FT. WORTH, Texas – Terry McCarl wheeled TheSnowPlow.com/Destiny Motorsports No. 4 to his 14th victory with the Lucas Oil American Sprint Car Series presented by the MAVTV Motorsports Network Thursday during night one of Tony Stewart presents the VANKOR Texas Sprint Car Nationals.

“Man, it feels good to win because this wasn’t an old man track. This place was cowboy-up tonight so I just want to let everyone know old T-Mac can still cowboy-it up,” said McCarl. “Doug just gave me a great car; I really have to thank him and everyone who helps us. Every name on this car means a lot.”

The victory was McCarl’s first win at the Texas Motor Speedway Dirt Track with the Lucas Oil American Sprint Car Series presented by the MAVTV Motorsports Network. The multi-time Knoxville Raceway track champion is the 15th different feature winner of the season.

Taking the green from sixth, McCarl rode fourth until lap eight when the caution waved for Harli White, who made contact trying to avoid a lapped car while running second.

Set to go green from third, McCarl would end up taking off in second as race leader, Danny Jennings, started dropping water out of his engine. Giving the lead to Dylan Westbrook, the Hills Racing No. 47x shoe couldn’t hold off the charge of McCarl, with McCarl edging into the lead on lap nine by .017 seconds.

Pulling away from the field until the red lights flashed on as Channin Tankersley, who was running sixth, slammed the wall in the second turn after something came apart in the front suspension. Giving Westbrook a shot, the No. 47x could not keep pace, nor could anyone get a run with the field under caution again working lap 23 for Seth Bergman.

The caution reverted the field back to lap 22 for the final green flag of the night, with McCarl stretching his lead back out to 2.042 seconds before it was all said and done.

Getting a run on the final lap just as Westbrook suffered a mechanical issue, Sam Hafertepe Jr. snagged second, and in doing so, secured his fourth consecutive championship with the Lucas Oil American Sprint Car Series presented by the MAVTV Motorsports Network.

Westbrook was able to hold onto third with Matt Juhl and Blake Hahn making up the top five.

Moving up from 11th, Colorado’s Jake Bubak was sixth with Scott Bogucki earning hard charger honors with a run from 20th to seventh in the SawBlade.com No. 28. Tony Bruce Jr. followed in eight with Robbie Price making up nine positions to finish ninth. Matt Covington likewise gained nine positions from 19th to complete the top-10.

field of 40 drivers was on hand for the first night of Tony Stewart presents the VANKOR Texas Sprint Car Nationals at the Texas Motor Speedway Dirt Track. Five SCE Gaskets Heat Races were won by Sammy Swindell, McKenna Haase, Matt Juhl, Bergman and Jennings. Hoosier Tire Qualifiers were topped by Bruce, Brandon Hanks and Dylan Westbrook. The two BMRS B-Features was won by Swindell and Price.

The finish:

A Feature (25 Laps): 1. 4-Terry McCarl, [6]; 2. 15H-Sam Hafertepe Jr, [10]; 3. 47X-Dylan Westbrook, [4]; 4. 09-Matt Juhl, [3]; 5. 52-Blake Hahn, [7]; 6. 74B-Jake Bubak, [11]; 7. 28-Scott Bogucki, [20]; 8. 12H-Tony Bruce Jr, [8]; 9. 21P-Robbie Price, [18]; 10. 95-Matt Covington, [19]; 11. 17W-Harli White, [2]; 12. 11-Roger Crockett, [13]; 13. 11X-Tyler Courtney, [22]; 14. 24D-Danny Sams III, [16]; 15. 23-Seth Bergman, [5]; 16. 2X-Tucker Doughty, [24]; 17. 17G-Channin Tankersley, [12]; 18. 84-Brandon Hanks, [9]; 19. 51-Aaron Reutzel, [14]; 20. 33C-Casey Carter, [25]; 21. 1J-Danny Jennings, [1]; 22. 44-Sammy Swindell, [17]; 23. 55-McKenna Haase, [21]; 24. J2-John Carney II, [15]; 25. 14-Jordon Mallett, [23]

SEPANG, Malaysia – Fabio Quartararo led an impressive day for Petronas Yamaha SRT on Friday by topping MotoGP practice at the Sepang Int’l Circuit.

Quartararo started the day by pacing the opening practice with a track record time, but that turned out to only be a tease as he did even better during the second practice.

His 1:58.576 lap during the second practice reset the track record a second time on Friday and put him more than half a second clear of his Petronas Yamaha SRT teammate Franco Morbidelli on the practice charts.

Andrea Dovizioso was third fastest on the day, but he was. 630 seconds off the blistering pace set by Quartararo.

Maverick Viñales was fourth fastest for Monster Energy Yamaha, followed by his teammate Valentino Rossi in fifth. Marc Marquez was an uncharacteristic sixth fastest, nearly a full second behind Quartararo.

Johann Zarco and Andrea Iannone both crashed during the second practice, but were uninjured.

Many kids grow up dreaming of playing in their favorite professional league, imagining one day jogging out of the tunnel for the Green Bay Packers, climbing the steps of the dugout in New York Yankees pinstripes or skating onto the ice for the Boston Bruins. Some might dream of another future, though: behind the microphone as that team's play-by-play broadcaster.

But the weird thing about the NHL, in particular, is one's odds of becoming a player are probably better than becoming a team's announcer.

In the United States, there are only 24 -- soon to be 25 when Seattle enters the NHL -- television play-by-play jobs on the various regional networks, and only six of those gigs have changed hands in the past five years. Those numbers will start to grow in the near future, but there's simply not a lot of turnover. The average time TV broadcasters have spent with their current teams is 14 years, and nine have careers spanning more than 20 years with the same club. Several others have spent time in multiple booths.

The broadcasting post is one that can often be romanticized by fans. That singular voice can bridge generations, trigger the pangs of nostalgia and establish a tangible relationship with the viewer that is difficult to break. But time remains undefeated, and an older generation of NHL broadcaster is slowly moving on.

Bob Cole, an institution in Canada, called his last game for Hockey Night in Canada at the end of last season. Other long-time voices, such as Bob Miller with the Los Angeles Kings, Mike Haynes with the Colorado Avalanche, Paul Steigerwald with the Pittsburgh Penguins, Ralph Strangis and the late Dave Strader with the Dallas Stars, and Howie Rose with the New York Islanders, are among those who have left their posts in recent years. Rick Peckham, the Tampa Bay Lightning's only TV broadcaster in franchise history, announced that 2019-20 would be his final season, too, after 42 total years in the business.

There are still several long-time broadcasters who continue to put forth spectacular work that has connected fans with the team for decades. Rick Jeanneret has scaled back some of his broadcast duties, but he's in his 49th season with the Buffalo Sabres and is the dean of hockey play-by-play announcers. Sam Rosen of the New York Rangers and Pat Foley of the Chicago Blackhawks are also members of the 35-year club.

Unquestionably, however, the shift is underway. As the experienced broadcasters move on, another generation is getting an opportunity to land highly-coveted seats in the booth. It often takes years of stops and starts, and the timing usually has to break just right. Three of the league's newest broadcasters had very different paths, landing behind an NHL mic before age 40. Here's a look at how some of the young talented voices in the NHL got to where they are today.

Brendan Burke, the young journeyman

If you've seen Burke calling NHL games for the Islanders on MSG Networks and occasional national games with NBC Sports Network, you might think he came out of nowhere. At 35, he is especially young in broadcasting years. But make no mistake, he has paid his dues before reaching the big time.

Burke spent 10 years riding the buses in the minors, first in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he got a hit on one of the many, many demo reels he sent to teams around hockey and baseball. He was only 22, but the ECHL's Nailers needed a new broadcaster. After a few years, he made the jump to the AHL, where he called games for the Peoria Rivermen while also working with their public and media relations and community outreach.

He was even responsible for team travel, and when the St. Louis Blues needed an emergency fill-in on their radio broadcast in 2009, Burke was actually in the middle of trying to get the Rivermen back to Peoria after their bus broke down in Rockford, Illinois. He got the team home, set up the press box for the AHL game, drove three hours to Chicago for a direct flight and managed to make his first NHL broadcast in Nashville with only a few hours to spare.

But that taste of the dream job was briefly spoiled when the Rivermen ceased operations in 2013, leaving a newly married broadcaster jobless and the NHL seemingly very far away.

"I was wondering if that was the right path," Burke says. "I had been in the AHL for five years. So I was wondering is a sixth season going to be what it takes to get to the NHL? Is it going to take seven? Should I start doing some freelance TV? What is the right path to get where I want to go?"

Fortunes shifted when the AHL moved the franchise to Utica, New York, where it would become the Vancouver Canucks' AHL affiliate. Burke's wife is from the central New York town, not too far from Syracuse, and it was the perfect place to keep the dream alive. Within three years, Burke got the call he had been waiting for after longtime Islanders broadcaster Howie Rose decided to focus exclusively on working New York Mets baseball games.

"I grew up in New Jersey and the New York City market, so to me, this was coming home," said Burke, whose father Don Burke covered the Yankees and Mets for The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey. "To wind up in the No. 1 media market in the world and to have it be the place where I've always wanted to end up, it was perfect."

Replacing Rose, who was beloved by Islanders fans and an influence on Burke as a young broadcaster, was not easy. But the rookie broadcaster got a vote of confidence in a call from Rose just before his first preseason broadcast. "'Don't act like you're filling in for anybody, this is your job,'" Burke recalls Rose telling him. "That was his one piece of advice and it was perfect because your natural inclination is to try and replace the guy who's been there for 20 years because that's what people are used to. I really took that to heart, and it changed how I approached it."

Burke is now in his fourth season alongside legendary Islanders color analyst Butch Goring. He has been used by NBC Sports on various playoff series and regular-season games, and he is also the voice of the Premier Lacrosse League's national package for NBC.

"It didn't feel quick when I went through those 10 years," Burke says. "But all of the sudden you turn around, at 32 years old, and you're calling the NHL on national TV, it doesn't feel like a long time. And if you told a 22-year-old Brendan Burke, 'Hey you've got to ride buses for 10 years to get where you're going at 32, I'd sign that contract right now. I probably would have signed a 15- or 20-year contract to do it."

One industry source even says there is a belief that Burke is among the small group of broadcasters who could one day land in the NHL's top U.S. broadcast chair.

"You know, it's one of those things where I will never get to call a Stanley Cup Final unless I get that job, and there's only one of them," Burke says. "Could I aspire to it before I got to the NHL? No. I just wanted to get there. Do I aspire to it now? I'm not going to say no. It's something that's certainly out there, and I've got time on my side."

Steve Mears' winding road home

Mears was such a fan of the Mario Lemieux-led Penguins in the late 1980s and early 1990s that he says he began speaking with a French-Canadian accent, imitating his favorite player. He'd play video games while matching the cadence of Hall of Fame Penguins broadcaster Mike Lange, calling the action on the TV screen.

Today, Lange is still behind the radio mic in Pittsburgh, but it's Mears calling Penguins games on TV for the AT&T Sports Network. Now in his third season, it's a dream job for the 39-year-old native of Murrysville, Pennsylvania, and something he had a hard time envisioning for himself even as he started out in broadcasting at Bowling Green State University.

Mears' career began calling games for the Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs of the now defunct Central Hockey League. At 26, he had what he thought was his big break when he became the play-by-play radio voice of the Islanders. But as Mears was preparing for his fourth season in the Isles' booth, the organization decided to go with a simulcast of their TV broadcast, eliminating the radio booth entirely. Mears got word of the Penguins launching a 24-hour radio network in 2009, though, and earned a job as a host -- working under the wing of his idol Lange.

"You wonder if you'll ever get a break again," Mears recalls. "But sometimes the worst moment in your life turns out to be maybe the best, and you don't even realize it at the time.

"I tell students it's timing, luck and some level of talent. And there was timing right there. If you go back and retrace the steps -- if that doesn't happen, if I don't get in with the Penguins and they don't know my work and I make those connections, then maybe I'm not sitting here doing TV for them."

Before later returning as the TV voice, Mears became a more familiar face to NHL fans as a host on NHL Network's daily "NHL Live" program and the play-by-play voice of the network's World Junior Championship coverage, culminating with the dramatic gold-medal win by the U.S. in 2017. Mears admits that he loved his job at NHL Network, which made the decision to move on harder than expected. But when the Penguins announced Paul Steigerwald was moving into a different role in the organization, all he had to do was think about that 10-year-old kid calling play-by-play on NHL 96 in his No. 66 jersey.

"The fact that it was the Penguins, there was just no way I could have passed that up. When you strip down everything -- the path, everything I've done and all the other ancillary stuff -- when it comes down to it, I'm still just a Penguins fan from Murrysville," Mears says.

And being a fan comes in handy. "It's not a prerequisite for these jobs, but it helps to know the history of the game," Mears says. "I would like to think that Penguins fans appreciate that I'm one of them. I went to games at The Igloo [Mellon Arena]. It's in my DNA. It's not phony. I've got all the hockey cards and the posters and VHS tapes to prove it. I do think it makes our broadcasts better.

"I've already been blessed beyond belief to sit in that chair for the time I've had. Knowing the lineage, the importance of sports to Pittsburgh, the importance of the Penguins to my life and the city, in a lot of ways I'm already playing with house money."

Alex Faust, the wunderkind

Faust was only 28 when he landed his first full-time job in sports broadcasting, replacing a Hall of Fame broadcaster who had been with the Kings for the previous 44 years. Prior to that, Faust was carving out a role as a sought-after freelance broadcaster who had called a lot of men's college hockey games and eventually became the voice of Hockey East on NESN.

"I grew up fascinated by [broadcasting]," Faust says. "Both my parents worked in TV, and even though they begged me not to go into broadcasting, I got bitten by the bug."

He took his parents' advice as longtime television producers to heart and explored all of his options. Faust started a career as an analyst and consultant, putting his degree in economics to good use, while keeping broadcasting as a side gig.

"I always viewed it more as a passion project instead of a career path," he said. "I didn't ever think seriously that I would either be good enough or thought that I'd be interested enough to make it a career path. The more I did it, the more I enjoyed it, and here we are."

Having started calling hockey games as a student at Northeastern University, he picked up more and more work as a freelancer. People were paying attention, including Burke, who needed a fill-in broadcaster in Utica and immediately thought of Faust. NESN gave him an audition calling college basketball, and he started doing college hockey games, eventually landing the job as the lead voice for the Hockey East package. The jump in exposure was enough to leave his full-time job as a consultant.

After calling Notre Dame hockey games, NBC Sports Network offered Faust a shot at doing an NHL game. At 27, he called his first national NHL game alongside veteran color analyst Brian Engblom. Yanni Gourde scored an overtime winner to lift the Tampa Bay Lightning over the Chicago Blackhawks in thrilling fashion, and that OT period served as Faust's demo for the Kings' job.

After auditions with color analyst Jim Fox, where Faust said there was instant chemistry, Fox Sports West and the Kings agreed that he was ready to fill the shoes of the iconic Bob Miller. In broadcasting terms, Faust is an overnight sensation.

"I'd like to think I've earned the opportunity to get this job based on my body of work to that date, but I also understand that part of my learning curve was stunted because I didn't have those experiences riding the bus [in the minors]," Faust says. "I didn't have the background of developing relationships with coaches and players, or grinding your way through a long season. So there were things in my first year that I encountered that I wouldn't have encountered before. I'm lucky that the Kings were flexible enough to allow me to grow into the role and trusting that I had enough upside that I could be an established voice in the league within a couple of years. I'd like to think that I'm there and that I'll be in this league for a long while."

Like Burke, Faust is already on national broadcasts with NBC Sports Network. His star rose so quickly that Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek floated Faust's name during his first season with the Kings as a possible replacement host one day, which Faust admits caught him completely off guard. Having just turned 30, Faust still has a lot ahead of him, and if the rest of his career is as impressive as his meteoric rise, there's a lot for him to look forward to.

"The best thing you can do is always aspire for growth," he says. "I want to be able to continue to call games on a national level. I think there's a fun challenge in doing that. I want to strive to be the best I can possibly be in this profession."

What comes next

While the voices are changing, the booth has been a largely homogeneous position. But the future of the profession is likely to grow.

There have been small gains made in recent years to diversify the NHL booth. More women have been given opportunities in color commentary roles, including former Olympians AJ Mleczko and Jennifer Botterill, who have been involved in Islanders broadcasts. Mleczko has also had booth time on NBC Sports' national broadcasts. Kendall Coyne Schofield, a current U.S. women's national team member, has been part of national broadcasts, too, but also picked up a few games with the San Jose Sharks' regional telecasts this season.

On the play-by-play front, two prominent hockey events had female play-by-play voices for the first time. Leah Hextall became the first woman to call men's NCAA tournament games for ESPN last season, and Sloane Martin earned the nod to call Minnesota's boys' high school hockey tournament in the spring of 2019.

The NHL's U.S. TV rights are currently exclusively held by NBC Sports until 2020-21. The expiration of the current contract could lead to a changing landscape with multiple national networks expected to bid for at least a piece of the U.S. rights. With that, the opportunities for even more new broadcast personalities could exist.

A mix of familiar and new voices will continue to ring through the television speakers. Wherever NHL broadcasting goes next, the abundance of talent in the industry's next generation proves that hockey fans will be in good hands.

WHEN THE PUCK finally came to rest, it was almost entirely inside Craig MacDonald's mouth. It was Dec. 21, 2007, and with 1:51 left to play, the Tampa Bay Lightning winger, working in his own zone, stepped in front of an errant, elevated slap shot that instantly cleaved a grisly, bloody and impossibly wide swath of carnage through MacDonald's lips, gums and tongue before reducing nine of his teeth to dust. He spat out the 6 ounces of vulcanized frozen black rubber like it was a rotten MoonPie to reveal a fractured lower gum line and his half-cleaved tongue, hanging by a thread. Even in a sport synonymous with dental trauma, where the enduring image of hockey has long been the disturbing-but-endearing shot of Bobby Clarke's toothless grin reflected in the shiny silver of the Stanley Cup, MacDonald's injury was gruesome enough to earn an on-air attaboy from Don Cherry himself.

Team doctors reconnected the filleted parts of MacDonald's face with 75 sutures, then sent him home, where he sat on the couch until dawn, jolted awake by even the slightest puff of air passing over a mouthful of raw, exposed nerves.

"Worst night of my life," he says.

The next morning wasn't much better. After making his way, ever so gingerly, to the office of Gil Rivera, the Lightning's team dentist, MacDonald opened his mouth and was greeted by ... terrified silence. As a member of the gnarliest and most peculiar fraternity in sports, Rivera has seen it all during his 17 years practicing dentistry in the NHL: a Tooth Fairy teammate delivering goalie Ben Bishop's incisors to the bench for safekeeping; winger Ondrej Palat holding up half his bottom teeth with his tongue after getting lightsabered by an overeager rookie in practice; veterans, like Tomas Tatar, whom Rivera calls "Humpty Dumpties" because they have lost the same three front teeth on four separate occasions; marquee talent in need of work (and a bit of courage) hiding from him at the arena; and a notorious tough guy silently sweating through his clothes during an especially tough bicuspid extraction that Rivera compares to King Arthur pulling Excalibur out of the stone.

"It's just hockey, right?" says MacDonald, who retired in 2013 and, after studying at Harvard, is now an investment consultant in Nova Scotia. "Although I still don't recommend people blocking shots with their teeth."

Still, as MacDonald sat in Rivera's chair the next morning, the anatomy inside the player's mouth -- monstrously swollen gums, shredded tongue and Tic Tac nubs instead of teeth -- was unrecognizable. Rivera recoiled. He had no idea what he was looking at, or where to start. "His mouth was just obliterated," Rivera says. Out of instinct, he grabbed his air and water syringe and began washing away the dried brown blood and coagulate. Still unable to describe what slowly came into view next, Rivera puts his wrist against his mouth and wiggles his four fingers, like a walrus. "Four nerves just dangling there, flapping in the wind," he says. "I was like, 'OK, we need to do [six] root canals right now.' Oh, that poor guy."

Over the next four months, on off-days and between games, Rivera pieced MacDonald back together again during a dozen visits and more than 50 hours in the chair. The most hockey thing ever? MacDonald missed a grand total of one game. And the respect he earned from then-Lightning coach John Tortorella garnered him the most ice time of his 16-year pro career -- as well as a friend, and a dentist, for life.

"That was the first time I truly understood just how tough and unique hockey players are," Rivera says. "And it was the first time I realized that I'd be bored sitting at a football game. If you're a dentist, this is definitely the gig you want."

IT MIGHT BE the gig Rivera wants now. That wasn't always the case. Rivera, who grew up in Puerto Rico, had never seen a hockey game until he attended the University of Connecticut. Three months after completing his residency, and new to Florida, he got a message from the senior partner at his dental practice telling him to report downtown to lend a hand with the Lightning. Rivera Googled "Tampa" and "Lightning" and, after briefly considering that the last thing lightning-strike victims needed was a good tooth cleaning, he realized his boss was talking about the city's NHL team.

Rivera began speed-reading as many gory case studies on extreme dental trauma as he could get his hands on. And what he quickly learned was that while tooth enamel might be the hardest biological substance on earth, it's no match for the sport of hockey. With pucks, sticks and fists flying in all directions at players who famously refuse all means of protection, tooth trauma and trips to the dentist -- most people's worst nightmare -- are as inherent to hockey as ice. Recently, after Florida's Troy Brouwer lost the same two front teeth that Calgary team dentist Kristin Yont had fixed for him when he played for the Flames, he sent her a picture of his wrecking-ball smile while sporting a T-shirt that said it all: 4 out of 5 Dentists Recommend Hockey.

"Dentistry is one of the defining characteristics of a hockey player," says gap-toothed Sharks defenseman Brent Burns. "Losing teeth is a badge of honor. And guys are so big and fast, and pucks are bouncing everywhere, it happens all the time in our sport."

The relentless assault on such a specific body part, especially one as socially and aesthetically important as teeth, has transformed NHL dentists into the unsung heroes of the sports world. Each team keeps a full-time dentist on staff, often seated a few rows behind the bench and armed with a medieval toolkit of needles, forceps, sutures and curettes. Most NHL arenas have dental chairs somewhere near the locker rooms. The work performed there is so vital to teams' health and success that dentists are often some of the few staff members to survive an ownership or coaching change, and many, including Rivera, get championship rings and their own day with the trophy after a run to the Stanley Cup. "After seeing how many lips had been on the Cup, I gave it the slightest little kiss I could ... and then I went and disinfected my mouth," Rivera says.

On his first trip to the Bolts' rink in 2002, Rivera, then a baby-faced 26-year-old, became lost inside the labyrinth of narrow, dark hallways under the arena. After the final horn blew, signaling another Lightning loss -- back then the team was, shall we say, toothless? -- Rivera looked up to see Tortorella, a notorious hothead, charging in his direction. Thinking that Rivera was a fan, a purple-faced Torts started screaming "Who the f--- let this f---ing kid back here!?"

"Somebody came running over, going, 'No-no-no, Coach, that's our dentist!'" Rivera recalls. "I love that guy; he's awesome and super sweet outside all this. But trust me, I made a mark on his mouth later on."

Indeed, Lesson No. 1 in hockey: Sooner or later, everyone answers to the dentist.

This season, it was much, much sooner for New Jersey Devils center Blake Coleman. Midway through the second period in the Devils' season opener on Oct. 4, a teammate's stick clipped Coleman in the mouth, damaging four teeth and depositing a sandwich of fiberglass splinters that had to be extracted as a prelude to an emergency root canal. After missing just four minutes of ice time, though, Coleman returned and scored on a one-handed Frisbee-flip backhand.

Blake Coleman caught the blade of Taylor Hall's stick - bleeding as he heads off. #NJDevils pic.twitter.com/L63ip3BTIj

— Here's Your Replay ⬇️ (@HeresYourReplay) October 5, 2019

Last season's playoffs opened with an even crazier jaw-dropping goal by San Jose Sharks captain Joe Pavelski. Less than six minutes into Game 1 against the Vegas Golden Knights, Burns sent a shot toward the net that literally ricocheted off Pavelski's front teeth and past Vegas goalie Marc-Andre Fleury. After his crowning achievement, Pavelski returned with a new plastic chin guard and a toothless grin that fit in rather well in San Jose.

Burns, for one, lost his first tooth at 16 from a high stick to the mouth the day after getting his braces off. Knowing his mom had paid a small fortune to his orthodontist, Burns was worried she might knock out his other tooth once she found out. The game took care of that in no time, creating in his mouth an old-school look so distinctive that in 2017 the Sharks gave away Gap-Toothed Brent Burns Grills to fans as an in-game promotion. His mom, though, still kids him constantly that she wants that braces money back.

Even Sidney Crosby, the face of the NHL, has a reassembled smile. In 2013 a teammate's slap shot shattered his jaw, damaging 10 of Crosby's teeth. That same season, the Rangers' Ryan Callahan was bearing down to deliver a check on an L.A. player when the guy turned around at the last second and bayoneted Callahan's mouth, "Game of Thrones" style, with his stick blade. On his first night on the job, and at his first hockey game, no less, new Kings dentist Kenneth Ochi sat Callahan down in the chair at Staples Center, took a deep breath and aimed his dental lamp at the side of the player's mouth.

The light shined straight through to the floor.

Callahan's teeth were intact, but there was a 3-inch hole in his cheek, like he was some kind of gaffed tuna. A closer look revealed that a large portion of Callahan's exposed jawbone was covered in a strange black substance. Ochi labored over it with his curette for an excruciating 15 minutes while trying to keep his dinner down. Later, a staff member with more hockey experience informed him, with a shrug, that the substance was stick tape. "There's no manual for this stuff," Rivera says. "But for someone who always wanted to be a dentist growing up, being a part of the NHL means we're doing some crazy stuff -- and I love it."

Or consider Game 4 of the 2010 Western Conference finals, when, after getting smashed in the mouth by a shot, Chicago Blackhawks defenseman Duncan Keith spit out seven teeth like sunflower seeds on his way back to the bench. "It sounds gross and bad," Keith says, "but it happens all the time to guys."

During a game, an NHL team dentist's main priorities are triage, improvisation and speed: Stop the bleeding, yank or file down any dangerous edges and numb the pain so the player can return to the ice as quickly as possible. Restorative oral surgery -- things like root canals, crowns, bridges or removable teeth the players call "flippers" -- is saved for the fully equipped dental office. So it was that Keith left a breadcrumb trail of bicuspids all the way to the Blackhawks' training room, where at one point he counted seven needles in his mouth. He missed just six and a half minutes of the game and returned to the ice, mumbling instructions through numb chipmunk cheeks while setting up the game-tying goal. (Two and a half weeks later, Keith was drinking out of the Cup, presumably through a straw.)

"Gotta leaf it all on the eyesh," he gummed to reporters after the Sharks game.

FOR DECADES, THE pregame ritual in the NHL was for players to write their numbers on coffee cups, place their teeth inside the cups and leave them on a shelf in their lockers before taking the ice. In the 1960s and '70s, the game's giants, players like Clarke, Bobby Hull, Gordie Howe and Stan Mikita, created the enduring and strangely charming archetype of the toothless hockey warrior. For the rest of the world, the eyes might be the windows into the soul. In hockey, it's the teeth. And for half a century, the idea that hockey players would so readily sacrifice their smiles and subject themselves to a lifetime of periodontal pain, all in the singular pursuit of fleeting hockey glory, came to embody the rough, quirky charm of the sport. "Hockey players accept that being in the dental chair is just part of their job," says Yont, the Flames' dentist. "And they do seem superhuman when it comes to that."

In 1972, Hull, one of the legendary gap-toothed Hall of Famers, left Chicago to join the WHA's Winnipeg Jets. According to The Globe and Mail, after Hull arrived in Winnipeg to discover that team dentist Gene Solmundson was paying his own way into the arena, the Golden Jet bought him seats near the blue line, and Solmundson has remained there ever since. (Although some teams offer their dentists a small honorarium, most receive little more than tickets to the game and an official association with an NHL team -- along with the chance to break the monotony of working on cavities, halitosis and dentures all day.)

At the very least, NHL dentists receive some rather unique (and creepy) keepsakes to decorate their offices. In Rivera's clinic, just across the street from Raymond James Stadium, there's a framed picture of his staff with the Stanley Cup and, just down the hall, a closet full of light green plaster molds of every Lightning player's teeth. All NHL dentists keep molds like these so they have something to work from when the originals inevitably go missing. But jumbled together on a counter, the collection of green jagged fangs, especially with the players' names scribbled on the backs in black Sharpie, looks like some kind of Halloween display.

Rivera also has a framed jersey that Hall of Famer Martin St. Louis inscribed "thx for the best smile in the NHL!!" During his 13 years in Tampa, St. Louis underwent just about every dental procedure imaginable inside Rivera's office. Routine dental trauma has just always been an accepted byproduct of the sport. Hanging in Solmundson's office in Winnipeg is a picture of an old local pro team in which all but one player have holes in their smiles. Tom Long, the team dentist for the Hurricanes since the franchise moved to Raleigh in 1997, remembers a similar jack-o'-lantern look to his 1966 Dartmouth hockey team.

Yet Long, Rivera and other team dentists now say they can see major changes in the sport of hockey reflected in the improved smiles of their modern-day NHL clients. In other words, the era of tooth trauma in hockey might be down to its last bite.

For starters, fewer fights and fewer head shots mean fewer lost teeth, obviously. College players in the U.S. are required to wear full masks, so a large portion of players arrive in the NHL with all their own teeth. More players are also wearing mouthguards -- although the truth is they're little help when it comes to a direct hit. MacDonald, after all, was wearing a mouthguard. It might have prevented a concussion, which is no small thing, but as for his teeth, all it did was provide a collection tray for his shattered chiclets (and a cautionary tale for his teenage daughters, both of whom play hockey but never without a full mask).

Long says quicker whistles on wayward sticks have saved a mountain of molars. So has the hybrid icing rule, instituted in 2013, the result of which is that players are no longer required to race into the boards at top speed for the puck. In the past five years, Long has become so impressed by the reduction in major dental trauma in the NHL that he recently wrote a letter of thanks to the league's board of governors. "The dynamics of the game have shifted," Rivera adds. "But the societal stigma has changed too. The market and culture with teeth is so strong now it has gotten into even the psychology of hockey players."

A recent study in the journal Sociology of Health and Illness titled "Straight White Teeth as a Social Prerogative" found that spending on dental services in the U.S. has increased by more than $100 billion since the NHL's coffee cup days. Our smiles are now one of the most potent societal indicators of class, status and fitness, thanks to endless marketing campaigns bombarding us with the message that a mouth full of perfectly straight, white chompers is "linked to ... acceptance into high society, improving employment prospects, and ensuring success in career and love."

As a result, players who just a few years ago would have waited until the offseason, or retirement even, to fix a missing or cracked tooth are repairing their smiles right away.

There will always be holdouts; this is the NHL, after all. In 2016, after a high stick turned him into a "Twilight" extra, Bruins winger David Pastrnak's new look became so popular on Instagram that he decided to keep it. Others decline dental work for an entirely different reason: Some of the toughest athletes in the world are just as terrified of dentists as the rest of us.

Especially the Eastern European players. Several team dentists surmised that because of a different standard of dental care in places such as the Czech Republic and Russia -- where the use of Novocain and anesthesia is sometimes considered an indulgence, even in pediatric dentistry -- players from that part of the world are so terrified of the dentist that Long has seen them visibly shaking from fear in his chair.

"Trust me, hockey players get just as anxious, just as annoyed, just as scared as everyone else," Rivera says. "They are huge, and I am small, but I always find it interesting that, in my dental office, they are always way more afraid of me than I am of them."

LIGHTNING DEFENSEMAN Braydon Coburn understands the terror. He was in Minsk, Belarus, at the 2014 world championship when an Italian player took a wild baseball swing at a loose puck and instead cracked Coburn right across the kisser, shattering his entire top row of teeth. "A total mess," he says. "Just all nubs and blood. The teeth fell out like piano keys."

Tournament officials told him not to worry. You're going to see the top dentist in all of Belarus, they said. Then they escorted him behind the rink into a cinder-block broom closet with a bare light bulb, a dental chair and Soviet-era equipment that looked like it belonged in a Jordan Peele movie. The team chaperone and Russian translator took one look at Coburn's hamburger face and screamed "Nyet!" before running out of the room crying. Still, Coburn didn't want to fly home and miss a chance to represent Canada, so he succumbed to the chair where, using nothing more than thumbs-up and thumbs-down signals to communicate, the Belarusian dentist pummeled him with pulpectomies for nearly three hours. With Coburn on the verge of either suffering a panic attack from the less-than-ideal conditions or passing out from the hot enamel smell of his own tooth dust, the dentist stood up, waved her hands and said "Finish ... after supper, teeth ready."

Coburn figured that between the swelling and the meds, he must have heard her wrong. Back home, that kind of extensive reconstruction work takes weeks to complete. But later that night he dutifully returned to the broom closet, where the dentist was waiting with what looked like a brand-new set of front teeth.

Without fanfare, she leaned over the chair and pushed them into his mouth. It was a perfect fit.

Coburn was able to remain in Minsk and play in the Canadian national team sweater again.

Now, sitting in the Lightning locker room after a morning skate, the Minsk memory causes Coburn to smile, which in turn reveals his miracle Belarusian bridge, still as tight and strong as the day he got it.

"That dentist saved me," he says.

In hockey, that's just part of the drill.

TAIPEI, Taiwan – Mi Jung Hur shot a second consecutive 6-under 66 to take a one-stroke lead after Friday's second round of the LPGA Swinging Skirts.

Hur, who is looking for her third victory this season, is at 12-under 132 overall. Defending champion Nelly Korda (67) was one shot back while trying to win her second LPGA title of the season and third of her career.

Minjee Lee (67) and In-Kyung Kim (65) are two strokes behind.

Hur, a 10-year LPGA veteran, said it was difficult with her husband and family in the gallery.

"Yeah, there's a little bit of pressure with my family," Hur said. "The whole family are here. But they were there last week, as well, so getting used to it."

Brooke Henderson shot a bogey-free round of 64, the lowest round of the tournament so far. The Canadian hit a 3-wood from 225 yards to five feet for an eagle on No. 12.

Henderson is three strokes behind Mi after opening with a 71.

Smriti Mandhana has recovered from her toe injury and will join the India women's squad in the Caribbean ahead of the second ODI against West Indies on November 3.

ESPNcricinfo understands that Mandhana, who had sustained a fracture to her right toe while batting in the nets ahead of the ODI series against South Africa at home last month, will be leaving for the Caribbean on November 2. However, it's unclear if she will be available for the second and third ODIs of the series, which begins on November 1 in Antigua. The two teams will play a five-match T20I series after the ODIs.

Mandhana spent a part of her recovery at home in Sangli, from where she posted an update via Instagram of her first running session. She subsequently underwent rehab at the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru even as the Indian squad left for the Caribbean on October 21. No replacement for Mandhana had been announced at the time.

Mandhana, the vice-captain of the T20I side, had been named in both ODI and T20I squads for the tour, which is India's final assignment this year. With no India players participating in the ongoing fifth edition of the Women's Big Bash League in Australia, the matches in the West Indies could give Mandhana a chance to regain form ahead of the tour of Australia in January next year, where India will play a T20I tri-series against the hosts and England in the lead-up to the women's T20 World Cup in February-March in Australia.

In her most recent international assignment, the T20I series against South Africa in Surat, Mandhana had scored only 46 runs in four innings. Prior to that, she was below her best in the Women's Cricket Super League in England too, scoring 268 runs in 11 innings for Western Storm.

Two days before the Delhi T20I between India and Bangladesh, the air quality in Delhi has plummeted to hazardous levels, and led to a public-health emergency. Schools have been shut, construction work stalled, and athletic activity advised against, but the two teams trained out in the middle and continued to shrug off the threat of playing in such poor air quality.

This match is the first international fixture in India after Diwali, which raises severe questions over BCCI's planning because it is well documented that the weeks immediately after Diwali are some of the most hazardous on public health. The BCCI has had first-hand experience with Ranji Trophy matches cancelled and a Test match interrupted in the past.

The schedule was announced as early as June 2019. Match allocation in the BCCI works on rotation basis, but exchanging matches is not unheard of. However, the current BCCI office bearers took charge only last week, until when the board had been under the charge of the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators, who had been entrusted with ensuring the implementation of the Lodha Committee's reforms and overseeing the running of the board while that happened. So direct responsibility for this scheduling is hard to pin down.

Questions asked of CEO Rahul Johri, who was the chief executive even when the current BCCI was not in charge, went unanswered. New secretary Jay Shah didn't respond either, but new president Sourav Ganguly said on Thursday that it was not possible to change the venue at such a short notice.

The two camps, who are at possibly the biggest risk because they are undertaking strenuous athletic activity, tried to play the issue down. While the Bangladesh players privately complained of burning eyes, sore throats and their struggle to sleep, their coach Russell Domingo said they were not going to moan about it. In what might come across as an insensitive statement, he even said it is not like anybody has died on the field.

"It's not something you'd want, but there is nothing you can do about it," Domingo said. "It is what it is. We have to make sure that we prepare as well as possible and deal with it as well as possible. Thus far, for sure have some scratchy eyes and some sore throat now and then, but it's been okay. Nobody's been sick or dying or anything like that. We've been okay with it."

Domingo, who was one of the members of the Bangladesh camp who wore a mask during training, was thankful the team was playing just a T20I and not a Test match or ODI. "Obviously you don't want to be in it for six or seven hours," Domingo said. "Three hours we're playing and three hours practice sessions. It's probably as long as you would want to be in it at the moment."

Domingo also said conditions back home might have helped the players ready themselves for this game. "There's a bit of pollution in Bangladesh as well so it's not a massive shock to the system as maybe some other countries can experience. The players have dealt with it really well - 'It's a bit smoky but let's get on with it and practise.' They haven't made too much of an issue out of it. Coaches haven't either. And we just have to go about our business as well normally would."

India's batting coach Vikram Rathour compared it with playing in extreme weather conditions. Rathour himself played a lot of cricket in north Indian winters, so he was asked how much worse the pollution has become over time. "I don't think you even notice it," Rathour said. "Playing cricket, you play sometimes in very hot weather… 45-46 degrees [Celsius]. Sometimes you play in extreme cold. Once you are in a game, I don't think you notice these things. It's when you are sitting out…"

When told of the emergency conditions and the public-health advisory against athletic activity, Rathour said: "I understand that but we are here to play a game and can't really do much about it. We are here to play and we will play."

That's what the local hosting body, the Delhi and Districts Cricket Association (DDCA) said too. "As you must be aware that BCCI has said that it's too late to change the venue at the last moment," Rajat Sharma, the DDCA president, told ESPNcricinfo. "DDCA, however, is taking all possible measures in consultation with the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). A meeting was held by the representatives of DDCA with various other departments such as DPCC, Traffic Police, SDMC (South Delhi Municipal Corporation), PWD (Public Works Department) and others chaired by member secretary CPCB. The situation was reviewed and departments were advised to take certain measures to help reducing the pollution around Arun Jaitley Stadium.

"DDCA was advised to wash the trees inside the stadium so that the dust doesn't flow. DDCA was also asked to survey the area of about two kilometres around the stadium and if any polluting items such as construction material, burning garbage etc. is found it is to be reported to CPCB. They will ensure immediate action."

With the AQI (air quality index) reaching 471 on the afternoon two days before the match, these measures are not likely to make any significant impact on the air quality.

The best allrounder in the world. Bangladesh's best player ever. Friend. Mentor. At times, the voice of Bangladesh cricket. Two players in one. Now a banned cricketer because he didn't report suspect approaches, something you are obliged and taught to do. As the Bangladesh team began its preparations for the tough tour of India, coming to terms with the loss of Shakib Al Hasan is a long way away.

For starters, there are disappointed team-mates for whom Shakib was a role model. Coach Russell Domingo hasn't even worked properly with Shakib yet, but he can see it in the dressing room. "Everyone is a bit disappointed," Domingo said. "I don't think I should be talking too much about it. I've been here for a month, and I've known Shakib for a month. The relationships the players have with him are a lot deeper than I've got because I don't know him well. But the players speak very highly of him, have a lot of respect for him, admire the way he goes about his business, his performances. Now he's made a mistake, he's paying the price."

Shakib is banned for two years, one of which is suspended. That means he will be out for one year, and there is no telling how he will be accepted when he does make the comeback. "One year in cricketing terms is a long time," Domingo said. "I haven't even thought about it; how Shakib gets in the game, back into the team, it's something that hasn't crossed my mind. It hasn't crossed anybody's mind.

"He has been a big player for Bangladesh. Very close friends with a lot of the players, so it's obviously affected some of the players. He has made a mistake and he is paying the price for it. There's not too much that we can say about it. It's not something we can control or something that affects us too much at the moment. It obviously affects the team in terms of his performances, but our mindset and our focus will be entirely on the series and the [T20] World Cup in 12 months' time."

When it comes to performances, Domingo admitted any replacement for Shakib will leave the team one player light. "Shakib bats at No. 3, often opens the bowling or bowls first change," Domingo said. "He bowls four overs every single game. He's one of our leading batters. Do I replace the batter or replace the bowler? Because it's very difficult; he plays both. There aren't too many players who provide you with both skills.

"So you might find yourself short in one department, and strengthening the other department. Depending on the conditions, if it's a flat wicket, you want to strengthen your bowling. If you think there's a little bit in for the wicket you might as well strengthen your batting. So, it would very much depend on the conditions. I don't think there's anyone earmarked who's specifically going to do Shakib's job. Everyone's going to try to contribute and fill up the numbers as best he possibly can."

India will go into the series without their usual captain Virat Kohli, but Domingo was of the view that Shakib was just as big a miss if not bigger for Bangladesh. "There's no Virat, [at the same time] there's no Shakib," Domingo said when asked of the advantage Kohli's absence might give his side. "So, there's an advantage for India with no Shakib and there's an advantage for Bangladesh with no Virat."

Baseball's regular season has the pace-of-play problem with which we're all familiar: Many of the 2,430 games take on dead time until they are boring, lulling. It's a good dish, watered down until you don't love it as much.

The postseason's pace-of-play problem is different. It's not that games get boring, since a World Series game is almost always tense and urgent, and if you're on a cross-country flight with cable TV access you will enjoy every moment of it. But most people aren't on cross-country flights. Most people have full lives, and they have to squeeze in their baseball indulgences among other obligations, like family, and sleep, and moving at least once every four hours to avoid nerve damage. These postseason games are thrilling, but they are so lengthy that they become impractical for many otherwise enthusiastic customers -- a good dish that goes cold before it can be finished.

Nearly every game in this World Series was long, even by World Series standards. Of the 13 longest nine-inning World Series games this decade, six came this year. Game 3, a 4-1 Houston victory, took 4 hours, 3 minutes:

This was the first time a game lasted 4+ hours, didn't go to extra innings, and had 5 or fewer total runs scored https://t.co/InhtMBDxAF

— Baseball Reference (@baseball_ref) October 26, 2019

In some ways, the most discouraging part of the pace of these games is how well disguised the slowness is. It's not that the games are slow for reasons that are anomalous (like 15-14 slugfests) or that could be easily legislated away (like limiting constant mound visits by catchers, which have been sharply curtailed since the 2017 postseason) or that would be delightful (very good dogs running onto the field to frolic). Rather, they're slow because ... well, why are they slow?

We rewatched Game 3 of the series, that unprecedented four-hour affair, with a stopwatch in hand and a few spreadsheets open, looking for the stuffing. Here's what we found.

Let's start with the baseline: While the average nine-inning baseball game this year was 3 hours, 5 minutes (an all-time high), the 65 4-1 games -- with less offense than typical games -- averaged just 2 hours, 55 minutes. That's our baseline. (The longest 4-1 game in the regular season, incidentally, was 3 hours, 29 minutes. There were two previous 4-1 games in this postseason that were at least 15 minutes longer than that. Postseason games are very long.) So Game 3 of the World Series was, at 4 hours, 3 minutes, 68 minutes longer than we would expect from the score and the year. What are those 68 minutes showing us?

1. For around 17 of them, they are showing us this:

Postseason commercial breaks are longer than regular-season breaks, by about 50 seconds. There are 17 between-inning breaks (one after every half inning except the final one), plus pitching change breaks (which are also longer in the postseason), so that adds around 17 minutes. This is baked into every postseason game, so if you want to know what an average postseason game is, start at 3 hours, 20 minutes.

2. For a little more than three minutes, they are showing us this:

There are, on average, 2.05 mid-inning pitching changes per game in the regular season, each of which adds about 3 minutes,15 seconds of dead time. (Pitching changes at the start of an inning add only a few seconds of extra time.) There were three such pitching changes in this game, which is in keeping with the World Series norm: There have been an average of 3.7 mid-inning pitching changes per World Series game since 2016. Managers have more urgent hooks for their pitchers (both starters and relievers) in the postseason, and a lot more innings generally go to relievers in the postseason, hence more mid-inning pitching changes. The three longest half-innings in Game 3 -- all of them lasting at least 22 minutes, compared to about 10 minutes for a typical half-inning -- all had mid-inning pitching changes.

3. For about five minutes, they are showing us this:

That's a single that the Nationals hit in the bottom of the ninth, which, as you know, wouldn't have been possible if the Nationals -- the home team -- had been winning the game. But the road team won all seven games in this World Series, which added about 10 minutes to each game -- or, more fairly, about five minutes, since the home team does bat in around half of baseball games.

We're up to about 25 minutes of our 68.

4. For about 16 minutes, they are showing us this:

That's Yuli Gurriel singling with a runner on first base and two outs. We noted that scoring was below average this World Series, but it was uncharacteristically heavy on baserunners. The Astros and Nationals combined for a .331 on-base percentage, the highest in a World Series since 2011, and significantly better than the .299 OBP that World Series hitters had this decade. Batters in this year's regular season had a .323 on-base percentage. It doesn't feel as if we saw an explosive, offense-packed series -- there were only nine runs scored per game, down from 9.6 per game in the regular season -- but that's just because nobody is getting hits with runners in scoring position. There have been a ton of baserunners, but they're not being driven in.

Put this together with the third factor -- more home teams batting in the bottom of the ninth -- and this year's World Series has had about six more batters per nine innings than the average World Series this decade. And despite the low score, the Astros' 4-1 victory in Game 3 had 81 plate appearances -- almost 12 more than the average 4-1 game this year.

We already counted the time spent by batters hitting in the bottom of the ninth, so we won't count that again. But at a little under two minutes per batter, on average, the other eight extra batters account for about 16 minutes of extra baseball.

5. For about 20 seconds, they are showing us this:

That's just a pitch, one single extra 3-2 pitch. There tend to be slightly more pitches per plate appearance in the World Series than in the regular season, as strikeout pitchers face disciplined hitters and produce deeper counts. The difference was minimal for this game, though: In Game 3, there were 3.94 pitches per plate appearance, compared to 3.93 in the regular season, which is one extra pitch. So that's those 20 seconds.

6. For about two and a half minutes, they are showing us this:

We mentioned that more baserunners have meant more plate appearances, each one adding about two extra minutes. But more baserunners also means more men on base, and pitchers tend to slow way down when men are on base -- not just to try to stall the running game, but to go through more complex signals with the catcher, to pace themselves through longer innings and to keep themselves composed. The average time between pitches when a man is on base is about 5.5 seconds longer than when the bases are empty, according to Baseball Prospectus' pace metric.

Because there were a lot of baserunners in this series, and this game -- and, especially, a lot of baserunners early in innings -- there were a lot more pitches thrown with runners on base than normal: 53% of all pitches in Game 3, compared to about 42% in the regular season. That adds up to 17 extra pitches thrown from the stretch, which -- at 5.5 extra seconds per -- adds about two and a half extra minutes. That gets us to about 44 extra minutes accounted for, and about 24 minutes unaccounted for. So where are those?

7. For at least 13 minutes, and probably a lot more, they are showing us this:

Exciting! Dramatic! It's pitchers taking longer than usual to pitch!

Nearly every pitcher in this World Series has worked more slowly than he did during the regular season. On average, World Series pitchers have taken an extra 1.5 seconds between pitches with the bases empty and an extra three seconds per pitch with men on base. Sometimes this is obvious to the viewer: When Zack Greinke fell behind 3-0 to leadoff hitter Trea Turner, he took slow walks around the mound after the second and third balls, settling himself. When Anibal Sanchez was facing George Springer in a long at-bat during the second inning, he continually shook off signs and stepped off the mound. But mostly this shows up in an extra beat or two that you wouldn't notice unless you were timing it, at least until you wake up groggy from sleep deprivation the next morning.

Greinke took about six more seconds between pitches with men on base in this game, compared to the regular season, and about three extra seconds per pitch with the bases empty. Sanchez took an extra four seconds with men on, and an extra second with the bases empty. Relievers Brad Peacock, Will Harris, Joe Smith, Josh James and Joe Ross were all slower in this game than they typically are.

All those extra seconds add up to 13 minutes, compared to the regular season, but even that total probably undersells it. The "pace" figures we're using, from Baseball Prospectus, exclude the time between any pitches that come more than one minute after the previous pitch, because it assumes that something unusual happened -- an injury, a visit from the pitching coach, a pickoff attempt. We weren't able to determine whether there are usually more pickoff attempts in the World Series, but we can say definitively that there were more pickoff attempts than usual in this specific game, Game 3. On average, teams threw over about 3.5 times per game in the regular season. Sanchez threw over five times just in the first inning, and continued to do so as the game went on.

So that undefined time -- pickoff time, mound-visit time -- could get us pretty close to 68 minutes. The rest can be blamed on Turner, who spent two and a half minutes in agony after fouling a pitch into his crotch.

From MLB's perspective, we can break this time into three segments:

1. Commercials (17 extra minutes)

2. The type of game that happened to be played (around 27 extra minutes)

3. Postseason-specific dawdling (around 24 extra minutes)

The first is easy to fix -- but they presumably never will. The second is impossible to fix -- but nobody would ever want to, since that was all the natural and exciting stuff. The third is what executives dream of erasing.

But it's not simple. Pitchers aren't taking more time between pitches because they've never considered moving faster. They're doing it because these games are incredibly important, and those extra seconds help them, and research has found that working slower helps pitchers throw faster. As Joe Garagiola Jr. told Jerry Crasnick in 2013, "If people are taking a little more time between pitches ... it's because somebody is going to be the world champion at the end of the next eight or nine days. You can't lose sight of that."

The fact that pitchers slow down so much in the postseason is evidence of how important to their performance pitchers consider those extra seconds. Taking those extra seconds away in the name of business would be like outlawing sliders in the name of business. It would rightly infuriate pitchers, prioritizing a secondary aspect of the sport (the surface-level entertainment value) over the primary aspect of it (competition between elite athletes attempting to be their best). It's no wonder the union has pushed back against pitch-clock proposals that would disproportionately penalize one class of employee for the league's relatively unimportant business interest.

If the league really wanted to cut the time pitchers spend between pitches in the most important innings of the year, they would do better to consider pitch-clock rules as explicit efforts to hamper pitcher performance, not to save time but to strengthen the actual competition on the field. Those sorts of changes are common in setting (or changing) the rules of game play: imposing play clocks and shot clocks in other sports, banning spitballs and regulating mound height in baseball.

The main thing keeping offense going in baseball right now is the juiced ball; otherwise, pitchers are and have been ascendant for the past decade, with strikeout rates setting records every season. If the dead ball goes away -- and since Major League Baseball claims not to know what caused the dead ball, it also doesn't know how to preserve it -- baseball could quickly enter a new dead ball era.

One small thing the league could do to return an advantage to batters is take away pitchers' ability to slow the game down to their own preferred rhythm. Not for pace-of-play reasons, mind you, but to maintain a nice balance between pitching and offense. If, as a convenient side benefit, World Series watchers get a good night's sleep ... well, that'd be OK too.

Thanks to Lucas Apostoleris and Baseball Prospectus for research assistance.

Another new England number one
By SEAN REUTHE and ALAN THATCHER

Ever since Nick Matthew retired, England has witnessed something of a merry-go-round as James Willstrop, Daryl Selby and Declan James have enjoyed spells as the new national number one. Now we can add Adrian Waller to the list.

Waller, from a squash-loving family in Middlesex, has broken into the top 20 for the first time in his career to become the highest ranked Englishman on the men’s tour after the PSA Men’s World Rankings for November were released today.

Waller, the 29-year-old from Enfield, won his eighth PSA Tour title at the Life Time Chicago Open in October, and that victory, along with a third round finish at the U.S. Open, has helped elevate him seven places to sit at a career-high World No.17 ranking.

Waller and his brothers have become familiar figures on the Middlesex League scene over many years, while Adrian has quietly worked his way up the world rankings.

Waller represented England in last year’s Commonwealth Games and gained some extra PSA ranking points after winning the recent $30k Chicago Open, defeating New Zealand’s Campbell Grayson in a one-sided final.

Perhaps significantly, he beat Declan James in the second round of the US Open earlier last month.

U.S. Open champion Ali Farag extends his lead over runner-up Mohamed ElShorbagy at the top of the World Rankings, while Tarek Momen (No.3), Karim Abdel Gawad (No.4) and New Zealand’s Paul Coll complete the top five.

The rest of the top 10 is also unchanged as Simon Rösner (No.6), Diego Elias (No.7), Mohamed Abouelghar (No.8), Miguel Rodriguez (No.9) and Marwan ElShorbagy (No.10) all retain their spots.

India’s Saurav Ghosal stays at No.11 ahead of Welshman Joel Makin, while Egypt’s Fares Dessouky rises a spot to No.13. France’s Gregoire Marche moves up two spots to a career-high No.14 ranking, while Omar Mosaad drops two places to No.15. Zahed Salem falls a place to No.16, with England’s former World No.1 James Willstrop staying at No.18.

Egypt’s Mazen Hesham rises two places to return to the top 20 for the first time since September 2016, while England’s Daryl Selby completes the top 20 after falling three places.

 
PSA Men’s World Rankings Top 20 – November 2019.

Pictures courtesy of PSA