book-excerpts-that-dont-suck Page 4 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
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...
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...
How Michael Jordan And Nike Teamed Up To Conquer The World
It's easy to forget that there was once a time when Michael Jordan wasn't considered the greatest basketball player ever. But Jack McCallum remembers that time, and describes it (and how Jordan changed things) here, in an excerpt from his new book Dream Team, which we wrote about two weeks ago. The ...
The Birth Of The Magical 1971 Macon High Ironmen, Baseball's Version Of <em>Hoosiers</em>
Despite—or perhaps because of—their ragtag roster and hippie manager, the 1971 Macon High Ironmen found themselves in the Illinois state baseball championship. Chris Ballard first chronicled the team in a long piece for SI in 2010, and he's explored them in even more depth in One Shot at Forever. In...
What Boxing Writing Can Teach Us About Everything: A.J. Liebling On Moore-Marciano
Between the Victorian era and the Sixties, boxing was a regular and prominent feature of American life. Knowing something about the fights—being good with your hands, or maintaining an opinion about the welterweight division or fixed bouts or how to beat a southpaw—was a very common piece of equipme...
Everybody Loved Grantland
Excerpted from Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter....
30 Paragraphs About 30 MLB Teams From The Baseball Prospectus Crew
The following is excerpted from the team chapters and player profiles of the perpetually splendid Baseball Prospectus. You can buy the book now. Projected records via BP's playoff odds report. ...
Remembering The Deal Of The Century: When Two Yankees Swapped Wives
Excerpted from Damn Yankees: Twenty-Four Major League Writers on the World's Most Loved (and Hated) Team, out on April 3....
Coach K Is A Dick
Excerpted from Duke Sucks, Reed Tucker and Andy Bagwell's thorough charge-by-charge frisking of the worst college basketball program known to man, which is out now....
Inside The Spring Training Market For $4 Porn
Excerpted from former Padre and Blue Jay Dirk Hayhurst's splendid new book, Out of My League, a true chronicle of life as a pitcher bouncing between the minor leagues and the show. Some names have been changed....
Handjobs, Butt-To-Butt Action, And Other Sex Secrets Of The Champion Show Dog
For his new book, Show Dog: the Charmed Life and Trying Times of a Near-Perfect Purebred, Josh Dean spent more than a year following a champion show dog named Jack, a young Australian Shepherd. In the following excerpt, Jack—who is owned by a single mother from Pennsylvania named Kimberly Smith—trie...
Feet In Smoke: A Story About Electrified Near-Death
The following is excerpted from Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan's new collection of essays, which Deadspin cannot recommend enough....
30 Paragraphs About 30 Teams From The Basketball Prospectus Guide To The Truncated NBA Season
The following is an abridged preview of an abridged NBA season, culled from the team chapters of the ever-incisive Pro Basketball Prospectus. Buy the book as a PDF for $9.98. ...
When You Get Cocky In An MMA Gym, You Get Beat Down
Matthew Polly has never been a man for half-measures. When he wanted to learn kung fu, he left college for two years to live and train in the famous Shaolin Temple in China. Polly wrote an excellent book about the experience. His new book, Tapped Out, follows Polly on another two-year journey as the...
And Then Al Michaels Said To Howard Cosell: "You're Drunk. You're Ruining The Fucking Telecast."
Howard Cosell, who died in 1995, ruled sports broadcasting from the 1960s until the 1980s. He commentated on Monday Night Football from its inception, called boxing's biggest fights, and popped up on Olympics and baseball telecasts, too. In his new book, Howard Cosell: The Man, the Myth, and the Tra...