Thirty years ago this spring, Bob Irsay, the prototypical bad sports owner and an obstreperous public drunk, moved his Baltimore Colts to Indianapolis. His son, Jim Irsay, the current Colts boss, has sucked the fun out of the anniversary for Indianapolitans with a scandal that, in its sad and sordid way, offers a…
Excerpted from Eddie and the Gun Girl, a Kindle Single about the shooting of Eddie Waitkus, the real-life event that's best known as the fictional pivot of Bernard Malamud's The Natural. Annotations by the author appear throughout.
To tell the story of the Kiss Cam, let's start with a kiss that happened off camera. On Aug. 8, 2000, Danielle Goldey and Meredith Kott attended a game at Dodger Stadium. At one point, as couples are wont to do, they smooched. Before long, security guards arrived, removed the women from their seats, and escorted them…
On Sunday, the Seattle Seahawks walked all over the Denver Broncos, 43-8, to win Super Bowl XLVIII. Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson passed for 206 yards, ran for 26 more, threw two touchdowns, and made National Football League history. He became the second African-American quarterback ever to start and win a Super…
Eye On Basketball unearthed this little gem today from YouTube's wayback machine. It's footage of a game that matched preseason No. 1 North Carolina against unranked Kansas on Nov. 28, 1981. It was the season opener at the Charlotte Coliseum. And it featured the first two collegiate shot attempts by a 6-foot-5…
The 1992 death of Nugget II, the University of Southern Mississippi's Golden Eagle, is cloaked in mystery. A federal investigation and autopsy revealed two possible causes of death: The eagle's body contained lead shotgun pellets, and it suffered from malnutrition. But no blame was ever assigned, and the case went…
It was March 3, 1978, the sectional semifinals of the Indiana high school basketball tournament, in the teeth of what they call Hoosier Hysteria. George Washington was playing Northwest, a team it had already beaten twice that season. Washington was up, 61-60, and had the ball. A second remained. David Donald, a…
The owners insisted they had no plans to move the team. That's what the Maloofs swore, raising their right hand as their left hand worked deals with buyers first from Anaheim, then Virginia Beach, then Seattle. And that's what the owners of the Kansas City Kings maintained 30 years ago, even as they did everything in…
It was March 2005, and the NHL's owners didn't know what to do. It had been six months since they'd locked out the players' union, trying to force concessions, but the players were still refusing to bear the brunt of spending cuts. Two weeks earlier, the league had finally canceled the already-delayed season. No money…
An occasional feature in which we recall notable incidents that we would've covered the hell out of had we existed at the time.
An occasional feature in which we recall notable incidents that we would've covered the hell out of had we existed at the time.
This month, Marv Albert celebrated his 70th birthday and joined the NFL on CBS. He announced he would leave his gig calling Nets games for the YES Network—he wouldn't have the time. The CBS job "wasn't something I was looking for," Albert said. Marv, at 70, is sports' most sought-after voice, so much so that he's…