rant Page 86 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
This Is Now The Pittsburgh Pirates' Worst Season Ever
There was Pat Meares, and there was Operation Shutdown. There were those 100 losses in 2001, the year PNC Park opened. There was whatever they did to mess up Oliver Perez. There was that lost Saturday night in Anaheim in '07, when Ian Snell just couldn't take it anymore. And there was last year's 19...
Hey, America, Don't Let Your Children Shit At Restaurant Tables
Here's a fun little news item: a Utah woman named Kimberley Decker took her kids out to eat and snapped a photo of a nearby family toilet-training their kids right at the dinner table. Instead of having their kids sit on booster seats, the mother had them sitting on portable toilets, so that they co...
<em>Sports Illustrated</em> Senior Writer Calls ESPN A "Cesspool," Unethical
Well, surprise, surprise. ESPN finds itself in yet-another dust-up with its journalistic practices....
Are Football Players Really Living Longer Than Baseball Players? Why Grantland's Study Is Wrong
Grantland recently published an article, "Mere Mortals," by Bill Barnwell, which claims that:...
Red Sox Farmhand Flips Over Wall To Wall To Make Grand Slam-Denying Catch
Jason Repko has spent the bulk of his 13-year career in professional baseball in the minor leagues, and he's logged much of that time in Triple-A, most of it with the Dodgers organization. He played in more than 50 games for the Twins in both 2010 and 2011 before signing a free-agent deal with the R...
The Time Has Come For America's Flight Attendants To Shut Up
I think we can all agree that the emcee-ization of America's flight attendants has grown steadily worse over the past decade. And today, reader Kurt has sent us (and Gawker) arguably the nadir of flight attendant pep talks. I must warn you in advance that these will be among the two most painfully a...
Two Golfers, A Kicker, A Lemonade-Lovin' Linebacker, And One Crazy Goalie: The Few Athletes Who Endorsed Chick-Fil-A
A rule of thumb: if you'd like to learn about the next culture-war shitstorm before it hits, you're best served by visiting sort-of Bruins goalie Tim Thomas's Facebook page. (I say "sort-of" because Thomas has announced he'll take next year off from the NHL.) Thomas weighed in on Obamacare and birth...
Why Would An Olympic Basketball Player Not Want To Lead His Team In Scoring? To Avoid Drug Testing.
Thanks to Grant Hill, another interesting piece of Olympic basketball lore has risen to the surface. Yesterday, Hill went on the Dan Patrick Show, and talked about how nobody on the 1996 Olympic basketball team wanted to be the team's leading scorer, because that person would automatically have to ...
Kevin Durant, James Harden, And Deron Williams Are On A Segway Tour Across Europe
Durant posted this picture of himself and a couple USA basketball teammates on Segways this morning with the caption, "Barcelona." The 1992 Dream Team partied with the locals 'til all hours; the 2012 version of USA Basketball Instagrams photos of themselves on Segways, wearing helmets....
Ryan Kalil Takes Out Full-Page Newspaper Ad Guaranteeing A Panthers Super Bowl Victory
Athletes have to mince words. You ask them if they think they're the best, or if their team is going to win it all, and they probably believe the answer is yes, but know they can't just say that. They know they'll get roasted in the media and by opposing fans and players, so they pussyfoot around. T...
Counterpoint: Ads On Jerseys Are Bush-League Crap, And If You Think They're OK, You're A Stooge
Oh, gee, the NBA wants to build on its incredible globe-spanning success and goodwill by putting ads on its uniforms, because...that's how they do it in the WNBA. And MLS. And various other unpopular and/or foreign sports leagues, and uh NASCAR, which, really? NASCAR was a long-form automobile comme...
Read The Full Saga Of The Piggyback Bandit
Back in 2009, we wrote about the strange antics of Sherwin Shayegan, otherwise known as the Piggyback Bandit. Intrigued by Sherwin's story, the fine folks at Grantland sent Bryan Curtis on the bandit's trail in the hopes that some sense could be made of the man's obsession with piggyback rides....
Everything You Could Ever Want To Know About The Early Years Of WFAN, And More
Grantland's oral history whizzes have cooked up a doozy today on WFAN, the all-day New York sports talk radio station. Mike Francesa doesn't speak in the piece—a footnote explains that it's a "matter of principle" regarding his beef with ESPN—but everybody else does. Imus, Rose, Russo, Somers, Eagle...
Kevin Durant's Post-Game Tears Are Sad, Chilling
While the Heat celebrated their second NBA championship on the court, Kevin Durant's private-turned-public moment caught plenty of attention as tears streamed down the Thunder star's face as he hugged his mother....
Everyone Relax: The Guy Burning The Kevin Durant Jersey Isn't A Thunder Fan
This Twitter photo of a man in a Braves cap setting fire to a Kevin Durant jersey is making the rounds this morning. There's all kinds of hand-wringing about Thunder fans and fake fans and bandwagoners and what do you people want, James Harden was cold and Russell Westbrook made a dumb mistake and S...
The Thunder-Heat Series Isn't About The Noise; It's About The Beauty
Before turning on the television to watch Game 3 of the NBA Finals last night, I made the mistake of going to ESPN.com to read about the game, and then I compounded that mistake by clicking on this link, which led me to a video clip of Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless screaming about how terrible ...
Yes, LeBron James Fouled Kevin Durant
Kevin Durant's shot with 10 seconds left to tie last night's NBA Finals Game 2 didn't drop, and now the series is tied 1-1. Arguing over whether a foul should have been called on LeBron James is silly; Durant just as easily could have been called for a charge moments before, and there's no guaran...
What Dwyane Wade And LeBron James Can Learn From Kevin Durant And Russell Westbrook After Game 1
The Miami Heat began the third quarter of Game 1 of the NBA finals leading by seven points. The Heat had played brilliantly throughout the first half, executing crisp passes that criscrossed the floor and left the Thunder unable to close out on wide open three-point shooters. It looked like the Hea...
Dear ESPN: Your Movie-Tie-In Promos Suck
I was watching the NBA Finals last night. Or, at least, I was attempting to watch them. ESPN was unconcerned with my ability to watch the fucking game and much more interested in running 17 different introductory segments to the game. This is what ESPN always does. They run a dramatic intro to the g...