and saw the Patriots won again," said a youngster named Sonkwe. "I've never seen a football game in my life, but I've been wearing my Patriots '19-0 Perfect Season' T-shirt every Sunday for four years. It reminds me that anything is possible."

While today’s simulation software accurately mimics Major League games, the Mets recently declined to extend their contract with a cutting-edge computer graphics company for financial reasons, and instead dusted off their old system built by Atari in 1978.