si Page 660 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Yasiel Puig Loves Playing In The Snow, Is Still A Giant Six-Year-Old
When we last checked in on Yasiel Puig's Instagram account, we found him proudly showing off all of his neat toys like a kid trying to impress the new neighbor boy. This one is mine. So is this one. Do you have this one? I got it for Christmas. Now, we find him frolicking in a patch of snow and cont...

Why Do NBA Playoff Games Take So Long?
While it's common knowledge (and a common complaint) that the NBA playoffs as a whole take a long time to complete, it's often the case that the games themselves take a long time as well. Part of this is due to overtimes being (slightly) more frequent in the playoffs than in the regular season—6.0 p...

Get Ready To Hate The Caxirola
Brazil's answer to the vuvuzela? Not quite. The "official musical instrument of the 2014 World Cup" is softer—it produces a rattle, not a blare. Another thing in favor of your viewing experience: it's been formally banned from Brazilian stadiums. But that hasn't stopped fans from bringing them in so...


The Spurs Are Too Good For Advanced Stats To Measure
A curious stat popped up on ESPN's Stats & Info feed yesterday. "Tony Parker sat nearly as much as he played this season and the @spurs were slightly better per 100 poss. without him," it read. This says more about Spurs, and the stats we use, than it does about Parker. ...

Running Coach Fired For Running Boston Marathon
On Wednesday, April 23, Matt Aguero was terminated as the head track and cross country coach of St. Gregory's University in Shawnee, Okla. Unless you keep abreast of internal developments within NAIA sports, you probably missed the news. But hear me out now, because what happened to Aguero will be a...

Which Hockey Leagues Have The Most Fights?
The NHL has a lot more fights than, say, the NFL, but how does it stack up against other levels of hockey competition? To find out, Simon Garnier of Graph Zoo pulled data from the (hilariously '90s) site dropyourgloves.com and put together a neat graphic on "fights per game" across almost 100 active...

Which Countries Get Carded The Most At The World Cup?
Quartz has crunched the numbers on World Cup penalties, counting all the yellow and red cards for every squad back to 1970. Slovenia comes in number one, racking up 20 cards in their six World Cup games (3.33 per game). Peru was the least penalized, with nine cards in 13 games (0.69 per game)....

Jon Jones Trolls The UFC, Fans, The World
Last year, Jon Jones, the best fighter alive, defended his light heavyweight title against Alexander Gustafsson. It was great! The Swede couldn't pull out the win, but he became the only challenger ever to give Jones real trouble. Everyone wanted to see a rematch....

All 204 World Cup Shootout Attempts, In One Chart
With the tournament starting next week, the BBC has put together a neat little guide on "what makes the perfect World Cup shootout penalty." The graphic above—showing the location and result of all 204 World Cup shootout attempts—is just one of several neat visuals; go check them all out....

Jon Singleton Homers In First Career Game, Gets A Gum And Gatorade Bath
Jon Singleton, the Astros' first base prospect with a left-handed swing that was built to launch homers, made his MLB debut last night. Things weren't looking so good at first, as Singleton started the game with two errors and two strikeouts. He made up for the rocky start in the bottom of the 8th i...

Watch Football Players Get Taller And Heavier Over 90 Years Of The NFL
NFL height/weight data has been visualized before, but a new animation by WYNC's Noah Veltman may be the snappiest version yet. Over on his site you can watch the size of NFL players steadily expand through the early '70s, stagnate, and then spike again—mostly in terms of weight—in the late '80s....

On The Underrated Sublimity Of Throwing Your Miserable Guts Up
I come to sing the praises of a good, hard puke....

Dan Marino Says He Sued The NFL By Accident, Withdrawing Lawsuit
Yesterday, word made its way out that Dan Marino would join a suit against the NFL over the effects of brain trauma suffered during his career. Today, word from the Sun Sentinel is, Whoops, my bad guys. ...

Lethally Blonde: Miranda Lambert's Cheerful Country-Radio Revolution
You approach a Miranda Lambert song called "Automatic" with certain expectations—by not approaching it at all, really, instead crouching behind a desk, or a wall, or a Camaro, or something, braced for a cleansing, delightful hail of epithets and flames and bullets. She's a Texan country superstar wh...

Wedding Photo Shoots Continue To Be Menaced By Collapsing Docks
This is a thing that just keeps happening, over and over again. ...

Dan Marino Sues NFL Over Concussions
Noted jury-duty-skipper and production-assistant-humper Dan Marino, as well as 14 more former players, joined the more than 5,000 players suing the NFL over the effects of concussions during their time in the league. ...

Better Ways To Name Hurricanes, Ranked
There's a paper making its way around the internet today that puts forth that hurricanes that are named after women have been historically more deadly than those named after men. There's an appealing simplicity of stupid to this—people associate men with strength, and get killed by hurricanes becaus...

The Astros Just Changed The Game For Big Prospects In Small Markets
Today, the Astros signed prospect Jon Singleton to a big contract extension before he's played a game in the majors. It's a bit of baseball history, but more than that, it's an undeniably great move for Houston, and a look at the future of how small market teams will attempt to stay competitive....