book-excerpt Page 9 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Why You're Still A Fan, Despite All The Crap: A Look Inside Your Brain
Adapted from The Secret Lives of Sports Fans: The Science of Sports Obsession....
Get Lost, Norman
From Bob Klapisch and John Harper's entertaining book about covering the Mets in the early '90s, The Worst Team Money Could Buy:...
Brownsville Bum
Here's W.C. Heinz's classic True magazine story on Bummy Davis (Jimmy Breslin called it the best magazine story ever written):...
Hookers Vs. The Klan: Why Earl "The Pearl" Monroe Chose NYC Over Indy
Excerpted from Earl the Pearl: My Story, available tomorrow from Rodale....
Look, Up in the Sky
From Leigh Montville's wide-grin of a book, Evel: The High-Flying Life of Evel Knievel: American Showman, Daredevil, and Legend, here's a two part excerpt....
How A Med School Dropout Made America Fall In Love With Running
Excerpted from Kings of the Road: How Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers, and Alberto Salazar Made Running Go Boom, which is out today from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt....
I Was Wayne Gretzky's (Hungover) Linemate: An NHL Journeyman Picks The Wrong Night To Drink
To say I was a Wayne Gretzky fan as a child would be like saying that my brother has a small gap in his teeth. The Oilers were my team and Wayne was my idol. When Chris and I played hockey in the basement, I was always Gretzky and he was always Mike Bossy. Two of the most creative offensive forwards...
The Boy On The Edge Of The Bathtub: Sam Lipsyte On Growing Up A Sportswriter's Son
Whenever somebody makes the connection between my father, Robert Lipsyte, the legendary sportswriter, and me (usually because Lipsyte is a rare name, unique to our family, a family that may or may not include a Lithuanian paratrooper I once found online who boasted in emails about our fierce mountai...
How Maurice Clarett Lost His Way, Bombed Out Of The NFL, Planned A Murder, Missed An Exit, And Found Himself (And Warren Buffett) In Prison
In 2009, Joe Moglia, then the CEO of TD Ameritrade, quit his job to coach football. He wanted to coach a college team. But no athletic director wanted him. So he took a job, in 2011, as head coach of the UFL's Omaha Nighthawks, a team that included former Buckeye Maurice Clarett. Moglia had an unort...
Mike Keenan, The NHL's Last Great Asshole Coach
Playing for coach Mike Keenan in Chicago was like camping on the side of an active volcano. You had to accept the reality that he erupted regularly and that there was always a danger of being caught in his lava flow. He was a tyrant, a schoolyard bully, an oldschool coach who tried to motivate playe...
Al Davis Would Have Coached At Penn State If The Weather Weren't So Bad
When Al Davis died last year, he left the most mixed of NFL legacies. He did so much for minorities and his players. But he also he also ran his team into the ground for two decades while hopping along the California coast in search of stadium renovations. He gave us John Madden. But he also gave us...
"What Do You Want Me To Do—Tell You How Bad My Life Is, How Shitty It Is?": Adam Greenberg's Journey Back To The Majors
In 2005, Adam Greenberg was struck in the head with a fastball in his first major-league at-bat. He's spent the last seven years trying to get back to the majors. Last week, he signed a one-day contract with the Marlins and got his second career at-bat to a standing ovation in Miami last night. He s...
I Had The Best Cell On Death Row: A Member Of The West Memphis Three On Life In The Shadow Of Execution
In 1994, Damien Echols and two of his friends, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, were wrongfully convicted in what prosecutors called a satanic ritual murder of three 8-year-old boys. Echols, the leader of the group, was sentenced to death; Baldwin and Misskelley received life sentences. The trio...
How Gary Bettman Spent The Vancouver Riots
Excerpted from The Instigator: How Gary Bettman Remade the League and Changed the Game Forever, out in Canada now and in the U.S. Oct. 1....
32 Paragraphs About 32 NFL Teams From The <em>Football Outsiders Almanac 2012</em>
The following is excerpted from the team chapters of the always-excellent Football Outsiders almanac. Buy the PDF for $12.50 or order the printed book from Amazon....
Blackmail, Sexual Obsession, Fight Fixing: Behind The Weird Scenes On The Night Floyd Patterson Conquered Boxing
Excerpted from W.K. Stratton's Floyd Patterson: The Fighting Life of Boxing's Invisible Champion, available today from fine booksellers everywhere....
The Circadian Advantage: How Sleep Patterns Benefit Certain NFL Teams
Imagine, for a second, that you are in a casino in Las Vegas. You have been in town for a few days, spent too much and slept too little, and recently found out the hard way that you are not as good at poker as you had thought. Now would be a good time to find a wager where the odds, like a tipsy bar...
Olympics Memory: Beijing's Many Mascots Get An Un-Friendly Welcome
As the London Olympic mascots, Wenlock and Mandeville, greet visitors with their expressionless, chilling, cyclopean stares, we remember the controversial unveiling of the previous Summer Olympics mascots. In this excerpt from Tom Scocca's Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Futu...
The Steroids Era Was Just Like The Housing Bubble: How MLB Incentivized Widespread Fraud
Excerpted from Twilight of the Elites, available now wherever books are sold....
Will Clark Saved The Giants, And I Missed It
The Hall of Nearly Great hits web shelves today, and it's a bargain at $12. It has 42 terrific writers—heavyweights such as Rob Neyer and Joe Posnanski, and Deadspin folks, too: Owen Good and Will Leitch—with essays on the nearly great players they love. You can read about Brad Radke, Andy Messersmi...