Good Morning! Here’s what happened in the world of sports on Wednesday, August 21.

MLB

As the title suggests, there were some really fun baseball games yesterday. We’ll get to the walk-offs, but first a few individual highlights from around the league:

• Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz stole his 60th base of the year last night. For context, Shohei Ohtani is second in Major League Baseball with 39. De La Cruz and the Reds beat the Blue Jays 11-7.

• Another day, another Aaron Judge home run. Actually, Judge hit two homers last night, raising his total to 47. For context, Shohei Ohtani is second in Major league Baseball with 39. Judge and the Yankees beat the Guardians 8-1.

• And this last bullet point is to confirm that Shohei Ohtani does indeed have 39 home runs and 39 stolen bases this season. Not a typo, just an incredible baseball player.

Now it’s time to rank three thrilling walk-off victories from yesterday’s action:

3. At number three we have Wyatt Langford and the Texas Rangers. With two outs in the ninth inning, Langford lined a single to drive in the only run of the entire ballgame. A great moment for the rookie, and the Rangers beat the Pirates 1-0.

2. Desperately needing a win to keep their season alive, the St. Louis Cardinals played a back-and-forth game with the Milwaukee Brewers. St. Louis rallied down two runs to tie the game 4-4 in the ninth inning. Then, in the bottom of the 10th, Nolan Arenado hit a walk-off grand slam. A special night for Arenado and an important victory for St. Louis. Also of note– each of the Cardinal minor league teams won yesterday on a game-ending hit. That’s four walk-offs from the same organization!

1. Finally, the Mets and Jesse Winker take the top spot. Leading off the ninth inning of a 3-3 game, Winker connected on a solo shot to left-center field. The best part of this game-winning hit was the celebration: Winker’s helmet toss and scream as he made his way down the first base line was electric. If you’re keeping track, the Mets hit a walk-off home run on Monday, lost due to multiple errors on Tuesday, then hit another walk-off on Wednesday. They are a very special team.

NOTEWORTHY NEWS

The Remix wants to apologize for missing a major news story yesterday… the return of Backyard Baseball! Ask any sports fan around the ages of 20-35, and they’ll tell you one of the Backyard Sports games is the best video game of all time. We still don’t know all the details about the upcoming version of the game, but new developer Playground Productions has promised the game will be “bigger and better than ever while staying true to what made the franchise so special.”

Reds legend Joey Votto has announced his retirement from professional baseball. A member of the Blue Jays minor league system in 2024, the 2010 NL MVP played his entire Major League career in Cincinnati. Congratulations to a fantastic player and well-respected individual on a great career. You can read Votto’s official retirement post here.

Team USA flag football quarterback Darrell Doucette made headlines the other day when he stated, “I think it's disrespectful that [NFL players] just automatically assume that they're able to just join the Olympic team because of the person that they are—they didn't help grow this game to get to the Olympics.” The sentiment from Doucette is fair, if a little unrealistic. Then yesterday, Doucette decided to take his cause a step further, claiming, “At the end of the day, I feel like I’m better than Patrick Mahomes because of my IQ of the game.” I honestly don’t know how to respond to that. Maybe Doucette doesn’t watch much football?

Iowa head football coach Kirk Ferentz and assistant coach Jon Budmayr have each received one-game suspensions because of recruiting violations. The violations are related specifically to the recruitment of quarterback Cade McNamara. More details are on the way, as a press conference is scheduled for later this afternoon.

The Denver Broncos named rookie Bo Nix their starting quarterback for week one. Nix will be the first rookie QB to start the season for Denver since John Elway. No pressure, Bo.

PLAY OF THE DAY

Titouan Droguet is the 148th ranked men’s tennis player in the world. The 23-year old has a losing record in his short career as a professional. But yesterday, Titouan Droguet hit one of the best tennis shots I’ve ever seen. Take a look:

You’ll see that Droguet was up 6-3, 5-3 in that US Open qualifying match… he ended up losing 3-6, 7-5, 6-3. Maybe he heard about winning play of the day honors and decided that was enough?

TODAY’S BIG GAMES (all times Eastern)

MLB: Reds @ Pirates, 6:40 PM; Mets @ Padres, 9:40 PM

• There are a lot of great games tomorrow, but I’m highlighting two special ones. First, it’s Paul Skenes day in Pittsburgh– rumors are swirling that the Pirates may soon shut down their rookie phenom to save his arm for next season, so we need to enjoy these starts while we still can. And then late night, the Mets take their traveling circus/baseball team out to San Diego for a crucial matchup of NL wild card hopefuls.

GOLF: BMW Championship, round one begins at 9:25 AM on Golf Channel/Peacock

• Viktor Hovland looks to defend his title from a year ago as the top golfers in the world head to Colorado for week two of the playoffs.

And that’s a Remix. Have a great Thursday!