Defending World Series champions the Boston Red Sox slumped to their third loss in a row as the New York Yankees claimed a 4-1 home win.

There it is. Right there on the pages of the glossy red publication.

So how much money would you be willing to give up for the pleasure of hitting somebody?

It didn’t take the hurlers of Dublin, Tipperary, Clare and Galway long to discover Boston’s list of priorities last Friday when they landed for the Fenway Classic Super 11s.

What Stick lacked in muscle, he compensated with grey matter.

Like most of you, if the truth be told, I possess a dark sadistic streak.

One of the greatest movies ever made features Jimmy Breslin, though the great New York columnist, who died over the weekend aged 88, doesn’t even appear on screen.

Former NY Met Dwight Gooden has denied his former baseball compadre Darryl Strawberry’s accusation that he is “a complete junkie-addict ,” claiming his former Met team-mate is taking it personally that Gooden couldn’t make a scheduled public appearance with Strawberry last week.

In the yellow taxi - literally - from JFK when the text comes through.

Imagine a national sports body at odds with its constituent parts about money.

The great and the good had been queuing up all week to predict an England win at Twickenham on Saturday night, among them three captains from World Cups long gone, writes Peter Jackson.

A fan died after falling from the upper deck into the lower-level stands at Turner Field on Saturday night during a game between the Atlanta Braves and New York Yankees.

A burglar who was wearing a Yankees baseball cap he had stolen from a priest's house when gardaí arrested him has received a suspended prison sentence.

“You a fight fan?” the owner of my laundromat asked as he leaned back against a washing machine, his arm awkwardly stretched back over the whirring of a spin cycle.

The great players enjoy more space and more time than the mere mortals and that goal summed up what Villa can expect this year in this league.

“A bad day at the office,” said one bookie after the first day of the Cheltenham Festival ended with five of the seven races claimed by Irish trainers.

A word to the wise: The final say on sport in 2014

Now that Derek Jeter has left baseball, the rest of the sport can focus on the real business of October, the play-offs and the suddenly dramatic road to the World Series.

Before it gets grim around here, allow me to get a little sentimental.

There will come a point where we no longer feel like being deferential to the ostentatious voices of sport. That’s probably a good thing, on balance.

Maybe now he’ll make it onto the Good Wall.

A Yankees fan has filed a $10m (€7.36m) lawsuit against two ESPN announcers contending they mocked him when he was caught on television sleeping in his seat during a game at Yankee Stadium.

On Friday, when the fireworks pop and the hotdogs sizzle for the annual celebration of Independence Day in the United States, New York Yankees fans will have another impossibly sentimental reason to hark back on past Fourth of Julys.

At half-past five this afternoon, Manchester City take on Everton knowing that three points will carry them to the brink of Premier League glory.

The sensation was strange at first. Unfamiliar.

“It’s very… American, isn’t it?” Baseball is a cornerstone of Americana that has helped me get past that attitude.

New Year’s Day. Mount Corbitt, Churchtown, Mallow, Co Cork.

It hardly carried the glamour or gravitas of an induction into Cooperstown or Springfield, it wasn’t like there was a Larry Bird to welcome his Magic Johnson into this particular Hall of Fame, but there was something particularly pleasing about seeing Ronnie Whelan being honoured at the FAI International Awards on Sunday.

If you’re knee deep in the Netflix series House of Cards like me and Barack Obama, then you’ll know the office of the Vice President of the United States of America has rarely enjoyed a more glamorous or salacious depiction of its daily agenda.

The way the Boston Red Sox clinched the World Series this past week is almost too corny to be true.

During the last days of May 1995, two monumental New York Yankee debuts occurred within a week of each other.

It’s only getting seedier in the Alex Rodriguez saga that has baseball tearing itself to pieces.

New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, the highest paid player in baseball, has been banned for 211 games, starting on Thursday and covering the remainder of this season and all of next, for violations of Major League Baseball’s joint drug prevention and treatment programme and its basic agreement.

Spain 2 Republic of Ireland 0

Manchester City and baseball giants the New York Yankees have formed an agreement to purchase an expansion franchise in Major League Soccer, it has been announced.

The US Navy’s baseball team, the Rota Blue Devils, will make history in July along with the Liverpool Trojans when they play at the first ever Peter O’Malley Invitational Tournament in Dublin.

Ed Sheeran has threatened to leak his new album.

Maybe this New York soccer friendly will be no more than a money-spinning afterthought tacked onto a busy end-of-season schedule.

There are big games, very big games and then there are mega games.

So many accomplished players have passed through the Donegal Boston ranks during the club’s first 25 years that the summer of a young Jim McGuinness doesn’t stand out as much as you’d think.

Last week was a mixed one for former athletes, with Texas coursing through their veins.