Front Row Seat: Padres finish off Rockies before heading to NY

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San Diego FC misses opportunities in 3-1 loss to Minnesota United

SDFC played well but not well enough against one of the best teams in Major League Soccer this year.

Section 1904John Gennaro

San Diego Padres

Padres go up big, hold on to beat Rockies - San Diego Union-Tribune
The march toward the inevitable stalled for a time this month, but the Padres got back to taking advantage of the opportunity they were given.

For that, despite winning just six of their past 14 games, they could be celebrating a second straight postseason berth by Friday.

Seven games in 10 days against one of the worst teams in the history of Major League Baseball helped get the Padres back on track.

Padres, amid a facial-hair movement, appear to be regaining momentum - The Athletic
However friendly their recent schedule had been, this much was objectively true as the Padres packed for the final road trip of the regular season: Since Merrill debuted a newly shaved goatee on Sept. 6, San Diego has won six of the nine games that followed a 2-9 skid. Those victories include a series decider on Sept. 7, when Sheets boarded the team bus to Coors Field with a fresh goatee.

“(Merrill) came in, and I was like, ‘You know, I’ll follow suit,’ ” Sheets said. “And then once we both showed up, we were like, ‘All right, we’re going to try to see how many we can get.’ ”

San Diego FC / San Diego Wave FC

Match Recap: San Diego FC Falls 3-1 to Minnesota United FC at Snapdragon Stadium - San Diego FC
San Diego FC (17-8-5, 56 pts) fell 3-1 against Minnesota United FC (15-6-9, 54 pts) at Snapdragon Stadium on Saturday night. Despite the loss, SDFC remains atop the Western Conference standings.

SDFC captain Jeppe Tverskov scored for the home side in stoppage time to prevent the shutout loss after Minnesota had found the net with goals by Anthony Markanich (74th minute), Carlos Harvey (77th minute) and Nectarios Triantis (90+2).

San Diego Wave FC Falls 2-0 to Gotham FC at Snapdragon Stadium - San Diego Wave FC
After an even first 45 minutes, Gotham broke through right before halftime. A misplaced pass out of San Diego’s backline was intercepted by Geyse and fell directly to Esther González. The Spanish international and current Golden Boot leader calmly finished to give the visitors a 1-0 lead heading into halftime.  

San Diego pressed forward in search of an equalizer, but Gotham doubled their advantage in the 79th minute. Jaelin Howell delivered a ball into the box that found Jaedyn Shaw at the penalty spot. Shaw met the ball with a diving header, sending it low to the far post past Kailen Sheridan to seal the 2-0 victory.  

WNBA Playoffs

2025 WNBA playoffs winners and losers: Lynx, Aces score huge wins; Liberty lose Breanna Stewart to injury - CBS Sports
Their Big Three of Stewart, Ionescu and Jones only started and finished 13 of 44 games together; the Liberty won all 13. Unfortunately, they weren't able to add another tally to either column on Sunday. Even though they escaped with an overtime win, Stewart left with an apparent left knee injury with two minutes to play in the extra frame. 

WNBA playoffs: New York Liberty locked in during 'winning time,' but health continues to hamper their potential - Yahoo Sports
New York outscored Phoenix, 11-4, in the final five minutes. But it might have cost them more. Stewart banged hard into Satou Sabally, who was called for a foul, on that overtime baseline drive and stayed on the court for a few minutes, clutching her left knee. A bone bruise in her right knee sidelined her most of August as the Liberty plummeted from No. 2 to No. 5 in the standings.

The three-time champion and defensive linchpin was emotional on the bench with a brace on her knee. Brondello said immediately after the game there was no update on her heading into Game 2.

Eight Teams, Eight Questions: A Guide To The 2025 WNBA Playoffs - Defector
Will the Aces lose a basketball game ever again? The last time the Aces lost a game, they really made it count: a 111-58 loss to Minnesota, the largest margin of defeat in a home game in WNBA history. This happened more than a month ago. The Aces evidently got all the losing out of their system in one night and will now enter the playoffs on a 16-game win streak. A’ja Wilson remains the model of consistent excellence, but things around her seemed to click at the trade deadline, when the team dealt for NaLyssa Smith and brought her into the starting lineup in place of the offensively challenged Kiah Stokes. Head coach Becky Hammon also moved struggling offseason acquisition Jewell Loyd to the bench midseason, at Loyd’s suggestion.

Odds & Ends

The Winners and Losers of the NFL Week 2 - The Ringer
And as plenty of people pointed out online on Sunday, center Cam Jurgens is lining up over the football, which is considered the neutral zone, nearly every time Philadelphia runs its signature play, as you can see in the video above. The league tried hard, but failed, to ban the tush push in the offseason, and now, thanks to its inability to officiate the play correctly just two games into this season, the discourse about the ethics and efficacy of the push is back.

Joe Burrow reportedly needs toe surgery, will miss at least three months due to injury - Yahoo Sports
The Cincinnati Bengals will be without quarterback Joe Burrow for the majority of the 2025 NFL season. Burrow will reportedly undergo surgery on his toe and miss at least three months of action due to the injury, according to ESPN's Adam Schefter.

Burrow sustained the injury during the team's Week 2 game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. After being sacked by Arik Armstead in the second quarter, Burrow remained down on the turf and appeared to be grabbing near his ankle. He was treated on the field and taken to the sideline medical tent.

Round-by-round: Crawford tops Canelo, makes boxing history - ESPN
Terence Crawford moved up two divisions to challenge Canelo Alvarez and scored the biggest win of his career, a unanimous decision victory to win the undisputed super middleweight championship on Saturday at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.

Crawford, a four-division world champion, put his name in the history books by becoming the first men's fighter in the four-belt era (since 2007) to become an undisputed champion in three weight classes (junior welterweight, welterweight and super middleweight).

#71 It's anti woman to be anti mom - The Bandwagon
Much is made about how sports are sexist, as a cultural force and an industry. Not offering paternity leave is sexist. It’s premised on retrograde assumptions about gender roles. Not offering maternity leave is something else — it’s either anti-family or anti-women and, considering the social conservatism of sports teams, I think we can rule out that the intent is to be anti-family. Not offering maternity leave, then is anti-women1. Which, I know is the same thing as saying it’s misogynistic but I don’t want to obscure the simplicity of this stance behind fraught buzzwords. It’s as straightforward as hanging a NO GIRLS ALLOWED sign on the door.

Except, it’s more targeted than that: NO WOMEN WHO ARE IN THE BABY-HAVING STAGE OF LIFE, WHICH INCIDENTALLY OFTEN HAPPENS TO ALIGN WITH A CRITICAL CAREER JUNCTURE IN ORDER TO MAKE THE JUMP FROM JUNIOR ROLES TO LEADERSHIP POSITIONS.

Very young women might not be impacted by such a policy. Nor very accomplished women who have proven their bonafides and, perhaps, built a family elsewhere. No, it’s specifically anti-women advancing within the organization. That’s what rankles.

Sports in Charlie Kirk’s America - Sports Politika
While the moment of silence may have been well-intentioned, the NFL’s decision to honour Kirk ultimately sidelined those most harmed by his racism: the Black players who make up nearly two-thirds of the league, along with the coaches and staff across teams and at league headquarters.

In the past, Kirk has mocked affirmative action and claimed “prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people” in urban centres. He called Martin Luther King, Jr. “awful,” and “not a good person,” while insisting, “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.”

The Winners and Losers of the 77th Emmy Awards - The Ringer
Both new and old schools of television were honored at Sunday night’s ceremony, but ‘The Bear’ and ‘The White Lotus’ were still left in the dust

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