story Page 6 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
This Children's Book Is Messed Up: <i>The Story Of Babar</i>
The Babar I remember from childhood was a jolly elephant who goes on adventures. Somehow that’s all I took with me into adulthood from early readings of The Story of Babar by Jean de Brunhoff (and his wife Cécile, who first told their children the story at bedtime), a children’s classic that spurred...
The Time Dave McKenna Inspired A Thousand Terrible TV Characters
Our beloved colleague Dave McKenna tells good stories. He’s done a lot of cool shit, met many weird people in weird ways, and had his run-ins with the law. And after selfishly squirreling all his stories away in Slack and our brains for years, we’ve realized we have a societal obligation to share....
On The Origins, Use, And Meaning Of "Ass In The Jackpot"
The emergence last month of a 2016 video featuring mic’d-up Terry Collins arguing with umpire Tom Hallion not only gave the world, if only briefly, a unique insight into how umps deal with enraged managers, but also its most prominent demonstration of a phrase that was, until that point, known by on...
Weird FS1 Segment: Say What You Will About Joseph Stalin, But He Had A Sick House
Today’s World Cup coverage on Fox Sports 1 featured a short segment produced by National Geographic, in which a reporter gave viewers a light-hearted tour of Joseph Stalin’s dacha while going to some remarkable lengths to avoid mentioning that Stalin was a brutal dictator who was responsible for the...
The Time Barack Obama Tracked Down Dave McKenna At A Coffee Shop
Our beloved colleague Dave McKenna tells good stories. He’s done a lot of cool shit, met many weird people in weird ways, and had his run-ins with the law. And after selfishly squirreling all his stories away in Slack and our brains for years, we’ve realized we have a societal obligation to share....
Let's Remember Some Guys, Early '80s Fleer Mustache Dudes Edition
The Rememberer’s art is, for the most part, a lonely one. That is kind of portentous and serious-sounding, but it also seemed like a better way to begin this post than the thought it was intended to convey, which is “if you are someone who remembers a lot of rando middle reliever dudes from your you...
The Time Dave McKenna Drunkenly Heckled Jimmy Connors And Got Rewarded With VIP Passes
Our beloved colleague Dave McKenna tells good stories. He’s done a lot of cool shit, met many weird people in weird ways, and had his run-ins with the law. And after selfishly squirreling all his stories away in Slack and our brains for years, we’ve realized we have a societal obligation to share....
The Cleveland Barons' NHL Existence Was A Short And Spectacular Disaster
Bob Whidden got the bad news first. On June 14, 1978, Whidden was in Montreal representing the Cleveland Barons at the NHL owners’ meetings....
The Time Dave McKenna Accidentally Called 911 On A Guy Just Looking For His Craigslist Date
Our beloved colleague Dave McKenna tells good stories. He’s done a lot of cool shit, met many weird people in weird ways, and had his run-ins with the law. And after selfishly squirreling all his stories away in Slack and our brains for years, we’ve realized we have a societal obligation to share. ...
The RGIII™ Brand Is Dead, And Here's The Death Certificate
Want to see something really sad? Look at what’s become of Robert Griffin III’s stable of trademarks:...
Treat Yourself To Bartolo Colon's "Batters Faced" Page On Baseball Reference
If he hadn’t out-pitched Justin Verlander and completely baffled the defending world champions for seven innings on Sunday Night Baseball last week, there is a decent chance that Bartolo Colon might not have started another game for the Texas Rangers. The pitcher whose spot Colon filled last Sunday ...
The Wizards Of Aughts: The Post-Millennium Washington Wizards And The Bloggers Who Immortalized Them
The late-model Washington Wizards are broadly competent, secretly mediocre, spotty, and more boring than they are not. They could be nutshelled as an equal and opposite reaction to their counterparts of a decade ago. Those Wiz teams, which weren’t better but sure were stranger, boasted a bigger coll...
Mike Leach Tracked A Raccoon Because He "Was Curious Where It Lived"<em></em><em></em>
Washington State head football coach Mike Leach met with reporters Tuesday to answer the boring offseason questions coaches are supposed to answer, like how the incoming freshman class is progressing, who looked good in spring workouts, and how to properly track a raccoon through suburbia. You know,...
Loyola-Chicago's Been Here Before
Loyola-Chicago punched its ticket to the Final Four on Saturday by handing out its first decisive ass-kicking of the tournament after all those heart-stopping wins. If you saw them thrash Kansas State, 78-62—or if you’d seen them eke out one win after another en route to the Elite Eight—you know the...
For Black History Month, Boston Police Pay Tribute To White Man Who Coached Black Guys
Boston’s reputation as a city oblivious to racial issues is undeserved, I tell you....
Climate, Plague, And The Fall Of The Roman Empire
The Roman Empire in the west fell for a great many reasons. We could cite a lengthy series of breakdowns in its political structures, feckless leadership by a series of child-emperors and self-interested court officials, and aggressive and opportunistic barbarian groups. As the Empire fell apart, th...
The 1987 NFL Players Strike Created The Modern NFL
The darkest day in NFL history began with several Philadelphia Eagles players arriving at Veterans Stadium at midnight, some 13 hours before the scheduled kickoff of a game against the Chicago Bears. They weren’t there to play; they were there precisely not to play. More specifically, they were ther...
How Latin Became The Romance Languages
The Latin language is one of the Roman Empire’s lasting legacies. We hear it around us every day in the form of direct Latin loan-words into English, like “abdomen” or “exterior.” Every time you say something is “necessary” or you need to make a “revision” to a document, you’re using a loan-word fro...
The Penguins Do <i>A Christmas Story</i>
Every year, the Pittsburgh Penguins put out their own version of a holiday classic. This year it’s A Christmas Story, and I hadn’t realized this until now but the holiday season can’t officially begin until you’ve seen Kris Letang admiring himself in a bunny suit while Phil Kessel moans, “He looks l...
Please Do Check Out The Spicy Drama Going Down At The International Society For The History Of The Map
I’ve found, personally, an inverse correlation between how interesting an institutional power squabble is and how significant the institution in question is. A power squabble at the highest levels of a large national government, for example, is not really interesting; it will very often be terrifyin...