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The Birth Of The Magical 1971 Macon High Ironmen, Baseball's Version Of <em>Hoosiers</em>
Despite—or perhaps because of—their ragtag roster and hippie manager, the 1971 Macon High Ironmen found themselves in the Illinois state baseball championship. Chris Ballard first chronicled the team in a long piece for SI in 2010, and he's explored them in even more depth in One Shot at Forever. In...
Roger Goodell (And Nike) Will Not Tolerate The NFL's Epidemic Of Bruised Thighs Anymore
When we last left the Ginger Hammer, he was sending Gregg Williams to the bad corner and proving, once and for all, that violence has no place in football. And today, Roger Goodell has yet taken yet another step in showing the world that HE MEANS GINGER BUSINESS when it comes to player safety. Pendi...
What Did Joe Paterno Know About Jerry Sandusky In 1998? <em>Esquire</em> Unearths Curious New Details From Paterno's Papers
In the final interview of his life, the infamous "rape and a man" interview, Joe Paterno told Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post that he knew nothing about a 1998 police investigation into Jerry Sandusky, who, at the time, was still Penn State's defensive coordinator. (That investigation was launc...
The Best Shooters In The NBA, And Why Field Goal Percentage Can't Identify Them
What does field goal percentage actually tell us?...
That Oregon Prom Scandal Has Nike's Waffle-Soled Footprints All Over It
The story has the hook of a titillating local scandal: A married track coach goes to prom with a 17-year-old boy and loses her job over it. She's 41, her husband is 73, and they have a son who runs track too, yet some chaperone at the Condon (Ore.) Prom saw something worth complaining about, and now...
TNT's Slow Zoom On Mitch Kupchak's Face In The Final Minutes Of The Lakers' Season Was Sadistic
Only true Lakers believers (or the truly blind) couldn't see the Lakers' season was nearing an end long before the horn sounded on last night's 106-90 series-seizing Thunder victory. Yet it seems the moment of truth for Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak came at a time that TNT producers jumped upon for max...
How Readable Are Bill Simmons, Jason Whitlock, Rick Reilly, And Other Sportswriters? Science Investigates
The last time we played around with sportswriter analytics, we wondered if we could algorithmically determine a column's author based on his favorite words. (We could!) For a followup, I decided to look at the readability of different writers. Reading level is a nebulous concept and hard to define p...
How A Career Ends: Ron Darling Celebrated His 35th Birthday By Getting Cut And Being Left Alone At Home
Tell Me When It's Over is an interview series in which we ask former athletes about the moment they knew their playing days were over. Today: Pitcher Ron Darling, one of 37 major leaguers in history born in Hawaii and the record holder, by far, for most major league seasons by a Yale University alum...
Rick Reilly Has Golf Jokes For You Because Rick Reilly Is Everything Horrible About ESPN
Do me a favor right now: Drive out to your local exurb. Now, find the nearest Cheesecake Factory in that exurb, walk up to the bar, and try and spot the 40-year-old fellow wearing pleated chinos, loafers, and a button-down shirt with his real-estate company's logo on it. You see that guy? THAT is Ri...
LeBron's Choice Of Pre-Game Reading Material? <em>The Hunger Games</em>
ABC showed a brief clip of LeBron James in the locker room before today's Heat-Pacers Game Four in Indianapolis, and surprise of surprises, he was reading Suzanne Collins's young adult novel The Hunger Games. We won't shame anybody for their choice of reading material—indeed, we'd love for more ro...
I'll Have Another Wins Preakness, Forcing All Of Us To Watch The Belmont Stakes In Three Weeks
I'll Have Another nosed out a Preakness Stakes victory over Bodemeister with a late surge, ruining plans of a million Americans who'd scheduled something other than watching horse racing on June 9th. ...
Dead Letters: You Crossed A Major Line This Week, Canine Hitler
Subject: Racism and Pit Bulls...
Will Smith Has Left And Gone Away
When did you first realize that the Fresh Prince could legitimately act? Like, in the big leagues? For once in my life, I was on the early part of the curve; my college newspaper assigned me, a green freshman, a review of Six Degrees of Separation, John Guare's adaptation of his own play about a fan...
Here's Kerry Wood's Emotional Exit From Baseball, After One Final Strikeout
We reported earlier today Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood is retiring from baseball, but the oft-injured hurler promised to make one last appearance before hanging up his cleats. That appearance came today, and it was in a legitimate spot; down 3-2 in the eighth, Wood relieved starter Jeff Samardzija and pr...
Cops Will Steal Your Girlfriend!
Welcome to Great Moments in Drunken Hookup Failure, where we showcase three heartwarming true stories of drunken love gone horribly awry. Off we go....
The Dadspin Guide To Feeding A Baby
I have a newborn son. He needs to be fed eight times a day. Each session of feeding him takes roughly 30 minutes, 20 if I'm lucky. I am usually not lucky. That's four hours of the day dedicated to sitting in a chair with a bottle, begging the baby to drink faster. A newborn's life is dedicated to sl...
What Boxing Writing Can Teach Us About Everything: A.J. Liebling On Moore-Marciano
Between the Victorian era and the Sixties, boxing was a regular and prominent feature of American life. Knowing something about the fights—being good with your hands, or maintaining an opinion about the welterweight division or fixed bouts or how to beat a southpaw—was a very common piece of equipme...
Better Know An Umpire: Gary Darling
Welcome to Better Know An Umpire, an effort to educate ourselves on the human elements who have ultimate decision-making power over some 2,500 Major League Baseball games a year. (All cumulative statistics are through the 2011 season, unless otherwise stated.)...
Kegasus, The Beer-Loving Mascot Of The Beer-Loving Preakness, Is Actually A Sober Phony
What's the saying? If you'll keg stand for something, you'll fall for anything? Promoters of the Preakness Stakes must believe it. Turns out that Kegasus, spokesbeast for the Preakness and the best mascot in all of sports, is a sham....