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Floyd Patterson Was A Coward And Other Excerpts From One Of The Best Collections Of Boxing Writing In A Long Time
In the foreword to "At the Fights," a newish boxing anthology that spans over a century of pugilistic history, the novelist Colum McCann observes, quite appropriately, that, "Boxers get told to imagine punching a spot behind your opponent's head, to reach in so far that they can extend the destructi...

My Lunches With Costas: A Series Of Frank Encounters With The Journalist And Shill (UPDATE)
The following is adapted from Lipsyte's new memoir, An Accidental Sportswriter, now available on Amazon....

All The Unkind Things Bill Simmons Said About His Colleagues In The ESPN Book
One of the most interesting characters to emerge from the ESPN book is the formerly inscrutable Bill Simmons, if only because we've never heard him be so (openly) self-aware before. He again whips out the big swinging dick in some more excerpts....

This Quote Is Why Chris Berman Remains A Vile Piece Of Shit
I haven't been able to peruse the new ESPN book yet, as Daulerio and the others have, but I was struck dumb by a quote from the book that was excerpted by Richard Deitsch over at SI.com. This is what Berman said in regard to the NFL forcing the network to cancel its Playmakers series:...

ESPN And Publisher Alike: None Of These Guys Are Having Any Fun
Not two days since the embargo was lifted, the giant dragon fart of a book known as Those Guys Have All the Fun has left both publisher and subject alike strategizing about a new defense. Yes, ESPN officially threw together a semi-emergency town hall meeting ("tent"!!!!) earlier this afternoon for s...

The Decision About LeBron's <em>Decision</em> Was An Orgy Of Self-Interest, With Jim Gray On Top
There's a brief section about The Decision in Those Guys Have All the Fun, and if the details aren't exactly fresh, the takeaway is somewhat new: Everyone involved was using everyone else for their own ends to produce what amounted to a massive orgy that they all came to regret the next day. And LeB...

We Will Always Remember Dick Ebersol For That Thing He Said In The ESPN Book About Hitler And Penises
Dick Ebersol is leaving NBC Sports, as you may know. Let's not think about the bad times, though. Let's think about the fun we had. Like yesterday, when we came across this quote in the excellent ESPN book that we're currently dry-humping up and down the site:...

Chris Berman On <em>You're With Me, Leather</em>: "Mr. Kornheiser Chose To Run With It."
While the long-standing Kornheiser-Berman beef doesn't have the same initial draw of, say, Beadle-Andrews, its appearance in Those Guys Have All The Fun does lead us to the alleged root of everyone's favorite alleged pick-up line: You're with me, Leather....

Bill Simmons, Big Swinging Dick
Here's a fun passage from Those Guys Have All the Fun, addressing Bill Simmons's two-week suspension over his tweeting in 2009. ...

ESPN Book Will Make Things Even More Uncomfortable Between Michelle Beadle And Erin Andrews
Michelle Beadle freely admits that she's not a fan of Erin Andrews. "Everyone who knows me knows that," she tells me. It hasn't affected any of the hierarchy at ESPN at this point, but Beadle's admission in the new ESPN oral history that she watched Erin's peephole vid could put the WWL in the preca...

New Bits From ESPN Book: "A Lot Of Drugs," "Quite A Bit Of Screwing"
Entertainment Weekly has some new snippets from Miller and Shales' forthcoming ESPN book, Those Guys Have All The Fun. Publisher Little, Brown lifted its embargo on writing about the book earlier today....

ESPN Book Excerpt: Keith Olbermann, The Asshole Genius
GQ called dibs on the first exclusive excerpt of the gigantic Miller-Shales ESPN oral history, Those Guys Have All The Fun, but we've been given an excerpt of their excerpt just because nobody wants us running any more unapproved excerpts. We'll play along. So read this, then pop over to GQ for the...

The Restless Mind Of C.J. Wilson, The Rangers' Straight-Edge, Tolkien-Reading Enemy Of MLB Douchebags
The following is excerpted from Curtis's cover story in the May issue of Texas Monthly about the Rangers — "an AA meeting in spikes," he writes....

The Sultan Of Twat: Babe Ruth's Swinging First Few Years With The Yankees
The following is excerpted from Weintraub's The House That Ruth Built, about Babe Ruth, the Yankees, and the 1923 baseball season....

Roberto Clemente's 3,000th Hit, In Glorious Graphic-Novel Form
The following is excerpted from Santiago's 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente, a gorgeous graphic-novel biography of the martyred baseball great. Clemente got his 3,000th hit on Sept. 30, 1972, three months before he died in a plane crash. You can watch video of No. 3,000 here; Santiago's rendering b...

The Devil In Tampa: Remembering The Penny-Pinching, Snack-Policing, Nut-Cutting Days Of Vince Naimoli
In his new book, author Jonah Keri covers the rise of the Tampa Bay Rays under the stewardship of two Goldman Sachs alums and a private equity banker, who in 2008 managed to do to the rest of the American League what some of their former colleagues were doing to the U.S. economy. Before their arriva...

Deadspin Presents An Interpretive Rendering Of Cal Ripken Jr.'s Young Adult Book
We received an email from Cal Ripken Jr.'s publicity team at Random House, which will release his three-CD audiobook, HOTHEAD, next Tuesday. HOTHEAD (the caps are apparently intentional) is about a Babe Ruth League shortstop named Connor Sullivan and is "loosely based on challenges Ripken himself ...

How NASCAR Conquered America Through The Air
Greg Lindsay is the co-author of the forthcoming Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next, which argues that air travel has a lot more to do with your daily life than you might think. In this outtake from the book, he describes how NASCAR teams took to the skies as the sport expanded nationally over th...

Why There Are More .300 Hitters Than .299 Hitters, And Why It Matters
Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim, authors of the Freakonomically inclined Scorecasting, explore the peculiar power of round-number milestones and how they affect a ballplayer at the plate....

The Invention Of Air: The Myths Of Young Michael Jordan, Deconstructed
There was a time when Michael Jordan was a very different kind of superstar, writes Bethlehem Shoals in this excerpt from FreeDarko's wonderful and wonderfully idiosyncratic Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History. That MJ was edgy and menacing, and he helped make embarrassing music that no one r...