I'm not dead. | | | | | A mural of Fidel Castro playing baseball. (Arturo Pardavila III/Flickr) | | | | |  | “I'm not dead.”
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| | rantnrave:// The affect of FIDEL CASTRO'S death will be felt for days, weeks, and years. This is the dawning of a new age for CUBA, even if Castro had been out of office for years, and we don’t know yet how it will effect the sports world. Opening relations between the UNITED STATES and Cuba seemed to be an opportunity for a normal path for players from the island and to MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL. They would no longer need to cross shark-infested waters or be smuggled over by scrupulous agents. But with DONALD TRUMP taking office and Castro dead, who knows what it will mean going forward. Will Cuba care as much about being a regional and international sports power, either? Castro had made that a personal goal… Even before Castro’s death, his presence loomed over the NFL. COLIN KAEPERNICK has been a leader for social justice for African-Americans among NFL players but he made waves Wednesday. Kaepernick had worn a shirt in AUGUST with a picture of MALCOLM X and Castro. This put him on the brunt end of an attack-dog column by the MIAMI HERALD's ARMANDO SALGUERO. Salguero, who was born in Cuba and whose family was broken up during Castro's reign, called Kaepernick an "unrepentant hypocrite" for remarking fondly on Castro's Cuba as opposed to America's prison system. Obviously, anything not explicitly anti-Castro is anathema in MIAMI and this was a difficult topic for subtlety. The 49ERS played there SUNDAY and he was booed. Kaepernick hasn't relented. He says he was just honoring Malcolm X. For some, even Kaepernick's boosters, this could be a case of his message getting lost behind the messenger.… MUHAMMAD ALI went to Cuba and met Castro in 1996. They even boxed a little against each other… Orlando Cruz tried to become the first openly gay boxer to win a world title but he was stopped in the eighth round Saturday night. Worse yet, he was taunted by some in the boxing realm. | | | - Mike Vorkunov, curator |
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 | B/R Mag |
| The man, the myth...and finally, the truth. | | |
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 | ESPN.com |
| "Hockey Night in Canada Punjabi Edition" is more than just the awesome "Bonino! Bonino! Bonino!" calls. The unique TV broadcasts cross language barriers to unite fans and create memories. | | |
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 | Vice Sports |
| Donald Trump's proposed tax breaks for private construction investors and contractors could mean additional multimillion-dollar public subsidies for sports stadiums. | | |
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 | FiveThirtyEight |
| After 11 often grueling games over the past 16 days, the World Chess Championship is right where it started - tied. There is one full-length game remaining. Magnus Carlsen of Norway, the world No. 1 and defending champion, has spent the past two weeks jousting with his challenger, the underdog Sergey Karjakin of Russia. | | |
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 | The Kansas City Star |
| The Kansas City Royals invited the Schwab family to a game in August, promising privacy, and offering a chance to smile. Scott Schwab talked publicly for the first time since his 10-year-old son Caleb’s tragic death on the Verrückt water slide at Schlitterbahn in Kansas City, Kan., to say thanks. | | |
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 | WSJ |
| Professional sumo wrestling takes place only in Japan, but its top practitioners increasingly are Mongolian, who have come to dominate the ancient sport. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| Depending on whom you ask, either KF Trepca or FK Trepca is the rightful owner of the decades of soccer history that came before war tore apart the former Yugoslavia. | | |
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 | The Washington Post |
| James Lebbie won the Nigerian Open while playing for his native Sierra Leone. Then civil war derailed his dreams. | | |
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 | ESPN FC |
| If the second Bruce Arena era lasts only until 2018, the U.S. will soon need another new head coach. Here are some suggested criteria. | | |
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 | MMQB |
| In September, the former NFL coach nearly died from heart failure. This Thanksgiving, Wyche will say a prayer for a man he’s never met-the man whose heart now beats inside his chest. | | |
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 | Sports Illustrated |
| Thanks to Fidel Castro, Cuba is a dysfunctional nation-and a sports power. | | |
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 | Esquire |
| In which the only surviving champions of the People's Revolution finally get together and recapture some of the old magic. | | |
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 | The Miami Herald |
| San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who inspired many across the United States to protest oppression during the playing of the national anthem, defends his choice to wear a T-shirt featuring Fidel Castro and defends the Cuban tyrant in a conference call with Miami media. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| At the University of Alabama, where football reigns supreme, student protesters are calling attention to the program's racial history. | | |
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 | Baseball Prospectus |
| MLB parted ways with the Korn Ferry search firm as it continues to struggle filling front office roles with minority candidates. | | |
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 | HBO Boxing |
| On November 23, 1991, Bert Cooper nearly shocked the world. This is the story of what happened instead. | | |
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| WSJ |
| How Nick Saban, the coach of the No. 1-ranked Alabama football team, has steadily built a business empire throughout the South | | |
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 | Yahoo! Sports |
| The conference championship game was a made-for-television creation designed to solve another made-for-television creation: conference expansion. Then college football conferences kept embarking on that initial made-for-television creation - expanding and expanding - to the point the made-for-television championship game has been ruined by all those made-for-television expansion creations. Confused? | | |
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 | USA Today |
| When everyone is already being paid, winning and comfort level are bigger factors. | | |
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| ESPN.com |
| One metric says Diamondbacks lefty Robbie Ray was below average in 2016. Two others place him in the top half of the league. Welcome to baseball's "Two Watches" era, in which nothing is certain. | | |
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