sports Page 877 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Best Damn Sports Show Shuffles Off This Mortal Coil
Fox's "The Best Damn Sports Show Period" will hold its last show tonight after 8 years of wacky on-air sports-related hi-jinx and absurd athlete-celebrity couch pairings. Watch Charissa Thompson and Chris Rose get weepy....

Happiness Broke This High School Pitcher's Leg
Broken bones are commonplace in sports, but a fracture during an on-field post-game celebration is a little more rare. Yet, that's exactly how Auburn high school pitcher Chris Halliday most likely finished his baseball career....

Billy Mays Dead At 50
"Billy Mays here!" Not anymore. Chad Ochocinco was wrong. This is worse than 9/11. Now let's all watch his ESPN360 commercials and weep gently. [TBO]...

Michael Jackson Dies. Chad Johnson Says It's "Just As Sad As 9/11."
The LA Times is saying King of Pop Michael Jackson died today after suffering a heart attack. He was 50. Because this is a sports blog, here's a video, via NESW Sports, of Jackson playing one-on-one with Michael Jordan. RIP....

Twit Wars: The Sports Fella Vs. Mike Dunleavy, Sr.
Simmons is leaving blood on the keyboard because Clippers' coach Mike Dunleavy called him a "joke writer" on Cowherd's radio show. A possible tag-team bout with OchoCinco/Dunleavy vs. Merriman/Sports Fella is forthcoming. Let's make it a strap match. [SportsGuy33]...

Tom Verducci Has Found His Latest Anti-Drug Mascot: Joe Mauer
Oh, lookie. Here's Tom Verducci, once again on the cover of Sports Illustrated, once again turning real live baseball players into toy soldiers whom he can draft into his own personal war on steroids....

Sportswear Company Outplays Nike, Loses Anyway
It's a classic underdog tale—an upstart company devises a brilliant product plan, employs pluck and good fortune to make their dream a reality, and takes on the big boys....and then is summarily crushed by a large, multinational corporation....

Scoring At Home: Your <em>SportsCenter</em> Catchphrase-O-Meter
An occasional feature in which we explain and evaluate a SportsCenter anchor's pet phrase. Today's phrase: "I know a cat named Way Out Willy."...

Lenny Dykstra Lets The World Know He's "Flying Higher"
Here's the portion of Bernard Goldberg's follow-up with Lenny Dykstra from last night's "Real Sports" where The Dude daftly mumbles his way through an interview he appears to have completely forgotten was scheduled....

HBO Finally Outs Lenny Dykstra As Bumbling, Sad, Delusional Trainwreck
It was a little more than a year ago that HBO's Bernard Goldberg naively bolstered Lenny Dykstra's reputation as a simple hustler with a golden touch who earned millions after his baseball career had ended. Oh how things have changed....

Note To Sportswriters: Wide Receivers Aren't Actually Divas
Don Banks, the Sports Illustrated writer last seen comparing Matt Millen to Dick Nixon in a good way, wonders today why so many wide receivers act like divas. Not to pick on Banks again, but ......

Rick Reilly Before He Was Rick Reilly®
Once upon a time, before he was a walking Father's Day card, before his writing became a neverending telethon for the blind and the deaf, the palsied and the pinkieless, the one-armed and the no-legged, Rick Reilly was really good....

The Mets Do What The Mets, Pressured Third Graders Do
Luis Castillo is now the face of the New York Mets' misery. All he had to do was catch that popup, and we're not talking about him....

The Unfortunate Ambushing Of Jerod Morris' Raul Ibanez Post
The "acceptance" of sports bloggers took a nasty nosedive yesterday afternoon when Jerod Morris of Midwest Sports Fans was thrown into the Outside The Lines sausage maker for a little mainstream media, Inc. beat down....

How Did Green Day Become The SportsCenter House Band?
SportsCenter doesn't often use popular music as background for their various clip packages, but if you watch as much of the show as I do, you may have noticed that only one band ever seems to make the cut....

The Last, Best Sports Staff
A long, long time ago, when writers puffed on cigars in the press box and sipped scotches with their sources, the best sports journalism lived in print. And nobody did it better than The Boston Globe....

Yes, The Jonas Brothers Were On SportsCenter Last Night
Earlier this week, Sports Media Journal questioned the purpose of hosting SportsCenter in Los Angeles, prompting ESPN flacks to defend the move, in part, by citing "additional access to sports and entertainment celebrities." Like the Jonas Brothers!...

Make Some Space On Your CBS Sports Fantasy Teams
Stephen Strasburg wasn't one of The Chosen Ones, but he is otherworldy enough to be one of Washington's starting pitchers before the MLB Draft. In all fairness, CBS' geeksquad was probably just prepping for summer vacation. [CBS Sports]...

Tracking Bryce Harper's Moonshot
Sports Illustrated claims that Chosen Person Bryce Harper, as a 15-year-old, hit a 570-foot home run in Las Vegas, an anecdote that is equal parts Sidd Finch, Paul Bunyan and Jesus. And I'll be damned: It just might be true....

A Portrait Of The Columnist As A Young Virgin
Long before John Rocker offered him his thoughts on New York City transit, SI.com columnist Jeff Pearlman was a rosy-cheeked collegian who was more than happy to share his sexual habits with the world....