ew Page 2939 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Kim Clijsters Is Retiring (Again)
Tennis's good girl Kim Clijsters says she's retiring after this year's U.S. Open. This will be the second time that Clijsters will retire, and even though retiring and unretiring is sort of a fad in the women's game, this will probably be it for her....

Poor Ump Gets Hit In The Nuts, And All The Men At Chase Field Cross Their Legs
Willie Bloomquist tried to get down a bunt in the eighth inning last night, but it didn't go the way he wanted. It was much worse for home-plate umpire Dale Scott, though. And then there's the look on the face of third-base ump Vic Carapazza. At the 13-second mark, Carapazza can be seen stifling a...

Will Smith, We've Missed You. <i>Men in Black 3</i>, Reviewed.
For all of the box-office success and critical acclaim Will Smith has found playing different characters, it's quite possible that Agent J is going to end up being his signature role. Sure, he played Muhammad Ali, but his performance in Men in Black was the one that most defined his strengths—easy c...

Tracy McGrady Does A Chinese Beer Commercial
So Tracy's on his way home with a sixpack of refreshing Sedrin beer, the official Chinese beer of the NBA, when he's set upon by some streetballers intent on stealing his refreshing Sedrin beer, so they take advantage of his well-known benevolence to catch him in a Wile E. Coyote trap, only it doe...

Where In The World Was Chuck Knoblauch This Weekend?
When a story involving a visibly intoxicated Chuck Knoblauch hitting on women on a late-night Brooklyn subway ride surfaced yesterday, we were surprised and not surprised. Surprised because Knoblauch is about the most random former major leaguer imaginable—a good-to-very-good infielder who won four ...

The Pro Bowl May Survive For Another Year Of Uselessness By Moving To New Orleans
Just when it looked like the NFL was ready to do right by the Pro Bowl by putting it down, at least for next year, the league has decided to reconsider its attachment to pointless all-star football....

Better Know An Umpire: Brian Runge
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.)...

The Phillies Had Extra Security In Right Field For Bryce Harper Last Night
Bryce Harper's main crime, since arriving in the big leagues, was his haircut, which was the most offensive thing not attached to a reliever's chin. Now that the haircut's gone, Harper's just a young, captivating, toolsy outfielder. Who should hate him?...

Jimmy Rollins Goes On Paternity Leave Exactly Nine Months After Straining Groin. Hmmm.
Today, the Phillies placed Jimmy Rollins on the paternity leave list after his wife gave birth to their first child, a daughter. On August 22 of last year, Rollins went on the disabled list with a grade 2 strain of his right groin. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that I don't really understan...

Felix Hernandez And Adrian Beltre Spent Last Night's Game Talking Trash
Hernandez and Beltre were teammates in Seattle for five years, and became fast friends. So from the moment Beltre ran to first after a seeing-eye single in the second, to when he was retired on a flyout in the sixth, the two did nothing but jaw at each other good-naturedly. See? It’s just a game! Ma...

Alleged Alabama Teabagger Arraigned, Pleads Not Guilty
Brian Downing pled not guilty to charges he committed a sex crime in the hours after the Crimson Tide's BCS Championship win over LSU in New Orleans when he allegedly teabagged a Tigers fan at the Bourbon Street Krystal restaurant....

Claude Giroux Played Beer Pong With Casts On Both Wrists
Claude Giroux is still the postseason points and goals leader, despite being eliminated two weeks ago. Last week he had surgery on both wrists—bone spurs in one, torn cartilage in the other. That didn't stop him from tearing up Philly over the weekend, an odyssey nobly chronicled by Crossing Broad. ...

The L.A. Kings Created A Handy Infographic So The City's Media Will Know Who They Are
We've already tipped our caps to the social-media prowess of the Los Angeles Kings and their outstanding Twitter feed, @LAKings. And here they go again, staying ahead of the narrative as only they can....

Aroldis Chapman Arrested Outside Columbus For Allegedly Driving 93 MPH On A Suspended License
I have a lot of questions with this one. Why is the Reds' presumptive closer 100 miles away from Cincinnati, in Grove City, Ohio, going north on the interstate (that is to say, away from Cincy) at 12:40 a.m. on an off-day? Where was he going at 93 mph? Is he defecting from Cincy?...

Doc Emrick Reads Promo For MLS, Is Unable To Avoid Ripping Soccer Players For Diving
As NBC Sports Network's Stanley Cup Playoff coverage winds down, the network is transitioning to its key summer coverage to fill the gap until the London Olympics arrive: Major League Soccer. We've long admired NBC's top hockey announcer Doc Emrick for his no-bullshit approach to the game, and it ...

Rickie Weeks Would Have Tried To Turn A Double Play, But He Forgot
The situation: Giants-Brewers, top of the second. Runners on first and second, one out. Brandon Crawford bounces one toward Cesar Izturis at short, but a chance to turn an inning-ending double play instead becomes a routine 6-4 putout because Rickie Weeks has a brain fart and thinks he just recorded...

TNT's Slow Zoom On Mitch Kupchak's Face In The Final Minutes Of The Lakers' Season Was Sadistic
Only true Lakers believers (or the truly blind) couldn't see the Lakers' season was nearing an end long before the horn sounded on last night's 106-90 series-seizing Thunder victory. Yet it seems the moment of truth for Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak came at a time that TNT producers jumped upon for max...

How Readable Are Bill Simmons, Jason Whitlock, Rick Reilly, And Other Sportswriters? Science Investigates
The last time we played around with sportswriter analytics, we wondered if we could algorithmically determine a column's author based on his favorite words. (We could!) For a followup, I decided to look at the readability of different writers. Reading level is a nebulous concept and hard to define p...

Yankee Fans Think The Team's Play Of Late Has Been For The Birds
The Yankees fell to .500 after being shut out by the Kansas City Royals in the Bronx last night, but that hasn't stopped some fans from insisting the Yanks are #1....

If Beast Mode Exists In Basketball, Russell Westbrook Entered It
The action in Oklahoma City has been hot tonight, with Thunder fans matching the intensity of the players (from both OKC and L.A.) on the court. Russell Westbrook's been especially full of flair this evening, but his steal-and-circus-shot is the kind of highlight that deserves several looks; Kevi...