mad Page 41 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Real Madrid Pay 45 Million Euros For The Rights To A Child<em></em><em></em>
That braces-rocking, baby-faced kid with his tongue out who you see above is Brazilian club Flamengo’s teen sensation Vinícius Júnior. Vinícius is 16 years old; he has racked up all of about a dozen minutes of pro-level soccer; and, as the club confirmed today, he has just become the most expensive ...

An Attempt At Untangling The Legend Of Madison Bumgarner Dating A Girl Named Madison Bumgarner
Madison Bumgarner, the larger-than-life ace of the San Francisco Giants, carries the backstory of the hero in a tall tale. He began chewing tobacco in the fifth grade; he got married in blue jeans; he chopped up a rattlesnake with an axe and saved the two baby bunnies he found inside. But one story ...

Roger Federer Pulls Out Of The French Open, And Rafael Nadal's Practically A Lock To Win It
Good news for Rafael Nadal: Roger Federer isn’t going to the French Open....

Ah, Yes, Let's Relitigate The Slide Rule Some More
Joe Maddon and Jon Lester have come out hard against MLB’s slide rule after it cost them a run in the fifth inning of yesterday’s loss against the Cardinals....

Rafael Nadal Owns The Dirt And Anyone Standing On It
Watch this guy here, the blond guy playing frantic, brilliant tennis, tracking down a lob for a whirling dervish winner....

Pablo Cuevas Hits Incredible Behind-The-Back Winner, Downs Alexander Zverev
Early in the second set of 31-year-old Pablo Cuevas’s three-set quarterfinal win over young phenom Alexander Zverev in the Madrid Open, the veteran Uruguayan chased down a lob on the baseline and nailed this incredible no-look, crosscourt winner....

Grigor Dimitrov And Dominic Thiem Played The Best Tennis Of The Week And It Was Infuriating
For the better part of this week, it looked like Grigor Dimitrov was ready to shake himself out of his stupor—he’d lost his opening match at the last three tournaments, c’mon man—and make these frenzied blogs look a little less stupid. He started this Madrid Open looking like a whole player again, b...

The Sabres Will "Host" The Rangers In The NYC Winter Classic For A Specific Tax Purpose
The NHL announced Tuesday that the Sabres and Rangers will play the 2018 NHL Winter Classic at the Mets’ stadium in Queens. Despite the fact that the Sabres reside hundreds of miles away in Buffalo while the Rangers are only a borough away, the Sabres will be the “home team.” The NHL said that the d...

Borna Coric, Lucky Loser, Puts Slumping No. 1 Andy Murray To Bed
It’s been an extremely Andy Murray series of events. The ornery Scot played blisteringly good, 28-wins-straight tennis to finally claim the No. 1 spot for the first time in his career, but has since looked much easier to topple, taking losses to names you wouldn’t immediately recognize: older broth...

Real Madrid Finally Overcame The World's Best Player By Building The World's Best Team
For close to a decade now, Real Madrid have been tasked with solving the most difficult problem facing any club in the whole sport: What do we do about Lionel Messi?...

Karim Benzema's Houdini Act All But Destroys Atlético Madrid's Comeback Dreams
Atlético Madrid had a mountain to climb in order to get back into their Champions League semifinal tie against Real Madrid after losing the first leg 3-0, and it looked for a minute that they just might do it. Atleti jumped out to a 2-0 lead just 16 minutes into the match, needing just one more goal...

The Day The War Came For Muhammad Ali
The following is excerpted from Leigh Montville’s new book, Sting Like a Bee: Muhammad Ali vs. The United States of America, 1966-71....

Novak Djokovic Is Flying Solo And Looks No Steadier
Playing his first match after firing his whole coaching staff, Novak Djokovic struggled. Today, in the second round of the Madrid Open, he squared up against world No. 76 Nicolas Almagro—a player he had defeated in all four previous matches, losing only one set in a tiebreak—and teetered on the brin...

Cristiano Ronaldo Gutted Atlético Madrid
Cristiano Ronaldo has a penchant for doing only two or three things in any given game, but those two or three things usually end up being the most important things. That’s exactly what happened today, when Ronaldo scored a hat trick today against Atlético Madrid. His second was the prettiest, when ...

May The Soccer Gods Bless Atlético Madrid, Who Deserve To Win The Champions League
O ye mighty Soccer Gods, how blessed are we, the fans of the sport you so nobly watch over! You’ve given us over a decade of The One, your favorite son, the one and only Lionel Messi, and we have praised you for it! In recent times, you saw fit to grant us arguably the greatest team feat of all time...

Report: Text Messages Show Cristiano Ronaldo Knew About Settlement For Rape Allegation
A couple weeks ago, German paper Der Spiegel released a report that claimed Cristiano Ronaldo had settled out of court with an American woman who alleged he raped her in 2009. Ronaldo’s camp issued a strong denunciation of the report, calling it “journalistic fiction” and denying any ties between th...
![Rockets Owner Leslie Alexander Looked Really Quite Mad At This Referee [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/fxjbgfsfldsdyukytzcy.jpg)
Rockets Owner Leslie Alexander Looked Really Quite Mad At This Referee [Update]
The first-round series between the Rockets and Thunder is already plenty spicy on the court, and it’s only getting more contentious thanks to the involvement of both teams’ ownership groups. This weekend, the NBA said it was looking into a postgame incident between Patrick Beverley and the son of Th...

Lionel Messi Turned A Meaningless <i>Clásico</i> Into One For The Ages<em></em>
Barcelona probably won’t win anything significant this season. They remain underdogs for the league title, were ousted from the Champions League by Juventus after surviving the Paris Saint-Germain tie by the skin of their teeth, and can only really count on a Copa del Rey consolation prize to cap of...

Messi Scores 500th Goal For Barcelona With Gorgeous Game-Winner In Stoppage Time
Lionel Messi scored his 500th goal for Barcelona in style today—notching a game-winner in stoppage time for the club to take El Clasico by a score of 3-2....

Madison Bumgarner Placed On The DL After Presumably Bitchin' Dirt Bike Accident
The Giants placed Madison Bumgarner on the disabled list with a sprained left shoulder and bruised ribs. According to Ken Rosenthal, ...