The Secret Of The NHL's Greatest Call: Location! Location! Location!
Howie Rose was never one to use a canned line, but this called for something special, something that would convey the size of the moment. On May 27, 1994, as the Rangers clung to a 1-0 lead over the Devils late in the third period of Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals, words began to form in th...
What I Learned From Gary Smith
I can pinpoint the moment I realized I was never going to be Gary Smith. This was back in the spring of 2005, shortly before I graduated college. The campus paper had just published the best thing I thought I'd ever written. My profile of George Washington University basketball player J.R. Pinnock w...
The Kiss Cam And American Sports Fans: The History Of A Romance
To tell the story of the Kiss Cam, let's start with a kiss that happened off camera. On Aug. 8, 2000, Danielle Goldey and Meredith Kott attended a game at Dodger Stadium. At one point, as couples are wont to do, they smooched. Before long, security guards arrived, removed the women from their seats,...
How A Stoned Canadian Changed Sports History
Ross Rebagliati was happy to piss into a cup. He was proud to do it. The Canadian snowboarder had just completed an epic Olympic gold medal-clinching giant slalom run, and he welcomed the drug screening. It made things official, in a way. After all, this was early 1998. His still-fringe sport was b...
A Brief Oral History Of The Best Jump Ball Of All Time
On Tuesday night, Matt Bonner and Zach Randolph combined to create the above piece of comedic gold. I caught up with Bonner, who claimed he still hasn't seen the replay of the play, although he plans to now. "I have a sense of humor," he said. "Someone told me that Jeff Van Gundy was joking about it...
"The Faint Tinkle Of Broken Dreams": Roger Ebert, Teenage Sportswriter
When Roger Ebert died last week, sportswriters were among the many to pay tribute. The beloved movie critic's words, Will Leitch wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, "felt like LIFE." As it turns out, Ebert’s writing life started in sports. In the late 1950s, the News-Gazette, Ebert’s hometown paper in C...