2015 NFL HALL OF FAME INDUCTION

The Pro Football Hall of Fame inductions on Saturday night and the preseason game between the Minnesota Vikings and Pittsburgh Steelers were welcome sights. Football is back.

Great players and builders of the game – Junior Seau, Jerome Bettis, Charles Haley, Tim Brown, Will Shields, Mick Tingelhoff, Ron Wolf and Bill Polian – were inducted (Seau posthumously) at the Saturday night fest in Canton, Ohio. The Vikings beat the Steelers 14-3 with almost no starters for either team seeing significant playing time.

The Hall of Fame gained members, but it also lost one. Frank Gifford, a star at several positions for the New York Giants in the 1950s and ‘60s, died Sunday at his Connecticut home. He was 84. Gifford was the original play-by-play caller when Monday Night Football first began in 1971 and was the husband of TV talk show host Kathie Lee Gifford.

SWIMMING

No discussion of today’s great women athletes – Serena Williams and Ronda Rousey are names to know – would be complete without mentioning Katie Ledecky. The 18-year-old won five gold medals and set three world records at the world swimming championships in Kazan, Russia. Ledecky completed a sweep of the 200, 400, 800 and 1,500 freestyles on Saturday night. She swam the anchor leg on the victorious 4×200 free relay as well.

BASEBALL

The Toronto Blue Jays completed a three-game sweep of the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium with a 2-0 victory on Sunday at Yankee Stadium. The Blue Jays closed to within 1 ½ games of the Yankees in the American League East. … The Chicago Cubs wrapped up a four-game sweep of the San Francisco Giants with a 2-0 win at home on Sunday. The Cubs have won 10 of their last 11 games and hold a 3 ½ game lead over the Giants in the National League wild-card playoff race.

ELSEWHERE

Joey Logano got his second win in the NASCAR Sprint Cup series, nipping Kyle Busch at Watkins Glen, N.Y. … Shane Lowry won the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational at Akron, Ohio by two strokes over Bubba Watson.
 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman .