v Page 2800 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Happiest Man In The World: Teófilo Stevenson And Cuba's Lost Fighters
Teófilo Stevenson won his first Olympic gold medal in 1972 and his last world amateur championship in 1986. He won 302 fights and once went an unbelievable 11 years without a loss. Had Cuba not boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics, many think Stevenson would have won an unmatched four gold medals in...

Here's A Really Gross Track Injury Video You Shouldn't Watch
Watched it once. Visibly recoiled at the slow-motion replay toward the end. Maybe you're made of sterner stuff. It's Bulgarian sprinter Georgi Kirilov Georgiev, dislocating his knee and snapping his leg while approaching the finish line in the 100m at the European Championships. You've been warned...

Matthew Stafford As The 14th-Best QB: Is Ron Jaworski Crazy, Or Are The Rest Of Us Overrating Stafford? Discuss!
Ron Jaworski's been counting down his list of the best NFL quarterbacks, and Matthew Stafford, despite clocking in the top five in most statistical categories, landed at No. 14. Is Jaws right, and Stafford's sample size too small? Or could you stick a lump of Shaun Hill-shaped beef behind center, an...

How A Career Ends: Danny Manning, No. 1 NBA Draft Pick In 1988, Savored His Garbage Time In 2003
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, with the NBA draft beginning in a matter of hours: Danny Manning, the No. 1 overall pick in the 1988 draft. ...

NFL Pushes Back Start Times, So No More Getting <em>Heidi</em>-ed By Your Own Team's Kickoff
I enjoy football. Do you enjoy football? If you do, you're going to be able to watch even more football, starting this season. Ten whole minutes more football! This is the greatest innovation since Sunday Night Football, which in turn was the greatest innovation since football. (Thursday Night Footb...

What Happened To John Van Benschoten? The Former Pirates Pitching Prospect Laments The Hitting Career He Never Had
John Van Benschoten, the Pirates' first-round pick (eighth overall) in 2001, didn't have a good big-league career. In 90 innings of work spread over three seasons, Van Benschoten, mostly as a starter, racked up 65 strikeouts against 68 walks and a 9.20 ERA. We ranked him 76th on our list of the 100...

David Beckham Cut From Olympic Team
In something of a shock, it's being reported that David Beckham will be left off Britain's Olympic team. The 37-year-old will not be among the three players over 23 on the roster—those places will go to Ryan Giggs, Craig Bellamy, and in Beckham's presumed spot, Micah Richards, who was himself a surp...

How To Build A 21st-Century Bullpen With Failed Hitting Prospects And A Radar Gun
Earlier this month, Sean Doolittle made his major-league debut for the Oakland Athletics. It wasn't an obviously momentous event: The left-hander took the mound with two outs in the top of the fifth, with the A's trailing Texas 5-0. He struck out Nelson Cruz to end the inning, then pitched a perfect...

Angry Baseball Takes Out Aggression On Umpire Brian Gorman's Face
Not really sure how we should interpret this one. Was it a completely random occurrence? Does Eric Hosmer have some beef with Brian Gorman we don't know about? Or are the balls, after so much atrocious umpiring this season, finally rebelling in a futile effort to regain control of the game they've m...

Prince Fielder Found Himself In A Rundown, And Somehow Emerged Safely
Prince Fielder hit the deck no fewer than three times during tonight's Tigers loss in Arlington to the Rangers, but did so no more bizarrely than here in which the portly first baseman ran his way out of a rundown, waving his arms like a man fleeing a burning building along the way....

This At-Bat Captures The Sublime Ridiculousness Of Men's Slow-Pitch Softball
Literally dozens of people came out to ASA Hall of Fame Stadium tonight in Oklahoma City to see the USA Futures defeat the USA National Team in a 38-37 win, decided on a tag out at the plate on the final play. However, the first two outs of the inning came when two players hit home runs, actual fa...

Mike Trout Continues To Do Ridiculous, Impossible Baseball Things
This is Angels center fielder Mike Trout's first full season in the majors. He's not only made his mark at the plate (league-leading .331 batting average) and on the bases (league-leading 21 stolen bases) but in the field as well....

Ladies, Chad Ochocinco's Marriage Proposal Will Have You Sopping Wet
Chad Ochocinco proposed to model/TV person/Antoine Walker-dater Evelyn Lozada back in November of 2010, with the wedding set for next week. But the details of the actual proposal have gone shrouded in secrecy, until Lozada spilled the beans on a radio interview last week....

Because This Stuff Never Gets Old, Here's Carmelo Anthony Scaring People By Pretending To Be A Wax Figure
Melo got his sculpture at Madame Tussauds in Times Square yesterday, and in between saying things like "my time is coming," he did that thing where he stands stock-still until unsuspecting ticket-buyers get close enough to spook. There were no reactions as magical as this one, but Anthony's timing...

Evgeni Malkin Tweet Fish Catch Best
A couple of weeks back, Phoenix Coyotes enforcer Paul "Biz Nasty" Bissonnette turned us on to the Twitter charms of Pittsburgh Penguins center Evgeni Malkin, who knows best because he's best....

Steven Soderbergh Whips It Out. <i>Magic Mike</i>, Reviewed.
As Steven Soderbergh gets closer to the retirement he swears will be happening next year, it's tempting for us who love his movies to wish he'd go out with one last major opus, some sort of legacy-defining masterpiece. So maybe that's why it's good that he clearly doesn't seem interested in doing an...

Pitching Prospect Stops Line Drive With Face
Scary moment last night for Gerrit Cole, the No. 1 overall choice in last year's MLB draft. Cole was making just his second start for the Altoona Curve, the Pirates' Double-A affiliate, when what you see in the video above happened in the first inning. Cole somehow finished the inning by facing th...

<em>Phineas And Ferb</em> Had 18 Times As Many Viewers As The NHL Draft. Last Week's TV Ratings, In Context.
A weekly feature wherein we contextualize TV ratings for national sports broadcasts. Data via Nielsen and Sports Business Daily. Viewership numbers represent approximate number of persons tuned to a given program; ratings share refers to the percentage of all households using a television who are tu...

How "Seven Nation Army" Conquered The Sports World
The Euro 2012 semifinals kick off today, and 69 goals in, you might have noticed one fan chant being sung after every single one. How did an eminently chantable White Stripes ditty become soccer's universal goal celebration? This piece, originally published Jan. 13, 2012, has your answers....

Raven Wanted To Rent <i>Buffy The Vampire Slayer</i>, And We Didn't Have It In Stock: More Wrestler Run-Ins
Inspired by the saga of "Wrestling Superstar Virgil," pro wrestling's saddest man, 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."...