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<em>Appetite For Destruction</em> At 25: One Horny Young Boy's Recollection
The first kid in my middle school to discover Appetite for Destruction was a big football player named Si. Everyone in my class was terrified of Si because Si was the only kid in our grade who had gotten pubes. You walked into the shower and in the crowd of hairless penises was this big kid with a m...

So, What Kind of Batman Movie Should They Make Next?
Whatever your thoughts end up being about The Dark Knight Rises—even if you're like me, say, and think it pales it comparison to the previous two films but still sorta blows you away—Christopher Nolan has wrapped up his trilogy in a fashion that clearly won't damage his legacy: This isn't Spider-Man...

Doping, Cheating, And Insta-Celebrity: The Story Behind The First Great Sports Action Photograph, Taken In 1908
I grew up in a home without a television. When my parents’ TV went on the fritz, the story goes, they didn’t bother to get it fixed. So my earliest visual sports memories came not from watching television, but from gawking at the photographs in oversized books like The Wonderful World of Sport....

The Steroids Era Was Just Like The Housing Bubble: How MLB Incentivized Widespread Fraud
Excerpted from Twilight of the Elites, available now wherever books are sold....

Why Your Team Sucks 2012: Denver Broncos
Some people are fans of the Denver Broncos. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Denver Broncos. This 2012 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read the other Why Your Team Sucks 2012 previews here....

ESPN Hack Lynn Hoppes Copies Press Releases, Too
It's not hard to spot the biggest hacks in any newsroom. The biggest hacks are the reporters who rewrite press releases. Emphasis on the word "rewrite," since the laziest, most unimaginative journalist can typically muster the energy and self-respect to tweak a predicate or two. Even hacks don't wan...

Will Clark Saved The Giants, And I Missed It
The Hall of Nearly Great hits web shelves today, and it's a bargain at $12. It has 42 terrific writers—heavyweights such as Rob Neyer and Joe Posnanski, and Deadspin folks, too: Owen Good and Will Leitch—with essays on the nearly great players they love. You can read about Brad Radke, Andy Messersmi...

Sure, God Made The Universe. But Can He Coach An American Marathoner To Olympic Gold?
March 29 was a busy day for Ryan Hall, the fastest American marathoner ever. He was 137 days and roughly 2,100 miles of road training away from representing the country in the London Olympics. He had to be up early for drug testing....

The Iron Sheik Tries To Cut The Line At The Atlanta Olympics: 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 wrestlers past or present, e-mail us, subject line "Virgilbag."...

Bruce Wanes. <em>The Dark Knight Rises</em>, Reviewed.
1. The first two Batman films from director Christopher Nolan were so transcendent, so ambitious and challenging and grand, that The Dark Knight Rises feels like more of a disappointment than it should. The first two movies, especially The Dark Knight, were miracles, an impossible combination of uni...

Disenfranchise Mode: The Exhausting, Infuriating, Totally Addictive Baseball Simulation Game That Imitates Life Too Well
The summer after my freshman year of college, I told somebody's mother that I wouldn't be attending her son's funeral. I remember the moment, if not the conversation, with great clarity. I was working in my dad's shop, filling orders for spare bike rack parts, when my phone rang. My hands were stick...

Report: Penn State President Passed On Sweeping Reforms In 2004
The entire Penn State/Jerry Sandusky scandal is sickening in every way, but any time phrases like "could have prevented" get thrown around makes the whole thing especially horrifying, and ESPN's Don Van Natta Jr. has uncovered one of those very stories, dropping a bombshell tonight that in 2004, the...

Why Aaron Cook And His Two Strikeouts Are A Nightmare For Sabermetrics
Aaron Cook, who's now pitching in Boston after years with the Rockies, is doing something amazing this year. Cook has pitched 29.2 innings and struck out two batters. Two. (Both came in one start against the Mariners, naturally, and one was—again, naturally—Chone Figgins.)...

Whoa, We're Halfway There: The Grierson & Leitch Top 12 Movies Of The First Half of 2012
Shockingly, we are more than halfway through 2012. (It's a backloaded year: Olympics, election, total global catastrophe—all stacked up from late July on.) As always, the best, most "prestigious" movies won't be released until November or December, because the people who vote on the Oscars are senil...

Is The Name "Le-a" (Pronounced "Ledasha") An Urban Legend? Probably.
I wrote a Dadspin post about stupid baby names last week, and whenever I write about baby names, I inevitably get scores of emails featuring the same dubious story. Here is one such example:...

Even <em>Sports Illustrated</em> Doesn't Want Anything To Do With Joe Posnanski's Paterno Biography
The first review of Joe Posnanksi's Joe Paterno biography is in and it isn't good: Offered first serial rights to a book written by a former Sports Illustrated senior writer, the magazine said no. Assistant managing editor Chris Hunt confirmed to Deadspin that SI passed on running an excerpt. Posnan...

How The Knicks Could Afford Jeremy Lin, And Other Questions Answered
Thanks to everybody who sent in questions—which is none of you, because I never told you to send them in. So I made up some of my own, and answered them. ...

"I Hope Tim Tebow Rapes A Kid" And Other Completely Sane Penn State Fan Reactions To Paternoville's Renaming
Penn State's student campout group for football games announced last night they were changing their name from Paternoville to Nittanyville, and we noted the reaction from the PSU community was swift and uncomplimentary. The Nittanyville Facebook page found itself flooded with "Unlike" comments, but...

Why Your Team Sucks 2012: Oakland Raiders
Some people are fans of the Oakland Raiders. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Oakland Raiders. This 2012 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read the other Why Your Team Sucks 2012 previews here....

Olympics Field Guide: Jordan Burroughs: The Best Wrestler In The World Who Isn't Afraid To Say It
Name: Jordan Burroughs...