long Page 21 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Stories That Don’t Suck: SportsFeat's Guide To Sports Exile
Plaxico Burress is catching TDs for the Jets. The U may never play football again. Terrelle Pryor, who was ready to sit for a year, just finished his first NFL practice. With exiles starting, ending, and being averted, here are some great reads about players and coaches on the outs with the game tha...
The Longhorn Network Launches Today, And Nobody Can Watch It
Tonight, at 6pm Austin time, the controversial Longhorn Network will go on the air. 24-hour coverage will start immediately, giving you the latest and most in-depth UT coverage available. And there's absolutely no way for you or anyone else to watch....
Who Owns "Evil Empire"? The Yankees Launch A Proxy War For Control
Bridgehampton, N.Y., out on the East End of Long Island, is Red Sox territory. The bars along Main Street are decked out in red and will only show Yankees games if there's nothing else on. TVs receive the Hartford network affiliates. Carl Yastrzemski was born on a nearby potato farm and still holds ...
Stories That Don't Suck: SportsFeat's Guide To Funny People (And Chris Farley)
Every Friday, SportsFeat picks a few great weekend reads for Deadspin. This week we're chipping in with our favorite long-form writing about comedians....
The Hidden Message Of That Andover Rap Video
The Andover rap video that made the rounds this week is tacky and annoying, yeah, but to those of us who went to the school, there's more to it than the saccharine entitlement on the surface. When my class graduated from Andover two years ago, we marveled and fretted about the place: The kids are ...
Making And Remaking History In Olympics-Addled Beijing
Adapted from Tom Scocca's Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future, available at your favorite bookseller....
Total QB Rating: Everything Great About ESPN Multiplied By Everything Insufferable
It's been fascinating to watch ESPN roll out its new, proprietary Total Quarterback Rating over the past few days, and not just because we got to see Tirico, Gruden, and Jaws huffing and grunting and puzzling over the thing as if it were the first stone tool. ("This new measure of stats," Tirico cal...
When Mays And Mantle Were Banned From Baseball: Putting A-Rod's Gambling "Problem" In Context
As Alex Rodriguez stays in the headlines because he's Alex Rodriguez (even though he wasn't actually at the high-stakes poker game mentioned in the tabloids since he was playing in the World Series at the time), the real story is the re-emergence of baseball's complicated relationship with gambling....
What Jock Culture Does To Pukes Like You
The following piece originally ran in The Nation's sports issue, on newsstands now....
Matt Stairs: Spectacularly Just Good Enough
Matt Stairs, who on Wednesday announced his retirement, was the character actor who had a few decent roles in the 1970s and played solid bit parts ever after. He was a Ned Beatty of a player. He had a fine career. Always on the roster for his offense, he delivered above-average results with the bat ...
If Albert DeSalvo Wasn't The Boston Strangler, Who Was? Bill James Investigates
During the years 1962-64, 13 women in the Boston area were molested and then strangled by an assailant who came to be known as the Boston Strangler. In 1965, Albert DeSalvo, a convicted sex offender and patient at a local mental institute, began telling people he committed the murders. With the help...
Jurgen Klinsmann: America's Newest Soccer Jesus
Jurgen Klinsmann was introduced to the media this week as the new coach of the U.S. men's soccer team, a development in the making ever since the U.S. Soccer Federation batted eyelashes at Klinsmann before the 2006 World Cup. The coach spurned the USSF then, and instead led Germany to a third-place...
The Preventable Annual Tradition Of High School Football Deaths
It's that time of year again: when America's high schoolers start dropping dead during football practice. It's become so regular and so common that we can't do anything but shake our heads and move on, as if this is an acceptable rite of passage for youth football as a whole. But these are actual ki...
Randy Moss: The Weirdest Ever
Randy Moss is the most dangerous receiver to ever play in the NFL and the single most exciting player that ever played for my favorite team, Adrian Peterson included. He also happened to be the weirdest person ever to step onto a football field. ...
Stories That Don't Suck: SportsFeat's Guide To Life, Death, And Sex On Skis
Every Friday, SportsFeat picks a few great weekend reads for Deadspin. With things sweltering outside, we went looking for stories that might remind us of what it feels like to be cold. We found these instead....
All Too Good, And Not Good Enough: What Carlos Beltran Meant To The Mets
Carlos Beltran was not a New York Met. I don't mean this literally — Beltran's Mets career spanned six and a half seasons, from 2005 until yesterday. He was with the Mets almost exactly as long as Keith Hernandez was, and longer than Reggie Jackson was with the Yankees....
The First Rounder Who'd Rather Play For The Long Island Ducks Than Sign With The Astros
The Astros are high on UConn outfielder George Springer, who they took last month with the 11th overall pick. How high? He's got some wondering if Hunter Pence isn't now expendable. But the deadline to agree to terms is August 15th, and Springer spent his weekend on Long Island, meeting with the GM ...
The Incomparable Ichiro Swings Through
Two surefire Hall of Famers played in the Bronx last night. One is having the worst season of his career at 37 years old, hitting nearly 60 points off his lifetime average, and still getting paid $17 million. The other one is Derek Jeter....
The Graceful, Oversized Legacy of Yao Ming
How long was Yao Ming going to last? That was the question about the seven-foot-six center long before he broke his foot for the first time in the NBA. When Yao joined the league nine summers ago, picked first overall in the 2002 draft by the Houston Rockets, he was the man who would bring the entir...
Stories That Don't Suck: SportsFeat's Guide To Hoops In A Foreign Land
Every week, SportsFeat picks a few great reads for Deadspin. Thanks to Yao Ming's retirement and Deron Williams's Turkish tour, here are some classics on the foreign wanderings of professional basketball players. Enjoy....