BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Kentucky coach John Calipari came out strongly against the idea that the NBA would consider expanding beyond its current draft format of two rounds.

Speaking at the SEC Tipoff event on Wednesday, Calipari argued that additional rounds wouldn't be for the NBA but rather to stock its developmental arm, the G League.

"If anybody supports more rounds in the draft, those more rounds are to get kids to go to the G League, you do not care about college basketball or you're trying to ruin college basketball," Calipari said.

Calipari's comments come a day after Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski suggested more rounds in the NBA draft were a potential likelihood with the G League's increasing impact on the league.

Calipari, who signed a 10-year, $85 million extension with Kentucky this summer, said he supports players' ability to go directly to the NBA out of high school but is nonetheless wary of the G League. He said the developmental league's current setup helps those who are playing "their way back into the league" as opposed to those who are trying to enter it for the first time.

"After two years they don't perform, what? The NBA is going to take care of them and hire them? No. It's entertainment. You're done," Calipari said.

Calipari stressed college as a more stable option.

"If they're not going to the NBA, if we're really about young people, we should encourage them to go to college," he said. "And the reason is their way out is through education. Their way to break through to the American dream is education."

Calipari also addressed the new California law that will allow college athletes in the state to collect money for endorsements beginning in 2023. He challenged a room full of reporters on whether they'd read the law line by line before saying that he hadn't, either.

"But I do know that now there's a law in New York, there's one in Florida. How about this: Kentucky's going to have a law," he said. "That tells me there's going to be 40 laws in 40 different states. Then the tea leaves tell me there's one place this is going to get solved and it's Congress. It's not by the NCAA and it's not by the states."

While Calipari has long positioned himself as a supporter of college athletes having ownership of their name and likeness, he said he was worried about the next steps.

"There are all kinds of consequences that have to be addressed, and I'm coaching my team," he said. "That's what I'm doing, so I'm not spending much time on it."

ALTAMAHAW, N.C. – There’s nothing like home cooking to close out a racing season, and Bobby Komisarski is hoping to convert that local familiarity into a strong performance at Ace Speedway.

Komisarski, who has traveled many hours from North Carolina to compete this season with the Must See Racing Sprint Car Series presented by Engine Pro, will close his first full-time season on tour with this weekend’s two-day event held as part of the sixth annual Rodney Cook Classic.

With full features on tap both Friday, Oct. 18 and Saturday, Oct. 19, Komisarski knows that every opportunity to collect points is critical, considering he’s just inside the top 15 in points coming into the event and would like to end up even higher in the final standings.

But perhaps equally as important is racing close to home in front of family and friends. Komisarski hails from Charlotte, N.C., just two hours from Ace Speedway and the closest haul he’ll have all year long.

“Man, it sure feels nice to be able to finish off our year on the pavement with a ‘home race,’” Komisarski said. “We don’t get to race on asphalt down south very often, so in times like this our team wants to take advantage of that and come out with the best performance we possibly can.

“We’ve got a little added motivation with some of the extra supporters who will be able to come out and watch our No. 17 this weekend that don’t normally get to see us in action, so hopefully we can give them something to smile about when it’s all said and done.”

Komisarski was actually looking forward to the recent Must See event at Rockford (Ill.) Speedway last month, but that race on the Illinois quarter-mile oval was lost to Mother Nature via a rainy weekend.

“That was a bummer,” noted Komisarski. “I was really hoping for a good day there, because I felt like some of the dirt skills and it being a short track and possibly being a little bit loose setup-wise there would kind of help us out. I love the short tracks and I’ve always been a big fan of beating and banging on them, and I feel like we’ll have some of that at Ace too.

“We’ll just have to see how it all shakes out.”

Though he likely won’t be in reach to steal away the MSR Rookie of the Year Award from Rick Holley or Todd McQuillen – the two drivers ahead of Komisarski in points in that category – the driver nicknamed Kamikaze is pleased with how his first full season has gone overall in a winged asphalt 410ci sprint car.

“It has been crazy, but it has been so much fun, too,” explained Komisarski. “We had no idea how anything was going to turn out this year. We got the car; we got the motor last minute … which is why unfortunately we missed Anderson at the start of the year, but my dad’s background is mainly big-block modifieds. He ran a little bit of asphalt; I’ve run very limited asphalt, so we kind of just tried to learn as much as we could with the car while basically flying blind. We had Bronzie (Lawson IV, former MSR winner) helping us. We had Tony Grams helping us. But all that advice has really paid off.

“I’m really looking forward to the 2020 season now,” he added. “We really just were using 2019 as a learning curve, to try to get where we need to be for 2020. I’m really ecstatic with the way we’ve been going, so I’m really looking forward to next year and getting back at it, while also finishing strong.”

Open practice for all divisions at Ace takes place on Thursday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., with Friday’s pit gates opening at 9 a.m. Practice for the opening day show begins at 11 a.m., with qualifying following at 6 p.m. and racing firing off at 7:30 p.m.

Saturday’s schedule sees the pit gates again swinging open at 9 a.m. and practice kicking off at 11 a.m., with qualifying beginning at 4 p.m. and feature racing to follow.

The Saturday program will be co-headlined by a 140-lap late model stock car feature, in addition to the championship race for the Must See Racing sprint cars.

SOUTH BOSTON, Va. – As a racer, Peyton Sellers knows it’s best not to become overly satisfied.

But a month after clinching a record third-straight South Boston Speedway late model stock championship, he feels pretty good about the season, even if there was a little disappointment down the stretch.

“Honestly, we ran 35 regular season races (including 18 at South Boston), won eight (overall), and got a track title at our home track,” said Sellers. “In a perfect world we would have won the national title, but in the real world, we had as good a year as we could hope for.”

In 18 starts at South Boston Speedway Sellers had six wins, 15 top fives, never finished out of the top 10 and led 368 laps to win his fifth overall South Boston title.

The fifth track championship leaves him two behind all-time championship leader David Blankenship. Sellers is the only driver to win three consecutive titles.

Blankenship won two in a row on two occasions (1989-1990 and 1997-1998), Justin Johnson won back-to-back in 2009 and 2010 and Matt Bowling doubled up in 2015 and 2016.

The downside to 2019 for Sellers? Missing out on a second NASCAR Whelen All-American Series national championship and a third Virginia Late Model Triple Crown title.

After leading the national championship race all season, Sellers fell behind with a month remaining and never could catch up. He wound up sixth, 20 points behind winner Jacob Goede, who races in the Midwest.

Sellers finished second to fellow South Boston driver Lee Pulliam in the Virginia Late Model Triple Crown standings, coming up one position short at Martinsville earlier this month.

“We had a good year. A few things didn’t play out exactly right, but we were as competitive as we’ve ever been and it paid off,” said Sellers, who is sponsored by Clarence’s Steakhouse, Danville Toyota, St. Lawrence Radiology, Liquid Performance, Riverside Exxon and C&L Machine. “We led the national points from our home track until four races to go. We all got our hopes up for a national title, but we came up short on that and the triple crown. But we did win the track title.”

Sellers believes an average second half of the season proved costly to his national title hopes. After winning the midseason Thunder Road Harley-Davidson presented by Grand Atlantic Ocean Resort 200 on June 29 for his fourth South Boston victory, he won only twice more all season, sweeping twin 75-lappers on July 13.

“I’m convinced that what kept me from winning the national title was that we cooled off after the Fourth of July and Lee got hot,” said Sellers, nodding to Pulliam’s five victories after the halfway point of the season.

But that’s all in Sellers’ rear-view mirror.

“I’ll be honest, in this racing world, you’d better be able to put things behind you,” he said.

Sellers is most proud of the level of competition he bested for his back-to-back-to-back South Boston Speedway championships.

“I look back at who I’ve raced against to win these championships. (Bobby) McCarty in ’17, (Philip) Morris in ’18 and Pulliam this year,” said Sellers. McCarty is the reigning CARS Tour champion and Morris and Pulliam have nine national championships between them.

“Three in a row … it’s hard to win one championship. All three had challenges throughout the year. We had an unbelievable year this year and an unbelievable year last year.”

Free-agent quarterback Brock Osweiler says he is retiring from the NFL.

The former Denver Broncos, Houston Texans and Miami Dolphins quarterback told 9News in Denver in a telephone interview that he was "extremely grateful for the time I did receive playing in the National Football League."

"The experiences I did have, people I did meet, relationships I did make -- I'm not going to dwell on the things that didn't happen in my career.

"Being a kid from Kalispell, Montana, playing for the Denver Broncos, winning a Super Bowl, having the opportunity to sign a second contract -- when you look back on it, I couldn't be more appreciative. It was great."

Osweiler, who is 28, went 2-3 as a fill-in starter for the Dolphins last season when Ryan Tannehill was injured. He gave the fan base hope in a period dubbed "Brocktober," which began with him throwing for a career-high 380 yards in an upset overtime victory against the Chicago Bears, but his play leveled off in the following games.

What Osweiler did do, however, is reestablish his career from disappointing starter to reliable backup quarterback. He signed a one-year, $880,000 contract with Miami and competed to make the roster as a backup. Despite a rough training camp, the Dolphins kept Osweiler as their No. 2 QB, and he kept them afloat when Tannehill got hurt early in the season.

In 2018, Osweiler completed 63.5 percent of his passes for 1,247 yards, 6 touchdowns and 4 interceptions.

Osweiler's biggest NFL contribution came in a similar role. He went 5-2 as a starter in place of an injured Peyton Manning for the 2015 Denver Broncos, helping them earn the AFC's top seed en route to a victory in Super Bowl 50.

"That 2015 season is something that is very special,'' Osweiler told 9News. "The coaches, the players, they mean the world to me. I was thankful to have had the opportunity to play the role I did, but that was the ultimate team deal. There was a ton of talent on that football team, but I would say we were the closest of all teams in the National Football league. Our culture was beyond anything that can ever be created. It was so genuine, so real that I think any coach or player on that team would have done anything for anybody in that building that year."

That season led to a $72 million contract with the Texans, who traded him to the Cleveland Browns after one difficult season as the Texans' starter. The Browns then released Osweiler just before the 2017 season, when he was again picked up by the Broncos.

Osweiler, who played seven seasons in the NFL, was drafted by the Broncos in the second round (57th overall) of the 2012 draft.

"I have my health. I have the ring. There's a lot of things I still wanted to accomplish. And I have a lot more left in the tank. But, hey, sometimes you don't get that opportunity. And given that, it's all good," he told 9News.

ESPN's Cameron Wolfe contributed to this report.

Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett said Wednesday on Twitter that he was "punched" in the face by a fan.

Garrett wrote that he was driving when a fan flagged him down to take a picture and then gave him "a pillow tap" [in the face].

A "fan" hopped out his car to take a picture with me and then punched me in my face. Hm, put your legs into it might have actually made me flinch. ??

— Myles "Flash" Garrett ⚡️ (@MylesLGarrett) October 16, 2019

Was in my car, flagged me down for a picture and I cracked the window enough for the camera to get my face. Took the pic and gave me a pillow tap

— Myles "Flash" Garrett ⚡️ (@MylesLGarrett) October 16, 2019

The Browns, which completed their final bye week practice Wednesday, said the "team is aware and the appropriate law enforcement authorities have been notified."

Garrett is tied for the NFL lead with nine sacks.

The Browns next play Oct. 27 at the New England Patriots.

NEW YORK -- Sleepy-eyed Brooklyn Nets players, still recovering from the 12-hour time difference, practiced Wednesday for the first time since returning from their preseason trip to China.

Four days removed from their second and final game there against the Los Angeles Lakers, Nets players said they were ready to put the trip behind them.

"It's tough to block everything out," Caris LeVert said. "But at the end of the day we're human and we see those things. We just try to stick together as much as we could and focus our sights on the game."

The trip wasn't what players expected.

While the Nets flew to Shanghai, Rockets general manager Daryl Morey sent out a tweet supporting protestors in Hong Kong that created turmoil between China and the NBA. Community events there were canceled, posters promoting the Nets-Lakers games were stripped from the sides of buildings, the league went into crisis PR mode, and there was talk of the games being canceled.

LaVert said he never saw Morey's tweet, but heard about it upon landing.

The Nets have a unique tie to all of this; owner Joe Tsai lives in Hong Kong. Harris said the team spent time with Tsai on the trip and attended dinners at restaurants he recommended.

Tsai released a statement on Facebook reacting to Morey's tweet. It read, in part, "When I bought controlling interest in the Brooklyn Nets in September, I didn't expect my first public communication with our fans would be to comment on something as politically charged and grossly misunderstood as the way hundreds of millions of Chinese NBA fans feel about what just happened."

"Supporting a separatist movement in a Chinese territory is one of those third-rail issues, not only for the Chinese government, but also for all citizens in China."

Joe Harris said on Wednesday that Tsai suggested players "read the post and take it from there." Harris declined to get into specifics of the private meetings.

"Joe had a lot of stuff planned," Harris said. "We had great dinners. The team bonding. There was a lot of good opportunities to hang out. We weren't caught up with a lot of the stuff going on."

While players have returned to the states, the long-term implications of Morey's tweet and the NBA's relationship with China remains in question. If permanently damaged, players could lose money as China has been a hot spot for shoe sales.

Harris, who signed a two-year, $16 million deal with the Nets before last season, said he isn't concerned.

"Personally, I already get paid way too much to play a game. I'm not too worried about it," he said.

Sources told ESPN's Dave McMenamin that Nets point guard Kyrie Irving was among those who spoke with commissioner Adam Silver in China amid the fallout from Morey's tweet. Irving, sources told McMenamin, said he was there to play basketball games, and if a requirement for those games was dealing with the fallout that Morey's tweet created, he would rather not play at all.

Irving declined to speak to reporters Wednesday, but did participate in practice.

"We're just focused on the season now," LeVert said. "That's kind of behind us. We're back here, our first regular-season game is next week. So that's kind of what we're focused on right now."

LOS ANGELES -- The bat used by Babe Ruth to slug his 500th career home run in 1929 is going up for auction, nearly 75 years after he gave it to a friend whose family has kept it ever since.

Ruth became the first player to reach the coveted plateau on Aug. 11, 1929, hitting a solo shot for the New York Yankees off Willis Hudlin at League Park in Cleveland.

In the mid-1940s, Ruth gave the bat to his friend Jim Rice, who was mayor of Suffern, New York. Ruth and Rice enjoyed golfing, bowling and dining together, and Ruth was a regular visitor to the Rice household, where he came to know Jim's wife, Ethyl, and their children. Rice once beat Ruth in five straight games of bowling.

Terry Rice, an attorney in Suffern and Jim's only son, is selling the bat. Born two years after Ruth died in 1948, Rice more closely associates Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra with the Yankees of his youth, but he remembers Ruth's bat sat in the corner behind the television in the family's den.

"It was always there. It was part of life," Rice told The Associated Press by phone on Wednesday. "No one said I couldn't touch it. I never took it out and played baseball with it."

Good thing, too, since the bat was recently authenticated and received the highest grade given.

"For an inanimate object, it's beautiful," Rice said. "It's in perfect condition."

The dark-colored Louisville Slugger shows marks on the upper barrel where Ruth knocked mud off his cleats. The left barrel has impressions where the bat made contact with the ball. There's also a bit of green paint from where the bat rested in the dugout between uses.

"Babe Ruth is the king of the sports collectibles marketplace," SCP Auctions President David Kohler said. "When a fresh Ruth item of such quality and historical importance as this one surfaces, it generates tremendous excitement throughout our industry."

Ruth's 500th homer cleared the right field wall in Cleveland, sailed out of the park and rolled down Lexington Avenue where it was plucked by an Indians fan. After the game, the ball was returned to Ruth in exchange for $20 and his autograph.

It would be another 16 years before Mel Ott became the second player to reach 500 homers in 1945.

After Jim Rice died in 1983, his wife kept possession of the bat until her death in 1997. Then it passed to Terry Rice and was stashed in a closet.

"You couldn't leave it out," Rice said. "I wasn't enjoying it. I got to the point where we were worried about it."

Rice, 69, talked to his two older sisters before deciding to sell. They plan to split the proceeds.

Officials from SCP Auctions in Laguna Niguel, California, estimate the bat could sell for over $1 million.

"He'd be absolutely flabbergasted," Terry Rice said of his father's reaction.

SCP sold Ruth's bat used to homer on opening day of the 1923 season at Yankee Stadium for $1.26 million in 2004.

Rice pulled the 500th-homer bat out of the closet so it could see daylight before the authenticator arrived, and that's when it hit him.

"This is a piece of history," he said.

The Rice siblings are holding on to other mementos associated with Ruth. His oldest sister has a personally autographed photo, his middle sister has a paper Ruth signed, and Terry Rice has a signed baseball that Ruth inscribed to his father: To my pal Jim.

Oldest sister Pat has the strongest recollection of Ruth visiting the family home.

"He came in one time and picked her up into the air and hit her head on the chandelier," Terry Rice recalled. "She said, `I don't like you anymore."

Rice said he hopes the Yankees or the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, would be interested in the bat.

Online bidding begins Nov. 27 and ends Dec. 14 at scpauctions.com.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Joe Girardi has quit as the manager of the U.S. baseball team trying to qualify for the Olympics before it played a single game.

Girardi said Wednesday that he is leaving to pursue a major league managing job. There are seven current openings.

He will be replaced by Scott Brosius, who had been slated to be Girardi's bench coach. Brosius, the MVP of the 1998 World Series with the New York Yankees, became the senior director of baseball development for USA Baseball earlier this year.

Willie Randolph will shift from third base coach to bench coach, and Ernie Young from the first base coaching box to third.

The U.S. will train Oct. 21-28 at the Kansas City Royals' complex in Surprise, Arizona, then start competing Nov. 2-4 at Guadalajara, Mexico, as part of a group that includes the Dominican Republic, Mexico and the Netherlands.

The top two teams advance to a qualifying round in Tokyo from Nov. 11-16. The winner of that group advances to the six-nation Olympic field, which already includes host Japan and Israel, and the second- and third-place teams advance to another qualifying event.

Baseball is returning to the Olympics after being dropped for 2012 and 2016. Cuba won the gold medal in 1992, 1996 and 2004, the United States in 2000 and South Korea in 2008. Next year's Olympic baseball tournament is to be played from July 29 to Aug. 8 at Fukushima and Yokohama, Japan, as part of the Tokyo Games.

Players on MLB 40-man rosters are not eligible to play for the U.S. in qualifiers. The 28-man U.S. roster includes several top prospects, including Los Angeles Angels outfielder Joe Adell, Chicago White Sox infielder Andrew Vaughn and Atlanta Braves outfielder Drew Waters.

Vaughn was the third overall pick in this year's amateur draft.

NEW YORK -- The biggest story this year in Major League Baseball wasn't a player, a manager, a general manager, an incredible play or a historic game. It was a five-ounce-heavy, nine-inch-round orb that birthed conspiracy theories, broke records, spurred incessant conversation and happened to be part of all 732,472 pitches thrown in the 2019 regular season.

The ball -- the rocket ball, the juiced ball, the super ball, whatever you want to call it -- changed the game's calculus this season. Home runs left the park at never-before-seen rates, to the point that teams across the game tweaked their internal algorithms to account for it in future projections and specifically game-planned around it for this season. Nobody was quite sure why this year's ball was so different from balls of previous years. Nobody could say for certain how it happened. Nobody definitely knew whom to blame. Everyone simply agreed: The ball was behaving differently than it had in years past.

Which makes this October that much more curious -- and might have had a demonstrable effect on the Houston Astros' 4-1 victory over the New York Yankees in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series on Tuesday. The postseason ball is dead. It's not just the colder weather or superior pitching, either. Baseball Prospectus' Rob Arthur studied the drag coeffiecient, which helps determine how far balls fly, and said it is significantly greater, with a "one-in-a-million chance" the balls are the same as used in the regular season.

St. Louis Cardinals manager Mike Shildt said his team's analytics department believes the balls are traveling 4½ feet less than they did during the regular season. Officials from two other teams, who requested anonymity to not run afoul of the commissioner's office, concurred that whatever batch of balls has been used during October is not performing the way the ones in the regular-season did.

And that leaves us here, in the fifth inning of Game 3, Didi Gregorius at the plate, two on, two out and the Astros clinging to a 2-0 lead. Gerrit Cole, the Astros' starter, unspooled a middle-in 99 mph fastball to Gregorius. He turned on it and drove it 101.4 mph toward Yankee Stadium's short porch in right field. Astros outfielder Josh Reddick backpedaled, tracking the ball at its 41-degree launch angle, going back, back some more, back some more yet. And then, as if some force field commanded the ball to stop, it fell into Reddick's glove with his back against the fence.

This brought about varied reactions. A quick oral history of those 6.3 seconds Gregorius' ball hung in the air:

Cole: "The emotions kind of followed the fly ball, right? So it was kind of like low ... "

Reddick: "Panic. Immediate panic. Anything that goes up in the air in here as we all know has a good chance of getting out of here."

AJ Hinch, Astros manager: "I think every fly ball in 2019 is a homer. In season, regular season, postseason. I don't care. It's kind of been conditioned that way."

Cole: " ... to freaking out ... "

James Paxton, Yankees starter: "I thought it was gonna be really close. I knew it was gonna be one of those ones that was either a couple rows deep or right at the wall kind of thing. I thought it had a chance."

Gregorius: "I had the barrel, but I missed it. I was checking to see if maybe something's going to happen, but I know I didn't have all of it."

Hinch: "I immediately watched the hitter. The hitter tells you the most. And he didn't respond right away with the sort of pure excitement. He kind of watched it for a minute and then I looked up and saw Reddick getting back, settling underneath it. I watched Didi again, then I felt a little bit better."

Cole: " ... to not so worried anymore."

Chad Green, Yankees reliever: "There's obviously been some balls that have been hit well that haven't left the ballpark, so everybody starts to question it."

And that right there, what Green said, is really at the heart of the story about the balls. It comes down to consistency and credibility. The former breeds the latter. The same standard applies to umpires. You might not like the strike zone, but if it is called dependably, it is difficult to quibble. At least you know what you're dealing with.

The ball right now is a wild card. In a statement, MLB said: "Balls that are used in the postseason are pulled from the same batches as balls used in the regular season. Regular season and postseason balls are manufactured with the same materials and under the same processes." Let's take that statement at face value, simply for the sake of argument.

If true, it is a stunning indictment on the process used to manufacture the balls. MLB last year acknowledged that the balls were behaving differently. It started in the second half of the 2015 season, amped up in 2016, drank a keg of Red Bull in 2017, detoxed in 2018 and returned in 2019 as if it had spent the entire winter on a Stanozolol drip. The game changes. That's part of its beauty. But 60 feet, 6 inches between the mound and plate doesn't. Ninety feet between the bases doesn't. Some elements remain consistent to allow the game to rebalance itself amid the deluge of new knowledge gained annually. The ball is expected to be one of them.

MLB argues that the manufacturing process -- the ball is handmade -- allows for those differences, which seem wholly unnecessary. If the ball is going to have a stark effect on the game, and the game is different from month to month based on the ball, shouldn't streamlining the manufacturing process to better ensure uniformity among the balls be some sort of a priority? Certainly MLB doesn't like the constant talk, not just from the media but among players, about the one ubiquitous object on every play.

Going from the regular-season ball to whatever this ball is -- the normal ball? -- has been jarring. Gregorius' drive was one example. Before it, there had been no fly balls to right field from left-handed hitters at Yankee Stadium against four-seam fastballs with 100 to 105 mph exit velocities and launch angles of 38 to 50 degrees in 2019. Of the eight in previous seasons, all were home runs, according to Statcast. Expanding the search to all pitches but tightening the launch angle to between 38 and 43 degrees, there were a dozen (though still none in 2019). Ten of those 12 went for home runs.

There were also two balls hit by Astros catcher Martin Maldonado that looked home run-ish, which is admittedly nonscientific on an issue that is very scientific but speaks to how this season's ball skewed expectations. When you see hitters think they've hit lazy fly balls and those balls land over the fence, it bends reality. Postseason baseball is a different game than it was in the regular season, and not just because the teams are better.

Gregorius, for whatever it's worth, responded to a question about different balls by saying: "Are you serious?" To which anyone else would respond: "Are you serious?" Arthur's story about the balls was the talk of the game. Players heard. Discussed it. Rolled their eyes that the ball was changing. Again. To not know about it, Gregorius would have to actively avoid it. Which, hey, if he's that locked in, good for him. Because all of this talk about the ball is not great for baseball. Any time spent discussing the ball is not spent discussing the players hitting it and throwing it -- the ones who should be the focus of every single conversation during October.

Instead, here we are again, our tinfoil hats on, our black helicopters gassed up, wondering what's real and what isn't. MLB bought Rawlings, which manufactures the ball! (Yes. The league invested in the company last year. And this has been going on for almost half a decade.) Baseball wants more offense! (Sure. Pace of game is a much more pressing issue, and offense only extends it.) The league is doing it, man!

The last one is the most interesting, and plenty of players believe it. But here? Now? When the world is watching? If there's any time to pump up the balls, wouldn't it be now? Even amid the record 6,776 home runs hit this season, a universal truth remained: People love home runs. To shut off that spigot now, intentionally, would be comically stupid.

(Puts tinfoil hat back on)

Or exactly what they want to get you off the scent!

ST. LOUIS – Following the conclusion of the POWRi Lucas Oil WAR Sprint Car League season, the Shuman family will step away from the series in a full-time capacity.

“I would like to personally thank both Casey and Brooke for their hard work, dedication, and all their contributions to POWRi WAR,” said POWRi owner Kenny Brown. “We’re proud to have partnered with them in the early stages of developing our Non-Wing Sprint League. They have served as great ambassadors for our organization, through working to increase the annual race schedule and raising the purses for the driver.

“I’m glad to say this announcement is mutually beneficial and I want to thank them for their commitment to POWRi.”

Both Casey and Brooke Shuman have been a part of the sprint car league since the series came under the POWRi banner in 2017. Casey will continue to assist with scheduling and will remain on in an advisory role.

“Brooke and I have put our very best effort into this series since purchasing it in 2015. We have been fortunate enough to meet and work with some great teams and families. The Lucas Oil POWRi WAR Sprint League and its racers have grown so much in a fairly short amount of time. I am extremely proud and grateful to everyone that has been part of it,” said Casey Shuman. “Brooke & I look forward to watching the league continue to grow in the future and seeing all those familiar faces at the track when our schedule allows.”

The 2020 POWRi WAR schedule is roughly in place, as POWRi officials have already reached out to several tracks and secured dates. The majority of the 2020 races will again be centered on the Kansas City area to help reduce traveling.

Illinois will still host races, in a similar fashion to the Wild Card Series from 2018. The official schedule release will be around or shortly after the New Year.