Eli Manning is to continue in the vaunted tradition of his brother Peyton–and the less vaunted one of Michael Phelps and LeBron James and Nancy Kerrigan. He’s going to host Saturday Night Live on May 5! We hope the Giants’ Super Bowl hero–a shy and retiring type by comparison to splashy New York athletes of Read More
I first recognized it on Dec. 14, 2009, though I didn’t know its name then.
The news broke that Hideki Matsui—the George Harrison of the Yankees, the quiet, stoic performer, and the 2009 World Series MVP—wouldn’t play for New York the following season. The Yankees told Mr. Matsui’s agent that he wasn’t a priority, so Matsui took a one-year, $6.5 M. contract with the Anaheim Angels.
The same team who gave Carl “Ass Injury” Pavano a $40 M. contract (for which he earned $17,646 per pitch, having thrown in only 26 Yankees games) not four years before let Matsui go, just one month after he was named the MVP of the World Series he’d helped the team win. Even now, when I speak with fellow Yankees fans about this travesty, they just shake their heads and shrug, as if to say: Yeah, we know. What’re you gonna do?*
It was a classic, symptomatic moment of Steinbrenner syndrome, a disease characterized by short attention span, poor memory and fits of ecstasy followed by angry outbursts. It affects nine out of 10 New York sports fans (and 10 out of 10 New York sports editors). Its only treatment is frequent, intense doses of winning. Read More
It turns out the New York Giants were prescient when they briefly put their website on a championship footing Saturday: in spite of a strong effort by the Patriots in the 4th quarter including a failed Tom Brady Hail Mary pass, the Giants won their Super Bowl match-up against the New England Patriots, 21-17. The Giants profited as much off Patriot foul-ups as they did from quarterback Eli Manning‘s efficient move into high gear in the fourth quarter, when Mr. Manning led what would ultimately be the game-winning drive, culminating in a touchdown by Ahmad Bradshaw with less than a minute left in the game. The AP reports as many as 100 million viewers may have tuned into the game on NBC. Read More
So Rick Perry, President Barack Obama and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad walk into a bar… It’s not a joke; it’s a scenario we imagined as a real possibility as all three were descending upon Manhattan this week. (As long as they stay away from Miss Lily’s. It’s already crowded enough.)
We like to call this scenario “fantasy bar fight.” Read More
As Week 1 begins to transition to Week 2 at the U.S. Open, the quality of celebrity sightings are going to tick, tick, tick right on up.
Tonight, Will Ferrell is expected to be in attendance to watch the Blake-Djokovic match. Giants QB Eli Manning will be here, as will a Baldwin! (Stephen). And amazingly, Read More
The Jets seem to come in for the worst of it on the morning after they and the Giants both lost in humbling fashion.
“Frauds.” That’s Mark Cannizzarro’s lead paragraph in the Post. And it’s hard to argue–what with all the bluster after their 3-0 start, which is now officially forgotten after a loss Read More
All that drama on the field this weekend doesn’t make for much drama in this morning’s papers. The Yankees finished their sweep of the Twins with two rousing victories, so there’s lots of lavish praise.
The Alex Rodriguez stories are obligatory. After years of failing to live up to expectations down the stretch, he carried Read More
New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning threw his support behind drug and alcohol treatment programs at a glitzy gala benefiting the nonprofit Phoenix House at the posh Plaza Hotel on Monday, March 30, featuring live performances by Wyclef Jean and Miri Ben-Ari.
But the boyish 28-year-old pigskin personage couldn’t keep his mind Read More
I hope that in about ten years when Pro Football Hall of Fame voters sit down to make their selections, they remember the greatest Giant of them all, Plaxico Burress. Burress is so good that his absence alone was responsible for New York not repeating as Super Bowl champs – which means, by extension, that Read More
With all due respect to Peyton Manning, the NFL’s MVP for the 2008 season was the Arizona Cardinals’ quarterback Kurt Warner. Warner didn’t have the best passing stats in the league, though his numbers were outstanding: 4558 yards passing, good for 2nd in the league behind New Orleans’ Drew Brees; a healthy 7.7 yards per Read More
