2011-in-review - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

This Guy Died This Year: The Man Who Hated Us 2011 was a bad year for assholes. It was the year we were finally rid of this demented and twisted man who hated everything at the very core of what it means to be an American, a human. This man who spit hateful words toward those unlike himself, whether it be based on race, religion or sexual ori...

This Guy Died This Year: Nate Dogg, The King Of G-FunkNathaniel "Nate Dogg" Hale always sounded smooth. His voice gave him a niche within G-funk's very stylized confines for the most quintessential G-funk crooner of them all—not that there were many, because who else did we really need?—and he held that title for as long as it even existed....

10 Stories Of 2011 That Didn't Suck: A SportsFeat ListMax Linsky is the editor of Longform and SportsFeat....

This Guy Died This Year: Peter Falk

Depending on your age, Peter Falk is that guy from Columbo, that guy from Princess Bride, or that guy from that show your dad used to watch (which was Columbo). But all three of these suppose Falk to be an actor. In reality, acting was the career he landed in after failing as an academic and rese...

This Guy Died This Year: Clarence Clemons, Big Sideman

When Clarence Clemons, the saxophonist for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, died this year at 69 after a stroke, a lot of the remembrances, including Hickey's in this very webspace, cued up his solo in "Jungleland." "Jungleland" is a great song, one of Bruce's best, filled with lyrical drama and e...

The Highlights (And Assorted Lowlights) Of 2011, In Under Three Minutes

A collection of highlights and occasional lowlights from 2011, a year of triple plays, juggling catches, buzzer beaters, record-setting performances, Abby Wambach, "We will see you tomorrow night," fathers dropping daughters to catch foul balls, and old men punching each other silly. Enjoy...

This Guy Died This Year: George Shearing, Music's Original Hipster Taste

Jack Kerouac was into George Shearing before it was cool to be into George Shearing (or into Jack Kerouac, for that matter). Kerouac wrote a great deal about the near-orgasmic experience of listening to jazz, and one of his more notable passages on the subject appears in On the Road. It's drawn fr...

2011: The Year We Became The United States Of Trolling

Well, that about wraps up yet another shitty year of the new millennium. I don't know about you, but I personally can't wait to see what future shitty years have in store: rising water prices, a sharp growth in armed RoHoWa militias, a new Pitbull album ... everything shitty is on the table, people....