Billion-Dollar Billy Beane
The film version of “Moneyball” depicts many establishment baseball types as ignorant of where wins in baseball come from and clueless about how to properly value talent.
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Steven Nyman is poised at the starting gate, alert, coiled, ready. A signal sounds: three even tones followed by a single, more urgent pitch, sending Nyman kicking onto the Val Gardena downhill ski course.
The $10 million estate of Lance Armstrong’s dreams is hidden behind a tall, cream-colored wall of Texas limestone and a solid steel gate. Visitors pull into a circular driveway beneath a grand oak tree whose branches stretch toward a 7,806-square-foot Spanish colonial mansion.
The following is excerpted from a feature running in Next City's weekly Forefront series on urban issues. Two days before Christmas, the Detroit Red Wings got booed out of their own arena.
On a recent August afternoon, near Nineteenth Street, two young girls with blond hair pulled back in ponytails ran past me, one of them calling out, “Daddy, Daddy, I just saw Misty Copeland!” The tone of voice might as well have been used to announce a sighting of Katy Perry, or Snow White.
Brazil may have never wanted for places to play soccer, but that didn’t stop the country from spending billions of dollars on stadiums for last month’s World Cup.
When Ronaldo da Costa broke the finish-line tape at the 1998 Berlin Marathon, he began dancing a samba. He deserved to party: The marathon world record had been stuck at 2:06:50 since 1988, after creeping down an average of just five seconds a year since the late ’60s.
In late September, several weeks after signing a long-term deal that gave him the third-highest average annual salary in the National Hockey League, P. K. Subban went shopping for a house.
In January, Daniel Dobson was two months into a new job that allowed him the opportunity to travel overseas and watch live sports. It had a downside, though: It got him arrested in an incident that drew media coverage around the world.
The joke, said Braves broadcaster Skip Caray, is that if half the people who claimed to be at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium during the Bad Times (1985 to 1990) had actually been there, no seat would've been available.
Nothing is more reviled in sport now than doping. The US cyclist Lance Armstrong is not just bad – in the eyes of the media he is practically a monster: ‘singularly evil’, and ‘worse than shameless’.
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — When a pack of whip-thin girls zipped across the finish of the 1,600-meter race at a recent track meet here, the smallest runner’s legs wobbled like rubber, and she flopped into her waiting coach’s arms. She collapses every time she races.
One of the most interesting statistical nuggets I ran into while researching a piece about NHL goalies was the improvement in leaguewide goaltending over the past 30 years.
This week, as the sports world repays our slavish attention with more lousy, grotesque news, it’s worth noting that, on Sunday, the greatest American athlete in a generation won the U.S. Open, again, for the sixth time and the third year in a row.
When I played basketball for UCLA, I learned the hard way how the NCAA’s refusal to pay college athletes impacted our daily lives.
This is a column about Katie Ledecky. It has a simple thesis. The thesis is that Katie Ledecky kicks ass. The thesis is a gasoline fireball from which Katie Ledecky is walking away in slow motion, too cool to look back.
You’re on defense, zone defense. You pick up a loose ball and look for the outlet pass. You see it, throw it, and go down the middle on a fast break, taking the return pass. Now you’re looking for a three-on-two or a two-on-one before they can set up their defense.
As the NBA and NHL playoffs start, a Harvard sleep specialist advises rest, not more practice, for championship teams. On June 14, 2011, Dr. Charles Czeisler stood by the side of a small stage, listening as a colleague introduced him to a crowd of fellow researchers.
The funniest thing about the legacy of Moneyball, the 2003 Michael Lewis book and the 2011 Brad Pitt movie, is that it quickly became an ongoing leadership seminar about losers.
I was a state college kid the first and only time I rode a snowboard. This was in the 1980s and snowboarding was still illegal at New Hampshire's ski resorts.
Back in January, when Stan Wawrinka won the Australian Open, it was the first time in more than four years that someone not named Federer, Nadal, Djokovic or Murray captured a grand-slam championship.
BEFORE GETTING TO the alleged mob hit or the mystery of the missing referee, there should be an explanation about how this quest began. An assigned profile of Luis Suarez led to a stack of things to read about his past.
Yeah, I read LeBron James’s classy letter in Sports Illustrated. I believe him. I think he wanted to come home. I think he always wanted to come home. In the summer of 2010, LeBron handled everything wrong. He knows that now. His hometown turned on him. His former owner excoriated him.
Even before he exiled the most accomplished and iconic player in United States soccer history and before his presumptive top goal scorer went nearly an entire season without scoring goals and before he knew whom, exactly, his te
In the middle of 1989, suburban soccer dad Chuck Blazer had just lost his job, had no income, and was struggling with debt.
My Thursday-night pick: Baltimore -2.5 over Pittsburgh. Who cares? Does ANYONE care? Let’s break out the special-edition “HOW THE HELL DOES ROGER GOODELL STILL HAVE A JOB?” mailbag! But first … how the hell does Roger Goodell still have a job?
Throughout the world, the way people feel about sports spans a wide range. Let’s start with what we know about the non-sports side of the spectrum— To non-sports fans, caring about sports makes no sense.
BRISTOL, Conn. — Adam Schefter had some news to share. On this morning, the audience numbered only one: an AFC executive who had just called. “Well, I got a few things for you,” Schefter said. “Number one, you got the Titans and Eagles, both very anxious to trade for a wide receiver.
I don’t know if I believe that the NFL hadn’t seen the Ray Rice elevator footage before it was released by TMZ on Monday morning. It’s just impossible.
This article was taken from the January 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.