Does having four 100-win teams in the playoffs for the first time make for an epic Major League Baseball postseason? NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly gets a preview from The Ringer’s Michael Baumann.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Major League Baseball is now almost literally hit or miss – teams leaguewide combined for the most home runs and strikeouts in one season. Now, for teams, a 100-win season is one for the ages. On the other hand, a 100-loss season is a total disaster. You usually see one, maybe two each year. This year, there were four of each. So will this season of extremes lead to an extremely entertaining MLB post season? Well, for that, we turn to Michael Baumann. He covers baseball for The Ringer.

Welcome.

MICHAEL BAUMANN: Hi. Thanks for having me on.

KELLY: Hey. Good to have you with us. All right. So I want to get to the postseason in just a second. But first, is all of this good for baseball fans? I mean, it’s fun to show up and see a bunch of home runs, but are we all going to get complacent – that if we show up and there aren’t at least 10 home runs in any given game, that it’s just a boring one?

BAUMANN: I don’t perceive any sort of lack of interest among your everyday fans or your – certainly baseball purists. And you know, to a certain extent, I’m one of them who would like to see the ball put in play a little bit more than it is right now. But this is just sort of how the way baseball’s played right now.

KELLY: What about on the flip side – all these teams with a hundred losses in a season?

BAUMANN: This actually is something that worries me about the future of the sport. What we’ve seen is a very small handful of teams really going all in. And that means pursuing free agents. That means prioritizing winning over financial incentives. And even teams that traditionally run huge payrolls, like the Red Sox, Yankees, the Dodgers, are starting to respond to financial incentives far more than competitive incentives. And so it doesn’t matter, necessarily, how many fans you draw because the amount of money coming in through cable and online broadcast rights is so great that teams essentially don’t have to draw fans to the ballpark.

So teams that make the effort – and we see this in attendance as ticket prices continue to go up as spending goes down – teams that made an effort in the off-season – the Phillies drew – they were very active in free agency – drew 7,000 more fans this – per game this year than they did last year. And we’ve seen ambivalence from teams that are just content to throw any old team out there and collect leaguewide revenue-sharing checks.

KELLY: All right. Well, let me focus you on the good news, which is we do have, as we mentioned, four 100-win teams in the playoffs. They are the Astros, the Dodgers, the Yankees and the Twins. Does this mean we’re in for some spectacular baseball in the postseason?

BAUMANN: I certainly hope so. Two years ago, essentially this Astros team and this Yankees team played a great seven-game American League Championship Series and followed that up with the Astros and the Dodgers having an incredibly entertaining seven-game World Series. I think there’s – as many as eight of these teams are really scary, are just loaded top to bottom with either power pitching or power hitting or, in Houston’s case, both. And I think we’re – one nice thing about baseball right now is there’s an incredible wealth of charismatic young stars. We’re going to see several of those on display.

KELLY: I’m going to put you on the spot. If you had to put money on it right now, who’s going to make it to the World Series?

BAUMANN: Before the season, I predicted Houston over Washington. I think Houston is definitely the best team in this bracket. The American League side is a little bit tougher, so that gives me a little bit of pause picking them to win it all, but I think they’re the best team.

Washington – I really like the way they’re set up with their starting pitching, with some of the hitters that they have. But they’ve got to make another round as the wild-card team. So I’m a little hesitant to pick them knowing that within a couple hours of this show going out, my National League pick could be wrong. But you know, I really like the way they – their roster’s set up for this postseason if they can make it past tonight.

KELLY: We shall see if they prove you right. Michael Baumann of The Ringer – we caught him via Skype.

Thanks so much.

BAUMANN: All right thank you.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

A new California law allows college athletes to get paid in certain scenarios. That’s setting up a clash with the NCAA, the governing body of college sports.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

A bill making it legal for college athletes in California to get paid is now law. Governor Gavin Newsom has signed the Fair Pay To Play Act, giving college athletes the right to make money off their name, image and likeness. He did so over the objections of the NCAA, which oversees college sports. It sees the law as a threat to the traditional model of amateurism in college athletics. NPR’s Tom Goldman reports.

TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: It was a bill signing California-style. Governor Gavin Newsom sat in a barber’s chair on the set of basketball superstar LeBron James’ HBO show “The Shop.” James has been an outspoken supporter of the bill. He and the other guests on the show watched as Newsom put pen to paper.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “THE SHOP”)

GAVIN NEWSOM: All right. Well, let’s do it. Let’s do it, man. All right.

(APPLAUSE)

GOLDMAN: Newsom explained why the Fair Pay To Play Act was important.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “THE SHOP”)

NEWSOM: It’s going to change college sports for the better by having now the interest, finally, of the athletes on par with the interests of the institutions.

GOLDMAN: The law will allow California student athletes to earn money from endorsements, sponsorship deals and other activities related to their athletic skill. They’ll be able to hire agents. The bill will not require colleges and universities to pay players, but schools – and certainly the NCAA – aren’t happy about it. There’s concern California schools will have an unfair advantage when recruiting athletes and that the law will push college sports toward professionalism.

Of course, many Division I college sports certainly appear professional, with palatial football stadiums, huge TV contracts and coaches making multi-million-dollar salaries. The NCAA wouldn’t comment today about an earlier warning that California schools could be banned from NCAA championships because of the law. But Governor Newsome doesn’t think that’ll happen.

NEWSOM: They can’t afford to do that, can’t afford to lose the state of California. It’s truly a nation state. And the economic consequences of it would be profound. No. 2, I don’t think they have the legal right to do that.

GOLDMAN: The Pac 12 Conference, which includes four prominent California universities, says it’s also disappointed with the new law. Among its criticisms, the law will have a negative impact on female athletes, which the original bill’s author, California Senator Nancy Skinner, says is wrong – because, she says, women don’t have the same opportunities as men to become professional athletes after college.

NANCY SKINNER: For women, this might be the only time they could make any money.

GOLDMAN: Several other states are considering similar laws to the Fair Pay To Play Act. California’s law is scheduled to take effect in 2023. Tom Goldman, NPR News.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

We have a recap on stories from the week in sports.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

I look forward all week to saying it’s time for sports.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIMON: Homers a-poppin’ (ph) this baseball season. And for the first time, four teams have reached 100 wins. Yeah, guess who wasn’t one of those four. Meanwhile, racing resumes in Santa Anita after more than 30 horses died there last season. NPR’s Tom Goldman joins us. Good morning, Tom.

TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Hi, Scott.

SIMON: And I was astonished to discover this week that apparently baseball season is going on for some clubs. I mean, I thought after that Cubs-Cardinals series, they would just call the rest of the season off. But…

GOLDMAN: Let it go. Let it go.

SIMON: There – (singing) let it go. There’s been a record number of homers this season. The Minnesota Twins became the first team to hit 300 in a season. Yankees overtook them last night. Is the ball juiced, or is just everybody taking that supplement Frank Thomas advertises?

GOLDMAN: (Laughter) And he looks great, doesn’t he?

SIMON: He does look great, yeah.

GOLDMAN: He really does.

You know, not too long ago, we would be wondering about supplements and more powerful substances, but we’re told the so-called steroids era in Major League Baseball is over. Testing is rigorous. Science and a lot of pitchers, Scott, say it’s the ball’s fault – not enough drag on the balls, so they’re flying out. And there’s growing concern that all these home runs are bad for the game – less action on the field when guys are doing a home run trot around the bases while everyone else on the field watches.

There’s speculation change is coming. The balls may be altered, perhaps adding more drag.

SIMON: I wonder – I shouldn’t ask you without – I wonder if anybody stole home this year. I don’t remember seeing it. Do you?

GOLDMAN: I don’t remember seeing it, but I did not see every game.

SIMON: Yeah, all right.

And all the talk about the Astros, Dodgers and Yankees. What a season for the Twins. My gosh. They beat Kansas City last night for their 100th win, 6-2. And this is a small-payroll team in a modest but wonderful market.

GOLDMAN: It is. And the only other time the Twins did this was in 1965. And this time, it’s history. First time there have been four teams with at least a hundred wins in a season. Now, at the same time, way at the other end of things, there were four teams that lost at least a hundred games, and that ties a record of most teams in the season with at least a hundred losses. That was back in 2002.

So you have this situation of haves and have-nots causing more fretting in baseball, which prides itself on parity in recent years.

SIMON: Yeah.

GOLDMAN: The baseball rulers don’t seem too worried. They say these kinds of extremes are cyclical, and they work themselves out.

SIMON: Santa Anita Park is up and running again after an array of reforms designed to make racing safer. A 23-day autumn meet is underway now. Track officials say that they’ve made changes for the safety of the athletes, who happen to be horses. What kind of changes?

GOLDMAN: Well, here are a few. All racing entries have to have a pre-race form signed by a veterinarian saying there are no known problems with a horse that should keep it from racing. Veterinarians are also expecting – inspecting all horses scheduled for training. Santa Anita track has a new drainage system that’s supposed to help with the track surface – making it safer for horses.

There’s a lot of scrutiny as this fall meet opens, Scott. Santa Anita can’t afford to have another spate of horse deaths like before. And there’s a lot of optimism that the troubles are behind. But we should note just 10 days ago, a horse had to be euthanized…

SIMON: Yeah.

GOLDMAN: …After a training injury, making it 31 fatalities since last December.

SIMON: Oh, my word. Well, NPR’s Tom Goldman, thanks so much.

GOLDMAN: You’re welcome.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Constructed from over 500 hours of footage, director Asif Kapadia tells NPR’s David Greene his new documentary centers around one of the most celebrated, and hated, soccer players: Diego Maradona.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

I want to travel with you to Naples, Italy, in this raucous crowd.

(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD CHATTER)

GREENE: This is a city that had faced years of discrimination and racism from fellow Italians. Some called Naples the country’s sewer. But here, in the 1980s, Naples was celebrating its hero, a man named Diego Maradona.

(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD CHATTER)

ASIF KAPADIA: This is a story about a guy and a city. Really, those are the two characters. It’s about the perfect match between the kind of very dysfunctional character and a very dysfunctional city, which at the time, in Europe, was one of the poorest places in Europe, one of the most violent places. There’s a serious gang war going on between different gangs. Cocaine is everywhere. And the most expensive soccer player in the world ends up at one of the poorest clubs in Europe.

GREENE: That’s the voice of the film director Asif Kapadia. His new documentary, “Diego Maradona,” follows one of the world’s most talented and tragic soccer stars. Maradona, an Argentinean soccer prodigy, was bought by Naples’ soccer club in the 1980s. And Naples became addicted to the glory he brought them.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Diego. Diego. Diego. Diego. Diego. Diego. Diego.

KAPADIA: But it’s kind of a love-hate relationship. You know, they need each other. They do great things together. But everything that is dark that is in that city – he will then be drawn to, and that will mess him up, you know. He will come out broken.

GREENE: Diego Maradona is just the kind of complicated life that fascinates Asif Kapadia. He did an Oscar-winning film about the British music star Amy Winehouse. As for Diego Maradona, well, the filmmaker says he lived a life of extremes from the beginning.

KAPADIA: He’s from, you know, what we would know as slums or favelas, that type of place on the outskirts of Buenos Aires – very poor, you know, no running water, no electricity, large family living in a shack- you know, that’s his background – eight of them in total.

And he, from a very young age, becomes the breadwinner. From a age of about 15, he’s the reason why his family get a home, get a door key for the first time in their lives. His dad was a very much a kind of manual worker. His mom brought up the kids. So part of it, for him, was he played in order to get his mum a home and get them out of poverty.

GREENE: Which is, like, to me, is just learning about him, the maddening part. Like, you love him so much, and he wants to do the right thing by his family. And then there are moments in his life and his career that makes you just hate him so much.

KAPADIA: This is why he’s interesting for me, you know. The reason why I’m interested in these characters is because they’re not just these good guys. He is this kind of two sides of the same coin. Football, famously, like we call it, you know, it’s a game of two halves. So half Diego, you got his kind of angel, really nice, sweet guy – really, really endearing and cares about his family.

And then on the other side, he has a dark side. He has an edge. He – you know, he does drugs. He hangs around with gangsters. He gets into prostitution. You know, he denies his own child. So you’ve got this guy who’s a genius, but he’s a cheat.

GREENE: It’s really two different people – Diego and Maradona. Kapadia says Diego, this poor kid from Argentina, had to create an entirely different persona to deal with the overwhelming weight of that much fame. As time went on, that alter ego, Maradona, began to take over.

KAPADIA: So if you look at the young man who arrives in 1984 and then you look at the man that leaves seven years later, he’s changed so much. He’s broken. He’s really out of shape. And he leaves as an addict as well, which is a problem he has to deal with for the rest of his life. But even now, you know, he’s really struggling with this.

I would say, you know, while I was making the film, I met him. He was living in Dubai at a time. So I interviewed him about four or five times, went to his home. And I did feel, you know, towards the ending, that the person I was meeting and talking to was at one end of the spectrum of the kind of Maradona scale.

But it was – it made it quite complicated because he would essentially deny anything was wrong, or he wouldn’t want to talk about certain things. Even if I just brought up a person’s name, he’s like, don’t talk about her. I never want to hear about her. She’s a liar. OK.

GREENE: Wow.

KAPADIA: And that’s, like, his ex-wife, you know. OK. These are like my easy questions on Day 1. So with him, what we found is that he has a particular way of existing and living – is he never looks back. He never admits he’s made a mistake. And that is what his trainer, Signorini, says in the film. That’s kind of full Maradona. He’s never able to show weakness.

GREENE: There was such intimacy, I mean, seeing his face in moments. I mean, some of the moments of silence just looking at his face were the most powerful. And I know it took you something like three years to make this film and collect all of this. How did you manage to uncover all of that footage?

KAPADIA: Yes. So this is a key part of this film. There’s a cameraman who had all of these tapes on this old format called U-matic in the back of his house which had never been seen for 30 years.

GREENE: How’d he get – how did this guy have all this footage sitting there?

KAPADIA: So he transpires that Diego Maradona’s first agent when he was young, Jorge Cyterszpiler, in Argentina – he’s like, this kid’s going to be a star. So at the time, you know, they were still trying to break soccer in the U.S. You know, late ’70s, early ’80s, there was still this idea that football was going to become big in the USA. So he thinks, if I make a movie about this young kid, I’ll be able to break America.

So in 1981, he hires two Argentinian cameraman to follow Diego Maradona around, on the pitch and off the pitch. And then they go on to Naples, and they keep filming him through Naples.

GREENE: Wow.

KAPADIA: But the agent then gets fired by Diego. The cameraman probably were never paid for doing all their work, so they run off with the tapes. The tapes get kind of split somewhere around the world. There’s these rumors that the tapes are out there, but no one’s been able to do a deal with the cameramen and with Diego. And my producers were able to do both.

GREENE: Does he know that firing that guy, like, inadvertently gifted you a lot of this footage?

KAPADIA: Do you know? I’ve had these conversations with him, but he hasn’t seen the film yet. Diego…

GREENE: I was going to ask you…

KAPADIA: …Hasn’t seen the film yet.

GREENE: …He hasn’t seen it?

KAPADIA: Yet – there’s still time. One day, when he sees the film, maybe he’ll understand how we put this all together. What I should say is that everyone around him – his trainer, Signorini, his biographer, Daniel Arcucci, his ex-wife, his girlfriends, his children – everyone around him, I’ve shown the film to, and they all say it’s honest. It’s tough, but it’s very honest. And so they’ve all given it the thumbs up.

GREENE: Is it important for you that he sees it at some point?

KAPADIA: The honest truth is, as time goes by, I kind of feel less and less important because, you know, he is Diego Maradona. And he just will never do what you expect him to do. And with Maradona, it was always going to be tricky to get his reaction.

GREENE: Well, best of luck with the film. And thanks so much for talking to us.

KAPADIA: Great to be on. Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Foreign language spoken).

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, “DIEGO MARADONA”)

GREENE: Sound there from one of his many goals. We were talking to the film director Asif Kapadia. His new film is called “Diego Maradona.”

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

A Philadelphia man who helped firefighters rescue people from a burning apartment building used his moment in the spotlight to call out one of the Eagles’ wide receivers, who had dropped key passes.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

We have evidence today that sports fans in Philadelphia are serious about their teams. Around 2 o’clock in the morning on Monday, a fire broke out in a West Philadelphia apartment. And an Eagles fan, Hakim Laws, was walking nearby.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

HAKIM LAWS: Smoke started getting worse. Then I seen a guy hanging out the window, you know, screaming that his kids was in there and things like that.

NOEL KING, HOST:

OK. We should mention that Mr. Laws used to be a firefighter, so he rushed into action. He ran into the burning building and tried to climb up the steps. But then smoke turned him back, so he ran back down. At that point, the fire department arrives on the scene. And here’s what he told a news team afterward in a video that has gone viral.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

LAWS: The ladder truck was pulling up, and ironically then my – one of my old coworkers took the ladder off the truck, raised it up. And he was assisting people down. My man just started throwing babies out the window.

INSKEEP: And then Hakim Laws chose to use this moment to call out his team, specifically Eagles wide receiver Nelson Agholor. In the last two games, Agholor has dropped a few key passes. Laws, as you’ll recall, was being thrown babies.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

LAWS: We was catching them, unlike Agholor and his mishaps. I’d like to put that out there.

KING: Someone on Twitter called that comment, the most Philly thing I’ve ever seen. Nelson Agholor, the Eagles receiver, was a pretty class act about it, though.

INSKEEP: Yeah. He’s – he tweeted, thank you for being a hero in the community. Would like to invite you and your family to the next home game.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

When the Worcester, Mass., woman learned of the Worcester City Half Marathon, she signed up online. She realized too late that the race was in Worcester, England. She ran her own half marathon.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Good morning. I’m Steve Inskeep with sympathy but also congratulations to Sheila Pereira. The Worcester, Mass., woman learned of the Worcester City Half Marathon. She signed up online and realized too late the race was in Worcester, England. But Ms. Pereira was not deterred. She ran her own darn half-marathon in Massachusetts, 13.1 miles in just over two hours. The Boston Globe reports the organizers in England sent her a medal.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

The New England Patriots have released receiver Antonio Brown. Apparently politics and Major League Soccer do not mix. And, we’re down to the semi-finals of the WNBA playoffs.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

And now it’s time for sports.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIMON: Antonio Brown is cut. And apparently politics and Major League Soccer don’t mix. Down to the semifinals of the WNBA playoffs. NPR’s Tom Goldman joins us.

Hello there, Tom.

TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: You and I mix, Scott.

SIMON: Yeah, you and I mix, my friend. The Patriots have said goodbye – don’t let the door hit you on your way out – to Antonio Brown. But it’s – I mean, he was OK for one game for them. What happened?

GOLDMAN: They cut him yesterday, less than two weeks after signing him. You know, it was always a risk to sign him, Scott. He had this rocky ending to his nine years in Pittsburgh and his very short stay in Oakland this offseason. But as you know, the Patriots pride themselves on bringing in troubled players and having them snap to under the mythical Patriot Way, so they brought him in.

And after they signed him, the story got gravely serious. A lawsuit filed by Brown’s former personal trainer accused him of rape. Then another woman who alleges Brown made an unwanted sexual advance toward her in 2017 says Brown sent her a threatening – threatening text messages this week while he was a Patriot. And that reportedly was the last straw for New England. His agent said in a statement sorry things didn’t work out. Antonio hopes to play for another team soon.

SIMON: Also in the NFL, starting quarterbacks have been falling like trees in a forest. Drew Brees, Ben Roethlisberger, Nick Foles and, of course, Andrew Luck retired before he could be felled. Should Colin Kaepernick be waiting by the phone?

GOLDMAN: You’re hearing more and more people say no. And that’s after three years out of league with another batch of quarterbacks going down, as you say. And the calls are, you know, not going to come. Maybe teams think he’s too expensive to sign. And they can trot out lesser and cheaper quarterbacks, or there’s still concerned that he is politically toxic, even though the protests during the anthem issue has cooled down from what it was two, three years ago. Whatever the reasons, he’s still not playing. And you wonder if he ever will.

SIMON: I have to point out – I’m sure some people will ask. So Antonio Brown with these very serious charges could be signed by another team. It looks like Colin Kaepernick won’t.

GOLDMAN: Don’t try and…

SIMON: Oh, we’ll get to that if and when it happens.

GOLDMAN: Don’t try and get logic out of the NFL, Scott.

SIMON: All right. I want to ask you about Major League Soccer fans in the Pacific Northwest. Seattle and Portland have made their own political demonstration.

GOLDMAN: It’s very interesting. You know, we’ve been talking a lot about athletes making political demonstrations, like Colin Kaepernick. But now as you say, it’s the fans doing it. An interesting story, a new Major League Soccer policy this season prohibits political displays by fans. And some fans in Seattle and Portland don’t like that.

The fans have been displaying a symbol of the Iron Front. That was an anti-Nazi paramilitary group in Germany in the 1930s. Soccer fans say the symbol now is a statement against fascism and for human rights. MLS doesn’t like it because the league says the Iron Front symbol also is used by Antifa, the antifascist group that sometimes engages in violence. So MLS and fan groups met this week to try to resolve the dispute. They didn’t. They’re going to continue the conversation this coming week.

SIMON: WNBA semifinals, Washington Mystics versus the Las Vegas Aces and the LA Sparks versus the Connecticut Sun, how do you see things?

GOLDMAN: Right now, Washington and Connecticut looking very good, appear headed to the finals, which would be appropriate. They were the top two teams in the regular season, and they’re both up two games to none in their series. They’re both playing very well. Washington has this year’s MVP, Elena Delle Donne. It would be an entertaining final if they met.

SIMON: NPR’s Tom Goldman, thanks so much. Talk to you soon.

GOLDMAN: You’re welcome, Scott. Bye.

(SOUNDBITE OF CLEVER GIRL’S “JUMBO”)

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

The New England Patriots have cut Antonio Brown after just 11 days with the team. The wide receiver is accused of sexual assault and his future in the NFL is now in doubt.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

To the NFL now. The New England Patriots have released receiver Antonio Brown. Pressure had been building on the Patriots after allegations surfaced that Brown sexually assaulted a former trainer. From member station WGBH in Boston, Esteban Bustillos has more.

ESTEBAN BUSTILLOS, BYLINE: Eleven days – that’s how long the professional relationship between Antonio Brown and the New England Patriots lasted. And although the time was short, it was filled with strife from the beginning. Brown came in as something of a character whose antics forced the Oakland Raiders to release him. But the conversation became serious when Brown’s former trainer Britney Taylor accused him of sexual assault and rape in a lawsuit. When the allegations became public, Patriots head coach Bill Belichick remained stoic.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Were you aware of the lawsuit when you signed Antonio Brown?

BILL BELICHICK: I’m not going to be expanding on the statements that have already been given.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Don’t you think the fans deserve to hear a little more from you on…

BELICHICK: When we know more, we’ll say more.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: …Such a major development that, you know, could impact the team?

BELICHICK: I just said that.

BUSTILLOS: But the Patriots didn’t really say much more at all, and neither did Brown when he talked to reporters for the first time as a Patriot just yesterday. He answered a question about whether the NFL had told him anything about his playing status.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ANTONIO BROWN: I appreciate that question. You know, I’m just here to just focus on ball and look forward to getting out there in the home stadium and being with the team.

BUSTILLOS: The pressure’s been on the NFL to do something. The league has battled image problems with multiple players over the past few years being accused of violence against women. During the past week, the NFL reportedly spoke to his accuser, Taylor, and Sports Illustrated reported that another unnamed woman had also accused him of sexual misconduct. Brown’s agent tweeted this afternoon that Brown wants to play the game he loves and hopes to play for another team soon, which would be his fourth in less than a year.

For NPR News, I’m Esteban Bustillos in Boston.

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Chess grandmasters spend hours sitting over game boards. And yet, high-level players lose 10 to 12 pounds on average over a 10-day tournament. ESPN’s Aishwarya Kumar dug into that statistic.

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Chess grandmasters spend hours facing off over game boards. Beyond extending their hands to move pieces or maybe tipping their heads to the side in thought, it really just involves a lot of sitting. And yet, those playing at the highest level lose 10 to 12 pounds, on average, over the course of a 10-day tournament. Now, that improbable statistic was enough to send ESPN’s Aishwarya Kumar down a rabbit hole. She had to know why a mental game takes such a physical toll.

Aishwarya Kumar, welcome to the program.

AISHWARYA KUMAR: Thank you for having me.

CORNISH: Let’s start with the idea of this weight loss or calories burned. How does this compare to other athletes in other sports?

KUMAR: One of the basic facts was the 1984 World Chess Championship, right? So after five months and 48 games, defending champion Anatoly Karpov had lost 22 pounds. And some people said he looked, like, dead. Chess players were burning calories around the same rate as tennis players and competitive marathon runners. Like, in October 2018, Polard, this company that tracks heart rates, monitored chess players during a tournament and found out that this 21-year-old Russian grandmaster, Mikhail Antipov, had burned 560 calories in two hours, which we found out was roughly what Roger Federer would burn in one hour of singles tennis.

And I talked to Robert Sapolsky. He’s been studying primates for a long time now, and he corroborated that fact and said that, you know, chess players can burn up to 6,000 calories in a day by playing a tournament, which is three times that of any human on a regular day.

CORNISH: Now, what did you learn about why? Is it that their brains are just using that much energy, or is there something physiological going on?

KUMAR: Yeah. So the brain obviously is functioning at a much higher level, but we should understand that the brain alone is not causing the weight loss. The brain’s metabolism is causing for different reaction to occur in your body, like increased stress, like loss of appetite, like disturbed sleep patterns. And because of all of these different factors that the brain is setting off – that is the reason they’re losing weight.

CORNISH: I want to talk about world champion Magnus Carlsen from Norway. You learned about his training regimen. Tell me about the moment he realized that he needed a competitive edge and what he did to get it.

KUMAR: Yeah. So it’s interesting with Magnus Carlsen – he realized early on that fixing small things, like what he drinks during the course of a game, will alter the way he functions, especially in the last hour or so of the game. And so one of the things that was really fascinating about this was when I was talking to his dad. His dad was like, oh, we went to the Olympic Training Center. And they were told immediately that the orange juice that he was drinking was causing for the sugar levels to take a huge dip in the fifth and sixth hours of game. And so they were asked to replace that with milk.

CORNISH: Meaning he’d have a little energy crash. So the idea is you need to keep yourself sustained with something that gives you energy but won’t have the crash and that you need to do that even if you’re not skiing, right…

KUMAR: Exactly. Exactly.

CORNISH: …Even if you’re playing chess. So as we look at the world cup of chess, which is happening right now, what are you going to be watching for? What are the things you’ll see and you’ll think, that’s somebody who’s using some training?

KUMAR: I am actually very interested to see how they are sitting because another interesting thing that I found out during the course of the reporting was just how important the posture was. And Magnus Carlsen has perfected the sitting posture that has helped him. He taps his foot gently to keep his alertness on the highest level while still not losing too much energy. He chews gum. So I want to, you know, pay attention to all of those small details during the world cup to be like, OK, you’re – you know, you’re paying attention to all of these smaller elements that’ll set you apart from the rest of the crew.

CORNISH: That’s Aishwarya Kumar, international writer for ESPN. Thanks for explaining it to us.

KUMAR: Thank you so much for having me.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.