Hey folks, trying out something new.

I got the sense that people scrolling through their social media feeds and inboxes were clicking on something called “3 sports you missed, vol. 14” so I’m going to do a more generalized roundup. (I also regularly got stressed trying to figure out which Sports would be insulted by being placed into the “missed by most people” category.)

Here’s that subscribe button you were looking for—lots more like this post coming.

Baseball isn’t a sport where the word “undefeated” makes sense. It’s the game where everybody gets humbled a bit. The best hitters get out two-thirds of the time. The best teams will drop a game against the worst teams, and it’s not a disaster, just a fact of life.

Nobody in baseball is perfect… except LSU-Shreveport, which just won the NAIA World Series.

The Pilots went 59-0. They had 27 double-digit wins, which would be a lot IN BASKETBALL. They set the record for longest win streak by a college baseball team, and are believed to be the first undefeated college baseball team… ever.

Here’s what you need to know about the Pilots’ perfect season:

• The Pilots aren’t just the first undefeated team ever. The NCAA and NAIA record holders for winning percentage all had three or more losses. To find a team that even came close to perfection, you’ve gotta go to juco ball, where Howard College in Texas went 63-1 in 2009.

• It’s not like LSU-Shreveport is an unstoppable dynasty. This is their first championship! The NAIA World Series has ten teams in it, and the Pilots hadn’t been since 2022.

• Imagine a team which has just kinda been hanging around for a while, good but not elite. Let’s say… the Minnesota Vikings? And now imagine them winning their first championship by going 20-0 next year, winning 56-0 and 49-14 week after week. That’s the comparison.

• But this wasn’t an overnight thing. All nine everyday starters for the Pilots were seniors, most of whom had been in Shreveport for several years. And all nine hit over .300 this season! (I think some of those players are transfers, but it’s mainly 4-year guys.)

• Shreveport’s batters hit .361 as a team and had a .493 on-base percentage. They got on base 49 percent of the time. That’s STUPID.

• But their pitchers were even better! They led the NAIA with a 2.38 ERA, over a full run better than the second-place team, which had a 3.52 ERA.

• Their best hitter, Josh Gibson (yes, Josh Gibson) hit .439 and stole 53 bases in 59 games. Their best pitcher, Isaac Rohde, had a .75 WHIP and led NAIA in strikeouts.

• Gonna be honest, I'm kinda confused by LSU-Shreveport’s athletic branding. The team name is “the Pilots,” which makes sense, because the school’s campus only a few miles from the big Air Force base in Bossier City. However, the team’s logo features an anchor rather than a plane, implying some sort of riverboat pilot rather than an aviator. And the school’s mascot is Rev the River Monster, some sort of man covered in swamp scuzz, who does not seem capable of piloting any vessel, and may in fact be outwardly antagonistic towards boat pilots.

• You know how baseball kinda just turned into a sport where everybody just tries to hit dingers and strike out? Not in Shreveport! They had 180 stolen bases and just 76 home runs. An unbeatable offensive powerhouse built on singles and smallball!

• Longtime MLB reliever Chasen Shreve has no affiliation with LSU-Shreveport. However, you could say all the other teams in NAIA baseball were “chasin’ Shreve” this year.

• In football, NAIA the numbers say that are as good as NCAA Division II schools. I’m not sure if that’s true in baseball, but seems like a decent starting point. Seven players got picked in the 2024 MLB Draft out of NAIA schools, so there’s a pro pathway possible. Marlins rookie Cade Gibson is the only MLB player ever to have played at LSU-Shreveport, but he transferred to Louisiana Tech.

Baseball lover say that the sport teaches you lessons about life; that it’s important to learn how to lose and come back to the ballpark the next day. BZZT! Wrong. Sorry, LSU-Shreveport has proven this incorrect forever. It’s entirely possible to simply win every game. Apologies to everybody incapable of greatness.

The Knicks lost. I’m not ready to talk about it yet.

I think the Knicks could’ve played a lot better. They blew a 99% winnable game that would’ve completely changed the series. They still seemed to be figuring out their rotation and chemistry, 100 games into the season. I’m trying to focus on how this was the best season of my adult life and not asking what-ifs, or wondering if they’ll ever get back this far, but it’s hard.

I think Thunder are going to turn the Pacers into a fine red paste.

I would’ve loved to be that fine red paste.

The greatest dynasty on dirt is dead.

I think.

• Oklahoma had won four straight NCAA softball championships and seven championships since 2013. I have watched them win year after year, awed but terrified of our dinger-slamming teens.

• They’ve become famous for “Sooner Magic,” winning multiple Women’s College World Series games on home runs, erasing a 7-4 seventh-inning deficit in last year’s NCAA tournament against Clemson, coming back from a 6-2 deficit against Arkansas at this year’s SEC Tournament. Every softball player in the country hears Boomer Sooner in their nightmares.

• On Thursday, they trailed Tennessee 3-1 with two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning… and Ella Parker hit a 3-run go-ahead walk-off home run.

• Monday night, they were shut out by Texas Tech’s NiJaree Canady until there were two outs in the bottom of the seventh… and then, down to their last strike, tied the game.

• But Texas Tech walked it off in the bottom of the seventh.

The championship series starts Wednesday. We’re pulling for Texas Tech over Texas, because I’m a certified Nija Canady Stan. But man, I need them to dead-bolt Oklahoma’s coffin and strap it to a malfunctioning SpaceX shuttle that explodes in outer space. I’m worried they’re gonna somehow show up at the stadium and win the World Series anyway.

LAFC sealed the final spot in this month’s FIFA Club World Cup with a dramatic win against Liga MX opponent Club America. The Californians trailed 1-0 with a few minutes left in regulation, but scored in the 89th minute and won on an extra time goal by Denis Bouanga:

There is A LOT going on here, so allow me to explain.

• It should be noted that the Club World Cup wasn’t really supposed to have a play-in game. It only happened because the tournament is a hastily assembled cash grab invented by FIFA about three years ago, when their proposal to play the actual World Cup every two years instead of four was shot down. As a result, they’re coming up with the rules on the fly, and in March, FIFA ruled that Liga MX clubs Leon and Pachuca couldn’t both be in the tournament because they have the same ownership group. LAFC and Club America were next up in the qualification standings.

• The financial windfall for LAFC is massive. FIFA is trying to ensure everybody is motivated to compete in their new tournament with a one billion dollar prize pool (yes, One Billion Dollars), and LAFC will get $10 million just for participating. They can double that with a trip to the Round of 16 and double that if they make the quarterfinals. However…

• … LAFC’s players won’t get their fair share. While most teams in the tournament can pay their players bonuses for participating, MLS teams are governed by the league’s salary cap. And a previously obscure clause in the CBA caps payouts from non-MLS tournaments to $1 million per team. (I dunno—I guess they were worried that team owners could circumvent the cap by inventing their own tournament against high schoolers and paying their players $50 million for winning it, or something.) Either way, it seems nuts that MLS isn’t agreeing to update the clause now that FIFA has invented a billion-dollar tournament. The Seattle Sounders, one of the other two MLS teams in the tournament, protested the situation ahead of their Saturday night MLS game.

• So congratulations to LAFC’s owners, including celebrities like Will Ferrell, Magic Johnson, and the 90s sports power couple of Mia Hamm and Nomar Garciaparra… And also some really rich guys who you’ve probably never heard of, who will probably make much more money than Will Ferrell.

• Also on Saturday, Deportivo Cruz Azul defeated the Vancouver Whitecaps 5-0 for the CONCACAF Champions Cup, hypothetically sealing a spot in the 2029 FIFA Club World Cup… but, they haven’t even announced where the 2029 Club World Cup is going to be yet.

Remember how the #1 team in the NCAA softball, Texas A&M, lost the regional they hosted, failing to make it to the second weekend of the tournament?

Well, college baseball doubled the upset fun. The #1 AND #2 seeds, Vanderbilt and Texas, both lost home regionals to mid-majors.

Let’s start with #2-seeded Texas, who lost two games to UTSA. MEEP MEEP.

• Texas had played UTSA all the way back in March, but probably thought their loss to UTSA was some sort of fluke. It was a midweek game sandwiched between two SEC weekend series, they were trying out some bottom-of-the-rotation pitchers, and they lost in 12 innings. Surely, the Roadrunners couldn’t pull off that feat again.

• But as cartoon viewers are aware, roadrunners have a knack for luring overconfident predators into repeated embarrassments. And so, Wiley E. Longhorn got Acme’d, losing back-to-back games to UTSA in Austin. Probably karma for all the Longhorns fans making fun of A&M’s baseball and softball catastrophes.

But the bigger upset came with #1 Vanderbilt, which lost to Louisville (fine, normal) and got sent into the loser’s bracket against Wright State… and the Raiders won. Between them and Shreveport, wow, what a time to be a fan of a baseball teams of colleges located directly next to Air Force bases.)

• The NCAA baseball tournament has a ridiculous format—a double-elimination bracket where teams that lose have to play five games in four days. That puts a strain on pitching staffs, and forced Wright State to start a shaky lefty named Griffen Paige with an 8.90 ERA against #1 Vanderbilt.

• In Paige’s previous two starts, he gave up ten runs in five innings to IPFW and Wisconsin-Milwaukee…

• …and then he threw eight one-hit innings to defeat the best team in the country.

• It’s what makes the first weekend of the NCAA baseball tournament one of the best events of the year. Somebody has to eat those innings. Sometimes a lack of pitching depth costs a team their season; sometimes a guy comes out of nowhere and changes the championship picture with a performance even his teammates probably didn’t expect.

• The downside of the format, though, is that Wright State had to come back the same day and try to win another game to stay alive. They shut out by Louisville. Wright State fans probably barely realized the greatest moment in school athletic history was happening before it was over.

Next week is the Super Regionals—a sensible, best two-out-of-three series with no doubleheaders, no position players pitching, no heroics from the bottom of the bullpen. Here’s hoping a mid-major like UTSA or Murray State makes it to Omaha.

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