fl Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Let's Move The 49ers, Again
I am not among those of my era who are amazed that the Rolling Stones are still touring energetically at carbon-dateable age, but I know I am in the minority here, and I recognize power when I see it. So when the Stones condemned their recent experience playing the 49ers’ stadium, the implication wa...
George Best And The Soccer Battle Of The Sexes That Changed ... Well, Nothing
Fifty years ago, on a drizzly Sunday afternoon in Manchester, Eva Haraldsted played soccer against George Best. Haraldsted was 21 years old. She wore a turquoise mini-dress, white soccer boots, and a high ponytail, and was captain of a women’s team called Blinkers United. Best, the shaggy-haired Man...
The Secret Fun Of Wild Card Bumper Cars Without An Audience
Having been surprised and inspired by Comrade Burneko’s scolding paean to the virtues of minor league baseball (namely, that it’s fun and people you don’t hang out with seem to like it so it deserves its continued existence based solely on that fact), I decided to avert my eyes from the smoldering r...
The First Game Of The Rest Of Our Lives
Eighteen years ago this morning I awoke to shouts from the hall of my dorm. “We’re going to war! We’re going to war!” The origin of the shouting was my neighbor Brian, known for his histrionics, so I went back to sleep. But soon after, I received a call from my high school quarterback, Justin, livin...
Competitive Oyster Shucking Is Real, Decadent, And China's Best Party
Many people who visit Beijing take special pleasure in doing a thing they often do, but on the Great Wall. Shotgunning a beer on the Great Wall. Lighting a cigar on the Great Wall. Making a sandwich and then eating it on the Great Wall. I have personally seen a used condom on the Great Wall....
The Juiced Ball Is Going To Mess With MLB's Already Messed-Up Market
“Juiced” feels like the wrong word to describe what’s going on with the baseballs currently being put in play and mashed over fences in MLB. Not because what it’s describing isn’t real—it’s real all right—but because it makes it seem like the balls themselves have been injected with some kind of hom...
Where Do The Raiders Go From Here?
Lost in the exciting new world of Antonio Brown the Patriot (can’t you just see the glint in Bill Belichick’s eye?) is what Brown left behind:...
How Do The Raiders Do It?
Year after year, move after move, hire after hire, the Raiders outdo their own capacity for abject humiliation, and every time you think they’ve bottomed out, they bring in a new excavator. And now, with the start and also pending end of the Antonio Brown era, they can honestly say that the earth’s ...
The NFL Is 100, And Sometimes It Makes You Feel That Way Too
You may not have heard about it because the National Football League has fought heroically to keep this information out of the public, but this season the NFL celebrates its 100th year of whatever it is that they do. Toward that end, commissioner and dictator-for-life Jerry Jones was invited to the ...
I Broke The Official Jeremy Renner App By Posting The Word "Porno" On It
The Butterfly Effect is the idea that a solitary flap of a butterfly’s wings will eventually result in a hurricane halfway across the globe. In the interests of moving forward as a society, and because I don’t think I’ve seen a butterfly in, like, four years, I believe it is time to retire this term...
The Game No One Cares About Is The Biggest Game Of Their Lives
“Don’t count your reps, make your reps count.”...
Carli Lloyd And The Rule Of The Second
There are going to be somewhere around 10 in-season openings for NFL placekickers this year because there have been somewhere around that many every year since the rules were changed to make kicking more stressful. The chance that one of them will go to Carli Lloyd is minimal....
Football Doesn't Let You Leave
Empathy isn’t one of football’s commanding virtues. You don’t play because you care about the other guy’s pain. You play because you want to crush him. Same goes for watching—either you disconnect from the consequences, or you can’t really enjoy it....
What's The Matter With Baseball?
Nobody goes to baseball games anymore. That’s the common alarmist wisdom that has become one of the overarching themes of the 2019 season, which had barely gotten underway before USA Today was declaring that MLB’s attendance slide of recent years had taken on a “more permanent look.” By May, the Ass...
What Should Andrew Luck Do With His Superpower Of Making Dumb People Mad?
I imagine Andrew Luck is thinking about a Senate run today. Nothing, after all, inspires dreams of grandeur quite as quickly as doing something personal and painful that makes America pick a side, twitch like a worker in a meth lab, and then scream at each other for a few days....
My Husband Is Dying Every Day
Ron Fellows played cornerback for the Dallas Cowboys and Los Angeles Raiders from 1981–1988. He intercepted 19 passes and scored three touchdowns, including two on interception returns. Now 61 years old and living in Sacramento, Calif., Fellows suffers from Alzheimer’s, and his cognition is graduall...
The NFL Has Accepted The 80-Yard Field So Now Chaos Can Reign
So it turns out that professional football teams can do all the things they need to do on any given day with 20 percent less field. All they have to do is not give much of a damn about it....
Dog Racing Died Without A Funeral
SARASOTA, FLORIDA — The sun hadn’t yet risen over the Sarasota Kennel Club, and Deb Linn was wrist deep in 100 pounds of bloody meat. She had been been up since 4:30 a.m., when she made the 45-minute commute south from Ellenton, a small town where the rent is more affordable than in the wealthy beac...
The Antonio Brown Helmet Saga Ends With A Wet Thud
I suppose the only way the Antonio Brown Body Issue could wrap up was with him turning into a penitent and eager company man. He fought the law, the law yawned, took its feet off the desk, mixed itself a drink and hammered him flat, and he went “all-in” on being an Oakland Raider by playing Jon Grud...
The Nihilist's Guide To DeMarcus Cousins's Injury
If karma exists, DeMarcus Cousins did some ethereal being mighty wrong. If this is just bad luck, Cousins not only has his own but several other people’s as well....