dont- Page 7 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Rasheed Wallace Yells "Ball Don't Lie" Because Sheed Likes To Yell Things
The absolute best conceit in basketball is there is some sort of cosmic justice. If a player makes an undeserved trip to the line on a ticky-tack foul, the telltale ball will betray the shooter. This worked to perfection last night, as Rasheed Wallace—the chattiest player in the game—felt he was d...
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...
What It's Like To Play A Round Of Golf At A Maximum Security Prison
This piece was originally published in Tomorrow Magazine, which just published its inaugural issue. Go here to buy a copy, and read more stories here....
If You're In New York Tonight, Come Hear Some Splendid Writers Talk About Their Favorite Nearly Great Baseball Players
This month's edition of Gelf's terrific Varsity Letters reading series is tonight, with a great lineup of baseball writers reading from their essays in the Hall of Nearly Great e-book. You want Craig Fehrman? You got him! How about David Roth of The Classical, Marc Normandin of SB Nation, and Emma S...
"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...
If You're In New York Tonight, Come Hear Some Good Writers Talk About Football
This month's edition of Gelf's Varsity Letters reading series is tonight at Pacific Standard on Fourth Ave in Brooklyn at 7:30. Kevin Cook, author of The Last Headbangers: NFL Football in the Rowdy, Reckless '70s—The Era that Created Modern Sports will be there, so will Peter Schrager, co-author of ...
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....
Andrew Luck Made A Shitty Doodle of Lucas Oil Stadium And It Sold For $1500 On Ebay
People often bemoan the grown men who go autograph hunting, and maybe rightly so, but that's a debate for another day because there is something far, far worse. It is the guy who spends $1500 on a fucking chicken scratch sketch of a stadium drawn and signed by some rookie NFL player who hasn't even...
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...
If You're In NYC Tonight, Come Hear Some Good Writers Talk Boxing And Soccer
It's time for another edition of Gelf's excellent Varsity Letters reading series. This month's slate features former Washington Post staffer and veteran boxing writer William Gildea, the author Theresa Runstedtler (who has written about boxing legend Jack Johnson), and GQ's Mark Kirby, who will disc...
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 ...
If You're In New York City Tonight, Go Listen To Some Fine Writers Praise And Scorn The Yankees
This month's edition of Gelf's terrific Varsity Letters reading series brings together Rob Fleder (he edited Damn Yankees, in which this appeared), Steve Rushin, and our man Alex Belth (who profiled George Kimball here in December), and, if you so choose, you, dear reader! 7:30 p.m. tonight at Pacif...
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....