Chris Ryan at Grantland has a fun column on the ups and downs of relegation to and from the English Premier League. For football clubs, whether you’re talking about the bog-end of League Two or upper echelons of the game, there is always the taunting vision on the horizon — something better, something brighter — [...]
baseball
Fred Wilpon
Jeffrey Toobin has an excellent in-depth New Yorker profile of New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon, long known as an honourable businessman who has been caught up in the Bernie Madoff scandal. The Wilpon team believes that Picard and his top deputy, David Sheehan, have shown excessive zeal in pursuing the case. Madoff agrees. “When [...]
Contract the A’s and the Rays?
Bud Selig has been thinking about contraction again. The Oakland Athletics and Tampa Bay Rays have had a hard time making it financially in recent years. A person involved in baseball labor told the New York Post that there had been some conversation in the offices of Major League Baseball of contracting the two teams. [...]
Spring is here
Spring Training is almost here with the catchers and pitchers about to report. Here is what the Blue Jays have going on in 2011. There is a sense of renewal that is inherent to spring training, and that feeling will be particularly strong for the Toronto Blue Jays when pitchers and catchers hold their first [...]
Christmas Gift Ideas for the Sports Fan (2010 Edition)
Hockey Night in Canada Retro Puck & Stick Rug :: While Gary Bettman doesn’t respect the traditions of the NHL, that doesn’t mean that you can’t. Check out this retro Hockey Night in Canada welcome rug which would look great every Saturday night as you host your friends and family for the Hockey Night in [...]
Unemployment takes it toll on the employed
Good article on what it is like for the working spouse of someone who has been laid off in Tampa Bay. We know how unemployed people struggle. Dozens, if not hundreds, of candidates compete for every opening. People spend months sending out resumes, calling old contacts, straining to prop up their sagging self-esteem. But what [...]
The death of a dream?
We are seeing the end of middle class America. The slow economic strangulation of the Freemans and millions of other middle-class Americans started long before the Great Recession, which merely exacerbated the “personal recession” that ordinary Americans had been suffering for years. Dubbed “median wage stagnation” by economists, the annual incomes of the bottom 90 [...]
Move over California, Illinois is broke as well
From The New York Times Even by the standards of this deficit-ridden state, Illinois’s comptroller, Daniel W. Hynes, faces an ugly balance sheet. Precisely how ugly becomes clear when he beckons you into his office to examine his daily briefing memo. He picks the papers off his desk and points to a figure in red: [...]
Can LeBron James Save the Soccer in the United States?
An interesting article from ESPN on how it isn’t a lack of athletic ability that holds America back at the World Cup To believe the best-athlete myth is to fundamentally misunderstand American soccer’s plight. Athletic ability is not the problem. In fact, it’s generally considered a Team USA strength, along with competitive spirit. We can [...]
Contextless Links
Anyone want to give an over/under on Jay Cutler wanting out of Chicago now that Mike Martz has been named his O.C. Some 400 giant squid have shown up along the Orange County coast in Southern California since Friday. Some are as large as 4 feet long, and 60 pounds. At a laundromat in Brooklyn, [...]
