life - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Keef Riffhard
Here's a good piece on Keith Richards' memoir by Rich Cohen:...
Ballet For Dorks: The Awkward Beauty Of Bowling
Bowling is a ritualized behavior that requires strength, coordination and an often decidedly idiosyncratic technique in order to aestheticize a communally sanctioned exposition of controlled violence. Orrr . . . maybe it's just a fine example of the sort of loud, explosive fun that humans sometimes ...
The Black Power Salute That Rocked The '68 Olympics
Forty-five years ago, on Oct. 16. 1968, U.S. sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos stood atop the medal podium at the Olympic Games in Mexico City, bowed their heads and raised black-gloved fists during the playing of the American national anthem. Millions of their countrymen were outraged. As in b...
Old Photos Of Ballplayers In Locker Rooms Feel Dirty. In A Good Way.
Maybe it's just banal nostalgia, but photographers working years ago seemed to take better pictures of ballplayers in their locker rooms than photographers do today....
Bill Eppridge Is Dead. His Photos Will Never Die
Bill Eppridge, one of the greatest photojournalists who ever picked up a camera, a longtime LIFE and Sports Illustrated photographer and the man behind the harrowing, iconic picture of a fatally wounded Robert Kennedy lying in a pool of blood in a Los Angeles hotel kitchen in June 1968, died on Thur...
Ali In Exile: The Once And Future Champ Clowns In NYC, 1968
For several years in the late Sixties, while (largely) lesser fighters vied for the heavyweight title and while his great nemesis Joe Frazier was powering his way through the ranks, Muhammad Ali was effectively in exile. Barred from the prizefighting ring for refusing induction into the Army ("War i...
The Cruelest Sport
If you don't already follow Longform I recommend it as a great place to find choice material. (Bookmark it already.)...
Beautiful Skeeter
Diggin' through the LIFE archives I came across this 1940 article on Pat Laursen, National Skeet Champion. ...
Keep on Joustin’ in the Free World
It lasted roughly a thousand years (give or take a few centuries). It generated mind-boggling advances in science, technology and medicine. It saw magnificent cathedrals rise at Chartres, Salisbury and scores of other cities and towns. It witnessed the first rumblings of a kind of proto-democracy in...
Extra! Ali Throws Punch, Hurts Man!
When Muhammad Ali beat Sonny Liston in their May 1965 title-bout rematch in Lewiston, Maine, a legend was born. Or, more accurately, a legendary controversy was born. Ali (who ditched his Cassius Marcellus Clay "slave" name for his Elijah Muhammad-sanctioned Muslim moniker after defeating Liston in ...
Hey, the All-Star Game Is Finally Here! I Said, the All-Star Game Is Fi ... Oh, Forget It
No one who was playing professional baseball the year that I last watched an entire All-Star Game from start to finish is still playing today. Not one single player. Which is a fancy way of saying that I haven't watched an All-Star Game in decades. Now, I understand that literally hundreds of baseba...
Picture This: Do the Bucs Stop Here?
This summer in Pittsburgh, the Pirates are messing with peoples' hearts again. After countless seasons of sub-.500 finishes, occasional spurts of excellence followed by long stretches of crappy play and, saints preserve us, a decades-long slog of mediocrity unmatched in the majors since ... well, ev...