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The Time A Baseball Player Sent A Rat To A Female Sportswriter
This column originally appeared in the Sacramento Bee on June 26, 1986. It is reprinted here with the author's permission. ...

Bros Gone Wild: Riot Erupts After U.S. Open Of Surfing
Huntington Beach, Calif., hosted the U.S Open of Surfing this weekend, and shit got way out of hand. Shortly after the conclusion of the competition, downtown Huntington Beach was swarmed by a mass of bros, apparently driven a bit mad by the heat and the ocean air. Portable toilets were tipped, impr...

The Happiest Hooligan Of Them All
Here's the original manuscript of W.C. Heinz's 1959 True magazine story on Pepper Martin: "The Happiest Hooligan Of Them All." ...

The Evolution of Bicycles
From Gizmodo: 100 Years of Tour de France Bikes mapping the evolution of cycling....

Straight, No Chaser
Last week, we featured an excerpt from Eliot Asinof's fine baseball novel, Man on Spikes. Today, here's more on Asinof....

Bitter and Beat by the Heat
Eliot Asinof is most famous for writing Eight Men Out. (He is less famous for once being married to Marlon Brando’s sister.) Asinof played minor league ball in the Phillies system for three years before World War II. His first book Man on Spikes was published in 1955 and to my mind is one of the bes...

It's A Turd! It's Plain! <em>Man Of Steel</em>, Reviewed.
1. On the surface, it seems obvious why you'd attempt to reboot the Superman franchise using the Christopher Nolan-Batman model. Nolan's Dark Knight films are terrific, brooding and powerful, and, oh by the way, they grossed a combined $2.5 billion worldwide. But their trying to make a tortured-supe...

How Dr. J Blackified Pro Ball, Found Himself, And Stayed Eternally Cool
Originally published in Esquire in February 1985 and anthologized in Teenage Hipster in the Modern World, a stellar collection of Mark Jacobson's non-fiction. Reprinted here with the author's permission....

The Little Superhero Movie That Couldn't: Defending <i>Superman Returns</i>
Next Friday, Man of Steel opens. It's the second stab by Warner Bros. to reboot the Superman franchise since its Christopher Reeve movies of the late 1970s and '80s. (And that's not even including all the failed attempts to get a new Superman movie off the ground, including a Batman Vs. Superman pro...

This High School Water Polo Player Is A Very Sore Loser
What you are looking at are members of the St. Thomas Aquinas and Belen Jesuit water polo teams lining up to shake hands after their state championship match in Miami. What you are also looking at is one of the Belen players deciding to go out with a flourish....

Cool Hand Joe
If you've never read Gay Talese's seminal Esquire magazine story on Joe DiMaggio, do yourself a favor and check out "The Silent Season of a Hero."...

Professional Cyclists Crash Into Road Signs Too, Sometimes
Yoann Offredo would like a re-do. Yoan Offredo would have been better riding offroado. A guy on a bike hit a sign....

The 13 Most Annoying Men Of March Madness
We've done enough loving on March Madness this week. March Madness is a wonderful time of the year, but it is also to be hated on: The fluffy mascots dancing around like they own the place, the pepped-out pep squads cheering like they actually believe in something, the crabby coaches, the clueless a...

Northwestern Has Fired Bill Carmody After 13 Years Of Decent-By-Northwestern-Standards Basketball
In 13 seasons as the head coach at Northwestern University, an alleged Big Ten basketball program, Bill Carmody’s signature moment might’ve been getting hired in the first place. And that, presumably, is why the school fired him today. Cracker-box facilities, lack of tradition, and academic pressure...

What The Paterno Family's Investigation Got Right And Wrong About The Freeh Report
The Paterno family's exhaustive evaluation of the Freeh report, prepared by the family's attorney and other experts who were paid to reach the conclusions the family wanted, is right about this much: The proof that Joe Paterno orchestrated or even participated in a malicious cover-up of Jerry Sandus...

Here Is The Paterno Family's Response To The Freeh Report
Joe Paterno’s family’s PR machine is up and running. The family of the late Penn State coach’s response to the Freeh report is now live online, and three of the four men who prepared the report—former Pennsylvania governor and ex-U.S. attorney general Dick Thornburgh, Paterno family attorney Wick So...

The Paterno Family's Counteroffensive Has Begun
As we mentioned the other day, the widow of Joe Paterno's big interview with Katie Couric is all set to go down on Monday afternoon. But the timing of that interview now makes much more sense: The Centre Daily Times of State College, Pa., is reporting that the Paterno family's long-awaited rebuttal ...

Watch Ray Lewis Yell About Weapons After The Ravens Beat The Broncos
Here's Ray Lewis's response to Solomon Wilcots's first post-game question after the Ravens beat the Broncos in double overtime. He's quoting Isaiah 54:17, which in the New King James Version reads:...

Seahawks Corner Richard Sherman Won His PED Test Appeal, And Then Dropped The Mic On Twitter
Back in November, Seahawks corners Brandon Browner and Richard Sherman—the league's best tandem, until Darrelle Revis's ACL heals—both tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs (reportedly Adderall) and faced four-game suspensions. Browner decided not to appeal, and his suspension will conclud...

A Frustrated Neil Everett Muttered "Son Of A Bitch, Goddammitdangit" Live On <em>SportsCenter</em>
An apparently rough episode of SportsCenter got the best of anchor Neil Everett tonight, as going to break a hot microphone caught the personality muttering some mildly inappropriate language at the end of tonight's 1 a.m. show....