si Page 738 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

NBC's Fake <em>USA Today</em> Pages Actually Text From The <em>Chicago Sun-Times</em>
You may have noticed NBC running these stupid, horribly-Photoshopped USA Today pages on their sports broadcasts recently. The mockups were inane enough before we realized the text was plagiarized from a Chicago Sun-Times article about this year's Notre Dame-Michigan football game....


Does The Majority Party Have An Advantage In Congressional Ballgame?
Tonight, Congress will once again take part in its annual baseball game, an ultra-American tradition that dates back to 1909. The Democrats, led by Louisiana Ace Cedric Richmond, have won the last four, but Republicans have a new weapon in freshman Rep. Ron DeSantis. Both played serious college ball...

Mets Approached Cougar Site About Stuffing Ballot Box For David Wright
When the first vote totals for the MLB All-Star Game were released last week, David Wright was in second. A desperate Mets marketing department didn't want Wright to lose to Pablo Sandoval for the second year in a row, especially not with the game being held at Citi Field. So one employee decided t...

Why'd It Have To Be Snakes?
Gordon Wright, another lover of classic sports writing, suggested this fun piece of work by Jeff MacGregor. From Sports Illustrated back in 1998, dig "Snakes Alive!"...

Good Old Sidney
Here's a story I wrote a few years ago about watching Dog Day Afternoon on TV late one afternoon with my Dad:...

Phil Esposito On The Stanley Cup Final: "Doesn't Mean Shit To Me"
Phil Esposito was a five-time NHL scoring champion whose best playing days were with the Bruins. But he began his career in Chicago, where his brother, Tony, was a Hall of Fame goalie. That said, Esposito's rooting interest in this year's Stanley Cup final is easier than you think....

What Hockey Needs Is More Violence
Originally published in Inside Sports in January 1981....

What Becomes a Legend Most?
I've got a friend who doesn't watch the NBA much but has caught the first three games of the Finals and proclaims that LeBron James isn't as great as everyone says. Never mind that mind-numbing argument, here's a vintage Bill Simmons Page 2 column on what it was like growing up watching Larry Bird:...

Lionel Messi Accused Of Tax Fraud
A Spanish prosecutor has formally filed a complaint against Barcelona striker Lionel Messi and his father, accusing the two of submitting fraudulent tax returns for four years....

Yasiel Puig Takes Fastball To Face, Stays In Game, Sparks Huge Brawl
Dodgers superman Yasiel Puig continues to impress, and his latest feat is taking a fastball to the face and managing to get up and take his base—something that eventually led to a big fight....

Rogen's Heroes: <em>This Is the End</em>, Reviewed.
When they're not performing, actors are basically worthless human beings. Or so goes the central joke in This Is the End, and it turns out that you can make a really funny movie based almost entirely on that joke. Written and directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and based on their short Jay and...

Darkness Visible
Check out this column by Chris Jones from ESPN The Magazine on Rebecca Marino and Depression:...

What is this shit? "The San Antonio Spurs picked Tim Duncan on June 25, 1997, about seven weeks before Matt Stone and Trey Parker launched their new animated series on Comedy Central....Both the Spurs and South Park generated so many classic moments over the years, they practically blend into each o...

Dad's Last Visit
Another Father's Day story. This one by Pat Jordan. "Dad's Visit," originally published in AARP back in 2006:...

Sometimes, Victory Can Be Agony Too
Send stories, photos, and anything else you might have to [email protected]....

A <i>Coach</i> Live Blog? You're Goddamned Right A <i>Coach</i> Live Blog
Welcome back to the much-anticipated second chapter of our occasionally continuing coverage of the late-80s-mid-90s classic sitcom Coach. It's on Netflix. You can stream it and watch it with me and the other six or seven degenerates still hanging around....

Custody Battle Over Baby Orphaned By Jovan Belcher's Murder-Suicide
When Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher murdered his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, before killing himself last December, the saddest consequence was that little Zoey Michelle Belcher would be left without parents. Relatives of both Belcher and Perkins have staked custody claims, and they can't agree on...

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....
