bain - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Down with influencers
With Haley and Hanna Cavinder announcing that they’re eschewing a final year of eligibility to turn full-time influencers, this seems as good of a time as any to share an influencer take that was naturally occurring. Seeing as it’s easiest to write when you’ve got a muse, and site output is down, th...
Barry Bonds is deserving of a Hall of Fame exemption
At best, it’s a crapshoot....
Tom Brady, LeBron James, Drew Brees, and Kevin Durant are all pickleball obsessed, which is why you shouldn’t be
With the growing number of Nirvana shirts I see young people wearing, I’m eagerly awaiting the angst to match the apparel. Kurt Cobain’s era-defining band became popular because it was part of a movement that was in direct contrast to heavy metal hair bands and ’80s glam epitomized by cocaine and Mi...
Get ready for hot pickleball action!
It’s not often that we get the chance to live through the invention and ascension of a sport into popular culture. American football dates back to the Civil War era. James Naismith invented basketball in 1891. FIFA was founded in 1904. But thanks to a man named Joel Pritchard trying to entertain his...
The path to an NBA championship is increasingly volatile
Neil Young gets credit for the line, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away,” but Kurt Cobain made it infamous. That dichotomy stuck with me, and it’s impossible not to see it in sports....
Does longevity plus consistency really equal Hall of Fame worthiness?
One of the more popular and most intensely argued sports debates that happen every couple of weeks, it seems, is the debate over who’s a Hall of Famer and who isn’t. No matter the sport, this is a conversation that can go on for hours, whether it’s happening on TV, radio, or in the barbershop....
<em>Ten</em>, named for Mookie Blaylock’s number, is 30 years old (Mookie is now 54… How’s THAT feel?!)
There was a time when I used to mark the inevitable march of time by how long ago Pearl Jam’s album Ten came out. This started sometime in the late-1990s when my former high school classmate (who was the only person from high school I chose to stay in contact with — we both pretty much hated everyon...
Meet MLB’s All-'Never-been an All-Star' Team
Nowadays, it seems like every baseball player under the sun has been an All-Star at some point in their careers. In 2019, there were four AL second basemen selected for the Midsummer Classic. FOUR! In total, there were 75 players awarded All-Star recognition in 2019. In 2018, 73 players were named A...
The Baseball Hall Of Fame Is Now In The Remembering Some Guys Business
Beyond the obvious broad comedy inherent in the words fuming baseball purists, one of the more amusing aspects of Harold Baines’s otherwise inexplicable selection to the Baseball Hall of Fame this week has been the sheer volume of discourse devoted to Harold Fucking Baines across various platforms. ...
Baseball's Hall Of Fame Was Busted Long Before Harold Baines Got In
It was terribly unfair of the “Today’s Game Era Committee” of the Baseball Hall of Fame to put Harold Baines in this position. When they elected Baines to the Hall on Dec. 9, the TGEC did him an honor, but also made him the foremost case study for the knowledge gap between those who control the Hall...
“Two days ago, the last word on Harold Baines would have been that he had no real shortcomings. Today, he’s been reduced to nothing but shortcomings. If the committee wanted to respect what he accomplished, it should have left him alone.” Tom Scocca on Baines deserving better than the Hall of Fame....
Paul Konerko Has A Good Bad Idea For The Hall Of Fame
The baseball world is very bored right now, and so is in high dudgeon over the election to the Hall of Fame of Lee Smith (fine, whatever) and Harold Baines. Harold Baines! It’s alternately inexplicable (Harold Baines was good for a long time, but c’mon, he’s no Ryan Klesko) and completely explicable...