tcraggs22 Page 98 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Baseball Statgeeks, iPhone Dorks Finally Join Forces
FanGraphs has an iPhone app now. "Live win probability and win probability graphs"! "Basic/Advanced/Value stats for any baseball player"! I do believe FanGraphs commenter Kevin S. speaks for all of us: "I just splooged in my pants." [FanGraphs]...

Rikers Inmates Are Apparently Jets Fans
"Plaxico Burress got a zero's welcome behind bars at Rikers Island, including taunts of 'a - - hole!' and 'The Giants suck!' according to jail guards." [New York Post]...

Mark McGwire's Insurance Policy Required Him To Take The Stuff That Inspired Our National 'Roids Hysteria
We all know about Mark McGwire and his (completely legal) use of Androstenedione, thanks to the hall monitors in our sporting press. What we didn't know: The Lloyd's underwriters who had insured McGwire's ankle required that he continue taking Andro....

From The Desk Of Gary Belsky: Gynecology Edition
Gary Belsky is the EIC of ESPN The Magazine, which you probably know as the strange, unwieldy object wedged into your mailbox every other week. Sometimes, funny things happen at Gary's magazine, and employees tell us about them....

Sports Will Make Detroit Happy Again, Sportswriters Continue To Claim
Oh, look. A sportswriter has parachuted into Detroit and found a hard-luck city with a shrinking tax base in the maw of a recession whose spirits nonetheless brighten because Brandon Inge just ran out a grounder to short. Yay!...

The Learning Curve: Phinally Philly
This segment is called "The Learning Curve" where you, young blog proprietor, will get a link to your new site on Deadspin. Any and all questions you may have about being a successful blogger will (hopefully) be answered....

Giants' Teenage Prospect Now A Murder Suspect
Angel Villalona, a Giants top prospect, was scouted at 13 and signed by San Francisco at 16, and now, at 19, he's the prime suspect in a murder in the Dominican Republic, a top prospect of an entirely different sort....

Mark Sanchez Overpraise Poised To Annoy The Hell Out Of Us
Mark Sanchez possesses a certain je ne sais quoi. So how to describe him, just two games into his NFL career? If only there were some hackneyed bit of praise that elevates competence into a kind of holy state ......

Playground's Michael Jordan
New York magazine's excellent Sam Anderson reviews Flight, the magisterial Michael Jordan biography written and illustrated by Sam Anderson, age 13. [New York]...

A <em>Star Wars</em> Geek, Randy Wolf Is
Asked, in the best Q&A ever, which Star Wars character would make the ideal baseball player, Wolf responds: "[T]he Emperor is unstoppable. He seems like he could pretty much get it done." It's true. His stuff is electric. [StarWars.com]...

Why Your Stadium Sucks: Petco Park
This is a weekly feature in which I (and maybe you, too, readers) detail the various reasons for hating your ballpark. This week: Petco Park....

Bustin' Ass
It's been awhile since we last brought you a photo of a terrified adolescent mutton-buster being tossed about by an unsettlingly placid-looking sheep. Our apologies....

The Learning Curve: Herm's Perm
This segment is called "The Learning Curve" where you, young blog proprietor, will get a link to your new site on Deadspin. Any and all questions you may have about being a successful blogger will (hopefully) be answered....

WWE's Linda McMahon Scores Key Endorsement In Actual, Not-Fake Senate Bid
McMahon, wife of Vince, CEO of WWE, enemy of budget deficits, is running for Chris Dodd's Senate seat. "Connecticut needs Linda McMahon," says former wrestler Lanny "The Genius" Poffo. "She is the opposite of Nancy Pelosi." Senton bomb! [Daily Beast]...

The NCAA's Last True Believer
Myles Brand, the career academic who shitcanned Bobby Knight and became the NCAA's fourth president and maybe its last true believer, was the perfect salesman for an organization that pretends, against all evidence, not to be selling anything....

Help!
Paul Shirley, hoops journeyman and dime-store Jim Bouton, thinks the Beatles are totally overrated and today's music is vastly superior. Moment I stopped reading: "Just as Dean Koontz came after Bram Stoker, Oasis came after The Beatles." [ESPN]...

Simmons On Carolla: "He Has Reached Manny Ramirez Status"
Bill Simmons had himself a chat yesterday with the baccalaureates over at newly launched ESPN The Boston, and between Road House jokes, he shared a few catty thoughts about Adam Carolla — thoughts apparently deemed too catty by ESPN....

What Is Wrong With Our Angry Tennis Players?
Federer, bitching to the umpire about a late challenge by eventual winner Juan Martin del Potro: "Don't tell me to be quiet, OK? … I don't give a shit what he said, OK?" Such grace! [YouTube, AP]...

Jim Carroll: The Bard Of The Hardwood
Carroll — junkie, author, schoolboy basketball star — died Friday of a heart attack while working at his desk. He was a hopped-up Holden Caulfield with a jump shot, and the closest thing basketball ever had to a poet laureate....

<em>Joe Buck Live</em> Lives!
Next week brings the joyous return of Joe Buck's Cavalcade of Sporting Chit-Chat and Penis Whimsy, now with what promises to be a marked emphasis on the former over the latter, unless Joe Namath is off the wagon again....