Harry Kane becomes first Englishman in 25 years to win the Ballon d'Or - football's top individual prize bbc.in/48j8ESI

A scout drove out to a junior college in Missouri to watch him throw, and he walked eight batters in a row. That is the story everybody tells. Somebody brought it up again this month and he corrected them. It was nine. They drafted him anyway. Fourth round, 2018. Aaron Ashby is from Kansas City, Missouri, out of Park Hill High School. His uncle Andy pitched fourteen seasons in the big leagues and made two All-Star teams. The Texas Rangers had taken him the year before that, in the 25th round, 764th overall. He turned it down and went back to the junior college. His first big league appearance was two thirds of an inning and four earned runs. Two seasons later he went 2 and 10 as a starter. Milwaukee signed him to a five year extension anyway, and then his shoulder went. Arthroscopic surgery. He lost all of 2023. He says he has never gotten the slider he had in college back, not once, not all the way. Then 2024 at Triple-A Nashville, a 8.04 ERA across 25 games. That is the number teams look at when they decide somebody is finished. In August of that year, still in Nashville, he started messing with a knuckle-curve. He was in Milwaukee about a week later. Last season he put up a 2.16 out of the bullpen. This season he went 13 and 3. And then October started and he just stopped giving up runs. Fifteen and two thirds scoreless innings to open this postseason. Five hits. Three walks. Seventeen strikeouts. He has pitched in eight of the Milwaukee Brewers ten playoff games and every single one at home. He is one out away from the record. Andrew Miller went sixteen scoreless to start the 2016 postseason and nobody has matched it. Ashby passed Goose Gossage and Andy Hawkins to get here. Pat Murphy watched him get a five out save in Game 2 Saturday and called it Goose Gossage-like. He is also the first pitcher in the history of the postseason to record at least five outs in six straight appearances without allowing a run in any of them. The pitch doing it is the curveball he was not supposed to have. Miguel Sano hit the fifth curveball he ever threw in the big leagues over the wall, back in August 2021. He has thrown 1,045 of them since. Not one has left the yard. They asked him how he stays that calm with the tying run on second in the ninth. "It's a lot of breathing." "Just kind of praying for peace, I guess." Be straight about where this sits. Milwaukee is up 2-0 but the next three are in Tampa Bay, the Rays won 94 games, and nobody finishes a postseason at 0.00. But a kid walked nine straight hitters with a scout in the stands, and a week from now he might own the record for the best October any bullpen arm has ever had.