Monica just released a steamy new music video … and her son has some thoughts!
The singer recently released a new single, titled “Letters,” and dropped a risqué music video to accompany it on Friday. In the footage, there’s one notably sexy scene in which she cozies up to rapper The Gamein a bath tub.
The singer shared a sneak peek at the video to her Instagram page last night, posting some behind the scenes video of the tub moment. In the comments, Monica’s teen son Romelo expressed his confusion over the situation.
“Yo what is this,” he wrote.
“SON… It’s like a movie!! Momma at work,” she responded, before reposting the exchange to her Story and added, “Somebody please tell Lil Daddy to take a day off.”
The Game, meanwhile, simply reacted to the video by commenting, “👀”
Watch the full video below:
Romelo is one of three of Monica’s kids.
She shares Romelo, 15, and Rodney, 18, with ex Rodney Hill and went on to have daughter Laiyah, 9, with ex-husband Shannon Brown.
Monica also recently celebrated Rodney’s high school graduation in a series of photographs for the special day. “@rodneyy This Moment, This Day is YOURS…… Class of 2023,” she captioned the pics.
Nike and Major League Baseball have unveiled the uniforms that All-Stars will be wearing during the upcoming game in Seattle.
And they’re…kinda cool?
Perhaps even more importantly, Nike revealed an entirely new template for on-field uniforms players will be wearing for the 2024 season.
For this year’s All-Star Game, teams will be wearing Seattle-themed jerseys, to match the host city.
The home team American League will have a teal jersey, with the visiting National League wearing dark blue uniforms.
According to MLB.com, “The 2023 jerseys feature a print that blends elements of Seattle’s neighboring ocean, forests, topography and the movement of air.”
Both have All-Star Game patches, with ASG 23 on the back collar, with “The Future is here” tags on the bottom right corner.
The American League All-Star Uniforms, Front And Back. (Fanatics)National League All-Star Jersey Front and Back. (Fanatics)
Nike Reveals New Uniform Materials, Design Template
Nike also revealed their new jersey template, which reportedly took years to develop.
According to MLB.com, the jersey is more “breathable” with “high-performance fabric.”
“Vapor Premier’s breathable, lightweight, high-performance fabric is made from at least 90% recycled polyester yarns. It also gives the jersey 25% more stretch and allows it to dry 28% faster, with moisture-wicking Dri-Fit ADV technology keeping players cool. Nike body-scanned more than 300 baseball players to find the ideal fit, which is more athletic and form-fitting than previous models,” the release explains.
The newly fabricated All-Star jerseys are already available online, with all on-field sets to be changed for the 2024 season.
This is notable mainly because it’s the first update to the on-field template in around a decade.
Nike took over distribution of the MLB on-field uniforms several years ago, promising to change and modernize the look and feel. That took longer than expected, making Friday’s announcement a bit more exciting than the usual jersey announcement.
At first glance it’s hard to tell how much they’ve changed, outside of the new fabrication.
The stitching and sides seem to be the most different, although it’s hard to tell until there are more real-world photos.
Fans will get to see the new designs and the All-Star game uniforms live at T-Mobile Field in just a few weeks on July 11th.
The Aaron Judge Show arrived in Queens on Tuesday night and delivered again — even if the Yankees didn’t in their 6-3 loss to the Mets.
Judge entered with four homers in his previous four games and immediately improved on that number by drilling a solo shot to right that went an estimated 423 feet at 112 mph.
It was his MLB-leading 38th homer of the season as Judge’s onslaught of opposing pitching, regardless of opponent or ballpark, continued.
Aaron Judge belts a solo homer in the first inning of the Yankees’ 6-3 loss to the Mets. Jason Szenes
He also walked on four pitches with two outs in the top of the fourth, as the Mets and Taijuan Walker clearly pitched around Judge to load the bases for Anthony Rizzo.
Rizzo nearly made them pay, when he swung at a 3-0 pitch and hit it to the warning track in dead center, but Brandon Nimmo caught it to end the inning and keep the Yankees down by a pair of runs.
Judge reached base a third time with a single to left off ex-Yankee Adam Ottavino with one out in the seventh, moved to second when Rizzo was hit by a pitch and then stole third — although Rizzo was thrown out at second on the double-steal attempt — but was stranded there when Gleyber Torres popped out.
He’s now 16-for-28 with seven homers and 16 RBIs in his last seven games. Judge also has multiple hits in six of his last eight games and has driven in half of the team’s runs (12 of 24) in its last five games — which is good for Judge and not as good for the Yankees, who have lost three of those games.
Jonas Valanciunas took a jab at LeBron James without saying a word during a game of charades on a Lithuanian television show.
He let his actions do the talking during the appearance in his native country.
While imitating James in front of a live audience, Valanciunas first rubbed his eyes and wept, a clear shot at the Lakers superstar’s penchant for complaining about fouls. After the crowd broke into laughter the 30-year-old went a step further, floundering to the floor in an exaggerated manner in an attempt to mimic James flopping.
Valanciunas’ guesser quickly pieced together the references, correctly inferring that the 6-foot-11 center was acting out the role of James.
LeBron James handles the ball against Jonas Valanciunas at Crypto.com Arena.Getty
While Valanciunas and James have had no publicized beef with each other prior to this shot, their team’s recently exchanged blows over Twitter last week.
The Twitter feud began after the Pelicans official account was called out by user @thewhistle0 for having a Twitter banner of five active players posing at an NBA Summer League game – a stark contrast from the Lakers account’s banner, which boasts the franchise’s 17 championships. New Orleans didn’t hold back, responding “yes our players enjoy sitting next to each other rather than on opposite ends of the court.”
The reply was a direct dig at James and teammate Russell Westbrook, who were seen sitting apart from one another at an earlier Summer League Lakers’ game.
Perhaps the NBA’s newest rivalry is developing before our very eyes.
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Cocos Technology said it has raised $50 million to fuel the growth of its open source Cocos Creator game engine.
Cocos has been around for a long time as a foundation for making 2D games for mobile devices and other platforms. Last year, it also added its first all-in-one 3D engine and editor with a new version of the Cocos game engine, which traces its roots back a decade to Cocos2d-x.
Cocos has been used by more than 1.4 million developers to date, and over 100,000 games in the app stores use it. And more than 1.6 billion people play games that use the engine.
The investors include CCB Trust, GGV Capital, Agora, and others. With this round of funding, Cocos will continue to improve the core technology of the engine with the help of capital and promote the further integration of the engine within various industries such as games, automobiles, education, XR, home design, architectural engineering design, and other future endeavors.
Cocos said it is committed to providing developers with more convenient creation tools, reliable technical solutions, and diversified products and services for cross-industry customers.
Founded in 2010, Beijing-based Cocos has created a global digital interactive content development platform. The Cocos engine is a popular open-source engine in the world. Cocos has cultivated the underlying technology for many years, providing the most professional products and services.
Cocos can be used for 3D games.
The company bills Cocos Creator is an efficient and easy-to-use cross-platform interactive digital content development engine built by Cocos. It is not only a powerful game development tool but also an open-source engine that can meet the creative needs of many developers and engineers.
In May 2021, Cocos Creator 3.1 was officially released. Cocos and Huawei’s HiSilicon team cooperated on the underlying facilities of the engine, becoming the first case of the “chip + engine” cooperation model in China. This version includes the deferred rendering pipeline contributed by the Huawei HiSilicon GPU team and the support of the PhysX physical backend.
The Cocos engine covers all market categories and is widely used and recognized worldwide. China’s mobile game market share accounts for 40%, and the global mobile game market share accounts for 30%. Tencent, NetEase, Nintendo, Ubisoft, and other major game developers have used the Cocos engine to develop and launch their game products.
Cocos is adding 3D to its 2D game engine.
Starting from mobile games, the Cocos engine has grown into a more universal tool across multiple fields. In the field of smart cars, Cocos is also being used to create functional interaction in different scenarios between people and vehicles and vehicles and the outside world. Multi-modal interactive smart cockpit products based on the Cocos 3D rendering engine will also be launched shortly.
In online education, Cocos launched the Cocos ICE courseware editor for education companies. This is an interactive courseware editor that can be used quickly without coding. It has strong compatibility and can be customized. Cocos currently has more than 90% of the Chinese market in this new online education sector.
At the end of 2021, Baidu released the metaverse product “Xi Rang” to accelerate the creation of the metaverse. Cocos has recently become a partner of Baidu, providing a technical platform base for the metaverse world. The two parties will jointly build a metaverse world over time.
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ESPN’s new gimmick during “Sunday Night Baseball” provided some entertaining moments during the Red Sox’s 4-3 victory over the Yankees.
Boston center fielder Kiké Hernandez was mic’d up for a live interview with the broadcasters in the bottom of the fourth inning as he played in the outfield, a quirk the network experimented with in spring training but is trying out during the regular season this year. On Sunday night, it provided for some fun television as Hernandez reacted in real time to the game as it unfolded.
With Anthony Rizzo at bat, Isiah Kiner-Falefa at second and Jose Trevino at first, Boston pitcher Ryan Brasier threw a pitch in the dirt, allowing both runners to advance. From center field, Hernandez sized up the situation to the broadcast booth aptly.
“Fast guy at third (Kiner-Falefa), slow guy at second (Trevino). If he gets a base hit to me I’m going to throw him out at home, maybe,” Hernandez said.
Prophetically, on the next pitch, Rizzo lined a hit to Hernandez in center. “Here it is!” the Sox outfielder grunted as he sprinted to the ball – and tried, exactly as he said, to throw Trevino out at home.
“Fast guy at third. Slow guy at second. If he gets a base hit to me I’m gonna throw him out at home maybe”
Didn’t go the way Kiké Hernandez wanted it to but this was an awesome mic’d up moment pic.twitter.com/fsWaxLZg36
Unfortunately for him, while his throw was on a line, the cutoff man intercepted it and let the runner score, holding Rizzo to a single in the process.
It was a fascinating TV moment watching a player narrate the game as it unfolded live, but it wasn’t the only noteworthy sound bite of the night. At one point, announcer Karl Ravech asked Hernandez – who joined Boston in 2021 after playing six seasons for the Dodgers – how the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry compared to Dodgers-Giants.
“Pretty similar, but colder,” Hernandez quipped.
Kiké Hernandez warms up prior to a game against the YankeesGetty Images
He also nominated Braves second baseman Ozzie Albies – whose team will play the Padres in next week’s “Sunday Night Baseball” – to be the next player mic’d up for the segment.
ESPN emptied the bag of tricks for their first “SNB” of the year, and while the debut of the “Kay-Rod Broadcast” – with Michael Kay and Alex Rodriguez – earned mixed reviews, this segment is certainly one we would like to see again.
Jordan Montgomery was rolling around on the grass near the pitcher’s mound, writhing in pain.
It was just three batters into Sunday night’s game and a Xander Bogaerts grounder had ricocheted off Montgomery’s left leg. He’d hopped, then fallen and then he was on the ground with trainers looking over him, and the lefty’s first start of the 2022 season looked like it had ended just after it began.
A couple hours earlier, Yankees manager Aaron Boone had been asked about the sustainability of using his bullpen the way he had during the season’s first two games. His answer, in short: it is not sustainable.
The Yankees used seven pitchers on Saturday. They used eight on Friday. And here was Montgomery, one out into Sunday’s game, on the ground, with Clarke Schmidt getting up in a hurry in the bullpen.
It looked like Montgomery was done. And then, as quickly as he had gone down, he was back up.
Jordan Montgomery is drilled with a come backer in the first inning.Robert SaboJordan Montgomery lies on the ground after getting drilled by a line drive in the first inning. Robert Sabo
He did not leave the game. And despite struggling through the first inning, he ultimately did not pitch all that poorly.
“It’s fine,” Montgomery said of his leg after the game, which the Yankees lost 4-3 to the Red Sox. “It’s gonna be a little swollen, but I’ll be ready in five days.”
Montgomery pitched 3 ¹/₃ innings, giving up two runs in the first before settling in for a solid if uninspiring 58 pitches. He finished with three earned runs allowed and four strikeouts on four hits, though his constitution was the most noteworthy piece of the performance.
“Obviously to see him rolling around like that in pain was certainly concerning,” Boone said. “Pretty gutsy effort to kinda walk it off and shake it off.”
Montgomery said he passed a series of tests and returned a clean X-ray. Between innings, he put heat on it and walked around to try and stay warm, though he and Boone seemed confident it wouldn’t affect his next start.
Jordan Montgomery pitches during the Yankees’ loss to the Red Sox. Robert Sabo
“We’ll see how he is [Monday],” Boone said. “But I think the preliminary looks at least a little bit encouraging.”
He and Schmidt — who pitched the next 2 ²/₃ innings, giving up his only hit on Bobby Dalbec’s go-ahead home run — gave the Yankees’ bullpen the closest thing it will get to a light night of work.
With pitchers coming off a shortened spring training due to the lockout and still ramping up their workloads, it is expected most starters won’t go deep into games early in the season. That compounds a reality that already exists in an era where most managers would rather avoid their pitchers facing a lineup for the third time in a game.
Montgomery said he would have preferred to get through four or five innings, but was happy with his outing.
The Yankees, it’s safe to assume, were happy Montgomery was merely able to stay upright.
“I’m sure he’s gonna be pretty stiff,” Boone said. “He’s pretty stiff already right now. Gutsy effort by him.”
Nearly 17 months after the Rangers sent out the unforgettable rebuild letter in February 2018, Artemi Panarin took his talents to New York to the tune of $81.5 million over seven years.
The credit for landing the biggest fish on the free-agent market at the time goes to the organization’s former managerial duo of president John Davidson and general manager Jeff Gorton. Panarin has been everything the Rangers needed him to be, and now the star winger is leading the club to its first playoff berth in five years.
“We sent the letter out, and then we signed a big ticket,” Chris Kreider said while looking over at Panarin sitting next to him after the Rangers’ playoff-clinching victory over the Senators on Saturday, “I think we more reloaded than rebuilt in a lot of ways.”
Panarin, who leads the Rangers with 88 points, extended his point streak to four games and recorded his 11th three-point game with a goal and two assists. Since Panarin entered the NHL in 2015-16, only the Oilers’ star duo of Connor McDavid (81) and Leon Draisaitl (61) have more three-point games than Panarin’s 59.
Artemi Panarin celebrates a goal.Getty Images
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It was also Panarin’s 18th multi-assist outing of the season, which is tied with the likes of Mark Messier, Brian Leetch and Jean Ratelle for the most by a Ranger in a single season.
“A little overall,” Panarin said through a translator when asked if he’s elevated his game of late. “Obviously, I kind of do want to be even better than I am, I do try.”
Even in a season where he’s looked a tad off at times — more hesitant with the puck and less imposing in certain situations — Panarin has still managed to impact games more often than not.
But lately, the Russian has been consistently spectacular at a crucial time in the season. Panarin has five goals and 12 assists for 17 points over the last 12 games. Even without Ryan Strome for four games, Panarin didn’t slow down and made it work with trade-deadline acquisition Andrew Copp.
“He always does things every single night that just make us roll our eyes on the bench,” Kreider said of Panarin. “Stuff that no one else can do. I don’t think he’s any different than anyone else on our team, he understands that we were on the precipice of making the playoffs and he’s a big-game player to go along with all the things that he does so incredibly well — that no one else can do. He obviously raised his level, that’s just Arty.”
Gerard Gallant became the 15th Rangers head coach to qualify for the playoffs in his first season with the club.
Major league teams have to be drooling at the potential of Roki Sasaki.
The 20-year-old right-hander was already on their radar, and now he added another reason for MLB teams to want the potential future ace.
Sasaki tied a Nippon Professional Baseball record with 19 strikeouts in a perfect game on Sunday in leading the Chiba Lotte Marines to a 6-0 victory over the Orix Buffaloes — the first perfect game in NPB history since May 18, 1994, and the 16th the league has ever seen.
“This is the greatest,” Sasaki told reporters after his masterpiece. “Honestly, I wasn’t thinking about the possibility [of a perfect game]. I figured it would be OK if I gave up a hit, so I just pitched and put my trust in [catcher Ko] Matsukawa right until the end.”
Sasaki’s fastball reached 100 mph and he fanned 13 straight hitters in one dazzling stretch. That’s a Japanese record, the Kyodo News reported. Most impressively, he needed only 105 pitches to go the distance.
“We were all on edge on the bench, but so were the guys in the field,” Marines manager Tadahito Iguchi said. “This is not something everyone can go through, so it’s a great experience. I have to give credit to Matsukawa for calling such a great game and doing a solid job with the bat as well. The two of them are quite a battery.”
A year ago, Sasaki notched a 1.84 ERA, struck out 84 hitters and walked 19 in 16 outings.
We’ve seen plenty of odd reasons for a delay of action in sports. On Friday, the Mets vs. Nationals game was delayed due to a lights outage.
This one was a bit different, though. In a North Dakota high school baseball game between the Grafton Spoilers and Rugby Panthers, the game was delayed due to prairie dogs running onto the field, as video from KXMB-TV shows.
Prairie dogs cause quite a stir at a North Dakota high school baseball gameKXMB-TVTwo prairie dogs running on the field during a high school baseball game in North Dakota.KXMB-TV
The prairie dogs were eventually guided off the field. The Panthers went on to win the game 4-1.
It wasn’t quite the black cat during the Mets-Cubs game in 1969, or the black cat interrupting Giants-Cowboys in 2019, but add this to the list of animal-related sports oddities.
