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Michael Wilbon Just Can't Decide How Much He Hates DC Sports Fans
Michael Wilbon has a problem. There's been all this winning and fun times going on with DC sports this year, so some major magazines are starting to tout DC's merits as a Great Sports Town. Problem is, when ESPN The Magazine rolled out its DC lovefest this week, we learned that Wilbon supplies the ...

The NHL Just Canceled The First Two Weeks Of Its Regular Season
The NHL has locked out its players for nearly a month now, and today we saw the first meaningful casualty: the first two weeks of hockey are gone. The NHL's usual wacky overseas openers had been scrapped back in March, but now the rest of the openers—Kings-Rangers, Flames-Canucks, Sens-Habs—are gone...

Rockets Rookie Wants To Ride The Team Bus To Away Games
Royce White, the Houston Rockets' first-round draft pick, has struggled with anxiety disorder his entire life. Among other things, White is prone to panic attacks and harbors an immense fear of flying. It's tough to be an NBA player if one can't fly....

Right After Bobby Valentine Gets Fired, ESPN Runs A Segment About Why He's Still The Manager Of The Red Sox
ESPN was covering the breaking news of Bobby Valentine's firing when the network accidentally aired a pre-recorded Tim Kurkjian segment, one that was presumably meant to air under the (unlikely) condition of Valentine returning as the Red Sox's manager for 2013. Oops. Chris McKendry did her best to ...

Curt Schilling Might Have To Sell His Bloody Sock In Order To Pay Down His Debt
The Red Sox have had a bad year, but Curt Schilling's has been worse. At least the Red Sox have money. Schilling's video game company, 38 Studios, filed for bankruptcy in June. Even worse, 38 Studios owes around $150 million to creditors, including a $100 million loan from the state of Rhode Island....

The 7 Stages Of A Bobby Valentine Meltdown
The worst part of Bobby Valentine's soon-to-be-over slow-motion train wreck with the Red Sox is its predictability. To say that Bobby Valentine has never gracefully handled a losing season would only obscure the fact that he's never gracefully handled any season. (Even during the salad days with the...

The First Season Of Marlins Park Was A Tremendous Failure
The Miami Marlins opened their new ballpark in April to much pomp and fanfare and cringe-inducing spectacle, and there were great hopes that the empty orange seats that had come to represent the very idea of baseball in South Florida would fast become but a memory. Funny thing about that! The team, ...

If You're In New York Tonight, Come Hear Some Splendid Writers Talk About Their Favorite Nearly Great Baseball Players
This month's edition of Gelf's terrific Varsity Letters reading series is tonight, with a great lineup of baseball writers reading from their essays in the Hall of Nearly Great e-book. You want Craig Fehrman? You got him! How about David Roth of The Classical, Marc Normandin of SB Nation, and Emma S...

An Exhaustive Audio History Of The "Yankees Suck" Chant
This week's excerpt from Slate's Hang Up and Listen podcast is super-timely. It's got the Red Sox, the Yankees, and people who say the Yankees suck. Can't ever get enough of them. Massholes, like Sully. Gotta love Sully. And there's politics! There's some kind of political affair tonight, isn't ther...

A Miserable Season From The Houston Astros Ended With A Glorious Faceplant In The Dirt
Poor Carlos Corporán, who actually had a good game for the 'stros, getting them on the board with a run-scoring single in the first and then grabbing another hit after Houston tied the game in the eighth with a three-run home run. However, a botched hit-and-run turned Corporán into an easy out for C...

The Replacement Ref Disaster Was The Most Watched <i>Monday Night Football</i> So Far This Season: Last Week’s TV Ratings, In Context
A weekly feature wherein we contextualize TV ratings for national sports broadcasts. Data via Nielsen and Sports Business Journal's John Ourand. Viewership numbers represent approximate number of persons tuned to a given program; ratings share refers to the percentage of all households using a telev...

Bristolmetrics: The Best <em>SportsCenter</em> Of 2012
This is a regular feature breaking down, minute-by-minute, the content that appears on ESPN's 11 p.m. edition of SportsCenter throughout the week....

"What Do You Want Me To Do—Tell You How Bad My Life Is, How Shitty It Is?": Adam Greenberg's Journey Back To The Majors
In 2005, Adam Greenberg was struck in the head with a fastball in his first major-league at-bat. He's spent the last seven years trying to get back to the majors. Last week, he signed a one-day contract with the Marlins and got his second career at-bat to a standing ovation in Miami last night. He s...

Damien Echols Of The West Memphis Three Is Here To Answer Your Questions
Earlier today, we ran an excerpt from Damien Echols's new book, Life After Death, about his time on death row following his wrongful conviction in the murder of three 8-year-old boys. If you haven't yet, be sure to give it a read. The book is available on Amazon....

This Rap Song About Seattle Sports Might Make Your Ears Bleed
Any rap song about Seattle, or so I'm told, has to include shoutouts to all the great Emerald City sports stars, and Riff Raff provides all of them: Ken Griffey Sr. and Jr., Shawn Kemp, Gary Payton, and Brian Bosworth, with a Craig Sager reference thrown in because why not? Alas, Steve Largent, Ed...

I Had The Best Cell On Death Row: A Member Of The West Memphis Three On Life In The Shadow Of Execution
In 1994, Damien Echols and two of his friends, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, were wrongfully convicted in what prosecutors called a satanic ritual murder of three 8-year-old boys. Echols, the leader of the group, was sentenced to death; Baldwin and Misskelley received life sentences. The trio...

The Honky Tonk Man Will Not Sign Your Corn Dog Napkin: More Wrestler Run-Ins
Inspired by the saga of "Wrestling Superstar Virgil," we continue with readers' encounters with the titans of the squared circle. If you've had your own run-in with pro wrestlers past or present, e-mail us, subject line "Virgilbag."...

Bobby Valentine Fell Off His Bicycle Into A Waterlogged Ditch
Bobby Valentine was riding his bicycle around the Central Park Reservoir and then—what do you know—he fell into a ditch:...

A Wee Bird Terrorized One Yankee Stadium Grounds Crew Worker
You just never know when a li'l injured/scared bird will come onto a baseball field and starting flopping and flailing before (kinda) flying off, but this one made sure it first made an unfortunate example out of a Yankee Stadium worker. Oh, and don't miss the part where Michael Kay thinks, if onl...

Mike McQueary Has Filed A $4 Million Lawsuit Against Penn State
Mike McQueary, the former Penn State assistant football coach who witnessed Jerry Sandusky touching a boy in the school's football building shower 11 years ago, has filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the university, accusing it of defamation and misrepresentation. He's seeking $4 million plus dam...