history-lessons - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
An MLB Strike Threat Might Be The Players’ Only Leverage
There hasn’t been a strike in Major League Baseball for nearly 25 years. Not coincidentally, MLB’s owners and front offices are at this moment in arguably the strongest position they’ve occupied since before the Major League Baseball Players Association existed. They’re using it to implode free agen...
40 Years Ago, Antonio Inoki Maybe Possibly Almost Wrestled Against Idi Amin<em></em>
As a mainstream athlete, Antonio Inoki is probably best known for battling Muhammad Ali to a draw in an actual on-the-level fight—albeit one restricted by last-minute rule changes—after The Greatest backed out of plans to lose a traditional entertainment wrestling match. But Antonio Inoki is not a m...
Twenty Years Ago, The Rock Beat Mick Foley About The Head And It Was Fucked Up
What still stands as quite possibly the most viscerally memorable match in the modern history of World Wrestling Entertainment took place 20 years ago this week at Royal Rumble ‘99. How much of a compliment that is depends on your perspective. ...
WWE Released A Failed 1989 Wrestling Pilot And It's Awesomely Terrible<em></em>
The WWE Hidden Gems section of WWE Network’s on-demand library is one of the more reliably enjoyable things that the promotion offers, a weekly release of unseen or rarely seen footage from their vast archives that offers a compelling look at weird days gone by in the sport. Not every week is a home...
Wrestling Magazines Were Bloody, Dumb, And Sleazy, And I Loved Them
A couple weeks ago at an independent wrestling show in New York City, the promoter, Jac Sabboth, arrived with a treasure trove of old magazines. Sabboth also owns a pro wrestling memorabilia store, but even bearing that in mind the selection was startlingly eclectic, from the most popular magazines ...
Big League Bullying: The Conspiracy To Humiliate MLB Umpire Steve Fields
Baseball consensus holds that umpires only get noticed when they make a bad call. Steve Fields’ career as a major league ump was bookended by two calls that put him in the spotlight. But he went to his grave insisting both were right....
Let's Remember Some Guys, Early '80s Fleer Mustache Dudes Edition
The Rememberer’s art is, for the most part, a lonely one. That is kind of portentous and serious-sounding, but it also seemed like a better way to begin this post than the thought it was intended to convey, which is “if you are someone who remembers a lot of rando middle reliever dudes from your you...
The RGIII™ Brand Is Dead, And Here's The Death Certificate
Want to see something really sad? Look at what’s become of Robert Griffin III’s stable of trademarks:...
Treat Yourself To Bartolo Colon's "Batters Faced" Page On Baseball Reference
If he hadn’t out-pitched Justin Verlander and completely baffled the defending world champions for seven innings on Sunday Night Baseball last week, there is a decent chance that Bartolo Colon might not have started another game for the Texas Rangers. The pitcher whose spot Colon filled last Sunday ...
The Wizards Of Aughts: The Post-Millennium Washington Wizards And The Bloggers Who Immortalized Them
The late-model Washington Wizards are broadly competent, secretly mediocre, spotty, and more boring than they are not. They could be nutshelled as an equal and opposite reaction to their counterparts of a decade ago. Those Wiz teams, which weren’t better but sure were stranger, boasted a bigger coll...
Loyola-Chicago's Been Here Before
Loyola-Chicago punched its ticket to the Final Four on Saturday by handing out its first decisive ass-kicking of the tournament after all those heart-stopping wins. If you saw them thrash Kansas State, 78-62—or if you’d seen them eke out one win after another en route to the Elite Eight—you know the...
Climate, Plague, And The Fall Of The Roman Empire
The Roman Empire in the west fell for a great many reasons. We could cite a lengthy series of breakdowns in its political structures, feckless leadership by a series of child-emperors and self-interested court officials, and aggressive and opportunistic barbarian groups. As the Empire fell apart, th...