book-excerpts Page 5 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
How Branch Rickey Invented Modern Baseball
Excerpted from Dollar Sign on the Muscle, named by Sports Illustrated one of the top 100 sports books of all time; postscript by Sam Miller. You can read more about the new Baseball Prospectus edition of the book here, or buy it in paperback or as an e-book....
Don't Turn Your Back On A Jealous Cokehead: A Mike Tyson Life Lesson
Excerpted from Undisputed Truth, available now from Blue Rider Press....
The '85 Bears At The Obama White House: A Historic Photo, Annotated
In 1986, shortly before the Super Bowl champion Chicago Bears were prepared to make the annual champions' trip to the White House and meet President Ronald Reagan, the Challenger exploded. The Bears' White House visit was canceled and subsequently forgotten—until, that is October 2011, when rabid Be...
This Is What It Was Like To Play For The Qaddafis' Basketball Team
Excerpted from Qaddafi's Point Guard: The Incredible Story of a Professional Basketball Player Trapped in Libya's Civil War, which is available now from Rodale. ...
Secrets Of A Hitter: How Doug Plank Inspired The NFL's Meanest Defense
Adapted from Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), available now. ...
Why Lionel Messi Is Even Better Than You Think
One of the key findings of The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Soccer Is Wrong is that soccer, more than any other team sport, is a weak link game: matches are won and lost, and championships and relegation are secured, by the genius and quality of a club's superstars, but even more so b...
Stealing Signs In Baseball: A Hall Of Famer's Guide
There are many fair ways to steal the signs of the enemy, so many that the smart ball-player is always kept on the alert by them. Baseball geniuses, some almost magicians, are constantly looking for new schemes to find out what the catcher is telling the pitcher, what the batter is tipping the base...
Never Give Your Kid A Cold Shower: Advice From The Worst Dad On Earth
Excerpted from Someone Could Get Hurt: A Memoir of Twenty-First-Century Parenthood, which makes a great Father's Day gift for foul-mouthed dads everywhere....
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....
Hookers Vs. The Klan: Why Earl "The Pearl" Monroe Chose NYC Over Indy
Excerpted from Earl the Pearl: My Story, available tomorrow from Rodale....
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....