book Page 38 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Mary McCarthy on Salinger's Closed Circut
Who you callin' a phony? From her 1962 Harper's review of J.D Salinger's Frany and Zooey, here's Mary McCarthy:...
G.O.A.T
It ain't cheap but Taschen Books' tribute to Muhammad Ali, Greatest of All Time, sure is fucking fabulous. ...
The Most Honest Book About Football You'll Read All Year
Former Bronco Nate Jackson's book is out today, and it's an exceptional memoir of life on the NFL's margins. You'll find out what it's like hiding injuries to make a roster, waiting for the year's annual drug test to pass so players can start smoking, and what a dickbag Eric Mangini is. Slow Getting...
The Radio Game
Dig this bit from Mark Harris' short essay, “Recalling the Joy of Watching Baseball on the Radio,” which is featured in the collection Diamond: The Baseball Writings of Mark Harris. Most famous for his Henry Wiggens trilogy, Harris doesn’t argue that radio is superior to television, just that they e...
Lance Armstrong Can Lie In His Autobiographies, Judge Rules
A federal judge has ruled in favor of Lance Armstrong, who is being sued by a group of people who purchased his books. They claim Armstrong committed fraud by writing that his successes were the result of hard work and perseverance, and not enough PEDs to send even the gentle dugong on a murderous r...
This 9/11, Bama Wants You To Make Your Profile Pic Bear Bryant's Hat
If you, like many Americans, can only express emotions through useless social media gestures, why not join thousands across the nation in honoring this sacred day by changing your Facebook photo to Bear Bryant's houndstooth fedora?...
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...
The Greatest Comic Book Of 'Em All: Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali
One of the juiciest pop culture sports books ever made is this 1978 gem with art by Neal Adams. ...
The Best Book Pitch Ever Comes From An Imprisoned Bank Robber
Another entry in our growing collection of unsolicited letters. If your company has received anything as absurd as a request to be in porn or a plea for an NBA roster spot, send it in....
Skinheads, Drunks, And London Soccer In The Early '70s
Forty years after its publication, The Glory Game, Hunter Davies's behind-the-scenes classic about a season with Tottenham Hotspur, reads in a lot of ways like a supreme work of access journalism, one willing to betray the secrets everyone already knows in order to protect the real ones. So players ...
John O'Hara Told The Truth About His Time
My father didn't care much for Fitzgerald or Hemingway or Faulkner. He loved Steinbeck. But the writer he told me to read was John O'Hara. I still have the copy of O'Hara's short stories that Dad gave me when I was in high school. ...
Facebook Data Now Give Us The Best Map Of College Football Fandom
Taking off from its outstanding NFL and college basketball maps, Facebook has compiled county-by-county data on which Top 25 college football teams have the most "likes" across the nation (click here for a larger image). With the usual caveat that many of the counties shown here have very few people...
Note In A Fan's Notes
Found this copy of Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes in a bookstore on the Upper West Side last week. Dig the inscription:...
The Sportswriter Who Wrote American Better Than Anyone Anywheres
Below is John Lardner's introduction to a 1959 edition of Ring Lardner's You Know Me Al, a fictional series of letters from professional ballplayer Jack Keefe to his friend Al. Those stories are included in the Library of America's new collection. (There was also a comic strip based on the same char...
Ring Lardner: An American Original
This week gives Ring Lardner who is being honored with a volume by the Library of America (edited by Ian Frazier). We'll run one of his stories from the collection tomorrow, and later today we've got a treat from his eldest son, John. Meanwhile, check out three of his most famous stories at the LOA'...
Strange Sports Stories Comics
From the excellent tumblr site, The Bristol Board, check out these Strange Sports Stories. ...
Cal Ripken's Final Game At Yankee Stadium
The fifth home game at Yankee Stadium after 9.11 was Cal Ripken Day. Here's my scorecard. The game ended in a 1-1 tie, called due to rain. It was a cold, miserable day. I remember seeing cops on the roof of the Stadium behind the lights. They looked like prison guards....
I Can't Stop Reading This Book About Cricket And Colonialism
It's a lovely late summer weekend. You should go buy this book about cricket, a sport you almost certainly don't care about, and take it the park or the beach and read it. You'll be happy you did....