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The following is excerpted from Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan's new collection of essays, which Deadspin cannot recommend enough. More »
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The following is an abridged preview of an abridged NBA season, culled from the team chapters of the ever-incisive Pro Basketball Prospectus. Buy the book as a PDF for $9.98. More »
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Matthew Polly has never been a man for half-measures. When he wanted to learn kung fu, he left college for two years to live and train in the famous Shaolin Temple in China. Polly wrote an excellent book about the experience. His new book, Tapped Out, follows Polly on another two-year journey as the author whips himself into shape to prepare for his first pro MMA fight. It wasn't easy. "[M]y weakness for Chinese takeout and Coors beer had taken its toll," Polly writes. But he sought out the best coaches in the sport and wrapped up training with a six-month stint in Randy Couture's gym in Vegas. Along the way, he learned why MMA has become so popular, why fighters need exceptionally patient wives, and why you never, ever act like a tough guy when you first walk into a gym. Polly himself will be here tomorrow to tell us about some of the injuries he picked up while fighting. For now, enjoy this excerpt from a chapter in Tapped Out called "The Green-Light Special," which is what happens to you when you act like a tough guy when you first walk into a gym. More »
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Howard Cosell, who died in 1995, ruled sports broadcasting from the 1960s until the 1980s. He commentated on Monday Night Football from its inception, called boxing's biggest fights, and popped up on Olympics and baseball telecasts, too. In his new book, Howard Cosell: The Man, the Myth, and the Transformation of American Sports, author Mark Ribowsky expertly traces Cosell's rise and fall. We'll have more describing Cosell's heyday later, but, for now, his nadir. More »
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When LeBron James stood up the Cavs live on ESPN last season, Esquire writer Scott Raab took his 50-plus years of sad-sack Cleveland sports fandom and became a one-man hate machine. For those of you annoyed by Raab's anti-King James Twitter rantings last year, you'll be happy to know his new book is nothing like that. Oh, it's angry all right, but it's also touching, sad, and revelatory. We'll have more from Scott this week but for now, start with this chapter excerpted from The Whore of Akron: One Man's Search For the Soul of LeBron James. It's on sale today, so go buy it. More »
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Back in September 2007, the Patriots were caught taping the Jets' defensive signals on the sideline. This was week one, after the Patriots beat the Jets, 38-14. The next 15 games—all of which the Patriots won—were blowouts a lot like that, but with a venomous edge. In his new book, War Room, which hits stores tomorrow, former Boston Globe writer Michael Holley traces Bill Belichick's career along with those of Thomas Dimitroff and Scott Pioli, two of his pupils. This is a trip inside the 2007 Patriots, when all of football turned on Bill Belichick and his team. More »
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John Carlos is best known as the man who, along with Tommie Smith, raised a clenched fist—the Black Power salute—on the medal stand after the 200 meter race. Carlos took bronze, and Smith gold, at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. But that moment was a culmination of months of political discussion among black leaders in America. One such discussion happened in early 1968 in New York City. Carlos explains, in a section excerpted from The John Carlos Story, written with Dave Zirin. More »
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Esquire has the first excerpt from Scott Raab's The Whore of Akron, on sale Nov. 15. We'll have more later in the week. For now: "Lord. This is where LeBron James wants to play basketball, in front of sun-dried cretins who must be bribed to act as if they care about the game and the team. ... For as long as I've been a fan, I've rooted hard against certain teams and players, but never have I hoped to see a career-ending injury—until tonight." [Esquire] More »
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Today the 1985 Chicago Bears were finally honored at the White House—25 years after their 46-10 romp over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX. (The original trip was canceled because of the Challenger explosion.) That Super Bowl was memorable for many reasons—the headbands of Jim McMahon, the spectacle of William "Refrigerator" Perry—but it was also noteworthy for what didn't happen: Walter Payton didn't score a touchdown. In fact, the belief has long been that Payton was miserable after the game. In this excerpt from Sweetness, available on Amazon, author Jeff Pearlman revisits the scene after Super Bowl XX and finds the great Walter Payton in tears. More »
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Alex Gibney's film Catching Hell—about Cubdom's favorite scapegoat, Steve Bartman—aired tonight on ESPN. Last year, we adapted the following excerpt about Bartman from Will Leitch's book Are We Winning? Fathers and Sons and the New Golden Age of Baseball. Originally published May 4, 2010. More »
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The following is excerpted from the team chapters of the always-excellent Football Outsiders almanac. Buy the PDF for $12 or order the book for $21.95. More »
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For Comedy Week, we're running a handful of tributes in the vein of our Dead Wrestler of the Week series. Here, from the best book ever written about stand-up comedy, Phil Berger's The Last Laugh, we look at the evolution of Andy Kaufman, meshuga provocateur. More »
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Adapted from Tom Scocca's Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future, available at your favorite bookseller. More »
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During the years 1962-64, 13 women in the Boston area were molested and then strangled by an assailant who came to be known as the Boston Strangler. In 1965, Albert DeSalvo, a convicted sex offender and patient at a local mental institute, began telling people he committed the murders. With the help of superstar attorney F. Lee Bailey, and with the support of investigators eager to be rid of the case, DeSalvo confessed to the killings during a trial for unrelated crimes. No physical evidence linked him to the Boston Strangler cases, and DeSalvo was never convicted of those killings. But for years after his confession the popular assumption remained that the Strangler murders were the work of one man, and that that man was DeSalvo. In an excerpt from his new book, Popular Crime, Bill James, the patron saint of sabermetrics, explains how DeSalvo couldn't have been the Boston Strangler. More »
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The following is excerpted from Josh Wilker's book about The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training, written for Soft Skull Press's Deep Focus series. More »
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In the foreword to "At the Fights," a newish boxing anthology that spans over a century of pugilistic history, the novelist Colum McCann observes, quite appropriately, that, "Boxers get told to imagine punching a spot behind your opponent's head, to reach in so far that they can extend the destruction to the back of the head. Writers do the same thing — they try to imagine a spot behind your brain and punch you there." More »
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The following is adapted from Lipsyte's new memoir, An Accidental Sportswriter, now available on Amazon. More »
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The following is excerpted from Weintraub's The House That Ruth Built, about Babe Ruth, the Yankees, and the 1923 baseball season. More »
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The following is excerpted from Santiago's 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente, a gorgeous graphic-novel biography of the martyred baseball great. Clemente got his 3,000th hit on Sept. 30, 1972, three months before he died in a plane crash. You can watch video of No. 3,000 here; Santiago's rendering below is infinitely more exciting. More »
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In his new book, author Jonah Keri covers the rise of the Tampa Bay Rays under the stewardship of two Goldman Sachs alums and a private equity banker, who in 2008 managed to do to the rest of the American League what some of their former colleagues were doing to the U.S. economy. Before their arrival, however, there was Vince Naimoli, the Rays' founding owner, a man too cheap for email. More »
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We received an email from Cal Ripken Jr.'s publicity team at Random House, which will release his three-CD audiobook, HOTHEAD, next Tuesday. HOTHEAD (the caps are apparently intentional) is about a Babe Ruth League shortstop named Connor Sullivan and is "loosely based on challenges Ripken himself faced as a young player." More »
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Greg Lindsay is the co-author of the forthcoming Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next, which argues that air travel has a lot more to do with your daily life than you might think. In this outtake from the book, he describes how NASCAR teams took to the skies as the sport expanded nationally over the last decade. More »
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Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim, authors of the Freakonomically inclined Scorecasting, explore the peculiar power of round-number milestones and how they affect a ballplayer at the plate. More »
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There was a time when Michael Jordan was a very different kind of superstar, writes Bethlehem Shoals in this excerpt from FreeDarko's wonderful and wonderfully idiosyncratic Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History. That MJ was edgy and menacing, and he helped make embarrassing music that no one remembers today. A look back at Michael Jordan, basketball punk. More »
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The following is taken from Bronx Banter Presents: Lasting Yankee Stadium Memories, edited by Alex Belth and featuring recollections of the old ballpark—sorry, stadium—from the likes of Pete Hamill, Charles P. Pierce, and Joe Posnanski. Bob Costas has something in there, too, I guess. Here, the great Richard Ben Cramer remembers his first visit to Yankee Stadium and the brief moment he thought he might die. More »
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Today, mongrels, we're excerpting from Anthony Gargano's tremendous NFL Unplugged, which offers a ruthlessly entertaining portrait of the NFL. It has all the lawlessness, the poop, the broken fingers, the organized insanity that the league would prefer you not know about. More »
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Beth Raymer moved to Vegas in 2001, hoping to land a cocktail-waitressing job. Instead, she wound up the girl Friday to a gambler named Dink, from whom she learned that one "takes" the dog, "lays" the favorite, and never, ever steals. More »
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Paul Solotaroff, the guy with the pecs in the above photo, lived through the age of muscle, which on one notable occasion found our hero shimmying for horny Long Island women, his dick in a Star of David rayon sling. More »
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The following is taken from Josh Wilker's wonderful memoir Cardboard Gods: An All-American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards. You can find more of Josh's writing at cardboardgods.net More »
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Today's selection comes from Michael Weinreb's book, Bigger Than The Game: Bo, Boz, the Punky QB, and How the '80s Created the Modern Athlete. This excerpt offers a glimpse into the aforementioned punkyness of the Bears' eccentric QB. More »
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The following is excerpted from Emma Span's 90% Of The Game Is Half Mental: And Other Tales from the Edge of Baseball Fandom, an account of one woman's love of baseball—from cheering along at home to being on the team beat and everywhere in between. More »
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In the 1980s, Billy Ray Bates, dubbed "the Legend" by Brent Musberger, washed out of the NBA and onto the shores of the Philippines, where for a few wild years his legend grew, both on the court and in the bars. More »
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The following is excerpted from Top of the Order: 25 Writers Pick Their Favorite Baseball Player of All Time, edited by Sean Manning and featuring essays by Matt Taibbi, Stefan Fatsis, and others. Here's Scott Raab, writing about former Indian Tony Horton. More »
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The following is taken from chapter 8 of Doug Glanville's "The Game From Where I Stand." Read it, buy the book, and chat with Doug in a followup post at 2pm. More »
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Below is a chapter titled "Confidence Is The Way To A Woman's Heart, Or, At Least Into Her Pants " from SMDS by Justin Halpern, America's premier chronicler of patriarchal affection. Buy the book, read the Tweets, pray for Shatner. Chat at 2. More »
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The following is adapted from Will Leitch's Are We Winning? Fathers and Sons and the New Golden Age of Baseball. More »
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The following is taken from Chapter 1 of Sarah Silverman's memoir, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee. Chat with her in a followup post. More »
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Sam's down in the comments, awaiting both your observations on America's sham meritocracy and your penis humor. Go say hi. Don't forget to read the excerpt and buy the book. More »
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Below is the first chapter of The Ask, by Sam Lipsyte, our funniest and foremost chronicler of fuck-up Americana. Read it and come back at 3 p.m. for a live chat with the author in a followup post. More »
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We'll have an excerpt Thursday from the great Sam Lipsyte's new novel, which is very funny and which I encourage you to read immediately. Sam will be by around 3 p.m. to say filthy things to you and discuss aggressively marketed nachos. More »
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