w Page 4727 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

With NBA Lockout Looming, Gilbert Arenas And Dwight Howard Start Planking
Perhaps you are familiar with planking, one of those odd fads forced upon us by Australians. (Just like Hugh Jackman!) One planks by lying completely flat on an odd surface and then photographing it....

A Year Ago, Diamondbacks 3B Sean Burroughs Was Drinking 8 Slurpees Daily, Eating Cheeseburgers Out Of A Trash Can
Sean Burroughs, if you'll recall, was once the fraught golden boy of early 2000s NL baseball—the smooth-swinging Padres third baseman who could only hit singles. (His career isolated slugging percentage, .078, is only a fuzz better than Juan Pierre's.) But Burroughs has since resuscitated his pro ca...

Jay Mariotti's Long Downward Spiral
A California judge ruled yesterday that there was sufficient evidence against former ESPN talker and Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti for a trial on assault, domestic violence, and stalking charges....

Driver Sets New Record For Fastest Lap Around Manhattan
Alex Roy circled the Island of Manhattan in 2001 setting a known record for fastest time at 27 minutes, reaching speeds of 144 mph over the 24.48 mile distance. A new driver's now done it in 26:03. Here's video. [Jalopnik]...

More From The Jay Mariotti Hearings: Pulling Out Hair <i>Extensions</i> Does Not Make It OK
Last night we alerted you to the news that formerly ubiquitous ESPN pundit Jay Mariotti would stand trial in California on charges of felony stalking, domestic violence, and assault stemming from an April altercation. That came after a no-contest plea on domestic violence charges in September 2010....

Wily Mo Pena Spits A Loogie Into His Helmet, Hits Two-Run Walkoff
Via Awful Announcing, here's Baseball MLB Tonight's involved slo-mo breakdown of Willy Mo Pena's pre-game-winning-homerun ritual: he sends a gob of spit and possibly other substances in his helmet, and then he wears the helmet. Babe might be proud. Babe also might be kind of grossed out....

Troy Tulowitzki Scores From First On A Bloop Single, Miguel Tejada Nearly Gets Thrown Out At Home On A HR
I guess what we're saying is that Tulo always hustles, while Tejada is looking to top the Tater Tot Tracker charts....

Dirk Nowitzki Is Big In Germany
Your morning roundup for June 29, the day we started rapping on light poles. Image — of Dirk Nowitzki's triumphant return to his hometown of Wurzburg, Germany — via MSNBC Photoblog....

Jay Mariotti Will Stand Trial On Stalking, Domestic Violence, And Assault Charges
"Mariotti allegedly confronted the woman at a restaurant last Sept. 30.... He also is accused of grabbing the woman outside a Venice restaurant around midnight on April 15 of this year, pulling out a chunk of her hair and grabbing her cell phone away as he shouted at her." [BHCourier, h/t tomuban]...

California Minor League Hockey Team Demands Quite A Lot From Those Applying To Be Its Mascot
Inhabiting a mascot's costume can be demanding work. We know that. But who would have guessed that it had so many prerequisites? Tipster Rick alerts us to this ECHL job posting from the Stockton Thunder. They're looking to hire someone to portray Thor, their mascot....

John Calipari Has A Shockingly Logical Plan For Paying Players
Every morning, the fine folks at Sports Radio Interviews sift through the a.m. drive-time chatter to bring you the best interviews with coaches, players, and personalities across the sports landscape. Today: Calipari on how to pay just the ones that bring in the money....

Grantland's Jonah Lehrer Loves Intangibles So Much He Made A Whole Argument Out Of Them
Aren't sports statistics terrible? Of course they are. Sports has been overrun by number-nerds, and the number-nerds get angry if you point this out. So Jonah Lehrer, writing at Grantland about the pernicious influence of numerical analysis, makes sure not to bring up any actual examples of how numb...

The Face Of Totalitarianism Meets The Righteous Boot Of Democracy
Maybe the North Koreans really were struck by lightning; if "Lightning" is Megan Rapinoe's nickname for her right foot....

Jack McKeon Thinks He Can Silence Logan "Twitter" Morrison; So Far, He Has Not
On Saturday, Trader Jack benched Twitter-happy outfielder Logan Morrison, who's hit .189 in June. McKeon said he would try "something different. Give 'Twitter' a rest." McKeon once thought "Twitter" was Morrison's dog. Now it's just a chiding nickname....

North Korea Lost To The US Because They Were Struck By Lightning, Says North Korea
In a truly bizarre press conference, North Korea's coach Kim Kwang Min had an excuse for his team's performance that...I don't think I've ever heard before....

What <em>Really</em> Happened When Rex Ryan And His Wife Ran Into Foot Joker Wes Welker
In his book Play It Like You Mean It, Jets head coach Rex Ryan writes that Patriots receiver Wes Welker apologized to him and his wife in Hawaii for his press conference before the AFC divisional playoff game in which he made 11 references to feet. According to one person who witnessed the interacti...

Men Can Crush Helpless Garments With Man Iron
Do you wish you could iron some stuff, but you can't, because you are a man? Despair no more — the Man Iron is here to solve all of your problems! A reader sent us a helpful press release titled, "PHILIPS HELPS MEN TURBOCHARGE THROUGH THE IRONING WITH THE NEW ESSENTIAL POWERTOOL FOR THE MODERN MAN."...

Supreme Court Wisely Declines To Hear Roger Clemens' Dumbass Appeal
Reassuring news out of DC today: the US Supreme Court—which hears less than one percent of the cases appealed there anyway—has declined to hear Roger Clemens' appeal re: his silly defamation case against former trainer Brian McNamee. Many moons ago, Clemens sued McNamee after he dished on Clemens' s...

Channing Crowder's Jersey And The NCAA's Land Of Make Believe
Channing Crowder talks in hypotheticals. "Hypothetically," he says, he doesn't have any more of his old Florida jerseys. Some local businessmen, he says, really liked his play. "Hypothetically."...

Your Women's World Cup Open Thread
The U.S. women start their 2011 World Cup campaign today in Dresden, with an opening-round game against "mysterious" North Korea at 12:15pm. It will be aired on ESPN and ESPN3. Talk about it here, whether or not you played girls' club soccer in 1999 and had a prized ticket stub to the U.S.-Germany q...