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A series taking place two years out from the next World Cup is unlikely to offer much of use for either team

Danyal Rasool03-Nov-2025ODI cricket in 2025 is a bit like a premium tablet, a product in search of a use case rather than the other way around. It was revolutionary when it first came out, but now most of its functions can be better catered to by something bigger and more luxurious, or smaller and more easily mass-produced. But since it already exists, justifications for its existence have to be manufactured, and they tend to take the form of niche situations. Perhaps you’re on a flight, where you can’t bring your laptop, and your phone is too small. Or, in the case of ODI cricket, maybe a World Cup is just around the corner.The issue is that most of the time, you’re not on a flight, just as most of the time in a four-year cycle, a World Cup is quite far away. It’s still two years out from the next one – around this time in 2027. What Pakistan and South Africa can extract of value in Faisalabad to be deployed in Southern Africa half a world and half a cycle away is unclear. Not much else is staked on ODI cricket these days, especially with a T20I World Cup three months away.Perhaps it’s where these three ODIs will be held this week that provides the most meaning to this series. Faisalabad last hosted international cricket 17 years ago, and will become the fifth international venue in Pakistan since cricket returned to the country in 2015. It was due to host two T20Is against Bangladesh in May, but was forced to have its wait extended by another half year after skirmishes between Pakistan and India’s armed forces led to the PSL overrunning its schedule, and scrapping the Faisalabad leg of the Bangladesh series altogether.Faisalabad did, in recent memory, hold what was then billed as a prestigious enough tournament to act as a test case for future international cricket. The 2024 Champions Cup, Pakistan’s domestic 50-over competition, was given a glamorous makeover and played at Iqbal stadium. It serves as the most recent reference point for the kind of pitches likely to be served up to Pakistan and South Africa. If much of that tournament, held at a similar time of year, is an indicator, high-scoring games are likely; only in four of the ten group stage matches did the side batting first fail to post 300.Faisalabad saw many things during the 2024 Champions Cup, including Babar Azam bowling•PCBThat is par for the course at most ODI venues in Pakistan now, though this is the first time since their ill-fated home Champions Trophy campaign that Pakistan are playing ODI cricket at home. There were two away series losses in New Zealand and the West Indies to compound the misery and raise further questions about this team. These three ODIs right now are unlikely to answer them.Pakistan have selected a full-strength squad for the series, with Fakhar Zaman back after fitness issues kept him out of the T20Is last week. More excitingly for Pakistan’s supporters, the trio of Shaheen Shah Afridi, Haris Rauf and Naseem Shah will bowl together again for just the ninth time since they first caught fire at the 2023 Asia Cup. They achieved great success at the backend of last year, winning a series in Australia before whitewashing South Africa, taking 31 of 47 opposition wickets in five games. Replicating that success in Pakistan, though, has proved trickier, as evidenced by their indifferent showings in the Champions Trophy.South Africa have no such qualms about their ODI form, coming off the back of away series wins in Australia and England following a Champions Trophy run to the semi-finals. Their squad, however, is decidedly not first-choice, bearing something of a resemblance to the one that played a tri-series in Pakistan at the start of the year. Matthew Breetzke, who debuted then, is now captain, while Quinton de Kock’s un-retirement provides premium top-order experience to a side that will need plenty of it.Their biggest concern is likely the bowling on what will be batting-friendly surfaces. Corbin Bosch demonstrated he could bother Pakistan in the T20Is, but he didn’t get enough support from the other seamers. In that tri-series earlier this year, run-scoring was not a problem for South Africa. They put up 304 against New Zealand and 352 in their game against Pakistan, but a bowling unit denuded of their best assets failed to defend either.Ultimately, any result of this series risks being dismissed in a week’s time as an irrelevance to any larger picture. The cricket will be entertaining in the moment, especially for Faisalabad’s starved viewers, but it is likely to be little more than a dopamine hit. Not unlike the reasons for buying a tablet.

Manchester United have been warned off a £100 million ($134m) move for Nottingham Forest midfielder Elliot Anderson, with ex-Red Devils defender Paul Parker explaining to GOAL why such a swoop would be “foolhardy”. Transfer plans at Old Trafford are being drawn up heading towards 2026, but they are being advised to steer clear of a highly-rated England international.

• Wanted man: Anderson attracting attention

  Anderson has been generating plenty of hype since bursting onto the Three Lions scene under Thomas Tuchel. He helped England to secure faultless qualification for the 2026 World Cup and is expected to figure prominently at that tournament.

  Said event will provide the classy 23-year-old with a global window in which to showcase his talent. The expectation is that more names will be added to what is an ever-growing list of suitors – with United reportedly forming part of that pack.

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  Engine room: Man Utd looking for midfield reinforcements

  The Red Devils are mulling over additions to their engine room as questions continue to be asked of how long Bruno Fernandes and Casemiro will remain at Old Trafford. The former is being linked with teams across Europe and the Saudi Pro League, while the latter is seeing his contract run down towards free agency.

  Anderson would be a different kind of ‘No.6’ to Casemiro, with his game more about retaining the ball than winning it back, but would he be a good fit at Old Trafford at the price being mooted?

• Price tag: Would Man Utd spend £100m on Anderson?

  When that question was put to Parker, the former United full-back – speaking in association with gambling portal British Gambler – told GOAL: “I keep seeing his name bandied about. When it’s Manchester United, everybody wants to throw out someone all the time. Everyone goes with it.

  “I’m not used to labelling players with numbers. You just want a midfield player who has got the capability to go up and down, wants to go up and down, and he definitely has that. I’m quite sure a lot of these young players don’t want to be labelled anymore. They did all that when they were kids playing FIFA. When it gets to the real world, you see that they want to get about. In my opinion you want midfield players like a Roy Keane, a Paul Ince, a Bryan Robson – players who can and want to do everything.

  “I see where he is [Anderson] and I quite like him. The moment you mention it with Manchester United it’s £100m. That seems to be the going rate. Are United going to go and spend that kind of money on one player? I think it would be foolhardy if they go and do that.

  “When you look at Anderson, he is a high-energy player but there are a lot of high-energy players out there. To be in the Premier League now, it is about how athletic your team is. There is a lot better chance of getting results at weekends, gives you an advantage and opportunity, when you have got athletic players. Sunderland are proving that at the moment. One player for me in midfield is not enough. They need a major rebuild.”

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  World Cup window: Man Utd could explore other options

  It remains to be seen whether United formalise their supposed interest in Anderson. Ruben Amorim also needs to determine how he is going to split any transfer funds that are made available to him. As alluded to by Parker, it is unlikely that all of his recruitment eggs will be lumped into one basket.

  Forest will not be dropping their demands, though, so anybody wanting to lure Newcastle academy graduate Anderson away from the City Ground will need to dig deep. He is tied to a contract on Trentside that is due to run until the summer of 2029.

  The Reds are under no pressure to sell and that may force the likes of United to use next summer’s World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico as an opportunity to assess alternative options that come with a slightly more budget-friendly price tag.

MLB's Speedway Classic was slated to take place on Saturday and while everything at Bristol Motor Speedway great, the weather was not interested in cooperating.

First pitch for the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds was slated for 7:15 p.m. ET. Rain started pouring well before that, causing a delay that lasted well over two hours. Just before 10 p.m. ET the two sides took the field and tried to play.

It did not go well. The contest was called before they could complete even a full inning. And it was no surprise to any viewer who stuck around long enough to tune in, because the field was a slippery mess full of puddles.

Here are some still images to give you a complete picture:

Given Shohei Ohtani's injury history there was real cause for concern as a Los Angeles Dodgers trainer visited him on the mound Wednesday night in the fourth inning of a start against the Cincinnati Reds. And even more when he abandoned the start to play DH, though staying in the game at all was an optimistic sign.

The Dodgers announced that Ohtani left his start due to cramping and after the game the two-way superstar provided further information after his team suffered a 5-2 loss.

Through an interpreter he said that he felt cramping in his right hip during the first inning but was able to work through the discomfort until it became a problem and affected his delivery.

"I don't play defense. I think that helped," Ohtani said. "But also at the same time, we were playing a close game so I wanted to help the team win."

Manager Dave Roberts appeared optimistic that Ohtani would be able to make his next scheduled start under better conditions back in Los Angeles.

"He'll have a week," Roberts said. "It'll be at home, so there won't be humidity to deal with."

After finishing the series with an average of 151, Kohli said he wants to push his boundaries and see where he goes

ESPNcricinfo staff06-Dec-2025Virat Kohli feels his “whole game is coming together nicely” and is batting at a level he hasn’t in the last two-three years. Kohli stayed unbeaten on 65 in the ODI series decider against South Africa, which India sealed by a comfortable nine wickets with more than 10 overs to spare in a chase of 271.Kohli’s half-century came after he struck back-to-back centuries in the first two ODIs to finish the series with a tally of 302 and a staggering average of 151. Kohli now has four straight 50-plus scores after he had bagged two consecutive ducks in the ODIs in Australia, which was his first series since the IPL finished in June.”Honestly, just playing the way I have in this series has been the most satisfying thing for me,” Kohli said at the presentation. “I don’t think I’ve played at this level for a good two-three years now and I feel really free in my mind and just the whole game is coming together nicely, [it’s] very exciting to build on. And something that I’ve always tried to do as a player, maintain my own standards that I’ve set for myself and play at the level that I can make an impact for the team. I know when I can bat like that out there in the middle, then it of course helps the team in a big way because I can bat long, I can bat according to the situation and just being confident makes me feel like any situation out there in the middle, I have what it takes to handle that situation and bring it in favour of the team.”Related

• Rohit and Kohli take centre stage before receding to the background

• Stats – India finally end their rotten luck with the toss

• Jaiswal, Rohit, Kohli lead India to 2-1 series win

Kohli took home the Player-of-the-Series award for a record 22nd time in international cricket, and 12th in ODIs. He also smashed a record 12 sixes in the three games, easily his personal best in any ODI series, including World Cups. His series strike rate of 117.05 was also his best in an ODI series since January 2023.”Well, you know, when I play freely then I know I can hit sixes,” he said. “So I just wanted to have some fun because I was batting well, just take a bit more risk, just push my own boundaries and see where I go. There’s always levels you can unlock and you just need to take a risk.”Kohli further said that since he has been around for more than 15 years in international cricket, he has gone through “many phases where you doubt your ability” because as a batter it comes down to making one mistake. It is, he said, “a whole journey of learning”.”You tend to go into a space where you feel like maybe I’m not good enough, the nerves take over and that’s the beauty of sport, especially a skill like batting where you have to keep overcoming that fear every ball that you play and eventually play long innings and get into a zone again where you can start playing confidently. It’s a whole journey of learning and getting to know yourself better and becoming better as a person along the whole way. I can surely vouch for the fact that being a batsman and realising so much about myself, what kind of negative thinking patterns I have, where I can get into a zone where I don’t feel confident or when I’m feeling like myself, what are those small little details, it just improves you as a person in general and your whole temperament becomes much better and balanced over so many years. So, yes, I’ve had many phases where I’ve doubted myself and I haven’t been shy to admit that.”

Michael Neser has been added to the squad, and Brendan Doggett could be closing in on a Test debut in Perth

Andrew McGlashan15-Nov-2025Australia have suffered a huge blow ahead of the Ashes, with Josh Hazlewood ruled out of the opening Test in Perth with a hamstring injury three days after initially being cleared when he left the field during New South Wales’ Sheffield Shield game against Victoria at the SCG.Hazlewood will not travel to Perth this weekend, and Queensland seamer Michael Neser has been added to the squad, which has also lost Sean Abbott to a hamstring injury.Related

Hazlewood suffers Achilles soreness during hamstring rehab

Doggett awaits his day as Perth Test debut looms into view

Pope hopes No.3 scrutiny can bring out his best for Ashes

Will Australia's pitches be juicy for the Ashes?

England's Ashes squad have pace in abundance, but do they have the miles?

Pat Cummins had already been ruled out of at least the opening Test as he recovers from a back injury.”Initial scans Wednesday were clear of muscle strain, however follow-up imaging today has confirmed the injury,” a CA statement on Saturday said. “Early imaging can occasionally underestimate low-grade muscle injuries.”The latest injury means that Brendan Doggett could be closing in a Test debut with even more onus now on Mitchell Starc and Scott Boland.The news of Hazlewood follows England having a scare around Mark Wood who went for a scan after reporting hamstring tightness of the first day of the warm-up game against the Lions in Perth although on Saturday the ECB said he had been cleared.Hazlewood, who sits on 295 Test wickets, had bowled superbly in the white-ball matches against India last month and again looked in good rhythm in his Shield outing. However, after completing his spell on the third morning, he told Steven Smith, who was captaining NSW and will lead Australia in Perth, that he was feeling some tightness in his hamstring and Smith told him to leave the field immediately.He walked to a clinic next door to the SCG to have a scan which, before the match had ended, came back clear. Cummins, who had been at the ground to see the physios before speaking at a commercial engagement, said Hazlewood had been in good spirits after the result.Last season, Hazlewood missed three of the five Tests against India, firstly because of a side strain and then a calf injury.Since 2014, Australia have only twice played a Test at home without Cummins and Hazlewood, but won on both occasions – against England in 2021 and West Indies in 2022 – which are also the two Tests Neser has played.Doggett, the South Australia quick, has been in excellent form since return from his own hamstring problem with 13 wickets in two matches. He was a traveling reserve for the World Test Championship final earlier this year and had been due to tour West Indies before injury ruled him out. If Doggett makes a debut in Perth he would become Australia’s third Indigenous men’s player and it would be the first time a men’s Test XI featured two Indigenous players, alongside Boland.Cummins has recently increased the intensity of his return to bowling with an eye on a potential return in Brisbane although that remains a race against time. He said he was operating around 90% during a spell in the SCG nets last week.”[The Gabba] is what we’re building towards,” Cummins said. “Hopefully by Perth, I’m up there near 100%, and then see where we’re at. It’s still pretty aggressive, going from nothing to trying to get ready for a Test match in four weeks. But we’re going to give it a good shot.”Australia’s pace-bowling depth is already being severely tested and further injuries would leave them scrambling for more options. Jhye Richardson has been named in the Cricket Australia XI to face England Lions and there is hope he could become an option later in the series as he returns from shoulder surgery. Xavier Bartlett is another who could come into contention.

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Chelsea have been handed an injury blow ahead of their Women's Champions League clash against St Polten as first-choice goalkeeper Hannah Hampton has been ruled out of the match due to injury. Swiss international Livia Peng is set to take Hampton's place in the starting XI for the match in Austria as Sonia Bompastor's side aim to maintain their unbeaten start to the league phase.

• Chelsea lose Hampton to injury

  Bompastor has confirmed that Hampton has been sidelined with a minor quad injury and will undergo further tests to determine the severity of the problem. Hampton has therefore been left out of Chelsea's 22-strong travelling squad for the game in Austria. Peng and Becky Spencer are the two goalkeepers named in the travelling party for the Blues, while Lauren James and Naomi Girma are also involved again after recovering from injury. Here's the squad in full:

  Goalkeepers: Livia Peng, Becky Spencer

  Defenders: Sandy Baltimore, Nathalie Bjorn, Millie Bright, Lucy Bronze, Veerle Buurman, Ellie Carpenter, Niamh Charles, Naomi Girma.

  Midfielders: Erin Cuthbert, Oriane Jean-Francois, Maika Hamano, Wieke Kaptein, Sjoeke Nusken, Lexi Potter, Keira Walsh.

  Forwards: Lauren James, Sam Kerr, Catarina Macario, Johanna Rytting Kaneryd, Alyssa Thompson.

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  Blues aiming for back-to-back European wins

  Chelsea will be hoping to make it back-to-back wins in the Champions League campaign after opening up their campaign with a 1-1 draw away at FC Twente, followed by a 4-0 win over Paris FC. The Blues will be hot favourites for victory against St. Polten but will have to make at least one change to their starting XI with Peng coming in to replace Hampton. Peng moved to Chelsea in the summer from Bundesliga side Werder Bremen, after featuring for Switzerland at Euro 2025, and made her debut for her new club in the draw at Twente. That Champions League outing is her only appearance so far this season but she will surely be relishing the chance to take over from Hampton again on Tuesday night at the NV Arena.

• Peng living the dream at Chelsea

  Peng admitted that moving to Chelsea was a dream after putting pen to paper on a four-year contract in the summer. She told the club's media: "It feels so good to be here. When I was 10, I dreamed of playing for Chelsea. Now, my childhood dream has come true and it's so exciting. I'm really happy to join the Chelsea family and get started. It's such a big club. Chelsea want to win titles and so do I. We're a good match. I'm hungry to win here."

  Chelsea complete a domestic treble (WSL, FA Cup, League Cup) last season without losing a game and will be hoping for more silverware in 2025-26. The Blues have made a strong start to their Women's Champions League campaign and sit in second place in the Women's Super League table, just one point behind current leaders Manchester City after eight games played.

  "I think we are still early on in the season and I'm not worried about where we stand right now in the table," Bompastor has said of her team's start. "We always want to be the leaders and leading this league but the most important thing for us is to be leading the race at the end of the season. I trust my squad – the quality I have in the squad to be able to do that. Not the result we wanted to have coming into the game, but we are still in control and I am quite confident."

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  Big win on the cards for Chelsea?

  Chelsea head into the match off the back of a controversial draw with Arsenal which extended their unbeaten run in the WSL to 33 games. The Blues now switch focus to continental competition and will be hoping to win a maiden European crown in 2025-26. Bompastor's side will certainly be expected to make light work of St. Polten. The Austrian side have conceded nine goals in their two Champions League outings so far, and anything but an away win will be a big surprise.

Tottenham Hotspur are stuck in a cycle of repeated mistakes, time and time again struggling to establish a winning formula on home turf and struggling also to weave Thomas Frank’s tactics into their identity.

Much has been made of Spurs’ attacking problems this season, but defensively, there are imbalances too. The north Londoners’ xGD (Expected Goals Difference) stands at -6.8, marking them 18th in the division for that metric.

Despite adding a range of talented additions to their ranks after winning the Europa League last season, the residual issues that stemmed from a torrid Premier League campaign remain, and Frank has to show that he has what it takes to wipe out the recurring patterns that are threatening an exciting season.

The likes of Mohammed Kudus and Xavi Simons were welcomed to the ranks, but Frank has yet to pull it all together

The potential Frank replacements ENIC should consider

It has been reported that Frank is not under immediate pressure in the Tottenham hot seat, but after picking just two points up from his past five outings, the Spurs boss will know that results need to improve, especially with the win over Burnley in August standing as a lonely win down N17.

Kudus might be the joint-top assist maker in the division so far, but Tottenham’s creativity is a big concern, and ENIC Group may have the perfect replacement they can fall back on.

Back at the start of the summer, ESPN reported Tottenham had whittled their shortlist down to two candidates, Frank being one, Fulham manager Marco Silva being the other.

The Portuguese tactician is a well-seasoned Premier League manager, having led 221 matches across four different tenures.

Known for establishing stability and a clear tactical vision, the 48-year-old has earned his share of praise, with pundit Jamie Carragher among those to suggest Silva may well be a tailor-made fit for the Lilywhites.

Why Carragher has "always seen" Silva at Spurs

Carragher remarked on The Overlap this week that he has “always seen Silva at Tottenham”, with his blend of pragmatism and shrewd ideas potentially instilling the secure and balanced foundations the club have been lacking in recent years.

Implementing a 4-2-3-1 formation, Silva, whose Cottager side beat Tottenham away from home only last weekend, seeks to strike a balance between possession-based play and counter-attacking football, with both sides of that coin on show against Spurs.

There is an emphasis on overlaps and wide play that could also give rise to Kudus’ qualities. The Ghanaian – who England fans will be threatened by at the 2026 World Cup next year – has made a positive start to life in north London, but there’s a sense that there is more to come from the versatile wideman.

As per FBref, the 25-year-old ranks among the top 3% of positional peers in the Premier League this season for successful take-ons per 90.

Kudus needs to score more, and he also needs to make more of his inherent creative skills. Silva’s system could help achieve this.

Transfer reporter Dean Jones has even gone as far as to label Silva a “genius”, with his subtle and nuanced approach to the managerial game something Spurs may need to adapt to different situations and rediscover their fluency both in defence and attack.

Whether Tottenham decide to cut their ties with Frank down the line will be a matter of time and perserverance, but should an upswing fail to materialise, Silva could be the shrewd successor to finally take this team to a sustainable level at the top.

Spurs star is becoming Frank's own version of Kane & he's not even a forward

This Tottenham star is becoming a talismanic force for Frank’s side.

By
Angus Sinclair

Dec 5, 2025

The World Series opens Friday with an updated version of in play, the role of Roy Hobbs, the mysterious slugger-pitcher from somewhere in Middle America, being reprised by a muscular manchild from Japan. The mythic contours of the game—baseball as our spiritual sports obsession—have rarely been more in evidence than in the chimerical (one could almost say comical) versatility of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani, who is scheduled to get at least one pitching start against the Toronto Blue Jays and expected to blast at least one seamed orb out of the confines of either Dodger Stadium or the Rogers Centre.

, from 1984, was just one of five baseball films—all successful and well-executed in their own ways—that emerged from the diamond-deep decade of the 1980s. Its mythic cousin is (1989), whose rewatches still have grown men weeping at the sight of long-dead ballplayers emerging from cornfields looking for a game of catch. (1988) and (1989) were somewhat polar opposites, the former a John Sayles-directed account (fairly accurate) of the World Series scandal of 1919, the latter a raucous comedy with a cover of the Troggs’ “Wild Thing” as its musical heartbeat and the voice of the immortal Bob Uecker intoning “Just a bit outside” after a pitch from Charlie Sheen’s character threatened to leave the zip code.

But , from 1988, was the best of the lot, smartly touching all the bases of the others—myth, low locker-room humor, superstition, baseball lore—and covering them with a layer of grit thanks to writer-director Ron Shelton, who lived the minor league life for five years, and, as a middle infielder for the Class A Stockton Ports, co-led the California League with 29 doubles in 1969. You can look it up.

And now has resurfaced as both a musical and a meta enterprise, trying to make it to The Show, in this case Broadway, just as Shelton’s protagonists were doing back in Durham, North Carolina. is in a one-month run at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Milburn, N.J., a stop-off for shows that sometimes make it to the Great White Way. (The final performance is Nov. 2, a day after a scheduled Game 7 of the World Series.) The 80-year-old Shelton could be resting comfortably on the laurels (and royalties) of the movie version, as well as (1992) and (1996), among other films and shows he either wrote, directed or did both. But Shelton is no lollygagger. You can’t take the minor league ethos out of the man, the eternal battle to strive and succeed, to get to The Show, just as his fictional creations, Crash Davis and Eby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh, were doing in the movie version of .

”I never dreamed that 37 years after the movie, I’d be working on something related to ,” Shelton said by Zoom from an apartment near Los Angeles. (He and his wife, the actress Lolita Davidovich, lost their home in the Palisades Fire in January.) “But it’s an honor. There is something, of course, in the idea that baseball is at the heart of America, this collective Church of Baseball, [the title of both a song from the musical and a book Shelton wrote about getting to the screen] something that makes it timeless, mythic.”

Shelton has a perfect double-play partner in the person of Susan Werner, a multi-talented singer-songwriter (and guitar player and pianist) who wrote the music and lyrics. Werner’s fervid cult following does not come from baseball, but the producers reached out to her because she weaves a story with virtually every song she writes going back to her small-venue roots in the early 1990s. She is perfect for in that she’s a major league talent, who, in terms of general name recognition, still plays in the minors.

Plus, she has kind of background. Growing up on a farm in Iowa, “I was the girl throwing the tennis ball against the base of the barn,” says Werner. “I played softball with my cousins in the cornfield. It was about as wholesome as you could get, and when this opportunity came along it just felt to me like big, sloppy, honest American fun. It felt .”

From time to time Werner would reach out to Shelton for a brief outline she needed to complete a song. “I would ask Ron, ‘Hey, what would Nuke say in this situation,’ and I’d get back an email with language so specific that it was easy to transform it into lyrics,” says Werner. But much of the baseball namechecking came from her own knowledge of the game. “And by the end of the first week he’s giving in,” sings Annie Savoy, the Susan Sarandon character played charmingly in the musical by theater veteran Carmen (no relation to John) Cusack, “and by the end of September he’s Tony Gwynn.”

Several tweaks and updates keep the material fresh, such as Annie now embracing analytics and Bill James, along with Emily Dickinson, William Blake and in-season coitus. Still, making it to Broadway will be no base on balls in the park. The success of the movie ( made about $50 million on a budget of about $9 million) will help, of course, as will some of its still-familiar touchstones. (Alas, the bathtub scene between Annie and Crash is gone.) And if it won’t be an easy ride, well, Shelton is accustomed to bumpy ones, aside from those he took on buses as a minor league infielder trying to get promoted in an organization with players like Brooks Robinson, Davey Johnson, Mark Belanger and Bobby Grich in front of him. If there’s a villain in it’s The Organization, which strangles the dreams of players like Crash while wringing everything it can get out of them, but Shelton has mostly fond memories of the Orioles of the late 1960s. (“The best organization in baseball,” he says.) It took years off his life to get made and it never would’ve reached the screen, says Shelton, had Kevin Costner not been a smash in , which convinced Orion Studios that Costner, as Crash, could carry a movie. That’s Hollywood: A film about a Russian spy and a D.C. murder greenlights a film about minor league baseball.

The best thing that Durham has going for it is a certain timeless quality. If it ever leans toward sentimentality, there is Crash to say “Shut up” when the batboy tells him to get a hit. And if it ever gets too cynical, there is coach Larry Hockett visiting the mound to remind everyone that “Candlesticks always make a nice gift,” a moment preserved, needless to say, in the musical.

Back in the real world, the 2025 World Series may well be defined by the Ruthian presence of Ohtani, who need only tear the cover off a ball to reach the mythical status of Roy Hobbs. But we can also expect those other moments that tie us to the past. Photos and videos of 3-year-old Vladimir Guerrero Jr., now the Blue Jays starting first baseman, for example, playing ball with his Hall of Fame father. Or comparisons of Toronto’s DH/outfielder George Springer’s hitting heroics to those of Joe Carter Jr., who 32 Octobers past sent a pitch from Philadelphia’s Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams into the left field bleachers, a three-run walkoff dinger that gave the Blue Jays their second straight World Series title.

They haven’t been back since and now they’re here, staring into the smiling face and terrifying batting stance and pitching arm of Ohtani. We like the idea of baseball as a continuum, a preserver of our history, and here’s hoping that , with its pitch-perfect sense of the sublime and the ridiculous, can make it to The Show.