Jessica Mendoza Will Appear On Sunday Night Baseball Broadcasts For Remainder Of Season

ESPN announced Friday that the Olympic gold medalist will appear as an analyst for their Sunday Night Baseball broadcasts for the rest of the MLB season. On Thursday, Curt Schilling was booted from a similar role.

Jessica Mendoza

ESPN announced Friday that former Olympic softball player Jessica Mendoza has been added to the Sunday Night Baseball broadcast team for the remainder of the 2015 MLB season, along with the AL Wild Card game.

Mendoza made history on August 24 when she became the first woman at ESPN to call an MLB game. A week later, Mendoza called the Cubs–Dodgers game on Sunday Night Baseball, during which Cubs pitcher Jake Arrieta threw a no-hitter.

According to ESPN's announcement Friday, Mendoza will appear for the final three Sunday Night Baseball games of the regular MLB season, plus the AL Wild Card game. ESPN does not have broadcast rights to any playoff games beyond the Wild Card.

Mendoza was a starting outfielder for the USA Softball Women's National Team during the 2004 and 2008 Olympics. In college, she and her Stanford teammates appeared in the Women's College World Series. Mendoza now was an announcer for the Women's College World Series for ESPN, and this year called the men's College World Series.

Mendoza's rise in ESPN ranks coincided with fellow analyst and former MLB pitcher Curt Schilling's troubles with the cable sports network.

On Thursday, Schilling was booted from the Sunday Night Baseball broadcast team for the remainder of the MLB season, along with the AL Wild Card game. Schilling was pulled from the schedule after he tweeted an image macro comparing Muslim extremists to Nazis.

ESPN first pulled Schilling off the Little League World Series broadcast. After sitting out the week, Schilling exacerbated the situation by sending a rambling email to a reporter in which he questioned the reporter's integrity and made a snide comment about a fellow ESPN reporter.

The statement issued Thursday by ESPN was uncharacteristically candid, saying Schilling's actions have "not been consistent with his contractual obligations nor have they been professionally handled; they have obviously not reflected well on the company."

In Schilling's lengthy email to a reporter, he credited Mendoza's work as an analyst for its own merits:

"My suspension or not she deserves to be in a booth calling MLB games. Not to break a barrier, not to enter a new frontier, but because she earned it. She's one of the few still understanding if you work your ass off you can do what you dream."

ESPN has not made a decision about the Sunday Night Baseball tenure of Schilling nor Mendoza beyond the AL Wild Card game. Mendoza's next appearance will be Sunday, September 6, when division rivals St. Louis and Pittsburgh go head-to-head.

LINK: Curt Schilling Booted From ESPN Broadcasts For Remainder Of MLB Season

LINK: ESPN Pulls Curt Schilling From Sunday Night Baseball Broadcast For Tweeting A Nazi Meme

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Can You Name ALL Of The Ginger Players Who've Played In The Premier League?

NOTE: This quiz does not accept strawberry blondes, or people who just have ginger beards.

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3 Dips You Need To Make For Game Day

Make your Snack game BEAST MODE. “HOLD MA DIP”

BuzzFeed Blue / Via youtu.be

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This Alternative World Ranking System Puts England Way Above Wales

Sorry, Wales.

Wales have achieved the extraordinary this week, not only is the nation of just 3 million inhabitants in the top 10 of the FIFA World Rankings, they have gone above England for the first time ever.

Wait, is that a mullet?

Stu Forster / Getty Images

As if that wasn't already brilliant enough for Welsh sport fans, they are also above England in the World Rugby Rankings – just a few weeks away from the Rugby World Cup.

Alex Livesey / Getty Images

But, not to downplay the recent success of the Welsh football team, the FIFA "Coca Cola" World Rankings have been a point of contention in international football for quite some time. Here is the current top 10.

Now... given that Germany won the World Cup just over a year ago, you'd expect them to be at the top of that pile, and certainly above Belgium, who are currently BELOW Wales in their Euro 2016 qualifying group.

FIFA

There IS an alternative to the FIFA World Rankings. It's called the ELO World Rankings, and it's based on a formula developed by *consults the internet* Hungarian mathematician Dr. Árpád Élő. It's mainly used to rate chess players.

Who you gonna believe – this guy, or Sepp Blatter?

Creative Commons

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Curt Schilling Booted From ESPN Broadcasts For Remainder Of MLB Season

The former Red Sox pitcher continues to face disciplinary action from ESPN as fallout from Nazi-related tweet.

Elsa / Getty Images

ESPN announced Thursday that baseball analyst Curt Schilling will not appear on broadcasts for the remainder of the MLB regular season and the American League Wild Card game. The remainder of the MLB playoffs, including the World Series, are scheduled to be broadcast by other networks.

Schilling's shaky standing with ESPN, where he's worked since 2010, began in August when he tweeted an image macro that drew a comparison between the number of Nazis and number of Muslim extremists, transposed over a photo of Hitler. Schilling also posted the photo to his Facebook page, which was later discovered to have entire photo albums of his collection of WWII/Nazi-related memorabilia.

ESPN quickly pulled Schilling from that week's broadcast of Sunday Night Baseball and from his Little League World Series assignment. He later tweeted an apology.

Schilling was scheduled to be back for this upcoming Sunday's broadcast, but shortly after midnight on Monday morning he sent a lengthy diatribe to reporter Dan Levy, who writes for sports media site Awful Announcing.

The former pitcher questioned Levy's integrity in covering his Nazi meme–related suspension, linking to an Awful Announcing story written by another writer.

Schilling claimed the nature of the photo had been willfully misconstrued on the site, taking a shot at a fellow ESPN colleague in the process. "Very Chris Mortensen of you," he wrote, referring to Mortensen's reporting on the Tom Brady/NFL saga, which has been largely discredited.

"I don't have a racist bone in my body," Schilling wrote. "Anyone that knows me even a little knows that."

He continued:

I don't have a racist bone in my body, never have. Anyone that knows me even a little knows that.

Yet you, like so many others, continue to destroy what's left of the publics trust and confidence in media by creating a story of your own design and liking when you didn't need to, and smearing someone's reputation ato do it. Any thought at all as to my children and their thoughts if they read the lie you created? That's an honest question. I dealt with it in my home, but I always wonder when people of your ilk give ruining someone a shot, if you ever do think about the family you impact. Especially when you are creating a story that never happened to do it.

And for what it is worth I apologized for tweeting. The forum was about as poor a choice as I could have made in trying to elicit a potential discussion on that topic. I did not, and will not apologize for the content of the tweet. If you, or anyone else, can't wrap your head around your native language enough to understand that omitting words, or adding them, is plain and simple lying when it comes to journalism. Oh and it changes the content of a quote when you do that too. But you already knew that. But to paraphrase, when a radical minority is opposed by a silent and weak majority, really really bad stuff can, and has, and likely will again, happen.

In the same email, Schilling did offer lengthy praise for fellow baseball broadcaster Jessica Mendoza, who became the first woman to call an MLB game for the network recently and sat in for Schilling on Sunday.

"My suspension or not she deserves to be in a booth calling MLB games," Schilling wrote. "Not to break a barrier, not to enter a new frontier, but because she earned it."

Awful Announcing did not have a formal agreement with Schilling for the email to be off the record, despite Schilling requesting it be kept private, so after a day of consideration, they published the entire email.

ESPN released a statement, assuring reporters that "We weren't aware of Curt's plan to craft or sent this email."

In a follow-up, Levy published his lengthy response to Schilling, in which he asked the analyst about other offensive posts on Schilling's social media sites.

You know for a fact the post about blowing up prophets was 100% in reference to those unique gentleman on global airwaves daily, talking about the destruction of all non believers, America and Israel.

But that screws your narrative so you act more ignorant than you are, play stupid and try to make the leap, as with the tweet, i meant all prophets. At least you're consistent.

That tweet with Hitler was offensive, he was a despicable, horrible anti-christ of a human.

Did that tweet stir up negative emotions?

It was supposed to do that, albeit again it was idiotic for me to post in that forum.

We are now in a time and place where horrible despicable things are being imparted on innocent human beings around the globe by people who have made it clear they wont stop until ever non believer on the planet is dead.

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Late Thursday, ESPN issued a scathing statement on Schilling's recent — and very public — comments. The emails between Schilling and Levy were not mentioned explicitly.

At all times during the course of their engagement with us, our commentators are directly linked to ESPN and are the face of our brand. We are a sports media company. Curt's actions have not been consistent with his contractual obligations nor have they been professionally handled; they have obviously not reflected well on the company. As a result, he will not appear on ESPN through the remainder of the regular season and our Wild Card playoff game.

ESPN has not announced who will sit in for Schilling going forward.

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Venus Williams Receives Degree From Indiana University East

Congrats!

Venus Williams is now an alumna of Indiana University East!

Congrats!

Carlo Allegri / Reuters

The tennis star earned her Bachelor's of Science in Business Administration after enrolling in IU East's online degree program in 2011.

She was able to finally visit the campus in August while traveling for the Western Southern Open.

Hali Cartee / Indiana University East

One of the main reasons that I chose IU East was because I felt so at home. It was like family, like it was my school, and I was so excited. It's been an incredible journey. I've learned so much. It was always my dream to have a business degree and I ended up going to art school so many times, but in the back of my head I felt like I needed the tools to be a better leader, to be a better planner, to be better at all of the things I wanted to do in my businesses because I'm so hands-on.

Via iue.edu

Congrats, Venus!!!!!!! You are an inspiration to us all!

Hali Cartee / Indiana University East

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This Is What One Of The World's Biggest Football Clubs Is Doing To Help Refugees

Bayern Munich are raising €1 million for refugees, as well as offering food and tuition.

Now, after the fan-led movement last week, Germany's biggest club, Bayern Munich, has announced that it will work with the German government to help refugees in Munich and Bavaria.

CHRISTOF STACHE/AFP / Getty Images)

The club is taking the unprecedented step of holding training sessions for younger refugees. Children and teenagers will also receive German lessons from the club, and will be offered food and clothes.

L. Preiss / Getty Images

Germany is currently experiencing its greatest influx of refugees for many decades. This presents a special challenge to the state and society. FC Bayern München will play an active part in meeting the challenge and, working closely with the city of Munich and state of Bavaria, contribute financial, material and practical help.

Via fcbayernmunich.com

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