e Page 7030 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The NHL Just Canceled The First Two Weeks Of Its Regular Season
The NHL has locked out its players for nearly a month now, and today we saw the first meaningful casualty: the first two weeks of hockey are gone. The NHL's usual wacky overseas openers had been scrapped back in March, but now the rest of the openers—Kings-Rangers, Flames-Canucks, Sens-Habs—are gone...

Rockets Rookie Wants To Ride The Team Bus To Away Games
Royce White, the Houston Rockets' first-round draft pick, has struggled with anxiety disorder his entire life. Among other things, White is prone to panic attacks and harbors an immense fear of flying. It's tough to be an NBA player if one can't fly....

Right After Bobby Valentine Gets Fired, ESPN Runs A Segment About Why He's Still The Manager Of The Red Sox
ESPN was covering the breaking news of Bobby Valentine's firing when the network accidentally aired a pre-recorded Tim Kurkjian segment, one that was presumably meant to air under the (unlikely) condition of Valentine returning as the Red Sox's manager for 2013. Oops. Chris McKendry did her best to ...

No One Gives A Shit What The Coach Told You At Halftime, Michele Tafoya
Drew Magary's Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday during the NFL season....

"Are We Live? Oh Shit." Liam Neeson Appears On <em>SportsCenter</em> And Has Absolutely No Idea What He's Being Asked
Liam Neeson dragged himself onto SportsCenter yesterday to pimp Taken 2 and wow. Has there ever been a guest on SportsCenter who was so unprepared to be a guest on SportsCenter? Neeson didn't like where it was headed from the get-go—he was being asked about the Jets—and wanted to start over. But w...

Ichiro Doesn't Look Amused By Joba Chamberlain's Champagne Bath
Baseball celebrations make for great, out-of-context photos, and Joba Chamberlain pouring some (possibly frigid?) champagne down Ichiro's back after the Yankees clinched the American League East title last night is another excellent entry, especially when you consider that Ichiro's reaction is maybe...

The Oakland A's Now Have Their Own Folksy Theme Song
Any good championship run needs a catchy theme song. Unfortunately, it often derives from some iteration of "Don't Stop Believin'," either the original form (see: White Sox, Chicago, 2005) or some customized version, like the San Francisco Giants adopted in 2010....

Curt Schilling Might Have To Sell His Bloody Sock In Order To Pay Down His Debt
The Red Sox have had a bad year, but Curt Schilling's has been worse. At least the Red Sox have money. Schilling's video game company, 38 Studios, filed for bankruptcy in June. Even worse, 38 Studios owes around $150 million to creditors, including a $100 million loan from the state of Rhode Island....

The 7 Stages Of A Bobby Valentine Meltdown
The worst part of Bobby Valentine's soon-to-be-over slow-motion train wreck with the Red Sox is its predictability. To say that Bobby Valentine has never gracefully handled a losing season would only obscure the fact that he's never gracefully handled any season. (Even during the salad days with the...

The First Season Of Marlins Park Was A Tremendous Failure
The Miami Marlins opened their new ballpark in April to much pomp and fanfare and cringe-inducing spectacle, and there were great hopes that the empty orange seats that had come to represent the very idea of baseball in South Florida would fast become but a memory. Funny thing about that! The team, ...

This Is How Your Bleacher Report Sausage Gets Made
On Wednesday, we pointed you in the direction of the SF Weekly's long, excellent story about the rise of Bleacher Report. That piece discussed at length the process whereby Bleacher Report reverse-engineers its content based on data collected by an "analytics team." In short, the analysts divine the...

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...

A's Pitcher Pat Neshek's Newborn Son Has Died
On Monday, the Oakland Athletics clinched a playoff spot, and just a few hours later pitcher Pat Neshek's wife went into labor. Neshek flew to Florida and was with his wife when she gave birth to a baby boy....

Daily Screencap Classic: J-E-S-T JEST JEST JEST
The 2-2 Jets, mired in a trench of poor quarterback play and idiots screaming for Tebow, added to that the reeling feeling of learning Santonio Holmes would be missing the rest of the season....

Deadspin Up All Night: This One Goes Out To All The A's Fans
Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. We'll have more for you tomorrow. In honor of the A's taking the AL West, I give you Bill fucking King....

Holy Shit, The Athletics Just Won The AL West
In April, Baseball Prospectus picked the Oakland A's to finish 73-89. In June, we called the team "hopeless," and said they were playing out the string. Today, they beat the Rangers, 12-5, to finish 94-68, one game better than Texas. In first place. The Oakland A's. They won the AL West. Holy shit. ...

The Oakland A’s Cap Off An Incredible Late-Season Comeback And Win The AL West
"The Oakland A's have shocked the Rangers and the baseball world!" That's one way to put it mildly. As Dan Brooks of BrooksBaseball.net reminded us all, the A's had less than a 1 percent chance of even making the playoffs back on June 15. That's just completely insane....

Arkansas Coach John L. Smith Realizes He's Actually $40 Million In Debt, Not $25 Million
John L. Smith is even more broke than he initially thought. He first filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 6. In a subsequent filing, on Sept. 19, he reported $25.7 million in liabilities and $1.2 million in assets. You don't have to be a CPA to know that this is a bad cash flow position. But wait, it gets ...