Sports Illustrated

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Legends of the Fall CAN THE Dodgers break their 31-year championship drought? Will the Astros take their second World Series in three years? What surprise team will crash the Fall Classic? Go to SI.com for comprehensive coverage, including power rankings of all the playoff teams and a list of the Series matchups we most want to see. What roles will (above, from left) Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman, Houston pitcher Zack Greinke and Dodgers outfielder Cody Bellinger play for their teams? SI’s baseball analysts address the biggest question facing each team and predict how the postseason will play out. PHOTO FINISH Insta Gratification Oklahoma linebacker Kenneth Murray had plenty to celebrate after making nine tackles and a sack during the No. 6 Sooners’ 55–16 drubbing of Texas Tech on Sept. 28, and photographer Greg…

inbox

MEGA-TRUNCATED I love guys like Calvin Johnson. He showed that football was just something he did—something he did very well—but that being a professional athlete was just a piece of who he is. Derek Hollinshead Covina, Calif. (Via Facebook) Barry Sanders deserved better from his team. So did Johnson. Even though both were making the best decision for their families by retiring, the Lions acted as if they’d been scorned. Both players are class acts, and Johnson will soon join Sanders in Canton. Jonathan Taljonick Flint, Mich. (Via Facebook) HISTORY OF TROUBLE There are givers and takers in this world. Steelers fans like myself know what Antonio Brown is all about. He is arguably the best receiver in team history, but to call him a spoiled malcontent and locker-room cancer would be an understatement. Robert Klemko’s story showed just how…

popular demands

BEFORE JAGUARS cornerback Jalen Ramsey left the team to go on paternity leave late last month, he began the process of forcing his way out of northern Florida. It began with Jacksonville’s Week 2 loss to Houston, during which Ramsey was seen arguing on the sideline with coach Doug Marrone. After the game Ramsey asked his agent to formally request a trade, which the cornerback later explained was because of issues “more so with the front office and the organization” than his coach. “Some disrespectful things were said on their end that made me definitely walk out and call my agent,” he said on former NFL wide receiver Nate Burleson’s podcast, 17 Weeks. When that didn’t immediately result in a deal, Ramsey resorted to a little bit of tradecraft by calling…

hopalong cassady 1934–2019

THOUGH HE was the third Ohio State player to win the Heisman Trophy, Howard (Hopalong) Cassady wasn’t above whistling “The Victors,” the fight song of the Buckeyes’ archrival, Michigan. He did it as a coach of the Columbus (Ohio) Clippers to fire up shortstop and Kalamazoo native Derek Jeter. A two-sport star in Columbus, Cassady led OSU to a national title in 1954 and won the Heisman the following year. The speedy back’s nickname was more than a tribute to the iconic fictional cowboy; it actually fit his scampering style. (Before the 1955 Rose Bowl, Cassady met the actor who played his namesake.) When OSU played the Lockbourne Air Force Base baseball team, he befriended the opposing coach: George Steinbrenner, who later hired Cassady as a scout and minor league coach. Cassady’s…

last call

WITH HIS John Wayne gait, push-broom mustache and basso profundo voice, 6' 3" Bruce Bochy cut an imposing figure as a big league manager. It was a humorous lie. The truth and the magic of Bochy were in the deftness of his touch, be it acquiring the deepest trust from his players or wringing the slightest advantage out of a baseball game. Every one of his players was the better for knowing that Bochy was on his side. Only Connie Mack and Bochy held down a big league managing job for 25 uninterrupted years—and Mack owned the team for which he worked for 50 years, the Philadelphia A’s. Bochy’s run with San Diego (1995–2006) and San Francisco (2007–19) ended on his own terms. At age 64, Bochy retires with a career…

on the rise

BROOKE RABOUTOU is just a sophomore at the University of San Diego, but she’s already burnishing her résumé with a new title: Olympic sport climber. “It hasn’t fully sunken in, those words, the meaning of them,” the 18-year-old, who finished ninth overall at August’s world championships, says from her campus dorm. That she is the first American ever to qualify for the Games in sport climbing, which will debut as an Olympic event in Tokyo next summer, “definitely makes it a little crazier,” she says. “It’s hard to know what to think at this point.” Raboutou’s ascent as a climber was virtually preordained. Her parents, Didier and Robyn, are both former world champion climbers, and her older brother, Shawn, 21, is an accomplished outdoor climber as well. About a decade ago Didier…