I'm scared about the time if I actually get to that point where these guys have snapped. What has made them snap? And that is what I am scared of, that there is something that is going to come over me that is going to make me snap. | | | | | A frustrated Mickey Mantle in 1965, as his career was winding down. (John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I'm scared about the time if I actually get to that point where these guys have snapped. What has made them snap? And that is what I am scared of, that there is something that is going to come over me that is going to make me snap.”
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| | rantnrave:// DONALD TRUMP has become a pariah for many in the sports world. The NBA is becoming an opposition institution. Two PATRIOTS aren't going to the WHITE HOUSE (read MARTELLUS BENNETT's whole TWITTER feed). Even associating with him is risky. So what kind of blowback will UNDER ARMOUR CEO KEVIN PLANK receive for coming out in favor of the president? It's already been a bad few weeks for the company. Will athletes shun the company? Will it cost the company new partnerships? NIKE and ADIDAS executives have been critical of the president's policies. Has Plank shipwrecked his company on a desert island?... ROB GRONKOWSKI saved his biggest catch of the season for the parade. He had a grand old time... The Patriots can orchestrate a malevolent football deflation scheme but they can't keep track of their valuable memorabilia... The IOC's hesitation to suspend RUSSIAN athletes is creating fissures in the sporting world. Winter athletes are threatening to boycott world championships and high-level events if Russian athletes are there. It provides an interesting dilemma for the IOC and for competitors who want to have a doping-free OLYMPICS. If Russians are banned en masse, the IOC risks ostracizing an entire country's worth of dollars and viewers; it might also be more responsibility than IOC brass wants. But if Russians Olympians aren't suspended or banned after the revelation of a state-sponsored drug program, what will it take for the IOC to act against more than individual athletes? Why should anyone trust the IOC going forward to keep the Games clean? Then again is it fair to punish every athlete for the crimes of their country and cost them a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? | | | - Mike Vorkunov, curator |
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 | Longreads |
| The unexpected joys of adult beginner ballet. | | |
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 | ESPN.com |
| In a time of unrest, Serena's 23rd Grand Slam title stands as a sustaining triumph of talent and perseverance. | | |
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 | Sports Illustrated |
| How far can a team go on shoulders so close to the earth? No player in the NBA is shorter than Isaiah Thomas, but no player in history has been explosive in the fourth quarter than the 5'9" dynamo either. | | |
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 | Bloody Elbow |
| Karim Zidan looks at the sports diplomacy that strengthened US-Iran ties in the 1990s, and how it was nearly interrupted by President Trump’s restrictive immigration plan. | | |
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 | Vocativ |
| Two Houstonites beat a multi-million dollar security operation thanks to friendship and luck. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| A club from a village of 700 people is causing a stir in the Polish top flight thanks to an ambitious owner, drones and a strong female presence. | | |
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 | Vice Sports |
| Holly Holm's two-fight losing streak is the talk of the MMA world ahead of UFC 208 and many are asking if she has lost a step, but the truth might be a little stranger. We examine how styles make fights and tendencies of The Preacher's Daughter. | | |
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 | Yahoo! Sports |
| Because the minor-league hits and home runs were real. Because surely there’s somebody out there who can see that. Because this is what he is if not who he is -- but maybe who he is too sometimes -- and just because the game seems to have one opinion of him does not mean that is real, not today and not tomorrow. So he’s going to play baseball for the rest of his life. | | |
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 | FanGraphs |
| When someone inevitably asks what the next market inefficiency is in baseball, I’ll probably shorten my answer to “communication." | | |
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 | FiveThirtyEight |
| If your social media feeds are like mine, they contained a blurry mix of politics and sports on Sunday night. So as the Atlanta Falcons collapsed, there were a lot of people (myself included!) comparing them to Hillary Clinton and the victorious New England Patriots to Donald Trump. But Super Bowl Sunday and election night weren’t really very much alike. | | |
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 | The Washington Post |
| Friday's $208.7 million settlement did not end a case the NCAA argues could "dismantle" college sports. | | |
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 | San Francisco Chronicle |
| Fitbit’s foray into corporate health care is now a growing part of its business. The company contracts with 1,300 companies, health insurers and corporate wellness vendors to get hundreds of thousands of Fitbits onto the wrists of employees across the country. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| Marc Márquez, a winner of three MotoGP titles, heads to his parents’ quiet home in Spain during the off-season. | | |
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 | n+1 |
| It is a mistake to count on men like Belichick and Brady to understand the basic tenets of our shared world together. They know how to throw touchdowns and win football games, but not how to build or maintain a world in which it is possible to make millions doing so. For that, they rely on the rest of us, especially those long since priced out of their stadiums. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| LeBron James has had no problem speaking his mind this season. Will it hurt the Cleveland Cavaliers in the team's quest to repeat as NBA champions? | | |
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 | Baseball Prospectus |
| PECOTA and Las Vegas don't always see eye to eye, but what if one is watching the other? | | |
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 | MMQB |
| A conversation with Dave Portnoy, creator of Barstool Sports and unofficial leader of New England's fan base. | | |
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| ESPN.com |
| As Sidney Crosby nears the 1,000-point milestone, he reflected back on his early years in the NHL -- and found that the special moments with teammates still resonate more than the statistics. | | |
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| The Guardian |
| Las Palmas’s former Spurs and Portsmouth midfielder talks about fighting racism, speaking at the UN and waking up one day ‘looking like 50 Cent: that’s not me’. | | |
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| Sports Illustrated |
| U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati offered his explanation for why it's not implemented in the United States-and isn't likely to be anytime soon. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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