life Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Remembering Miss America When America Was American
Beauty pageants are marvelous entertainments, except when they're profoundly offensive, cringe-inducingly awful displays of objectification and spooky double-sided tape mojo. But why quibble? Can't they be both? Can't we simply enjoy the spectacle, especially if we're gazing back at it through the s...
Picture This: Little Leaguers Want Their Pants
Most everyone who has ever played a sport — even those of us who never played at a level beyond, say, high school basketball, football, baseball, soccer — most of us can recall at least one time, before a game, when everything just felt right. Maybe there was something in the air, or there was a loo...
A Prayer For Jacques Plante's Busted Schnoz
Let's let Jacques Plante's Hockey Hall of Fame biography tell this one:...
Wilt And Phog, Two Jayhawks Passing In The Night
Forced to retire at 70 years old, Phog Allen landed one last recruit: a tall kid out of Philadelphia named Wilt. Allen coached Chamberlain for one year, on Kansas's freshman team, but it was Dick Harp who led Chamberlain and company to the triple-overtime 1957 title game against UNC, by some telling...
Before He Became Kareem, Lew Had Trouble Finding Pants That Fit
As a sophomore at UCLA in 1967, young Lew Alcindor already had one of the highest verticals in the game, and an inseam to match. (Fifty-one inches, to be precise.) Tailored clothes were the solution to that, but the rest of college basketball had no answer for Alcindor's and UCLA's dominance. The ne...
UCLA Basketball Players Fought Each Other Long Before Ben Howland
The year was 1945, and John Wooden was still in the Navy. It would be three more years before he took over in Westwood, but the UCLA Bruins under coach Wilbur Johns were already using revolutionary training methods....
Never-Before-Seen Spring Training Photos Of Yogi Berra And The '61 Yankees, Taken By A '61 Yankee
Before the start of the 1961 baseball season, which ended with the Yankees' 19th World Series title, LIFE Magazine gave a camera to 25-year-old Yankee shortstop Tony Kubek and asked him to take portraits of his teammates. He shot Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Roger Maris, Whitey Ford, and others at the...
Cool Never-Before-Seen Ali-Frazier Photos, 40 Years After The Fight Of The Century
On March 8, 1971, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier fought in what was billed as the "Fight of the Century" at Madison Square Garden. LIFE has put together a gallery of photos taken by a 24 year-old staff photographer named John Shearer 40 years ago; the majority of his photos were never published until...