tldr Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Twenty Years Ago, Bobby Valentine Snuck Back Into The Dugout And Woke Up The Mets
This is an excerpt from Matthew Callan’s book Yells For Ourselves: A Story Of New York City And The New York Mets At The Dawn Of The New Millennium....
When Your Country Is On Fire, There's Always Softball
When he lived in Venezuela, Freddy de Freitas played baseball every day of the week, except for the occasional Monday. He played and baked under the Caracas sun on weekends, and on weekdays after work he’d rush over to his local stadium to play under the lights. That was before the stadium lights st...
Competitive Musical Chairs Is New York's Friendliest Contact Sport
While holding up the remains of a wooden chair that had just been smashed to pieces, a woman yelled, “I got a splinter in my butt!” A referee wearing black and white stripes hustled over with a new chair and placed it on the grass, reconstituting the circle of chairs that was just broken. An impatie...
The Night Climbers Of Islamabad
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Every night during Ramadan, about a dozen boys meet up in a parking lot that sits near Islamabad’s network of hiking trails to play cricket under the streetlights. You’re likely to see the same scene play out in any well-lit parking lot across the predominantly Muslim city. Bu...
Rough-Touch Football Gave Me More Than Just Money And Bruises
Bear called around seven and told me to wake up Moe....
The Bitter Life Of A Shattered Jockey: A Mostly True Story
The 1973 Philadelphia Sports Writers Association Awards banquet wasn’t lacking for starpower. Flyers legend Bobby Clarke, who became only the ninth player in NHL history to score 100 points with his 104-point 1972-73 campaign, was one of the honorees. So too was Penn State running back and newly-min...
How The Milwaukee Bucks And A Former Wedding DJ Won The T-Shirt Cannon Arms Race
There’s an arms race of sorts now taking place in sports arenas. Hence, the Quad....
Portland Wronged The Jail Blazers More Than The Jail Blazers Wronged Portland
Late last year I attended a jersey release party thrown by the Portland Trail Blazers and Trillblazin, a Trail Blazers-centric independent clothing concern. The Cleaners, a gallery in Portland’s Pearl District, was flooded with people looking to get free t-shirts and tote bags, and looking at a doze...
The Mastermind Behind The College Admissions Scandal Used To Be A Crazy Middle School Basketball Coach
The members of a middle school basketball team that represented a Jewish Community Center in Omaha, Nebraska, were not expecting the 2001 season to be an auspicious one. The previous season had produced mediocre results, and there was no reason to expect much of an improvement going forward. That al...
The Night The Lights Went Out
“Pieces were stolen from meOr dare I say… given away?”...
Baseball Owners Want An International Draft Because They Want Absolute Control
For North America’s amateur baseball players, be they generational talents like Mike Trout or organizational filler like Mike Fish, the road to the majors begins in the same place: with Major League Baseball’s amateur draft. There is no such system in place for international players, at least not ye...
Can Sports Show The Way To Smarter Voting?
Electoral reform is coming to America. This year in MLB, a simple first-past-the-post voting system will no longer determine all-star starters. Fans will instead select three finalists in a Primary Round and then vote from among those finalists on a single Election Day....
The Stefanos Tsitsipas Channel Is Always On
Minutes removed from making the 2019 Australian Open semifinals, Stefanos Tsitsipas, 6-foot-4 and handsome as a lion, was talking about YouTube. With a microphone in his face and all the attention that comes with taking out Roger Federer two days earlier, Tsitsipas spoke his truth....
What It's Like To Get Crushed By <i>Jeopardy! </i>God James Holzhauer
James Holzhauer is one of the finest Jeopardy! contestants the world has ever seen. Through his 22 games as reigning champion, he has won $1.69 million, averaging $76,864 in winnings per episode. He appears to be a real threat to break Ken Jennings’s record of 74 straight wins, which was set in 2004...
Why Are Good Young Racehorses Ending Up As Meat 7,000 Miles Away?
Two years in the life and death of a racehorse:...
Three Mushers, One Impenetrable Blizzard, And The World's Hardest Dog Sled Race
Everything was going to be decided within the next five minutes. Three mushers and their dog teams were on top of Eagle Summit, a 3,685-foot tall gap that runs through the White Mountains in central Alaska. They were stuck in a blizzard, huddled together with their dogs as winds up to 40 miles an ho...
Baseball's Unwritten Rules Are The Vestiges Of A Drunk And Violent Sport
Chicago White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson is having a very good April, give or take a gratuitous insult to his buttocks. He’s hitting .383, which is second in the AL, and has stolen nine bases, which leads the league. He has popped four home runs, too, which is the issue, here. After one of those hom...
How To Leave Sportswriting And Never Regret A Second
In the autumn of 2012, I began working at a pricey midtown Manhattan steakhouse. At one of my first tables sat Geno Auriemma, the women’s basketball coach at the University of Connecticut. Eleven years earlier, I had embedded with him and his players for six months for a book I’d write. I’d held a n...
Conquering The Carolina Reaper Requires Self-Deceit, Milk, And A Lot Of Barf
In the same way strip malls pipe in the smell of luxury, the NYC Hot Sauce Expo must pipe in the smell of pain. The ambient tang of hot sauce greets every visitor at the door. How the mere consumption and sale of hot sauce could suffuse a huge, high-ceilinged space with its odor defies explanation. ...
One Last Opening Day At A Dying Minor League Ballpark
WOODBRIDGE, Virginia — None of the elite members of the Washington, D.C. sporting press were on hand at Pfitzner Stadium to witness the home opener of the Class-A Advanced Potomac Nationals. It was probably for the best....