mb Page 248 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Eleven Years After The Greatest Match Ever: A Federer-Nadal Wimbledon Liveblog
Novak Djokovic awaits in the final. Either Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal will join him after today’s semifinal. GOATs are grazing everywhere the eye can see. Roger has mastered the grass and Wimbledon is historically his home turf, but Rafa has beaten him here before—famously, in their 2008 final, t...
Jim Bouton Woke Up America
In 1969 and 1970, two books were published that demystified two of the most hidebound American institutions—presidential campaigns and major-league baseball. By and large, both were exercises controlled at their very top by Penis-Americans who were so white that they barely cast a shadow. They were ...
Nothing's Happening Today
This is the worst time of the year, but not for the reason you think. It’s because everyone in sports media all the way down to a three-watt radio station in Cow Skull, Saskatchewan, tells you it’s the worst time of the year. “Nothing’s happening,” “Nothing’s going on,” “We’re so bored,” and “I know...
Jelena Ostapenko's Doubles Partner Has Endured Too Much Friendly Fire
Jelena Ostapenko is one of the fiercest power hitters in the women’s game. She hasn’t quite lived up to the promise of her 2017 French Open win, and she had a disappointing first-round loss in the singles draw at this Wimbledon, but she’s still alive in the quarterfinals of the mixed doubles. And sh...
Waiting For The Revolution At Soccer Analytics Bootcamp
When the 2019 Champions League final between Liverpool and Tottenham kicked off, I wasn’t jammed into a sports bar downing beers with hundreds of other soccer-mad Americans, as I had originally planned to be. Instead, I was dead sober, watching the game in a lecture hall situated on the Columbia Uni...
Let's Remember Some Guys: Matt Nokes Was Literally The Pilot Of The Schaumburg Flyers
Schaumburg, Illinois has no shortage of spectacle. A cursory Google search reveals that this suburb of Chicago has an indoor water park, an Ikea, and a Rainforest Cafe all stuffed within its city limits. But despite all of those commercial pleasures, I can’t imagine any of them fill the gaping spiri...
Damn, Coco Gauff's Prodigious Wimbledon Run Is Over
Any disappointment that a 15-year-old lost to a top seed at Wimbledon is absurd on its face, but that’s just how good Coco Gauff’s tournament has been. The expectations have been warped beyond any recognizable norms....
Nick Kyrgios Executes Perfect Underarm Serve Against Rafael Nadal
The second round of Wimbledon offered Nick Kyrgios the opportunity to do what he loves best, which is to try to beat Rafael Nadal. Though he failed in that quest, falling in four sets in yesterday’s match, Kyrgios was able to realize his other great love, which is to try to annoy Rafael Nadal. No mo...
After Nearly Two Years, Tottenham Are Finally Buying Players Again
Congratulations, Spurs fans: the club’s long transfer market nightmare is finally over. On Tuesday, Tottenham Hotspur announced not just one, but two transfers, the first by the club since signing right winger (both on the field and off of it) Lucas Moura back in January of 2018. And judging by the ...
Let's Remember Some Guys: The Proper Use Of Flip-Down Sunglasses
To understand how and why the Guys that have lodged in my mind are where they are, you must remember that this was the 1980s and 1990s, and that I lived in the suburbs, and that I am an idiot. There were things to do there, and various places within a moderate bike’s ride at which to do them; I had ...
Sad Naomi Osaka Is The Saddest Sight In Tennis
One endearing thing about Naomi Osaka is that she seems to actually digest and carefully respond to the questions asked of her in press. Where many athletes are ready to spit out some prepackaged platitude—which, in fairness, is about the level of thought that most post-game queries deserve, in any ...
15-Year-Old Coco Gauff Upsets Venus Williams At Wimbledon
Cori “Coco” Gauff is still a teenager, but her legend precedes her. The first story I ever heard involving the American prodigy was about her serving incomprehensible heat while she was barely a teenager. Soon enough there were official figures to back that up. Last year at the Wimbledon junior tour...
Celtics Bring In More Normal All-Star Guard
Minutes after Kyrie Irving shipped himself off to Brooklyn to try and get the Nets to interested in channeling the cosmos, the Celtics have gone ahead and signed a more-than-suitable replacement for this upcoming season: Kemba Walker....
Ancient War Goblin Henry Kissinger Defends Olympics In <i>Los Angeles Times</i>
Every global-scale sporting event exists in a strange standoff with itself. On one side is the inevitable bloat and graft and soul-deep cynicism that animates every such event—the neighborhoods flattened or surveilled or otherwise punished for sitting where a stadium is supposed to be, the bribery a...
A Scout's Honor
You don’t get to choose which parts of your past are remembered. ...
Let's Remember Some Guys: They Enlarged Greg Minton's Teeth
There is something about a mustache that disorients a person. It is a grooming decision first and foremost, but also and in a broader sense it is a choice. Growing a bunch of hair on your upper lip and then getting like marinara sauce and old bits of cake in it is, at bottom, a decision that you mak...
Former Kings Executive Sentenced To Seven Years In Prison For Repurposing $13.4 Million Of Sponsorship Loot
Former Sacramento Kings and Miami Heat chief revenue officer Jeffrey David was sentenced to seven years in prison Monday for embezzling $13.4 million from two Kings sponsors in an arena naming rights scheme he executed in 2015. David pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges...
Let's Remember Some Guys: American Gladiators Beyond Thunderdome
How smart do you want your sports to be, really? Not the athletes involved, who will invariably have the kind of fast and opportunistic and almost automatic intelligence that athletes display in the moment, but the sport itself. Do you want it to be complex and governed by arcane rules, or just so s...
Copa América Has Been A Horrible Mess So Far
We’re through the first round of group stage games in the 2019 Copa América, and there’s really only one thing we know for sure: this tournament is total ass. The first six matches have been plagued by blowouts, VAR nonsense, and all the usual CONMEBOL-flavored bullshit. This isn’t a bug, but rather...