ew Page 2954 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Another Mike Leach Book Inscription: "Anybody But Craig James For Senator"
Last night, we showed you the personalized message Washington State football coach Mike Leach left when autographing a copy of his book for a fan, which referenced the possibility that Craig James killed five hookers while at SMU....

The Harvard Baseball Lip-Synch Video That's Sweeping The Nation
Suffice it to say, I had no clue who Carly Rae Jepsen was when this video started circulating a couple of days ago. Evidently, the song is called "Call Me Maybe," which I also had to look up because I hadn't ever heard it before. Our old pal Emma Carmichael called it "the new perfect pop song" bac...

Fenway Park Public Address Announcer Killed In Car Accident
Sad news out of Boston this afternoon as police have announced that Carl Beane, the public address announcer at Fenway Park since 2003, was killed earlier today in a one-car crash in Sturbridge. He was 59 years old....

Greg Oden Says He Became An Alcoholic, Got Offers To Work In Porn
Mark Titus has a piece over at Grantland that offers a "rare and candid" look at the reclusive Greg Oden, who was finally released by the Trail Blazers in March after five seasons marked mostly by injuries. Titus, who writes about his basketball experiences on his blog, Club Trillion, acknowledges u...

A Special Graduation Message To The Class Of 2012
I had a long drive home the night that I found out my son was in grave danger of being born too early. Not long in the sense of distance, but long in an existential way, the way that a minute spent waiting in a dentist's office is far longer than a minute spent hooking up with someone for the first ...

Spokeswoman For Craig James Denies He Killed Five Hookers While At SMU (OK, Whatever)
It's the probing question that keeps the world's brightest minds up at night: Did unpopular Texas Republican Craig James actually kill five hookers while at Southern Methodist? Tim Rogers, an editor at D Magazine in Dallas, finally got James campaign spokeswoman Meredith Turney on the phone for a fr...

Tim Burton Bottoms Out. <em>Dark Shadows</em>, Reviewed.
1. How was there ever a time that we considered Tim Burton weird? He certainly isn't weird now—give this guy a slight haircut and he's essentially an insurance salesman—but in retrospect, knowing the bloated, self-satisfied cookie-cutter hack Burton turned out to be makes one wonder what all the exc...

"Singer Michael Bolton Hits Hole-In-One," Writes Man Who Hired Sarah Phillips
That's the latest from ESPN senior Jonas Brothers correspondent and ace talent scout Lynn Hoppes, whom we've met around these parts before. [ESPN]...

Craig James's Senate Campaign Nears Its Sad, Inevitable Conclusion
There's a new poll out in the race to win the Republican nomination for Texas's open Senate seat, and it's not good news for skilled communicator Craig James, whose campaign has now hit some sort of sad nadir that even we didn't think was possible....

A Brazilian Player Protested His Yellow Card By Doing The Moonwalk
Here's something totally normal from Brazil's Série A. Sport Recife defender Tobi gets booked during the first leg of the Campeonato Pernambucano final (a regional championship) and, when asked by the referee to turn around so the ref can see his number, performs the moonwalk. While American audie...

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

For Sale: Bobby Petrino's Wrecked Motorcycle, Needs Some Repair
If you're into making investments you have no chance of recouping, have I got a deal for you. Bobby Petrino's 2007 Harley Davidson, the same one the former Arkansas football coach allegedly crashed while riding with ex-university employee Jessica Dorrell, is up for auction at Copart.com, and while t...

Last Night JaVale McGee Did A Lot Of Great Things, At Least One Bad Thing, And A Very Strange Thing
The Denver Nuggets forced a Game Six in their series with the Lakers last night with a 109-99 win at Staples Center, and JaVale McGee played a big part in the team's success with 21 points, 14 rebounds, and a number of highlight reel plays you can view here....

Down And Out In Baseball's Indie Leagues; Or, What Made Tommy John Want To Rake The Infield?
A dispatch from our correspondent with the Bridgeport Bluefish, an unaffiliated team in the Atlantic League....

Vladimir Putin's Game-Winning Goal Against The "Legends Of Russia" Was So Obvious
Here's a sporting feat that even Kim Jong Il would've appreciated. Just hours after his presidential inauguration Monday, Vladimir Putin led a team of amateur hockey players against a squad known as the Legends of Russia, which included such former professionals as Slava Fetisov, who just happens ...

Despite Hitting Four Home Runs, Josh Hamilton Could Not Secure A Majority Of The Player Of The Game Vote
In you were in the mood to have your head explode this morning, here you go. (Obviously this is the poll taken on the Baltimore MASN broadcast, which may be a measure of the grasp Orioles fans have on reality, or at least Orioles fans who possess cell phones.)...

Bristolmetrics: <em>SportsCenter</em> Said "Fire Extinguisher" More Times Than "Kobe Bryant" Last Week
This is a regular feature breaking down, minute-by-minute, the content that appears on ESPN's 11 p.m. edition of SportsCenter throughout the week. Graphic by Jim Cooke....

How An Ohio State Blog's Reporting Led To The Arrest Of A Fan Who's A Convicted Sex Offender
Ohio State fan-perv Charles Eric Waugh was arrested last night in Boyd County, Ky., on charges of violating his probation. The arrest was the culmination of some terrific investigative work in the last week by the OSU blog Land-Grant Holy Land, which was the first to discover Waugh had pled guilty ...

Apparently, Popeye Jones's Son Is One Hell Of A Hockey Player
Seth Jones of Plano, Texas, is a 6-foot-3, 201-pound defenseman and quite possibly the best young American-born hockey player in the country. He was the captain of the USA Under-18 team that recently won gold at the World Championships in the Czech Republic. He's also the only player on that team wh...

Merril Hoge's Little Tie Is Adorable
ESPN NFL analyst Merril Hoge is a connoisseur of the cravat, and has drawn a reputation for his ridiculously thick knots that would fit in better on the set of Barney Miller than that of NFL Live. A segment today forced Hoge to remove his jacket—and thus revealing that such a wide Windsor comes wit...