Ichiro Suzuki carried himself, especially in recent years, like he’d play forever. He stuck out three full seasons in Miami—in 2016, as a Marlin, he notched his 3,000th hit, which will be a handy trivia answer someday if it isn’t already—and returned to Seattle before this season, with his compensation, tools and playing time all fractions of what they had been at his peak. These are not the pursuits of a man with any desire to depart the game.
But with just a .205/.255/.205 line in the 13 starts and 47 plate appearances he had accumulated to date in 2018, the time evidently came for him to depart indeed, at least for now. Seattle announced on Thursday that effective immediately, the 44-year-old outfielder would “transition” to a role as special assistant to the Mariners’ chairman for the remainder of the season. From that perch he will work with players, coaches and the front office. General manager Jerry Dipoto said, “With Ichiro’s track record of success, his personality, his unique perspective and his work ethic, he is singularly positioned to impact both our younger players and the veterans in the clubhouse. We really don’t want him to change anything that he’s doing right now, with the exception that he will not be playing in games.”
Ichiro’s agent, John Boggs, said that Ichiro is not retiring and may still play in 2019, when the Mariners open the regular season in Japan.
The world has watched Australia’s Kyle Chalmers transition from impactful domestic age group star to national-level threat to Olympic champion in the span of just a few short years. The now-19-year-old enjoyed recent success on his home turf, claiming 4 golds and 1 silver at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, including the men’s 200m free Commonwealth title.
Speaking with the South Australian native recently, SwimSwam was able to dissect Chalmers’ composition to find out what makes him such a magnetic athlete both in and out of the pool. Read on to learn more about 2016 Olympic champion Chalmers.
Whether it’s Mitchell Trubisky or Deshone Kizer or well, any rookie quarterback in the foreseeable future that underwhelms, the new theory for optimism is “Well look at how lost Jared Goff was as a rookie!” There is no doubt that Goff was terrible as a rookie and it’s equally true that he was excellent as a sophomore. Goff pulled off a remarkable worst-to-first campaign, ranking last in ANY/A in 2016 and then first in ANY/A in 2017. He increased his ANY/A average by 4.90, the greatest year-over-year increase in NFL history. That is why he is the exception.
The newest member of the WTA top 32 got there the hard way. Mihaela Buzarnescu, who achieved her latest career-high ranking with a run to the final of last week’s Prague event, where she lost a three-setter to Petra Kvitova, made her professional debut 14 years ago. Despite a dose of junior success, including a junior doubles title at the 2006 US Open, she didn’t crack the top 100 until last October.
This isn’t how tennis career trajectories are supposed to work. Yes, the game is getting older and stars are extending their careers, but Buzarnescu’s year-long winning spree, in which she has climbed from outside the top 400 to inside the top 40, began after her 29th birthday. The closer we look at what the Romanian has achieved, and the age at which she’s doing so, the more unusual it appears.
The former Texas center has as much potential as any prospective NBA draft lottery pick, but to reach it he will have to remake his game and his body. That means tons of jumpers, thousands of calories, intense workouts, and even the random game of chess.
It had taken hard work and dedication to achieve the impossible. But even as Claudio Ranieri and Wes Morgan hoisted the Premier League trophy above their heads in May 2016, the feat still seemed scarcely believable.
Matt Reeves was in the wilderness before he joined the Foxes. A university student who’d been released by Fulham’s academy as a youngster, his hopes of making it to the elite level of the game seemed a faraway dream. Now, just years on from accepting a single day’s work experience, he was part of football’s 10,000-1 fairy tale.
Reeves’ story may not have received the column inches that Messrs Vardy and Mahrez earned, but his ascent to Leicester’s title-winning Head of Fitness and Conditioning was no less noteworthy. And it stands as a great example of how a young coach can reach the top without a big book of contacts to rely upon.
An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the School of Engineering & Applied Science is redefining the notion of a wisdom tooth.
The team is developing a smart-tooth technology that could someday be used to detect early signs of certain diseases in high-risk patients by analyzing saliva or gingival crevicular fluid.
“Salivary-based biosensors have generated a lot of interest because of their potential for wide applications in medicine,” said Erica Lynn Scheller, who trained as a dentist and is now an assistant professor of medicine and of cell biology and physiology in the School of Medicine. “We’re initially working to develop a biological sensor that measures specific peptides active in periodontal disease and that would be used in combination with a wireless device to retrieve that data.”
It will draw on the ingenuity of biomedical engineers, medical scientists and other TAU researchers to raise the overall level of Israeli sports achievement.
Los Angeles FC, New York City FC, Real Salt Lake and Sporting KC probably could have shared the same pair of oversized scissors typically used for ceremonial ribbon cuttings. All four teams have opened state-of-the-art training facilities over the first few months this year, with NYCFC the latest to show off new day-to-day digs last month.
This comes on the back of Atlanta United opening a $60-million facility of its own last year, with a number of other Major League Soccer teams moving into similarly impressive training grounds in recent years. This marks something of a trend sweeping across the North American game.
The NFL and NFL Players Association are teaming up with Cigna to host “Beyond The Physical: A Symposium on Mental Health in Sports” on May 14.
The forum is part of an ongoing effort to promote player health and wellness. On the agenda is a series of panels including NFL players and Legends, mental health organizations, caregivers, medical providers and media personalities. The forum aims to raise awareness around mental health and promote a culture where everyone is encouraged to seek the support they need.
When it comes to treating anxiety in children and teens, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are the bane of therapists’ work.
“With (social media), it’s all about the self-image — who’s ‘liking’ them, who’s watching them, who clicked on their picture,” said Marco Grados, associate professor of psychiatry and clinical director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital. “Everything can turn into something negative … [K]ids are exposed to that day after day, and it’s not good for them.”
Anxiety, not depression, is the leading mental health issue among American youths, and clinicians and research both suggest it is rising. The latest study was published in April in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. Based on data collected from the National Survey of Children’s Health for ages 6 to 17, researchers found a 20 percent increase in diagnoses of anxiety between 2007 and 2012. (The rate of depression over that same time period ticked up 0.2 percent.)
Lab-grown chicken, beef, and duck products are edging toward the U.S. market—despite enduring confusion about how they’ll be regulated. But language buried in a draft spending bill released by a U.S. House of Representatives appropriations panel this week suggests some lawmakers are eager to get rules in place. A one-sentence proposal in the bill would put the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in charge of regulating products made from the cells of livestock or poultry, and instructs the agency to issue rules about how it will oversee their manufacture and labeling.
To the credit of advocates, journalists, and academic researchers, issues of fairness and bias in the algorithmic and data-driven systems that govern our lives have recently taken on an increasing sense of urgency. This heightened awareness allowed people to challenge this work immediately, whether in the room or online.
It’s a conversation that is essential for constructively scrutinizing technology and the role we want it to play in our world.
But the problem here isn’t only one of biased datasets or unfair algorithms and of unintended consequences. It’s also indicative of a more persistent problem of researchers actively reproducing ideas that damage vulnerable communities and reinforce current injustices.
Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik opens up about turning around a once declining franchise, how hockey was always his first love, and his strategy to make sure the team remains successful.
“Say we had the historical data on Bayern Munich – which we do – you could then create the model for when Bayern Munich won the Champions League.”
Paul Power, an AI scientist at STATS, is talking about a technique called ‘ghosting’. In layman’s terms, this involves feeding data in at one end and the computer learning how a football team would respond in any given scenario. You can adjust the settings to reveal what a hypothetical ‘average’ team would do, or discover how a really good team side – with really good players – would react. And, in theory, you can compare it to your club’s youth players.
“So, we have [Philipp] Lahm, we have [Bastian] Schweinsteiger, we have [Thomas] Muller,” Power continues. “OK, now when we look at our young players playing a game, how similar is their defensive behaviour or attacking behaviour to these guys?
“The whole idea should be that you can start to identify ‘well actually this guy has the same movements as Lahm, he has the same defensive decision-making as Lahm, and he can recover or attack in the same way.”