w Page 4417 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
How A Career Ends: Dominique Moceanu, America's Youngest Gold-Medal Gymnast
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: Dominique Moceanu, the youngest American, at age 14, to ever win an Olympic gold medal in gymnastics. Moceanu was part of the Magnificent Seven—along with Sha...
NBC Has Awarded Justin Bieber U.S. Citizenship
NBC's been on the social networking kick these Olympics, and the Peacock Network has taken great pride in illustrating tweets of the rich, famous, and otherwise. They stumbled a bit yesterday, though, as the very Canadian black metal rocker Justin Bieber found himself identified as an American in N...
Disgraced Badminton Player Announces Retirement, Blames Poor Performance On Injuries
One of the eight badminton players who was disqualified from the Olympics for match-fixing is fighting back against those allegations, while also announcing her retirement from professional competition. ...
Gore Vidal's First Love: The Baseball Star Turned War Hero
As of Wednesday morning, administrators at Rock Creek Cemetery in D.C. hadn't heard yet whether Gore Vidal would actually be filling the burial plot he reserved there for himself some years ago. But Vidal, who died yesterday in Los Angeles at 86, has a couple reasons to get shipped back to his boyho...
Gregor Blanco's Diving Catches Are Becoming Even More Impressive
This is getting to be old hat for San Francisco Giants fans. First, Blanco became a folk hero in SF for saving Matt Cain's perfecto with an incredible late-game diving catch. Blanco put forth a more impressive version of that feat Wednesday night, with less inherent drama but way more bodily extens...
Minor League Umpire Ejects Ballpark Music Guy For Playing "Three Blind Mice"
If there's one thing umpires love more than ejecting players, it's ejecting non-players. That goes for managers but also fans, mascots, and other ballpark patrons. Tommy Lasorda once complained to umpire Bob Davidson that Youppi!, the Montreal Expos mascot, was jumping up and down on his dugout. (Da...
Minnesota Vikings Punter Chris Kluwe Is Here To Take Your Questions
OK, gang. As promised, Chris Kluwe is ready to take shit from you. He's at the Vikings' training camp in Mankato, Minn., waiting on food and hoping a thunderstorm doesn't knock down the dorm the team's staying in. Ask him anything about anything by firing away down in the discussion below. ...
NBC's Local Affiliates Don't Understand How Spoilers Work, Either
On Monday NBC inadvertently spoiled the result of a race they had yet to broadcast by showing its winner celebrating in a promo for the following morning's Today show. It seems its local affiliates aren't quite getting how to play the tape-delay game, either. Here's a clip from last night's 6 p.m....
Joe West Gets Clobbered Upside The Head, Starts Bleeding, Does Not Break Into Song
It was a tough night behind the dish for Joe West, who got knocked hard in the ol' noodle by the follow-through of Carlos Lee's swing. The game was delayed for a few minutes while West was attended to by the Braves' medical staff. Sadly, as far as we know, he did not pass the time by humming a few...
"It Took His Nose Right Over His Right Eye": A Team Equipment Manager Tells All
There aren't many jobs in professional sports less glamorous (yet more important) than that of the equipment managers, but Brad "Dogg" Thompson has been a fixture with the Grand Rapids Griffins hockey team for some 15 years now. And seeing how he works for the primary affiliate of the Detroit Red Wi...
NCAA Names Former Sen. George Mitchell As Penn State's "Athletics Integrity Monitor"
The appointment of an Athletics Integrity Monitor (note the capital letters) is part of the oh-so-serious sanctions the NCAA dropped when it smacked Penn State with its shithammer. This is straight from the statement the NCAA issued today:...
This 90-Year-Old Pole Vaulter Is Much Better Than You
The BBC spent some time in Jonesboro, Ark., where 1984 Olympian and USATF hall of famer Earl Bell runs the training program that produced two-thirds of America's pole vaulters in London. Another familiar face around the facility is Earl's father William, who just turned 90, and can still soar with...
Men's Gymnastics All-Around: Kohei "Superman" Uchimura Is Invincible
The gold in today's men's gymnastics all-around went to Japan's Kohei Uchimura, aka "Superman," as it was supposed to. Did that make it boring, like a murder mystery where you know the ending, or like a primetime broadcast of a swimming race whose results were published hours ago? ...
NFC East Quarterback Who Has Actually Won A Couple Super Bowls Says His Team Isn't A Dynasty
Leave the dynasty talk for Philadelphia, where they win Super Bowls nearly every summer. Eli Manning was asked on NFL AM (via ProFootballTalk) whether the Giants constitute a dynasty. His response was essentially "aw shucks, you guys."...
Gore Vidal's <em>Myra Breckinridge</em> Became One Of The Weirdest Movies Ever Made
Gore Vidal died yesterday, and though he appeared as an actor in a few movies—he played a professor in With Honors, an evil futuristic fellow in Gattaca and, most memorably, as Tim Robbins' lefty opponent in Bob Roberts—he'll be remembered, in a movie sense, as the guy responsible for Myra Breckinri...
Here Is A Perfectly Ordinary Graphic From Fox Sports Ohio
It was sent to us by a reader named Steve, who insists it says more than what it was designed to say. I mean, it's just the logos of the four teams with the best records in baseball, in order, from left to right. No, really. Click the image to enlarge it so you can see those records for yourself. It...
Animal Care Worker Accidentally Killed Louisiana Tech's Bulldog Mascot, Then Tried To Cover It Up
Accidents happen, that's part of life, nothing you can do about it. Sometimes, you even forget to bring inside the beloved bulldog mascot of a major university and the bulldog in question dies of heatstroke. Should you ever find yourself in such a predicament, do not try to cover up the crime....
This Is The Deficit Allison Schmitt Just Erased To Win Gold For Team USA In The Women's 4x200 Free
The 4x200-meter freestyle relay just ended, and, as you'll learn tonight on NBC, the American women won gold. The hero of today's race was not Missy Franklin, everybody's favorite teenage superstar, but Allison Schmitt, the 22-year-old from the University of Georgia. (The photo above comes from Tues...
Of Course Bryce Harper Wore A "Sun's Out, Guns Out" Tank Top When He Met George Thorogood
The above photo comes from the Washington Nationals PR department, and it features Bryce Harper and his oozing Natitude in the bro-est tank top imaginable and what is either a red bandana or the biggest headband I've ever seen....
Olympic Media Bus Strikes And Kills Bicyclist
We don't know much but Al Michaels just interrupted NBC's Olympics coverage to say that a media bus struck and killed a cyclist in London....