john Page 173 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

John Hollinger Had The Best NBA Preseason Predictions, Jon Barry's Were Nearly The Worst
With the NBA season concluding last week with a Miami Heat championship, let's revisit how those pre-season pundit predictions turned out. We tracked the picks from 30 ESPN pundits across 11 categories (6 division winners, 2 conference champions, NBA Finals champion, MVP, and rookie of the year)....

Joe Maddon Vs. Davey Johnson Is A Great Old Man Fight
"The most boring ejection in baseball history?" No way, man. Davey Johnson and Joe Maddon, two feisty and erudite managers representing the oldest of old and newest of new schools, have moved into their second day of sniping after Johnson alerted the umps to some pine tar on Joel Peralta's glove. Th...

Who Will Win This Year's U.S. Open? Probably Someone You've Never Heard Of
Golf's major tournaments just haven't been that interesting lately. Over the last 17 majors, there have been 16 winners. In theory, this could be nice! A little diversity, a little surprise. But since Tiger's sabbatical, we've lost any hope of narrative. Individual sports thrive on story lines, riva...

Charlie Villanueva Says He's Not Overweight, Tweets Photo Of His Bathroom Scale
John Calipari is once again coaching the Dominican national team, because he's John Calipari and fuck you. (Also: recruiting.) Olympic qualifying begins in a few weeks, so it's time to make some cuts. First up: one of only three NBA players on the preliminary roster....

Random Dude Who Insists He Used To Be The Bullpen Coach Scams Braves' Alumni Weekend
The Atlanta Braves held an alumni reunion over the weekend. They played softball, they went out for drinks, they honored John Smoltz, and they got scammed by a random guy claiming to be John Sullivan, a former major leaguer who was briefly the team's bullpen coach in the early 1980s....

Should Brent Musburger Apologize For Calling John Carlos And Tommie Smith "Black-Skinned Storm Troopers" 44 Years Ago?
John Carlos and Tommie Smith, each raising a fist on the medal stand at the 1968 Olympics, have become an icon of that decade, and that climate, and of the changes that were a-coming. They're heroes now, but that the time they were seen by many as traitors, and agitators, and by at least one up-and-...

"Athletic" Shawn Johnson Retires: How Gymnastics Talks About Bodies In Code
On Sunday, former world and Olympic champion gymnast Shawn Johnson, 20, retired from gymnastics. Citing a bum knee, she withdrew from this coming weekend's national championships, the first competitive step towards the 2012 Olympic team....

Better Know An Umpire: Adrian Johnson
Welcome to Better Know An Umpire, an effort to educate ourselves on the human elements who have ultimate decision-making power over some 2,500 Major League Baseball games a year. (All cumulative statistics are through the 2011 season, unless otherwise stated.)...

Twitter Banned From Jerry Sandusky Trial, Which Starts Next Week
Jury selection will begin tomorrow in Jerry Sandusky's trial, after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied Lawyerin' Joe Amendola's latest motion to postpone proceedings. That leaves opening arguments on track for next week. But John Cleland, the presiding judge, made a pair of rulings today will hav...

Johnny Tapia Died, Died, Died, Died, Then Died, And Lived Hard In Between
New Mexico police are saying that boxer Johnny Tapia was found dead at his house on Sunday. They do not suspect foul play. Apparently he was the victim of having been Johnny Tapia for 45 years. ...

Calvin Johnson Goes Yard At Comerica Park
Fine, it was during batting practice—if you want to get technical about it—but impressive nonetheless for the Lions freakishly talented wide receiver. According to Johnson his power display was no fluke, he was approached by the Reds while in high school before he committed to Georgia Tech and foot...

Kegasus, The Beer-Loving Mascot Of The Beer-Loving Preakness, Is Actually A Sober Phony
What's the saying? If you'll keg stand for something, you'll fall for anything? Promoters of the Preakness Stakes must believe it. Turns out that Kegasus, spokesbeast for the Preakness and the best mascot in all of sports, is a sham....

Deconstructing Jimmy Johnson's Commercial For Medically Ineffective Penis Pills
It's one thing to sling Viagra, like Rafael Palmeiro and Mark Martin used to do. It's quite another to hawk Extenze, the "natural male enhancement pill" that has no evident medical benefits. But that doesn't stop the shameless Jimmy Johnson. These commercials have aired since 2010, but no one had ...

John Tortorella Has Had Just About Enough Of Your Damn Questions
We'll keep it in the room, Stan....

Former NBA Coach Plagiarizes Spurs Message Board For ESPN.com Column
John Carroll was the head coach at Duquesne for six years, and an assistant coach in the NBA for nine—including a 36-game stint as interim head coach for the Celtics in 2004. He's now sharing his expertise for Scouts Inc., which was purchased by ESPN in 2006. Since then Carroll's scouting reports ha...

Some Poor Bastard's Cell Phone Went Off During John Tortorella's Press Conference, And Torts Was Not Happy
John Tortorella's press conferences are the stuff of legend: tense, terse legend. At least from the media side, they're more amusing than hostile. But there's going to come a day when the Rangers aren't winning, and the scribes are going to refer to their mental tally of all the times Torts bullie...

If The Lakers Lose Tonight Mike Brown Will Be Out Of A Job, Says Lakers Vice President (Magic Johnson)
Last night, Magic Johnson had some relatively strong (hypothetical) words for the Lakers coach and key big men....

Brewers Closer John Axford Blows Save, Endears Himself To Media Anyway
Normally when a player fails to "take his lumps" or "stand up and face the music" or however else you'd like to phrase "talk to the media after screwing up," he is taken to task. John Axford, however, had a pretty good excuse and let the media know via handwritten message....

Tim Burton Bottoms Out. <em>Dark Shadows</em>, Reviewed.
1. How was there ever a time that we considered Tim Burton weird? He certainly isn't weird now—give this guy a slight haircut and he's essentially an insurance salesman—but in retrospect, knowing the bloated, self-satisfied cookie-cutter hack Burton turned out to be makes one wonder what all the exc...

Down And Out In Baseball's Indie Leagues; Or, What Made Tommy John Want To Rake The Infield?
A dispatch from our correspondent with the Bridgeport Bluefish, an unaffiliated team in the Atlantic League....