The Sports Report: Dave Roberts deserves more credit than he gets

Howdy, I’m your host, Houston Mitchell. Let’s get right to the news.

From Dylan Hernández: As Clayton Kershaw considered why he was in position to pitch in another postseason, he thought of his manager.

Dave Roberts managed Kershaw’s workload by spacing out his starts and limiting his innings over the last two months of the regular season, but that wasn’t what Kershaw appreciated most. When Kershaw returned from a shoulder injury in August, he was afraid he would be a burden. He had always prided himself on pitching into the late innings and giving relievers a day to recover. Now, he feared the opposite would happen, that by making four- or five-inning starts, he would exhaust the bullpen.

Roberts assured him that wouldn’t be the case.

“It’s not gonna be a burden,” Kershaw recalled Roberts telling him. “We’re gonna have guys.”

Eight seasons into their working relationship, Roberts understood how Kershaw was driven by a sense of responsibility to his team. Roberts knew what to say to him and how to say it, which changed how Kershaw viewed the task of preparing for October while minimizing the chances of further damaging his shoulder.

“For me,” Kershaw said, “it gave me some peace of mind to go out there and just pitch.”

The Dodgers registered their fifth 100-win season in their eight years under Roberts and won the National League West by 16 games over the Arizona Diamondbacks. Their continued regular-season dominance made them look like a machine that operates on autopilot, but that wasn’t the case. Someone had to be in control and that someone was Roberts, who performed the finest work of a managerial career that already counts 753 victories.

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NLDS SCHEDULE

Best-of-five
All times Pacific

Dodgers vs. Arizona
Saturday at Dodgers, 6:20 p.m.
Monday at Dodgers, 6 p.m.
Wednesday at Arizona, TBA
*Thursday at Arizona, TBA
*Saturday at Dodgers, TBA

All games will be on TBS.

Philadelphia vs. Atlanta
Saturday at Atlanta, 3 p.m., TBS
Monday at Atlanta, 3 p.m., TBS
Wednesday at Philadelphia, TBA, TBS
*Thursday at Philadelphia, TBA, TBS
*Saturday at Atlanta, TBA, TBS

*-if necessary

ALDS SCHEDULE

Best-of-five
All times Pacific

Texas vs. Baltimore
Saturday at Baltimore, 10 a.m., FS1
Sunday at Baltimore, 1 p.m., FS1
Tuesday at Texas, 5 p.m., Fox
*Wednesday at Texas, TBA, Fox/FS1
*Friday at Baltimore, TBA, Fox/FS1

Minnesota vs. Houston
Saturday at Houston, 1:45 p.m., FS1
Sunday at Houston, 5 p.m., FS1
Tuesday at Minnesota, 1 p.m., Fox
*Wednesday at Minnesota, TBA, Fox/FS1
*Friday at Houston, TBA, Fox/FS1

*-if necessary

LAKERS

From Broderick Turner: Three days into Lakers training camp and Jaxson Hayes has seen enough out of Max Christie to heap praise on the second-year guard.

“Max Christie is a dog,” Hayes told the media Thursday when asked who has stood out in his eyes.

Hayes paused for a few seconds and then repeated himself, with emphasis.

“Max Christie is a dog!” Hayes said. “His game has stood out a lot to me. I watched him in Summer League. Obviously, Summer League is one thing playing against younger guys. He’s come out here and just kept the same energy and the same mentality, so he’s been killing it. So, his game surprised me a lot. I already knew he was a good player, but he can really go.”

On a Lakers team with so much talent and so much depth, the question becomes how can Christie break into the rotation to get some playing time.

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NFL

A photo of Dick Butkus sneering behind his facemask filled the cover of Sports Illustrated’s 1970 NFL preview, topped by the headline, “The Most Feared Man in the Game.” Opponents who wound up on the business end of his bone-rattling hits could testify that wasn’t an exaggeration.

Butkus, a middle linebacker for the Chicago Bears whose speed and ferocity set the standards for the position in the modern era, has died, the team announced Thursday. He was 80.

According to a statement released by the team, Butkus’ family confirmed that he died in his sleep overnight at his home in Malibu.

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UCLA-USC FOOTBALL

From Ryan Kartje: Big Ten officials had already completed the complex work of piecing together a new conference schedule including two new members when the conference added two more schools in early August.

Adding Oregon and Washington a few months after USC and UCLA meant reconsidering how to handle scheduling within the Big Ten’s new West Coast enclave. Should the four schools play one another every year? How should the conference balance geography with a massive 18-team rotation? Those questions were “really at the forefront of a lot of the conversations,” said Kerry Kenny, the Big Ten’s chief operating officer.

After two months of deliberations, the Big Ten laid out its answer Thursday, releasing a five-year plan for its conference football schedules that opted for “a more fluid rotation” over protecting annual matchups for USC and UCLA against Washington and Oregon.

USC and UCLA will still meet every season, just as they have every year for nearly a century. But the four new Big Ten teams will play their other West Coast conference brethren only three out of every five years. For USC and UCLA, that means the prospect of seasons in which they play every road game, aside from their annual rivalry, thousands of miles away.

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DUCKS

Defenseman Jamie Drysdale has agreed to a three-year, $6.9-million contract with the Ducks, ending his lengthy absence from the team.

The Ducks announced the deal Thursday before their penultimate preseason game against Arizona. Drysdale is signed through the 2025-26 season.

Drysdale was the sixth overall pick in the 2020 draft, and the puck-moving defenseman appeared to be a budding star while scoring 32 points in 81 games for the Ducks as a 19-year-old in the 2021-22 season. But Drysdale missed all but eight games of last season because of a torn labrum in his left shoulder suffered during a hit by Vegas’ William Carrier last October.

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SOCCER

From Kevin Baxter: Gregg Berhalter and Gio Reyna may never be best friends. But Berhalter, coach of the men’s national soccer team, said Thursday that he and Reyna, one of his most talented midfielders, are ready to work together when the 23-player U.S. team begins gathering in Nashville next week for friendlies with Germany and Ghana.

“The idea is that we work together for the team to be successful. And I think we’re both prepared to do that,” Berhalter said. “Although it may take some time, we’re both aligned with what we want to accomplish.”

Berhalter and Reyna recently spoke for the first time since last fall’s World Cup, where Reyna’s poor attitude and lack of effort in training nearly led to his removal from the team. He played just 53 minutes in the USMNT’s four games in Qatar. After the tournament Berhalter, speaking at a leadership conference, referenced the incident without naming the player, touching off a feud with Reyna’s parents, who informed U.S. Soccer of a decades-old domestic violence incident involving Berhalter and the woman he would later marry. That briefly cost the coach his job as U.S. Soccer investigated, then cleared, Berhalter of any wrongdoing.

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HORSE RACING

From John Cherwa: The start of the West Coast path to the Kentucky Derby starts Saturday at Santa Anita Park with the running of the Grade 1 $300,000 American Pharoah Stakes. But, the new question facing the business is do the races for 2-year-olds mean as much as they used to?

There was a time when conditioning a horse meant getting a good foundation under them by running them a lot before the Triple Crown series. Not so much anymore.

“Horsemen are circling the first Saturday in May and then working backwards and figure out the least number of races that it takes to get them there,” said Rick Hammerle, a consultant for 1/ST Racing who was the racing secretary at Santa Anita for 16 years. “It’s really up to what the individual team is looking to do with a horse.

“If you start a horse in July as a 2-year-old, you might be aiming them for stakes races in the fall [such as the American Pharoah]. If you are going for success, winning a Grade 1 as a 2-year-old can mean a lot to a horse.”

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THIS DATE IN SPORTS

1926 — Babe Ruth becomes first MLB player to hit 3 home runs in a World Series game as the Yankees beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 10-5 in Game 4.

1928 — Leo Diegel wins the PGA championship, beating Al Espinosa 6 and 5.

1956 — Oklahoma blanks Kansas 66-0 to set a modern college football winning streak of 32 straight.

1963 — World Series: The Dodgers edge the Yankees, 2-1 at Dodger Stadium for 4-0 series sweep; MVP: Sandy Koufax.

1980 — Marvin Hagler wins the world middleweight title, beating Alan Minter in three rounds at Wembley Arena in London.

1990 — Stacey Robinson sets an NCAA quarterback rushing record with 308 yards and scores five touchdowns to lead Northern Illinois to a 73-18 victory over Fresno State.

1993 — Michael Jordan announces his retirement after nine seasons in the NBA.

2000 — Marty McSorley is found guilty of assault with a weapon for his two-fisted stick attack on an opponent by a Canadian court. McSorley is convicted for the Feb. 21 blow that sent Vancouver Canucks forward Donald Brashear sprawling to the ice.

2001 — Maurice Hicks runs for a record 416 yards and four touchdowns, but it isn’t enough as Morgan State defeats N. Carolina A&T 52-42. Hicks breaks the Division I-AA single-game rushing record of 409 yards set by Charles Roberts of Sacramento State in a 1999 game against Idaho State.

2003 — Indianapolis, led by Peyton Manning, becomes the first team in NFL history to win after trailing by 21 or more points with less than 4 minutes left in regulation. Mike Vanderjagt’s 29-yard field goal with 3:47 left in the extra period gives the Colts a 38-35 victory over Tampa Bay.

2010 — Roy Halladay pitches the second no-hitter in postseason history, leading the Philadelphia Phillies over the Cincinnati Reds 4-0 in Game 1 of the NL division series.

2017 — The Vegas Golden Knights defeat the Dallas Stars 2-1 in franchise’s inaugural season opener.

—Compiled by the Associated Press