tribute Page 5 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

S̶t̶e̶v̶e̶ ̶J̶o̶b̶s̶ Al Davis Is Dead (UPDATE)
Steve Jobs Al Davis is dead. The Apple chairman and former CEO who made personal computers, smartphones, tablets, and digital animation mass market products NFL owner who built the Oakland Raiders and became an NFL icon, passed away today. We're going to miss him. Deeply, and personally. ...

Dead Comedian Of The Week: Andy Kaufman, The Unlikely Bombthrower
For Comedy Week, we're running a handful of tributes in the vein of our Dead Wrestler of the Week series. Here, from the best book ever written about stand-up comedy, Phil Berger's The Last Laugh, we look at the evolution of Andy Kaufman, meshuga provocateur....

Dead Comedian Of The Week: Mitch Hedberg, The Comic's Comic
For Comedy Week, we're running a handful of tributes in the vein of our Dead Wrestler of the Week series. Here, the Masked Man looks at the legacy of Mitch Hedberg, the surrealist who developed a cult following before his death in 2005—and an even bigger one after his death....

Dead Comedian Of The Week: Vaughn Meader, Assassination Victim
For Comedy Week, we're running a handful of tributes in the vein of our Dead Wrestler of the Week series. Here, Alexander Woo, a writer and co-executive producer for HBO's True Blood, eulogizes Vaughn Meader, the wildly popular JFK impersonator whose star plummeted after the assassination of his sub...

<em>Welcome Back, JaMarcus</em>: Russell Will Return To LSU In The Fall To Take Some Classes
LSU Sports Information Director Michael Bonnette tweeted yesterday that former Oakland Raiders quarterback JaMarcus Russell would be returning to Baton Rouge to take classes in the fall. In his honor, we've cut you the opening credits of Welcome Back, JaMarcus....

Matt Stairs: Spectacularly Just Good Enough
Matt Stairs, who on Wednesday announced his retirement, was the character actor who had a few decent roles in the 1970s and played solid bit parts ever after. He was a Ned Beatty of a player. He had a fine career. Always on the roster for his offense, he delivered above-average results with the bat ...

Randy Moss: The Weirdest Ever
Randy Moss is the most dangerous receiver to ever play in the NFL and the single most exciting player that ever played for my favorite team, Adrian Peterson included. He also happened to be the weirdest person ever to step onto a football field. ...

Kelly Leak: The Coolest Kid Who Ever Lived
The following is excerpted from Josh Wilker's book about The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training, written for Soft Skull Press's Deep Focus series....

All Too Good, And Not Good Enough: What Carlos Beltran Meant To The Mets
Carlos Beltran was not a New York Met. I don't mean this literally — Beltran's Mets career spanned six and a half seasons, from 2005 until yesterday. He was with the Mets almost exactly as long as Keith Hernandez was, and longer than Reggie Jackson was with the Yankees....

The Incomparable Ichiro Swings Through
Two surefire Hall of Famers played in the Bronx last night. One is having the worst season of his career at 37 years old, hitting nearly 60 points off his lifetime average, and still getting paid $17 million. The other one is Derek Jeter....

The Graceful, Oversized Legacy of Yao Ming
How long was Yao Ming going to last? That was the question about the seven-foot-six center long before he broke his foot for the first time in the NBA. When Yao joined the league nine summers ago, picked first overall in the 2002 draft by the Houston Rockets, he was the man who would bring the entir...

So Long, Patrick Vieira. You'll Always Be "The Big Sausage" To Arsenal Fans
Patrick Vieira retired yesterday. This is sad. Vieira was one of the best midfielders ever, an end-to-end hard man who won a 1998 World Cup and a 2000 European Championship trophy with France and anchored Arsenal during three Premier League championship campaigns, including the 2003-04 "Invincible" ...

The 100 Worst Baseball Players Of All Time: A Celebration
Enough arguing about who deserved to be an All-Star. Here are 100 baseball players who did not, though a couple are in the Hall of Fame. A survey of Major League Baseball's lowlights, lowlifes, and overachieving underachievers. PART ONE » | PART TWO »...

The 100 Worst Baseball Players Of All Time: A Celebration (Part 2)
Here's the second part of the roundup of baseball's low achievers. Part 1 is here....

The 100 Worst Baseball Players Of All Time: A Celebration (Part 1)
This is a celebration. I realize that sounds strange—compiling a list of the worst of something doesn't seem like a joyous occasion. But by worst 100 baseball players I don't just mean the objective worst, the statistical worst, the most physically discomforting to watch. I mean the players whose fa...

My 3,000th Hit
Derek Jeter gave me the only baseball I ever got at a game. It was spring training in Tampa, and I was watching the Yankees practice from behind the dugout. Jeter jogged in with a ball, about to give it to the crowd. At first, I started to wave for it, but then, noticing the other 20 similarly aged ...

A Nick Charles Tribute, Featuring The Greatest Play You've Never Seen
While trolling YouTube for video of Nick Charles, who passed away over the weekend, I stumbled across this, uploaded by Mike Lortz after being found in a pile of VHS tapes: a CNN year-end best-of countdown. His interplay with Fred Hickman here is typically good-natured, and it wasn't an act: they ...

Stay Soft, Dirk Nowitzki
Even before Dirk Nowitzki lifted a championship trophy on Sunday night, he was being held up as a new man. Nowitzki had reinvented himself, we were told. He'd finally "shed" the Euro-soft label plastered to him throughout his career and, to much adulation, morphed into the sort of rugged warrior tha...

FC Barcelona Proved They Were The Best Team In All Of Professional Sports Yesterday
Your morning roundup for May 29, the day Roger Ebert inexplicably gave two thumbs down to those who blatantly allowed two eyes to check out two foreign boobs....

The Bulging, Feces-Filled Sacs In Brock Lesnar's Colon As Metaphor For Brock Lesnar's MMA Career
Dana White and the UFC convened an emergency conference call yesterday to announce that human orca Brock Lesnar has come down with diverticulitis for a second time and will pull out of his fight against Junior Dos Santos at UFC 131. What, you may ask, is diverticulitis? The National Center for Biote...