gi Page 480 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Brits Placed First And Second At The Tour De France, Their Significant Others May Hate Each Other
Remember foul-mouthed Bradley Wiggins—the cyclist that called would-be steroid accusers "cunts" and "fucking wankers" a couple weeks ago while he was leading the Tour de France? Well, he ended up winning, becoming the first British person to do so in the race's history. He made no mention of wankers...

Do Not Wear Giants Gear To An Oakland A's Game Or A Saint Bernard May Try To Bite You
Bark At The Park night in MLB stadiums is the exact opposite of Parks & Rec day: instead of the stadium being full of snotty kids, it is instead filled with a bunch of cute dogs. The evening didn't go so well for this Giants fan, though, whose attempt to cozy up with a Saint Bernard appeared to ha...

ESPN Hack Lynn Hoppes Copies Press Releases, Too
It's not hard to spot the biggest hacks in any newsroom. The biggest hacks are the reporters who rewrite press releases. Emphasis on the word "rewrite," since the laziest, most unimaginative journalist can typically muster the energy and self-respect to tweak a predicate or two. Even hacks don't wan...

Chipper Jones's Underhanded Throw To The Plate Nearly Lands In The Stands
The ball was flying all over Turner Field last night, what with the Giants and Braves combining for six home runs, including four in extra innings. The Giants eventually won in the 11th thanks to three-run homers by both Brandon Crawford and Gregor Blanco, but they initially took the lead in the 10t...

Will Clark Saved The Giants, And I Missed It
The Hall of Nearly Great hits web shelves today, and it's a bargain at $12. It has 42 terrific writers—heavyweights such as Rob Neyer and Joe Posnanski, and Deadspin folks, too: Owen Good and Will Leitch—with essays on the nearly great players they love. You can read about Brad Radke, Andy Messersmi...

The Iron Sheik Tries To Cut The Line At The Atlanta Olympics: More Wrestler Run-Ins
Inspired by the saga of "Wrestling Superstar Virgil," we continue with readers' encounters with the titans of the squared circle. If you've had your own run-in with wrestlers past or present, e-mail us, subject line "Virgilbag."...

In Desperate Bid To Be Down With The Youngs, <em>Sports Illustrated</em> Uses Instagram Photos In This Week's Issue
Oh boy. We've seen this before. Magazines are a bit of a crossroads, so in order to either (a) appeal to a younger audience or (b) to try to "engage social media," or whatever jargon-laden or ham-fisted way they want to describe it, they do little experiments....

You Can Waste A Morning Looking At These New Sports Infographics
Co. Design has a story about New York designer Deroy Peraza's latest project, in which he has created visual representations of the result of every NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA postseason in history. Each season is represented by a simple, radial infographic that have the power to evoke vivid memories of...

Bleacher Report Has Stiffer Penalties For Plagiarism Than ESPN Does
We uncovered more than a dozen of examples of ESPN senior writer Lynn Hoppes copy-and-pasting from Wikipedia and he was not fired. Instead ESPN gave him a slap on the wrist, and he hasn't written anything since—maybe he was suspended, or told to keep a low profile for a little while....

Chone Figgins Is Bad At Cheating, Too
Let's start with the good: Chone Figgins was on base! Twice, actually! In a rare start, he went 0-1 with two walks, lowering his average to .185. Look, that's as much "good" as you're going to get. As put by Lookout Landing, who's also responsible for this wonderful gif,...

San Francisco Giants Almost Give Game Away In One Of The Worst Ways Imaginable
It's the bottom top of the ninth, and San Francisco is protecting a 2-1 lead over the Astros. Two out, 1-2 count, man on second. The Giants' Santiago Casilla gets Chris Snyder to swing and miss. Ballga—woops! The ball got away from Hector Sanchez and so he quickly airmails it to first base, pulling...

ESPN Says Lynn Hoppes's Wikipedia Problem "Was A Case Of Journalistic Laziness, And We've Addressed It"
We told you on Wednesday about ESPN's senior pizza correspondent, Lynn Hoppes, and his persistent habit of pulling material from Wikipedia....

Doink The Clown Has The Shits: More Wrestler Run-Ins
Inspired by the saga of "Wrestling Superstar Virgil," we continue with readers' encounters with the titans of the squared circle. If you've had your own run-in with wrestlers past or present, e-mail us, subject line "Virgilbag."...

Minor League Team To Hold "Atheist Night"
We've got a whole tagpage of oddball promotions by the independent St. Paul Saints, but this is probably the first one that runs the risk of excommunication. It's not called Atheist Night—it's actually called "A Night of Unbelievable Fun"—but when the Amarillo Sox come to town next month, the home t...

Joe Paterno’s Defenders Aren’t Crazy, Just Blind. Here’s How They Got That Way.
An interesting thing to do in the central Pennsylvania college town where I live and work is to walk around the town and campus and make a list of all the things that remind you of the recently deceased football coach. These include but are not limited to: Joegies, the sandwich shop in the student u...

WWE Reenacted Chael Sonnen's Failed Spinning Backfist
On Saturday at UFC 14, Chael Sonnen attempted a spinning backfist that was ducked by Anderson Silva. Sonnen tripped, took a knee to the grill, and the fat lady started singing. Two days later on WWE Raw, CM Punk paid a bit of tribute to one of the more theatrical MMA endings in recent memory: he mis...

An Actor Explains Just How Bizarre Bob Kraft's Casting Video Was
We asked you last night for information about the bizarre audition tape Bob Kraft made with his girlfriend, Ricki Noel Lander. This morning, a reader (no, not Jon Hamm) wrote in to give us some sense about how audition tapes work in Hollywood:...

ESPN Entertainment Writer Has A Bad Wikipedia Habit
We've introduced you to ESPN's Lynn Hoppes a time or two. He's now an entertainment writer (and Cupcake Wars correspondent) for ESPN.com, but he used to edit the website's Page 2—where he wrote about pizza, covered the Jonas Brothers, and hired Sarah Phillips—before it rebranded itself as Playbook. ...

Here's Patriots Owner Bob Kraft Helping His Girlfriend With Some Kind Of Weird Audition
Well, this isn’t something we ever thought we’d see. Here’s 32-year-old occasional actress Ricki Noel Lander, better known around Boston as the close “pal” of Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and she appears to auditioning for the role of “Mary Elena” in something that requires her to be in a bikini....
