Sports Illustrated Kids November/December 2022

RUMP BALL September 25, 2022 Miami Gardens, Florida Many cheeky jokes were made following the Dolphins-Bills game, and Thomas Morstead was the butt of most of them. The Miami punter booted the ball into the backside of teammate Trent Sherfield. The ball went out of the rear end zone, er, the end zone, resulting in a safety. (Miami still won 21–19.) The bottom line: Always look before you kick. JUST LIKE OLD TIMES October 19, 2022 Brooklyn, New York After missing all of last season with a foot injury, Zion Williamson was back to his old self in the Pelicans’ season opener. The big man dominated in the paint, scoring 25 points and grabbing nine rebounds. Williamson also added three assists and four steals as New Orleans made a statement by pummeling the Brooklyn Nets,…

FINALLY A HOT TAKE about chess. Wait, wait, wait … don’t turn the page! It’s also about cheating and poker and baseball! (I’m filling in for Kip this issue.) Five years after the Astros lowered the bar for crude cheating with their trash-can-banging scheme, accusations of high-tech subterfuge have rocked the world’s brainiest sports. Unlike with the Astros, however, these scandals started before any shocking revelations have come to light. What’s the right thing to do when you think someone’s cheating, but you can’t prove it? In September, Magnus Carlsen, the chess world champion, pulled out of the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis after losing in the third round to American Hans Niemann. The Norwegian grandmaster had never left a tournament in such a manner and addressed his departure by tweeting a…

THE MONTREAL CANADIENS are all over hockey’s record books, and now they’ve claimed another historic first: a player whose last name starts with an “X”. Rookie Arber Xhekaj earned that distinction when he made his debut against Toronto on Oct. 12. Xhekaj (pronounced jack-EYE) is of Albanian descent and has earned the nickname “Wifi” from teammates who think his name looks like a random string of letters used in an internet password. The NFL got its first X-Man in 2019 in Giants outside linebacker Oshane Ximines. The only such major league baseball player was Leovigildo Xiqués, who played 43 games in the Negro Leagues in the 1940s. That leaves the NBA as the only remaining big-four league without an X surname. The Mavericks drafted Xue Yuyang (in China the family name customarily…

November 6 Las Vegas Aces forward Dearica Hamby turns 29. 8 The New York Yankees’ Giancarlo Stanton is 33 years old. 12 San Jose Shark Tomáš Hertl celebrates his 29th birthday. 20 American swimmer Haley Anderson turns 31. 22 Kansas City Chiefs receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster is 26 years old. December 5 Real Sociedad striker Alexander Sørloth turns 27 years old. 7 New York Mets first baseman Pete Alonso is 28 years old. 14 OL Reign and USWNT right back Sofia Huerta turns 30. 20 Sacramento Kings point guard De’Aaron Fox is 25 years old. 30 Tiger Woods turns 47. DAVID SHERMAN/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES (HAMBY); STAN SZETO/USA TODAY SPORTS (HERTL); MICHAEL HICKEY/GETTY IMAGES (SMITH-SCHUSTER); ERICK W. RASCO (ALONSO); ROSS KINNAIRD/GETTY IMAGES (WOODS)…

K_T MISSING A LETTER Eagle-eyed Twitter users thought Karl-Anthony Towns misrepresented his performance in the word-guessing game Wordle when he had apparently entered “UC_ER” en route to getting “ULCER.” KAT exonerated himself with a video screenshot. PERMABANNED After the Carlsen accusations (see page 9), Chess.com banned Hans Niemann and released a 72-page report that concluded he “likely cheated in more than 100 online chess games.” Niemann is suing Carlsen and the site for $100 million. FISH TALE Before this story went viral in October, the question How do you cheat in fishing? was quite a stumper. (The fish don’t usually want to collude.) Then a tournament director in Ohio found weights inside some suspiciously heavy walleye. AGHAST FROM THE PAST Comments from Phil Mickelson this year led Callaway to put its sponsorship of him “on pause.” So…

U.S. OPEN September 11 Typically only the best ball kids work the men’s final at the U.S. Open. So why was I there?! Granted, I was hanging in pretty well up to this point—crouching, rolling, running, and scooping. Thankfully Carlos Alcaraz was celebrating his victory and didn’t see my failure.” WNBA FINALS September 18 “Is there a better one-two punch in all of sports than A’ja Wilson and Kelsey Plum? Maybe Buzz and Whitney. That’s why Riquna Williams brought us to the celebration.” SUPER BOWL LVI February 13 “Only the best offcials get the call to work the Super Bowl. And this year, the best offcials all got sick after eating the same soup. So Liz and I had to fill in. I don’t think we’ll be invited back.” SCHWARBER EXPLODES April 24 "Kyle Schwarber wasn’t too happy with the ump’s…