mat Page 115 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

HIV, Hepatitis C, And More: New York's Amateur MMA Scene Is A Disaster
Things get bloody not long after the fight goes from technical battle to all-out brawl, and the former Hofstra wrestler and the kickboxer from Brooklyn up the tempo, mixing thudding kicks to the thigh with straight shots to the face. The venue—an event space in Chinatown called the Capitale—echoes w...

The Secret Of The NHL's Greatest Call: Location! Location! Location!
Howie Rose was never one to use a canned line, but this called for something special, something that would convey the size of the moment. On May 27, 1994, as the Rangers clung to a 1-0 lead over the Devils late in the third period of Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals, words began to form in th...

Robert Mathis Picks A PED Fight With The NFL He's Not Going To Win
Robert Mathis's agent is not about to let his client's four-game suspension pass without a fight—and the NFL appears willing to engage him. The agent, Hadley Englehard, and the NFL have waged an unusually public war of words for Mathis's violation of the league's drug policy for what he claims was a...

Algerian 800m Runner Loses Race After Celebrating Too Early
At less than two minutes, the 800 meters is not an especially long race. That didn't keep Algerian star Taoufik Makhloufi from cruising the last few strides at yesterday's Diamond League competition in Shanghai, waving his arms and wagging his tongue in victory. That premature celebration cost him t...

Saturday Afternoon Baseball Just Isn't The Same Without Blackouts
Send stories, photos, and anything else you might have to [email protected]....

Robert Mathis Cites Male Fertility Drug For Failed Drug Test
Today the NFL announced that Colts linebacker Robert Mathis will serve a four-game suspension for violating the league's drug policy. Mathis quickly released a statement, with an explanation we haven't heard before: He was taking a fertility drug to help his wife get pregnant...and it worked....

Matt Brown Got Violent This Weekend, And It Was Awesome
On Saturday night in Cincinnati, Ohio, Matt Brown and Erick Silva beat the hell out of each other for a while, and then things turned. In the end, it was Brown delivering and Silva absorbing a frightening thrashing, to the delight of nearly all, both his local fans in the arena and all those watchin...

Alex Cora's Great 18-Pitch At Bat
My pal Jon Weisman revisits the memorable 18-pitch duel between Matt Clement and Alex Cora that took place 10 years ago today:...

Animated Soccer Highlights Are Awesome
Artist and filmmaker Richard Swarbrick created an animated highlight reel for Liverpool's season and it is so cool. We need more of these for every sport. ...

Who Does Jameis Winston Think He Is—Joe Namath?
A story about the other famous shoplifting quarterback, excerpted from the book Rising Tide: Bear Bryant, Joe Namath and Dixie's Last Quarter....

Ha Ha Clinton-Dix Took Photos Of Napping Draft Prospects
Draft week is exhausting for prospects—they're hustled from meeting to meeting, media appearance to media appearance, with the only opportunity for some rest the bus rides in between. Earlier today, Alabama safety Ha'Sean "Ha Ha" Clinton-Dix put together a photo essay of his fellow prospects napping...

Matt Williams Rear-Ended By Hit-And-Run Driver During Radio Interview
Nationals manager Matt Williams's weekly spot with the Sports Junkies on 106.7 The Fan was a little more eventful than usual this morning, when his SUV was rear-ended by a driver being chased by police....

Matt Cain Injured Himself Cutting His Sandwich Into "Fancy Triangles"
The Giants placed starter Matt Cain on the disabled list yesterday with a cut on his right index finger. The team announced it was sandwich-related, which normally wouldn't rate extra mention in the pantheon of weird baseball injuries. But the Chronicle has more details:...

Bryce Harper Hits The DL After Sliding Head-First
Perhaps the only consolation for Bryce Harper after a shitty week on the basepaths is that it'll be a while before he has to run them again. The Nationals placed Harper on the disabled list with a thumb injury suffered while sliding head-first, and the team fears he could be out a lot longer than 15...

Matt Kemp Used Michael Jackson's "Black Or White" As His Walk-Up Music
Dodgers outfielder Matt Kemp, whose ethnic background became a topic of discussion in the Donald Sterling audio portion we released earlier today, responded to the controversy in a subtle, but remarkable way: by changing his walk-up music at Dodger Stadium to Michael Jackson's "Black Or White."...

The Origins Of Amateurism; Or, Why College Sports Are So Fucked Up
As president of the NCAA, Mark Emmert has $1.7 million a year riding on the premise that college sports are integral to the mission of higher education in general, a number that frankly lends a certain insight to his cause. Sympathy, even. After all, if you made that kind of money, you'd probably fi...

Original LeBron Hater Sick Of All The Bandwagon Haters
This right here is a brilliant piece of satire. Comedian Matt Lieb adopts the character of someone who has been hating LeBron James way before you were hating LeBron James, and in the process captures everything that is annoying about scolding fans who never shut up about bandwagoners. There's also...

Homemade Tomato Soup Is Easier (And Better) Than You Think
Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. Totino's Pizza Rolls. Campbell's Tomato Soup. These are all delicious, if corporate and perhaps a touch neon, foodstuffs. No snobbism here: I love these things, and it's pretttty likely that you—yes, you there, you reading this—love them, too. They're comforting. They're eas...

Illmatic's Dope Sports Reference
The Shaq Fu line from this record, produced by Large Professor....

Matt Harvey Tweets Bird-Flipping Picture, Immediately Deletes Account
Mets pitcher Matt Harvey tweeted out this picture today as a way to mark the six-month anniversary of his Tommy John surgery. It's a silly and harmless picture, but Harvey, or someone within the Mets organization, thought that its existence was offensive enough to warrant Harvey deleting his entire ...