ja Page 636 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Jack Wilson, Ian Snell Released From Pirate Jail
Pittsburgh gives Seattle their shortstop and a nervous nellie pitcher in exchange for a vanload of prospects and an autographed picture of Sasquatch. [MLB.com]...

College Recruiting About To Get A Lot More Complicated
Forget the fact that it's James Madison University vs. Marist. A dispute over a departed coach bringing previously recruited players to his new school has led to one of the oddest lawsuits in college sports....

Jay Mariotti, Making Children Cry
Jay the Joker one-ups Woody Paige with a human prop. The baby's tears represent America, except America would have tried to poop on him. [H/T reader Dan]...

Dr. James Andrews Giveth and Taketh Away
Orthopedic Hall of Famer Dr. James Andrews has saved the careers of countless athletes with his special brand of ligament justice, but occasionally he makes an oops and cripples healthy people for the rest of their lives. No one's perfect....

Japan Learns How To Lose From Notre Dame
Lou Holtz coached up the Fighting Irish and, afterward, a losing coach bemoaned a moral victory, so Saturday's college football exhibition was just like any other. Except Notre Dame won. And the game was in Japan....

A Comprehensive Ranking Of The Products Inside A Good Humor Truck
One of the good things about being a parent is that, during the summer, you're fully justified in eating all the goddamn ice cream you want....

Even LeBron's High School Keepsakes Are Worth A Fortune
Every high school phenom has a scrapbook of yellowing newspaper clips in his attic, readily available for reminiscing about the glory days. It's unusual, though, for someone else to collect those mementos and sell them for $250,000 on eBay....

Phillies Still Dawdling On Halladay, Just In Case Happ Or Drabek Is Next Halladay And Not Next Mike Grace
The Phillies were all but guaranteed to land the Greatest Pitcher Ever at some point this weekend, but Blue Jays' GM J.P. Ricciardi's now justifiably hard-balling. Impasse!...

And Now For A Minute Of Actual Sports
Roy Halladay is not a member of the Phillies ... yet. The Toronto Blue Jays' demands of executive bathroom privileges proved too steep for the Philadelphia bigwigs....

So <em>Now</em> Nike Decides To Return The LeBron Tapes
The Swoosh has graciously decided to return the footage it confiscated from two journalists at the LeBron James Skills Academy, now that TMZ and eBaum Nation are a combined $8,000 poorer and the world has moved on. [AP]...

Suspected Cancer Hoaxer Found Dead
Fifteen-year-old brain cancer patient "Jonathan Jay White" turns out to have been a 24-year-old woman in Ammon, Idaho, who was found Wednesday in her car, dead of an apparent suicide....

Japanese Baseball Robots Already Elected To The Hall Of Fame
Japanese nerds have invented baseball-playing robots with talent far exceeding our own Major League all-stars and they don't require Gatorade or HGH. Well, I guess that's it. We had a great ride, humanity, but our time has passed....

Your Daily Dead Mets Walking Update
Because no one reads the newspaper, and SportsCenter's anchors are too perky for this early in the morning, Deadspin combs the best of the broadsheets and the blogosphere to bring you everything you need to know to start your day....

Cop Who Arrested Henry Louis Gates Not A Racist Because He Once Put His Lips On A Dying Black Athlete
The Cambridge, Mass., cop who arrested (black) Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the same guy who tried to resuscitate a dying (and black) Reggie Lewis 16 years ago and is therefore in no way a racist, OK?...

LeBron Once Smoked The Reefer, Ever-Discerning ESPN Informs Us
ZOMG! LeBron James is one of 97 million Americans to have smoked marijuana! This is news! Hannah Storm just told the world! It's on the front page of ESPN.com! Right below that unfortunate business with Ben Roethlisberger!...

Jay Mariotti On Erin Andrews, AutoSummarized
"Why was the Internet ... giving semi-lives to people with no lives?" thunders Mariotti, who writes for the Internet. The column goes on in this vein for 1,500 words. Let's send this through Microsoft Word's AutoSummarize function, shall we?...

Was Lance Armstrong Duped By A Cancer Fake?
Jonathan Jay White is a 15-year-old with brain cancer whose devotion to the Livestrong credo caught the attention of Lance Armstrong and several generous donors. The grifter who invented "Jonathan Jay White" will soon catch the attention of federal authorities....

How EBaum Nation Beat TMZ At Its Own Game
So eBaum Nation got its hands on a nice, clear video of the disappointingly pedestrian Forbidden Dunk, and all TMZ got was some jittery cinéma vérité that might as well have been video of the Sasquatch. How'd that happen?...

A Completely Different (And Much Clearer) Version Of The LeBron Dunk
Suddenly, there's an epidemic of videos of "The Dunk." Different angle and less underwater-y. Where has this been all month? I wonder how much eBaum had to pay for theirs? [eBaum Nation]...

And Here's The Blurry, Anticlimatic Footage Of The LeBron Dunk (UPDATE)
Well, I guess he was "dunked on." Still, it takes you a little while to figure out what's going on even with the flashy arrows and name tags.(Much better version done by Gawker's Mike Byhoff.) [TMZ]...