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Greg Maddux Taught Me How To Watch Baseball
Having purchased a Hall of Fame ballot, which we filled out in accordance with the wishes of our readers, we're reviewing the merits—and relative lack of merits—of all 36 players on this year's ballot. All entries in the series can be found here....

Chart: All 64 Potential NFC Seeding Outcomes
There's been a lot of talk about the injustice of an 11-5 Arizona Cardinals team not making the playoffs—a distinct possibility!—but we could also have a 12-4 team as the 5 seed and an 11-5 team as the 6 in the NFC....

The Worst Films Of 2013
Yes, many people are already writing their Top 10 movie lists for 2013. We're saving ours for the last week of the year. While we wait for this terrific movie year to wind down, we're going to start looking back at some highlights. Today, it's the five worst films each of us saw this year, in alp...

Why That Dumb AIDS Tweet Was So Captivating
Will Leitch, senior writer at Sports On Earth and founder of Deadspin, is doing his yearly fill-in for Drew Magary on today's Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo. (Here is 2011's version, and here's 2012's.) Leitch has written four books. Find more of his business at his Twitter feed....

College Hockey Player And Coach Suspended For Not Filling Out Form
Here's a heartwarming story for the holiday season about a college hockey coach who did the right thing, a player who did nothing wrong, and the insipid bureaucracy that suspended them both, apparently just for the hell of it....

Rafael Palmeiro Was The Ideal Steroids Scapegoat
Rafael Palmeiro was going to stroll into the Hall of Fame. It's sort of unbelievable to remember this fact, as we try to gaze back over the ruptured fault line between the Steroids Era and the Steroids Recriminations Era. There wasn't really anything to argue about, back then. He was in....

These Guys Sucked In The Playoffs. Should That Matter To HOF Voters?
Having acquired a Hall of Fame ballot, which we'll be filling out in accordance with the wishes of our readers, we're examining the merits—and relative lack of merits—of all 36 players on this year's ballot for the purposes of better informing the electorate, i.e., you. All entries in the series can...

Deadspin Loses One Hall Of Fame Vote, But Gains Another
Recently, as you know, we announced that we had purchased a Hall of Fame ballot from a veteran baseball writer, with the intention of turning it over to Deadspin readers. The idea was to give a bit of power to ordinary baseball fans, and to draw attention to the increasing absurdity of the Hall of F...

The Main Ingredient
Over at a cool site called Forty-Sixth at Grace, check out the "For the Love of Pie" series....

Tony La Russa: Hall Of Famer
(Rescuing pets is a nice thing to do.)...

The NCAA Is Not Going To Tolerate Excess Education
Originally published at Bloomberg View....

Kenny Rogers, The Gambler Who Embodied Suffering And Abject Failure
Having purchased a Hall of Fame ballot, which we'll be filling out in accordance with the wishes of our readers, we're examining the merits—and relative lack of merits—of all 36 players on this year's ballot for the purposes of better informing the electorate, i.e., you. All entries in the series ca...

Hall Of Fame Voters Are Pickier Than They've Ever Been
Dave Cameron at FanGraphs has discovered something fascinating. Breaking down the number of men to play in the major leagues and the number of Hall of Famers by their birth year, he found that HOF electors have been remarkably consistent in the percentage of players they elect—roughly one percent to...

Do Native American Mascots Actually Cost Their Teams Money?
The "face of the franchise" debate in sports is always a curious one, because no matter how popular or talented a player might be, his face is not the one on the team's uniforms or merchandise. That is reserved for the mascot—the unnamed, disembodied heads adorning uniforms, as well as the Philly P...

Jack Morris Voter Hates What He Doesn't Understand (Numbers)
You want to list Jack Morris on your Hall of Fame ballot? Fine. You want to vote for Jack Morris and not offer a public explanation? Go for it, it's your vote! But when a BBWAA member announces his vote for Jack Morris, citing as a sabermetrics flaw a specific thing that sabermetrics do very well, t...

Swee'pea And The Shark: The Struggle For The Soul Of A Playground Hero
Originally published in the November 1992 issue of Esquire. Reprinted here with permission. An afterword from the author follows....

Edgar Martinez Murdered Baseballs Forever
Having purchased a Hall of Fame ballot, which we'll be filling out in accordance with the wishes of our readers, we're examining the merits—and relative lack of merits—of all 36 players on this year's ballot for the purposes of better informing the electorate, i.e., you. All entries in the series ca...

Love Song to Willie Mays
Joe Flaherty's love song to the Say Hey Kid. ...

The Painted Screens Of Baltimore
Rafael Alvarez has more about Elaine Eff's book in the Baltimore City Paper. ...

How Much Will Mike Trout Get Paid?
Any theoretical negotiation starts from this premise: He is 22 years old, and already the best player in baseball. (And if not for Miguel Cabrera's existence, he'd be the best by far.) We have already accepted that the economics of Mike Trout can't rely on past data, because there's nothing comparab...