and Page 1174 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

It's A Good Time To Be Bill Simmons
All kinds of news involving Our Boy Bill Simmons, kicked off with a glowing pop culture icon validation from Slate's Bryan Curtis, who writes the "Middlebrow" column for the Web mag, which has featured luminaries like Michael Flatley, Demi Moore and Cirque du Soleil in the past. Curtis has big nic...

Falling Asleep To Exciting Playoff Action
We were flipping through our newspaper this morning — sorry, sometimes we actually like to read printed things — and glanced at the schedule for the remainder of the Cardinals-Padres series. They will be playing Game 2 at 4 p.m. today — we'll be live-blogging the game, and we promise to actually f...

Macha Out As A's Manager
Just to show you the magical power of blogging, we are the first people on the Web to break the news that Ken Macha is leaving as manager of the Oakland Athletics. According to Peter Gammons, Macha wanted more money than general manager Smilin' Billy Beane wanted to pay, so he's now a "free agent....

Blogdom's Best: Cleveland Indians
More than any other sport, baseball lends itself to individual blog obsession. Every Major League Baseball team has several blogs obsessed with chronicling the ins-and-outs of everything. Deadspin salutes these modem-addled souls and proudly presents Blogdom's Best, given to the most outstanding b...

We Have To Ask ...
Suggested questions for today's ESPN SportsNation chatters ... • Noon. MLB with Gary Miller: We see they've moved you from Insider and are now offering your columns for free. Welcome to coach class. • 3 p.m. Writer Frank Deford: Do you sometimes catch you own reflection in the mirror and just stare ...

Playoffs Pants Party: White Sox vs. Red Sox
We know no one really remembers that the White Sox are actually in the playoffs, but we actually know some White Sox fans, so they do exist, apparently. Most people are giving this series to Boston, which seems odd, considering the White Sox had a better record, home-field advantage and more than,...

Live Blog: Cardinals vs. Padres, Game 1
OK, folks, we are sorry that you're stuck at work all day today, one of the best baseball days of the year. But worry not! We're at home, with vasoline on our fingers and ready to roll. Bookmark this page all day today to check in on the Cards-Padres, inning by inning, fingernail-bite by fingernai...

Playoffs Pants Party: Cardinals vs. Padres
Well, the playoffs are finally here, which means a month of absolute madness for anyone who dares to root for any of the final eight teams. (To reiterate: As Cardinals fans, October 2004 was the least productive month, professionally and personally, since all 48 months of college.) We at Deadspin ...

Good Times And Bad Times For Simmons Duo
Our Boy Bill Simmons gets a lot of gruff from old-school sports journalists for being too much of a "fan" and not enough of a "reporter," or, when he does do deign to do interviews, ends up crawling a little too high up the subject's nether regions. We've never really agreed with the former critic...

Jim Leyland, America's Role Model
On the list of Baseball Characters, former manager Jim Leyland has to be pretty high up there. As Leyland travels to Detroit to interview for the just-opened Detroit Tigers job, we'd like to hark back to our personal favorite Jim Leyland moment....

MLB Playoffs: Second Verse, Same As The First
Yesterday was kind of a weird final day of the baseball season; it made us feel sorta dumb for thinking it was such a big deal that we missed most of the early football. The Red Sox "clinched" the wild-card yesterday in the least dramatic way possible, basking in a total choke by the Indians and s...

NFL Roundup: Party Para Mexico
• We're a little slow this morning, because did a shot every time ESPN showed some Mexican "culture" during last night's 31-14 Buzzsaw victory over the 49ers. We know it's unusual to play a game in another country, but the slack-jawed awe of the broadcasters last night — "look, another local! Thes...

The Definitive Bill Simmons Interview, By Those Who Know Him Best
Well, we covered the 3-2-1 Liftoff! of Our Boy Bill Simmons' Now I Can Die In Peace in our own goofy way, and now, for that whole "perspective" and "intelligent analysis" way, David Scott of Boston Sports Media Watch talks in length with Simmons about his place among the Boston media, his meteoric...

Blogdom's Best: Oakland A's
More than any other sport, baseball lends itself to individual blog obsession. Every Major League Baseball team has several blogs obsessed with chronicling the ins-and-outs of everything. Deadspin salutes these modem-addled souls and proudly presents Blogdom's Best, given to the most outstanding b...

Who Is The Dumbest Team In Football?
It's a general consensus, we think, that football players are considered dumb. Even if they were smart at birth, once their brains were subjected to repeated jostling for two decades, all the good genes probably ended up dripping out. Well, the Wall Street Journal today looks at how each NFL team ...

Blogdome: Bill Simmons Edition
• Sports blogger goes after Bill and Chuck for trashing sports bloggers. [The Mighty MJD] • In full book promotion mode, Bill shows up on blogger radio show and actually predicts the Yankees to win. [Mr. Irrelevant] • The Phillies might be pretty much done in the playoff chase, but hey, look, they'r...

Yeah, Red Smith Totally Used To Eat Weird Crap
OK, so we were just watching the rerun of this morning's episode of ESPN2's "Cold Pizza" — we can only watch the same "SportsCenter" so many times before our soul starts to collapse into powder — and we saw Hometown Columnist Woody Paige eat a whole canister of dog food....

Tom Brady The Next Namath In More Ways Than One
We were pleased to see that Patriots quarterhunk Tom Brady shook off his hangover enough to lead the Pats to a last-minute victory over the Steelers last week; we were beginning to become somewhat concerned about his tendency to get all bombed and start hitting on Olsen twins....

Deadspin Party Crash: Bill Simmons' NYC Book Signing
Last night, at the Riviera Cafe in New York City, Our Boy Bill Simmons launched his worldwide tour to promote the release of his first book, Now I Can Die In Peace. And we — Deadspin editor Will Leitch and "photographer" Lockhart Steele — were there, because the bar serves alcohol and had some Arizo...

We're Exhausted, And The Playoffs Aren't Even Here Yet
Despite what The Smoking Gun has discovered Major League Baseball thinks about the American League East, we appear primed for a final five days of rather intense pre-playoff madness. The Yankees and Red Sox are still tied, the Indians are tied with them too and the White Sox are still toying aroun...