The antitrust lawsuit aimed at blowing up Major League Baseball's lucrative television-rights territories and forcing the league to abandon its antiquated blackout policy will proceed after a federal judge Wednesday affirmed the claims that MLB's media structure is anti-competitive.

U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin said MLB's policy, which includes offering out-of-market games only in a package and blacking out in-market games, raises prices, reduces competition among teams and used "monopoly power" to restrict fans' ability to watch games.

An influx of TV money has changed Bud Selig's stance on MLB's blackout policy. (AP)"Making all games available as part of a package, while it may increase output overall, does not, as a matter of law, eliminate the harm to competition wrought by preventing the individual teams from competing to sell their games outside their home territories in the first place," Scheindlin wrote in a 53-page decision. "And plaintiffs in this case – the consumers – have plausibly alleged that they are the direct victims of this harm to

Read More »from Lawsuit targeting MLB's blackout policy to proceed

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Josh Hamilton left here Tuesday night without a contract. He had arrived on the same flight as Texas Rangers executives, which was either a nice bit of serendipity or another slice of an awkward courtship that is proceeding with all the trappings of a teenage romance.

Josh Hamilton hit .285 with 43 home runs last season for the Rangers. (AP)The games. The drama. The uncertainty. And here we are, at the winter meetings, baseball's three-day-long prom, and Hamilton is going home without so much as a boutonnière while the Rangers do their best to convince the real prom king to dance.

Zack Greinke is their latest flirtation, he a willing coquet, and Hamilton shunted aside – again. First Rangers owner Nolan Ryan ripped Hamilton for quitting tobacco midseason, and then the team said it wasn't going to even offer him a contract, and now the Rangers and Hamilton are stuck in this odd place where they both need each other and neither is altogether willing to commit because of the mutual uncertainty borne of this discomfort that has permeated

Read More »from Josh Hamilton, Rangers should plan for reunion

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The Boston Red Sox's $120.2 million shopping spree has bought them a catcher who can't really catch, an outfielder who may not hit, an outfielder who probably should be a DH, a DH who will be a DH and a backup catcher. The free-agent market is Rodeo Drive prices for J.C. Penney production, and no team personifies that like the Red Sox.

And yet to boil it down to pure numbers sells short the upshot of the Red Sox's offseason binge, which continued Tuesday with the signing of Shane Victorino to a three-year, $39 million deal and followed that of Mike Napoli (three years, $39 million), David Ortiz (two years, $26 million), Jonny Gomes (two years, $10 million) and David Ross (two years, $6.2 million). This is as much an overhaul of a poisonous clubhouse atmosphere as it is a restocking of an organization in desperate need of talent. Boston wants to turn the old winning-creates-chemistry adage on its head and hope chemistry creates winning.

Shane Victorino (AP) These are the new Red

Read More »from Red Sox's reboot airs out nasty clubhouse with risky signings that include Shane Victorino

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – These are the Los Angeles Dodgers' winter meetings because this is the Los Angeles Dodgers' world. Team officials walking around the Gaylord Opryland Hotel get stopped by old friends who treat them as though they've just won the lottery. And very matter-of-factly, they'll nod their heads, affirm the jackpot and move on to the next target they're going to overwhelm with their sheer financial heft.

Zack Greinke could end up the richest pitcher in MLB history. (Reuters)At the top of their list is Zack Greinke, the 29-year-old right-hander who, by the end of these meetings, may end up the richest pitcher in history. The Texas Rangers and Washington Nationals would love him to head their rotations, and the Los Angeles Angels, professional background lurkers, are slow-playing it, hoping the price isn't as exorbitant as expected. Which is altogether laughable because the Dodgers are involved, and they are, as one executive put it, just like Dave Hester on "Storage Wars": giddy to spend as much as it takes to outbid you.

"Everything you

Read More »from Dodgers' flirtation with Zack Greinke puts rest of pitching free-agent market on hold

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – At this point, all that's left of Alex Rodriguez's baseball career is the hope that modern medicine can save him from a body that keeps betraying him. First went his right hip, then his right knee and left shoulder, and now it's his left hip, which needs surgery that could keep him out for six months – and in pain for up to a year. Which leaves the New York Yankees stuck with a $114 million bill over the next five years for a guy who can't do the Hokey Pokey, let alone hit a baseball.

While Rodriguez's feckless October now makes more sense, it nevertheless illustrates the pickle in which the Yankees find themselves; with old-guy contracts crashing into new budget restrictions. If Derek Jeter's rehab from a broken ankle keeps him out opening day, as it well could, the Yankees will find $45 million worth of late 30-somethings on their bench, with a 43-year-old closer, 40- and 37-year-old starters and an AARP representative giving a talk during spring training on

Read More »from Alex Rodriguez's hip injury reveals fragile state of Yankees' aging roster

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – While Kansas City Chiefs general manager Scott Pioli is "very emotional" after witnessing linebacker Jovan Belcher take his own life on Saturday morning and the rest of the team is reeling from the murder of his girlfriend that preceded it, the Chiefs announced they will play their scheduled game with the Carolina Panthers on Sunday at 1 p.m.

Belcher shot himself in front of Pioli and Chiefs coach Romeo Crennel in the parking lot at the team's practice facility outside of Arrowhead Stadium on Saturday morning, according to police. About an hour earlier, police said, Belcher allegedly killed his girlfriend at a residence in nearby Independence, Mo. Police identified the victim as 22-year-old Kasandra Perkins, the mother of Belcher's infant daughter.

The practice facility was quiet after police left around 10:30 a.m., with two security guards ensuring hordes of media stayed outside of its gates. Employees scurried in and out of the building. Kansas City mayor

Read More »from Mayor: Chiefs GM Scott Pioli is 'very emotional ' after witnessing Jovan Belcher kill himself

Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball are discussing significant changes to the posting system that brings players from Japan to the major leagues, sources told Yahoo! Sports.

The Rangers gave Yu Darvish a six-year, $60 million deal. (AP)While the talks haven't moved beyond cursory stages, MLB is pushing NPB for a system in which teams no longer would bid blindly for the right to negotiate with a player but rather would participate in a traditional, open auction, the sources said.

Such a format likely would lessen the amount of money funneled toward the Japanese team that posts the player. In the cases of Yu Darvish and Daisuke Matsuzaka, their NPB teams received more than a $50 million windfall, a huge boon for a league with manifold financial struggles.

MLB and the players' union agree they'd prefer to see a larger percentage of the money spent on high-end imports go to the player, the sources said. Darvish received a six-year, $60 million contract from the Texas Rangers on top of their posting fee, and Matsuzaka signed

Read More »from MLB seeking changes to posting system for players from Japan

Mark and Cindy Hill hold up their winning lottery check for $293,750,000. (AP)DEARBORN, Mo. – People wanted to believe. This was the sort of story that grows only from small towns with one restaurant that serves a dynamite catfish special and four churches that serve God however you please, with a Main Street that stretches all of half a mile, with a gas station that in the last year has sold two items of consequence: Confederate-flag license-plate holders and a $293,750,000 lottery ticket.

We wanted to believe it wasn't happenstance or chance or plain kismet that the six numbers on the middle row of Mark and Cindy Hill's five-line Powerball ticket – 5, 16, 22, 23, 29, 6 – were just numbers, because come on. Those aren't just numbers. Those are George Brett, Bo Jackson, Dennis Leonard, Mark Gubicza, Dan Quisenberry and Willie Wilson. Those are Kansas City Royals greats. Those numbers, just 45 miles from Kauffman Stadium, mean something, something more than an unthinkable windfall for a family reaping the cosmic payback of decades rooting for a woebegone

Read More »from Did the Kansas City Royals really inspire a winning $293 million lottery ticket?