obit Page 10 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Los Angeles Kings Have Cleaned House
The day after they ended the 2016-17 season with an overtime loss to their crosstown rivals in Anaheim, the Los Angeles Kings announced that they had fired head coach Darryl Sutter and longtime GM Dean Lombardi and promoted a pair of Hall of Famers. Rob Blake will replace Lombardi and Luc Robitaille...
The Gifts Jimmy Breslin Gave Me
It is hard to realize just how far away New York is by every conceivable measure unless you are in Salt Lake City when you are introduced to the world Jimmy Breslin populated with characters, con men and crusaders. I felt the sense of distance for the first time more than half a century ago, and it ...
Bill Paxton Was The Best
The brilliant actor Bill Paxton died on Saturday at the age of 61, after what several outlets have reported was a stroke following scheduled heart surgery. This is awful. He was a goddamn gem of a screen actor, and he has left the world so much poorer now that he won’t be boasting or grinning or mel...
Wrestling Legend George "The Animal" Steele Dead At 79
Growing up in the Washington, D.C. area in the ‘70s, I’d hear a rumor from fellow pro wrestling fans whenever we discussed George “The Animal” Steele, who died last night at 79, which held that he was a college math professor....
Mike Ilitch Was No Saint<em></em>
If you only went by what you read in the Detroit papers this week, you’d think Mike Ilitch—the pizza baron and owner of the Detroit Red Wings and Tigers who died last week at the age of 87—was a god incarnate. And for the last three decades, if you’d asked anyone in Michigan, you’d have gotten the s...
Report: ESPN Is Canceling <i>The Sports Reporters</i>
The Sports Reporters, a Sunday morning talk show in which boomer columnists who stopped actually watching sports when Michael Jordan retired for the second time take turns benevolently donating their dignifying Pensive Faces to the vulgar ball-games, will be canceled, according to a report by Sports...
Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka Dies At Age 73, Weeks After Murder Case Dismissed
Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, the legendary wrestler more recently charged with the 1983 death of his girlfriend, has died. He was 73. The case against Snuka was dismissed earlier this month after a judge ruled him incompetent to stand trial. His death was announced by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. ...
Ravens Assistant Coach Dies After Bout With Cancer
Baltimore Ravens assistant coach Clarence Brooks died Friday night after a bout with stomach and esophageal cancer. He was 65....
Phyllis Schlafly Finally Croaks
Phyllis Schlafly, who spent her adult life encouraging the American courts, legislature, and public to oppress women, among others, died tonight, not a moment too soon. She was 92....
A Few Ghosts Are Still Haunting George Michael's Sports Machine
Six years ago, the New York Times appended a correction to its obituary of George Michael, the sportscaster who pushed those big buttons on The Sports Machine, saying the original piece had “omitted three survivors.” The paper blamed the error on “information provided by a family member.”...
Alex Rodriguez Was Big Enough To Take All The Blame
It’s obvious where this begins: Thirteen years ago, at baseball’s annual winter meetings, the entire story was Alex Rodriguez and when and where he would be going. The Texas Rangers, who’d averaged 90 losses in three seasons with Rodriguez at shortstop, had made clear that they wanted out from under...
What We've Lost With Muhammad Ali
Yesterday, we lost Muhammad Ali, the Greatest of All Time. Note the absence of a noun in that title. He was not the Greatest Boxer of All Time; he was not the Greatest Athlete of All Time; he was not the Greatest Showman of All Time. No, Greatest stood alone, floating, butterfly-like, unencumbered b...
Growing Up Watching The Greatest
Muhammad Ali was the most popular guy in both the world and the McKenna household throughout my formative years. So I’m sad today, sadder than I’ll be about any other athlete’s death ever again. ...
Get Fucked, John Kasich
What even was John Kasich’s sweaty, affronted, whatever-happened-to-the-responsible-grownups-in-this-party act if not an even more insulting and ahistorical version of “Make America Great Again”? When was the last time the Republican Party had responsible grownups? When it sold a needless, catastrop...
Farewell To Ted Cruz, Self-Made Sucker
Ted Cruz, the worst possible man, lost the Indiana Republican primary to Donald Trump yesterday. He’d staked it as his last stand in the nominating race, even brokering a cynical armistice with John Kasich to unify anybody-but-Trump voters in the state, and got clobbered anyway, by some 17 percentag...
Prince Is Dead, Long Live Prince
So it’s true: Prince Rogers Nelson, a musician so superhuman that he was convincingly able to go by a single name even though that name is also a word, was found dead this morning at his studio compound in Minnesota. He was 57 years old, which is young for anyone, but so crushingly young for someone...
Kobe Bryant Is Finally Going Away
In a few hours Kobe Bryant’s career will be over. It was very long....
Johan Cruyff, The Man Who Invented Modern Soccer, Dies At 68
It would be impossible to even approach summing up the totality of Johan Cruyff’s unparalleled influence and contributions to the game of soccer in one blog post. First as the best player on the planet suiting up for Ajax, Barcelona, and the Dutch national team in the 1960s and 1970s, and later as a...
How To React To A Bad Person's Death
People die every day; famous people die over the course of many days. Those left behind watch as the internet floods with earnest RIPs and dewy-eyed takes and angry ripostes toward anyone with the gall to joke or critique At a Time Like This. In some instances, some otherwise empathetic people cut s...
Marco Rubio Will Have To Find Another Bed To Shit
Marco Rubio may very well be the emptiest suit to have campaigned for national office in my lifetime. He makes Paul Ryan look like Benjamin Disraeli....