ew Page 2898 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
German Newspaper Has Brilliantly Lowbrow Front Page Ahead Of Italy Match
This is the front page of today's Hamburger Morgenpost, ahead of this afternoon's Euro 2012 semifinal between Germany and Italy. It's a thing of beauty, or maybe stupidity. Yes, those are anguished Italian players in the pepperoni slices. Germany is weird....
David Beckham Cut From Olympic Team
In something of a shock, it's being reported that David Beckham will be left off Britain's Olympic team. The 37-year-old will not be among the three players over 23 on the roster—those places will go to Ryan Giggs, Craig Bellamy, and in Beckham's presumed spot, Micah Richards, who was himself a surp...
How To Build A 21st-Century Bullpen With Failed Hitting Prospects And A Radar Gun
Earlier this month, Sean Doolittle made his major-league debut for the Oakland Athletics. It wasn't an obviously momentous event: The left-hander took the mound with two outs in the top of the fifth, with the A's trailing Texas 5-0. He struck out Nelson Cruz to end the inning, then pitched a perfect...
Fortunately, ESPN Doesn't Speak Spanish
Here's a sign sported by some enthusiastic Spaniards before yesterday's Euro 2012 semifinal between Spain and Portugal and aired on ESPN before the match. It reads, basically, "Cristiano go fuck yourself, Froilán the Golden Boot."...
Angry Baseball Takes Out Aggression On Umpire Brian Gorman's Face
Not really sure how we should interpret this one. Was it a completely random occurrence? Does Eric Hosmer have some beef with Brian Gorman we don't know about? Or are the balls, after so much atrocious umpiring this season, finally rebelling in a futile effort to regain control of the game they've m...
Prince Fielder Found Himself In A Rundown, And Somehow Emerged Safely
Prince Fielder hit the deck no fewer than three times during tonight's Tigers loss in Arlington to the Rangers, but did so no more bizarrely than here in which the portly first baseman ran his way out of a rundown, waving his arms like a man fleeing a burning building along the way....
This At-Bat Captures The Sublime Ridiculousness Of Men's Slow-Pitch Softball
Literally dozens of people came out to ASA Hall of Fame Stadium tonight in Oklahoma City to see the USA Futures defeat the USA National Team in a 38-37 win, decided on a tag out at the plate on the final play. However, the first two outs of the inning came when two players hit home runs, actual fa...
The Official Song Of The London Olympics Is A Musical Abomination
There are so many better ways you could spend five minutes and 20 seconds of your life. You could drink half a beer, you could go put a load of laundry in the washer, you could jab a fork into your ears repeatedly and without mercy. These are all better uses of your time than listening to Muse's "...
Clyde Drexler Denies He Said Dream Team "Kept Waiting For Magic To Die"
Dream Team, Jack McCallum's exhaustive account of the life and times of America's 1992 Olympic men's basketball team, was already looking like the most anticipated sports book of the summer when we ran a brief excerpt yesterday, one that dealt with Hall of Famer Clyde Drexler and his comments on how...
Mike Trout Continues To Do Ridiculous, Impossible Baseball Things
This is Angels center fielder Mike Trout's first full season in the majors. He's not only made his mark at the plate (league-leading .331 batting average) and on the bases (league-leading 21 stolen bases) but in the field as well....
Ladies, Chad Ochocinco's Marriage Proposal Will Have You Sopping Wet
Chad Ochocinco proposed to model/TV person/Antoine Walker-dater Evelyn Lozada back in November of 2010, with the wedding set for next week. But the details of the actual proposal have gone shrouded in secrecy, until Lozada spilled the beans on a radio interview last week....
Because This Stuff Never Gets Old, Here's Carmelo Anthony Scaring People By Pretending To Be A Wax Figure
Melo got his sculpture at Madame Tussauds in Times Square yesterday, and in between saying things like "my time is coming," he did that thing where he stands stock-still until unsuspecting ticket-buyers get close enough to spook. There were no reactions as magical as this one, but Anthony's timing...
Evgeni Malkin Tweet Fish Catch Best
A couple of weeks back, Phoenix Coyotes enforcer Paul "Biz Nasty" Bissonnette turned us on to the Twitter charms of Pittsburgh Penguins center Evgeni Malkin, who knows best because he's best....
Bristolmetrics: Nobody Cared About The Roger Clemens Trial Except ESPN
When last we met, the Jerry Sandusky trial was largely ignored, the Heat were once again all over SportsCenter, and hey, ESPN did a good job covering a perfect games and a no-hitter. What would this week bring? ...
Steven Soderbergh Whips It Out. <i>Magic Mike</i>, Reviewed.
As Steven Soderbergh gets closer to the retirement he swears will be happening next year, it's tempting for us who love his movies to wish he'd go out with one last major opus, some sort of legacy-defining masterpiece. So maybe that's why it's good that he clearly doesn't seem interested in doing an...
Aroldis Chapman Can Somersault All He Wants
Last night Cincinnati Reds pitcher Aroldis Chapman recorded his ninth save of the season when he struck out Martin Maldonado with a 99 m.p.h. fastball. Upon finishing his achievement, Chapman decided to celebrate by performing two somersaults towards home plate. He didn't scream or yell or thump hi...
Pitching Prospect Stops Line Drive With Face
Scary moment last night for Gerrit Cole, the No. 1 overall choice in last year's MLB draft. Cole was making just his second start for the Altoona Curve, the Pirates' Double-A affiliate, when what you see in the video above happened in the first inning. Cole somehow finished the inning by facing th...
<em>Phineas And Ferb</em> Had 18 Times As Many Viewers As The NHL Draft. Last Week's TV Ratings, In Context.
A weekly feature wherein we contextualize TV ratings for national sports broadcasts. Data via Nielsen and Sports Business Daily. Viewership numbers represent approximate number of persons tuned to a given program; ratings share refers to the percentage of all households using a television who are tu...
Even Italy's A Little Racist Toward Mario Balotelli
This cartoon ran in Sunday's Gazzetta dello Sport, Italy's top-selling sports newspaper. It's Balotelli, fresh off the Azzurri triumph over England, climbing Big Ben. (Fun fact: It's officially "Elizabeth Tower" now.) Yes, Balotelli is playing the part of a giant gorilla, and yes, 90 percent of Euro...
Better Know An Umpire: Fieldin Culbreth
Welcome to Better Know An Umpire, an effort to educate ourselves on the human elements who have ultimate decision-making power over some 2,500 Major League Baseball games a year. (All cumulative statistics are through the 2011 season, unless otherwise stated.)...