fl Page 15 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

<i>Bull Durham</i>'s Annie Savoy Is The Patron Saint Of Female Baseball Fans
I believe in the Church of Baseball. I was raised in it after all, taken to a stadium with plastic seats that got so hot they’d roast the back of my thighs while the tops of them burned. I learned the liturgy and the scriptures and the seventh-inning hymns. The smell of dirt and fresh-cut grass beca...

The Athletes Hit A Slump This Week On <i>The Bachelorette</i>, But Lil Jon Showed Up
Okay, team. This week was a rambunctious one, full of so many twists and turns that none of us could really follow the playbook. As the season goes on, the chaff will be cut and the roster will really start to gel. But in the meantime, as your stern but loving coach, I’m here to make clear what real...

Your Guide To The CONIFA World Cup, The World Cup For Not-Quite-Countries<em></em>
LONDON — “We have nothing against FIFA,” CONIFA General Secretary Sascha Düerkop told a tittering press corps on Wednesday. We were all sitting in the basement of a student accommodation block in North London. “They are very great to learn how not to do things.” ...

Hell Is Real, And It's The Infield Of The Indy 500
“Where are you going? Heaven or hell?” asked a billboard beside a typically dull stretch of Interstate 65 halfway from Chicago to Indianapolis. Twenty miles south came another sign, this one more urgent than the last, a warning spelled out in white block type against a black background: “HELL IS REA...

NFL Owners Can Be Shitheads Without Donald Trump's Help
One day during the 2017 offseason, I went to Paul Brown Stadium to interview Cincinnati Bengals owner Mike Brown. Like a lot of grandfathers, Brown enjoys reading history books. At the stadium, his all-glass office is ringed in bookshelves that run partway up the walls, though not so far that they o...

The NCAA Is Running Out Of Excuses On Brain Injuries
When it was time to change her husband Greg’s diaper, Deb Ploetz followed a routine. First, she would lead him to the bathroom of their rental house in North Little Rock, Arkansas, where they had moved to in February of 2015—in part to be closer to Deb’s family, and in part because memory care facil...

The Cleveland Barons' NHL Existence Was A Short And Spectacular Disaster
Bob Whidden got the bad news first. On June 14, 1978, Whidden was in Montreal representing the Cleveland Barons at the NHL owners’ meetings....

How An Inner-City Minnesota High School Built a Girls’ Badminton Dynasty
Bao Nhia Thao is maybe 5-foot-2, with an enigmatic smile—smooth and benign. ...

The <i>Dancing With The Stars: Athletes </i>Finale Brought Kimonos, Backflips, And The Loss Of Our Dignity
I’ve always felt that every once in a while it’s good to rank the things you love most. You never know when you’ll be asked to choose between your waffle iron and Stanley Tucci’s character in Big Night, but when you inevitably are, it will be important to have that answer on hand immediately. It’s a...

Three Men Crossed Frozen Lake Baikal, And Chased More Than A World Record
The eighth day he was out on the ice, Scott Gilmour’s eyes started to feel like jelly. They wobbled around in his sockets, and when he looked out, the world seemed like it was smeared with goo. Gilmour and his two companions had been facing headwinds for hours, walking on ice as hard as steel. They ...

Your Saddest Desperation Cocktails, Ranked
In the relative safety of adulthood, when you can easily purchase alcohol—have it delivered to your door, even!—and legally frequent bars steeped in cocktail culture, it is easy to overlook the lower moments in our personal drinking histories. If you drink, you’ve experienced that desperate moment: ...

The NWSL Hasn't Had A Commissioner For Over A Year, And It's Getting Left Behind
On March 2, 2017, Jeff Plush stepped down as commissioner of the National Women’s Soccer League....

How The Golden Knights Got So Good
You could see it from the 300 level. Watching the Vegas Golden Knights beat the Blackhawks 5-4 in Chicago on Jan. 5 cemented two things in my mind about this NHL season. First, the Blackhawks were done, having been made to look exceedingly old and slow again. Second, the Golden Knights were very muc...

US Lacrosse Investigated Anti-Native Racism Allegations, Has Not Reinstated Expelled Native Teams<em></em>
In April, Deadspin published a story about three Native American youth lacrosse teams that were expelled from the Dakota Premier Lacrosse League after voicing concerns about systemic racism within the league to administrator Corey Mitchell....

I Beat Up My Own Brain At The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament
I once read an essay from which I can remember a single thing: that the author, a white man entering his forties, was no longer afraid to commit acts of minor to moderate civil disobedience in the service of righteous causes, or for just for shits-n-gigs. Send him to jail? Sure. Whatever he had to p...

How Clint Capela Became Houston's Secret Weapon
Early in the second quarter of the Houston Rockets’ postseason-opening win over the Minnesota Timberwolves, James Harden wiggled through the defense, drew help, and dropped a pass to Clint Capela for a dunk. It was Capela’s third jam of the game, with Harden assisting on each. TNT announcer Chris We...

The All-Athlete <i>Dancing With The Stars</i> Is Here And We're Smiling Through It
Last night, at exactly the same time as the Celtics-Sixers NBA Eastern Conference semifinals game, somewhere between 16 and 23 people in America elected to tune into a different kind of sporting event. That’s right, my devoted DaStie AthHeads: the long-awaited first episode of Dancing with the Stars...

The Story Of The Greatest Photo From The Greatest Game Ever Played
Game 7 of the 1960 World Series between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the New York Yankees has been described as “the greatest game ever played” and “the best game ever.” Entering the bottom of the ninth, the score was tied 9-9, and Bill Mazeroski was leading off....

How One Rich Man's Weird Dream Transformed A British Pro Soccer Team
Outside the 3500-capacity AGP Arena in the modest suburban town of Billericay, Essex, a 100-foot-long, 20-foot-high mural depicts Glenn Tamplin’s dream. It begins with the Mayflower setting sail for the New World, jumps ahead somewhat to the formation of Billericay Town FC in 1880, and quickly addre...

Katharine Graham Was Not To Be Fucked With<em></em>
This was first published as “Pillar of the Post” in the May 20, 1976 issue of The National Observer. It appears here with the author’s permission....