story Page 15 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

AP: Upstart Regional School Has The Honor Of Playing Notre Dame For A National Title
Yes, there is no higher merriment in college football than making fun of Notre Dame. But let's not overlook the joys of taunting the other side of the BCS championship matchup. If only there had been a giant sphygmomanometer hooked up to the deep Confederacy last night, to record the mass blood-pres...

Marvin Miller, The Man Who Beat Some Sense Into Baseball
He was in the phone book. That's the thing that always got me about Marvin Miller, the former head of the MLB players association and the man who pulled baseball out of its crude prehistory. You expect your heroes to be unlisted. You don't expect to find one of them in the white pages, right there b...

Aural History: How An Old Lady In Brooklyn Ensured That The "Shot Heard 'Round The World" Call Was Heard 'Round The World
It was Oct. 3, 1951, and the New York Giants were about to lose the pennant to the Brooklyn Dodgers two games to one in a best-of-three series. In Brooklyn, a 26-year-old travel agent asked his mother to flip a switch on his reel-to-reel machine, and few moments later at the Polo Grounds in Upper ...

Where Would The NHL Be If Bain Capital Had Bought The Whole League In 2005?
It was March 2005, and the NHL's owners didn't know what to do. It had been six months since they'd locked out the players' union, trying to force concessions, but the players were still refusing to bear the brunt of spending cuts. Two weeks earlier, the league had finally canceled the already-delay...

History Lesson: The Time Dave Stewart Was Arrested For Soliciting A Transvestite Prostitute
An occasional feature in which we recall notable incidents that we would've covered the hell out of had we existed at the time....

"What's This Fucking Song?" How A Yankees Free Spirit Reluctantly Ushered In Baseball's Entrance-Music Era
Sparky Lyle's arrival in New York was nothing to get excited about. On March 22, 1972, the Boston Red Sox traded the good but nondescript lefty reliever to the Yankees for Danny Cater and a player to be named later. Ho-hum. But when he actually came into the games—that was something else. ...

Redskins Quarterback Had A Great Debut
For a bungling NFL franchise looking for a reason to believe, there's nothing quite like a breakout performance by a superstar quarterback. So after years of failure, Washington fans had to be delighted to see the numbers RGIII put up in his first start for the team. When you see a stat line like th...

How "Seven Nation Army" Conquered The Sports World
The Euro 2012 semifinals kick off today, and 69 goals in, you might have noticed one fan chant being sung after every single one. How did an eminently chantable White Stripes ditty become soccer's universal goal celebration? This piece, originally published Jan. 13, 2012, has your answers....
![We Have A Winner For The Dumbest Story Ever Written About Derek Jeter [NSFW?]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/17po8uagmcz3wjpg.jpg)
We Have A Winner For The Dumbest Story Ever Written About Derek Jeter [NSFW?]
We asked you on Monday, after a particularly objectionable item ran in the New York Post, to write the dumbest story ever about Derek Jeter. You did not let us down. ...

How I Threw My Hair-Perm Superfly Spitball, By Dock Ellis: A New Animated Short
The video above is "Superfly Spitball," an animated short that grew out of the same interview—conducted by Donnell Alexander and Neille Ilel—that gave us Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No. Animated by Heidi Perry and co-produced by Thor Swift, the short will appear in a forthcoming iBook, Beyond Ellis D....

What Dock Ellis Taught Me About Drugs, Spitballs, Hair Curlers, Office Culture, Race, And America
Be sure to watch the accompanying animated short, "Superfly Spitball."...

Reconstructing Patrick Kane's Drunken Weekend In Madison, With Eyewitness Testimony
On Monday we showed you photos of a soused Patrick Kane in Madison, Wis., and then we asked you if you knew more about what happened while Kane was there. We had heard some bad stories—that Kane supposedly choked a woman, that Kane supposedly said anti-Semitic things—and we wanted to know if other p...

Vin Scully Raced Jackie Robinson On Ice Skates
For those of us living on the East Coast, there's no better teller of bedtime stories than Vin Scully. The embodiment of a man who has forgotten more about baseball than any of us will ever know, Scully weaves narratives from his 63 years with the Dodgers into his description of the events on-fiel...

History Is Bunk, When The <em>New York Times</em> Writes It About The Yankees
Two of the worst things in sports are Yankees homerism and New York Times writers who want to impress people. Put them together, and you get the Times's Mark Viera, coming off the sports department bench to gloat in yesterday's paper about the Yankees' 2-1 win over the Orioles the night before. His ...

History Lesson: The Time Matt Millen Punched The Patriots' General Manager In The Head
An occasional feature in which we recall notable incidents that we would've covered the hell out of had we existed at the time....

10 Historical Events That Would've Been Completed In The Interval Between MLB's First And Last Opening Days This Year
1. Anglo-Zanzibar War (38 minutes) 2. Death and resurrection of Jesus (according to Bible) (36 hours) 3. October Revolution (2 days) 4. Bay of Pigs Invasion (3 days) 5. Operation Desert Fox (4 days) 6. The ground conflict of the Gulf War (4 days) 7. February Revolution (5 days) 8. Six-Day War (6 day...

Annals Of Bullshit: The Myth Of The Myth Of Cal Ripken's Historic Home Run
Twenty years ago, Oriole Park at Camden Yards brought in an era of fake history in baseball architecture. So it fits that The Baltimore Sun's roundup of the park's greatest moments would feature fake history too. For the No. 1 moment, baseball beat reporter Dan Connolly described the night Cal Ripke...

Let's Recall 32 Teams That Made Deeper Tournament Runs Than The 2011-12 Duke Blue Devils
Now that their season is over, it's time to place the accomplishments of Austin Rivers, Seth Curry, the Plumlees, and all the rest of this year's unforgettable Duke Blue Devils in their proper historical context. Below is a list of 32 teams in the past decade whose tournament glory outshone that of ...

Tragically, The Best Mascot In March Madness Has Been Eliminated
On this week's video excerpt from Slate's Hang Up and Listen podcast, Mike Pesca of NPR tells you everything you might want to know about WuShock, the wheaty Wichita State Shockers mascot. The real Shockers fell to VCU, 62-59, last night, but WuShock lives on with all of us....

FBI Docs: How George Steinbrenner Helped Kill Off Baseball's Last Real Commissioner
On July 30, 1990, MLB commissioner Fay Vincent "banned" George Steinbrenner from baseball and brought a close to one of the more sordid chapters in the sport's history. Steinbrenner had paid $40,000 to Howie Spira, a Bronx gambler with mafia ties, for dirt on Yankees outfielder Dave Winfield, with w...