prise and delight were genuine, and the greater for having waited so long. Amis drank in the moment and the view. Pakistan should enjoy doing the same. For once, their story has been properly and sp

BOSTON -- Say this for the Boston Red Sox: Theyre going for it in David Ortizs final season.With the finish line in sight for their retiring franchise icon, the Red Sox didnt wait for the Aug. 1 trade deadline to get help for an inadequate rotation. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski didnt spare all of the organizations top prospects either, acquiring All-Star left-hander Drew Pomeranz from the San Diego Padres for touted 18-year-old right-hander Anderson Espinoza on Thursday night in an old-fashioned, one-for-one trade between clubs with vastly different timelines for contending.The Red Sox, who return from the All-Star break in a three-way fight for the American League East crown, get a pitcher who appears to be coming into his own at age 27 but has already reached his big league career high in innings pitched this season at 102. Meanwhile, the 38-51 Padres get an elite prospect who has been compared to a young Pedro Martinez but probably wont sniff the big leagues until at least 2019.Id rather trade three [lesser]-type guys than Anderson, but that wasnt appealing to San Diego, Dombrowski said. They really wanted more of the focus of the premium guy. Theres always risk with pitchers, no matter how old they are. We know that Drew hasnt thrown this many innings. We think he can handle it. We also know theres a risk in Anderson, a young pitcher that we like a great deal.Dombrowski said Pomeranz is scheduled to make his Red Sox debut Wednesday at Fenway Park against the San Francisco Giants.To make room for Pomeranz on the 40-man roster, infielder Josh Rutledge, who is out with an injured left knee, was transferred to the 60-day disabled list.Espinoza, ranked No. 14 on ESPN Insider Keith Laws midseason top 50 prospects list, was one of the most gifted arms in a Boston farm system that hasnt produced a homegrown starter since Clay Buchholz in 2007. But with the demand for pitching far outweighing the supply of available starters -- and the Baltimore Orioles and Texas Rangers,?fellow AL contenders, equally desperate for pitching -- the cost was always going to be exorbitant. Dombrowski had little choice but to act quickly and pay a steep price.Sometimes if you have more supply than demand, youre in a position; if you wait [until the trade deadline], sometimes it can be beneficial, Dombrowski said during a conference call. But in a case where the demand exceeds the supply, which is definitely the case in this situation, Im not sure you dont take a greater risk by waiting, because demand continues to build. I dont think theres a lot more guys becoming available. We had a pretty good pulse of that.Pomeranzs value has been built almost entirely over the past three months. A first-round draft pick of the Cleveland Indians in 2010, he earned his first All-Star selection this season after posting a 2.47 ERA and allowing 67 hits and 41 walks in a career-high 102 innings over 17 starts for the Padres. He ranks second in the majors in both opponents batting average (.184) and opponents OPS (.555).Before this season, though, Pomeranz bounced between the rotation and the bullpen for the Colorado Rockies and the Oakland Athletics, posting a 4.60 ERA and allowing 240 hits and 106 walks in 228? innings as a starter. The lefty has now been traded four times.But the Red Sox are betting on Pomeranz being a late bloomer because he has started throwing a cutter this season. They believe Pomeranzs cutter has made his fastball more effective because he doesnt have to throw it as frequently. In the past, he was primarily a fastball-curveball pitcher.Pomeranz will join a rotation that includes ace lefty David Price, upstart knuckleballer Steven Wright and right-hander Rick Porcello. Red Sox starters have posted a 4.72 ERA in the first half, which ranks 19th in the majors.The final two spots in the rotation have been a black hole, with six pitchers combining for a 7.22 ERA. The Red Sox are hoping lefty Eduardo Rodriguez, 23, has corrected mechanical flaws that contributed to an 8.59 ERA in six starts since he came off the disabled list in late May, but they also cant bank on a significant improvement from him.We have four guys, and were hopeful Eduardo steps up at this point when he pitches on Saturday [in New York against the Yankees], Dombrowski said. And well see what else happens beyond that.Hired in August with a win-now mandate from owner John Henry, Dombrowski has lived up to his reputation as an aggressive wheeler-dealer. In November, he acquired closer Craig Kimbrel from the Padres for four minor leaguers, including touted outfielder Manuel Margot and infielder Javier Guerra. He also signed Price and veteran outfielder Chris Young?and traded for reliever Carson Smith in a span of about three weeks during the offseason. Within the past week, he has made four trades, acquiring veteran infielder Aaron Hill, utility man Michael Martinez, reliever Brad Ziegler and now Pomeranz.Espinoza was widely regarded as the Red Soxs top pitching prospect and third-best prospect overall, behind second baseman Yoan Moncada and center fielder Andrew Benintendi, both of whom are playing at the Double-A level and could reach the big leagues later this season before Ortiz exits the stage.Espinoza is still years away from the majors. And after dominating the rookie-level Gulf Coast League with a 0.68 ERA and 40 strikeouts in 40 innings last season, he has struggled against older competition in the low-Class A South Atlantic League. In 17 starts for Greenville, he has notched a 4.38 ERA and given up 77 hits and 27 walks in 76 innings.The Padres were able to pry away Espinoza because Pomeranz isnt eligible for free agency until after the 2018 season. Pomeranz is making only $1.35 million this season, his first year of arbitration eligibility.Dombrowski noted the comfort of knowing Price, Wright, Porcello and Pomeranz would be locked up beyond this season.We found we were being asked for the same people no matter what the amount of service time left was, Dombrowski said. Even though somebody was in the last year [until] free agency versus somebody that had a couple of years to go, the same names that kept coming up, the players that we were being asked to trade.Trading Espinoza was also slightly more palatable for the Red Sox because of the re-emergence of right-hander Michael Kopech, who has returned from last years drug suspension and a broken hand in spring training. One Red Sox official said last week that Kopech has the best arm Ive ever seen, and in a start for Class A Salem on Wednesday night, Kopech threw a pitch that was clocked at 105 mph.The Red Sox were also on the verge Thursday night of signing first-round draft pick Jason Groome, a touted high school left-hander who figures to take Espinozas place as a prized pitching prospect.Braves Jerseys 2019 . 24 Baylor in a Big 12 clash between teams trending in opposite directions. Andrew Wiggins made 10-of-12 from the foul line and scored 17 for Kansas (14-4, 5-0 Big 12), which capped a stretch of four straight games against ranked opponents unscathed. Matt Joyce Braves Jersey . Despite the cost, effort and an improved steroid test, its possible that very few -- if any -- positives will be detected, Dr. Richard Budgett told The Associated Press in an interview. "We just dont know what the results from Torino will be," Budgett said. https://www.cheapbraves.com/1143o-dusty-baker-jersey-braves.html . Bryzgalov stopped 25 shots on Saturday in the Oklahoma City Barons 4-1 victory over the Abbotsford Heat. The Oilers signed Bryzgalov to a one-year $2 million contract last Friday after shedding payroll by dealing defenceman Ladislav Smid to the Flames. Gene Garber Jersey . You can watch the game live on TSN at 7:30pm et/4:30pm pt. The Flyers had won seven of eight before dropping their last two outings on consecutive days over the weekend. Philadelphia was handed a 6-3 loss by the visiting Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday afternoon before dropping a 4-1 decision to the Rangers the following night in New York City. Jerry Royster Braves Jersey . The 29-year-old from Port Colborne, Ont., has nothing but good things to say about former U.S. marine Liz (Girlrilla) Carmouche ahead of their co-main event Wednesday on the UFCs "Fight for the Troops" televised card in Fort Campbell, Ky.Asked how he felt about literary prizes, Kingsley Amis once said, Well, theyre all right if you win. Its easy to imagine the group of teams circling around the top of the ICC Test match rankings feeling the same. Like literary prizes, the criteria for victory seems arbitrary and hard to understand, and anyway the best - its subjective, isnt it?We dont need algorithms to tell us when a truly great team emerges. The West Indies of the late 1970s and early 80s and the Australian dynasties that succeeded them didnt need a mace and a cheque to validate their efforts. Their greatness bestowed itself upon the game, their defeats in some strange way more memorable than their victories; rare, valiant proof that they were (sometimes) human. Did anyone care about rankings as they watched India play Australia in 2001, or the Ashes of 2005? No, they did not. The battle itself was the thing, and it needed no further context.We live now in less certain times. Has there been a sadder sight than West Indies playing India in a four-Test series before almost no one, the great Viv Richards commentating on a mismatch in an empty stadium named after himself, while the last days of the CPL burned onwards towards a packed-out final tie contested by the real stars of Caribbean cricket? It appeared symbolically bad.Around the same time, Pakistan, a team that has not played a home international match since 2009, won a Test at Lords, but then subsided to defeat in the next two games, in Manchester and Birmingham. New Zealand went to Zimbabwe and illustrated the gap between a side in the middle of the rankings and the team at the bottom (Zimbabwe are so far adrift that eight of the other Test-playing nations are closer in points to the No. 1 spot than they are to tenth place). Australia, officially the best, went to Sri Lanka, who had just been roundly beaten in England, and were humiliated. New Zealand hopped on a plane to South Africa and found themselves trying to play a series out of season, as wet as West Indies and India ultimately became.The pivotal moments of these few weeks came at The Oval, when Pakistan, their glorious fervour calmly channelled by the ageless Misbah-ul-Haq, somehow raised themselves up once more and defeated England. Suddenly all of these random, unconnected, bilaterally contracted events had an overarching narrative that could knit them together, and that narrative was the Test match rankings.A few months ago, I wrote a blog about box-set cricket, the way that tournaments like the IPL, the Big Bash and the CPPL fit with modern life, fulfilling the urge to binge on one thing for a brief period.dddddddddddd Their self-containment seemed like an intrinsic and obvious part of their appeal, as did their comparative rarity - they may appear ubiquitous but each happens only once a year. They contrasted with the sprawling, soap-opera narrative of Test cricket, which didnt have any obvious entry point or definitive conclusion.Thats not necessarily a negative. As the great Gideon Haigh puts it in the documentary Death of a Gentleman, T20 cricket needs something to be shorter than. Test cricket has accompanied me through my life, changing with geological slowness but changing nonetheless, its storylines inexhaustible and self-renewing. And yet something that takes decades to impose its form needs impetus from outside forces, the shock of the new, whether it be Kerry Packer, the driving force of TV money, or the nonsense of the Big Three.By fluke, all of those Test series going on in the last month provided it. This wasnt quite box-set cricket but it was a happy coalescing that made for a compelling story with a wonderful outcome for Pakistan and the game as a whole. How invigorating and inspiring for Test cricket to have a team at No. 1 that has never been there before, and that has fought almost overwhelming odds to do so.But it has happened by chance. The rambling, unfocused ranking system cant claim credit, or to have solved the problem of giving narrative shape to the uncoordinated, top-heavy mess that is the Future Tours Programme.It is not a Test championship and it cant address the gap between the top teams and the bottom, which suggests a two-division system may work better. It doesnt provide more regular cricket, or a ladder up for, whisper it, more Test playing nations.Instead, it is proof that this endlessly unfolding story can have its way stations, points at which we stop and reset and allow someone to take in the view from the top. As Misbah put it this week, For us, the No. 1 ranking is not a destination but part of a journey.At the grand old age of 64, and with his 17th novel The Old Devils, Amis finally won something - the big one, in fact - the Booker Prize. His surprise and delight were genuine, and the greater for having waited so long. Amis drank in the moment and the view. Pakistan should enjoy doing the same. For once, their story has been properly and spectacularly framed. ' ' '