Deadspin

Fenway is eerily quiet as Red Sox Nation is down 5-0 to Rays. B.J. Upton and honorary Dominican for a day Evan Longoria have each homered off of Jon Lester. [Y! Sports]

Media

John Madden Getting Sick of Riding Old Bones Across Country in a Bus to Cover Crappy Games

The Washington Post has just reported that NFL broadcasting stalwart John Madden will miss his first week blabbering about football for the first time in 476 games. He's not gravely ill and not planning on retiring soon either, so the Frank Caliendo suicide watch is also put off indefinitely. No, the 72-year-old Madden insists the week off is more "circumstantial" than anything else and, instead, he will be at home in the Bay Area spending time with his five grandchildren doing grandfatherly things. More »

The Phillies play the Dodgers ♬ listen to the game tonight ♬ don't you remember ♬ we built this live blog ♬ we built this live blog on mock bingo — Sussman

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To Watch Tonight

What to watch while you win all your money back ...

• MLB: ALCS, Game 3, Tampa Bay Rays at Boston Red Sox (Right NOW!) Tazers on stun! [TBS]
• NHL: Vancouver Canucks at Washington Capitals (7:00 p.m., ET) Ovechkin cares not for your "goalies." [Versus]
• MLB: NLCS, Game 4, Philadelphia Phillies at Los Angeles Dodgers (8:22 p.m. ET). Manny thinks the guy at Starbucks handed his change back a little too far inside this morning. [Fox]
• NFL: Monday Night Football: New York Giants at Cleveland Browns (8:30 p.m., ET). When will Cleveland fans try a "brownout"? [ESPN]


Do not invite Joey Chestnut to your next pizza party. [NY Daily News]

Media

Memo to Adam Jones from Stephen A. Smith: You're Making All Black People Look Bad

Since the NBA season hasn't officially begun and the WWL has finally found out he's not as viable a sports star as they once hoped, Stephen A. Smith's visibility on ESPN has been limited. But last week Smith went into full-on ALL CAPS-mode while biding his time in the on-air personality purgatory known as 1st and 10. Everyone's favorite loudmouth took the news about Adam Jones' most recent minor dust-up with his nightclub body guards a little more personally than most:

More »

David Stern says the NBA will have to lay off about 80 employees due the recent economic "troubles." Sorry, J.J. Redick. [Reuters/ESPN]

Afternoon Blogdome

Afternoon Blogdome: The Other Tampa Bay Lightning

Don't ALCS me, bro!: The newest Rays promotion: The first 10,000 Red Sox fans at Tropicana Field receive a free tazering. (P.S. Don't applaud an electrocution when you're the one holding the camera.) [Busted Coverage] More »

Horseracing

Goodbye, Big Brown; You're In A Better Place Now ... Jersey

As we told you earlier, tragedy befell Aqueduct racetrack early this morning when Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Big Brown injured his right front hoof during a workout. He was immediately retired. And as you may have guessed, it didn't take horse fans to burst forth with their emotions, which, as usual, spilled into the absurd and inevitably reverted to the old crazy horse-person stand-bye, Barbaro. More »

Anquan Boldin's face, post-shattered sinus surgery: he's a little swollen. [NFL Juice]

Existential dread

Detroit Lions Still Finding New And Impressive Ways To Lose

Two games after getting rid of the The GM Who Shall Not Be Named, Detroit found itself on the verge of its first and possibly only win of the season against the Minnesota Vikings. The defense had kept the opposition under thirty for the first time all season and backup QB "Dandy" Dan Orlovsky had been an "adequate game manager" all day long. Then ... you know ... a few moments later it was all over and they were 0-5. That's bad, right? More »

College Football

Tommy Bowden's Firing: Is Coaching Clemson that Great of a Job Anyway?


In the wake of Tommy Bowden's firing after nine years at Clemson, current players are already piling on. The quarterback he benched, Cullen Harper, told ESPN, "They just told us. It's what he deserved." And this whole firing business might not be that big of a surprise since in the Clemson-Wake Forest preview on Thursday, I pointed out that in nine seasons Bowden had never won more than nine games, an ACC division or conference title, or finished a season with a team ranked higher than 21st in the country. But he did have the number 2 recruiting class in the country and did not completely collapse in any of his seasons. (I'm defining collapse broadly here.) Raising the question, how good of a job is Clemson? More »

O.j. simpson

O.J. Target Of Aryan Prison Gang? Yikes

O.J. Simpson is fearful that an Aryan gang hit squad has marked him for death, it was reported by The Sun, Britain's most trusted news source if you don't count all the others. Simpson, convicted recently on all 12 counts in his robbery and kidnapping trial involving a Las Vegas memorabilia dealer, is being held in Ely State Prison in Nevada until sentencing on Dec. 5. His lawyers plan to appeal the verdict. More »

Big Brown—who, if memory serves, is actually a horse—has injured his foot and will not race again. Has anyone told him about all the sex yet? [AP]

Alcs

Evan Longoria's Not Making a Lot of Amigos at ESPNDeportes

Nice catch by Shysterball, about a minor controversy from Evan Longoria's Eva Longoria-filled interview with Big League Stew's Dave Brown earlier this month. It stemmed from this question, where Brown pithily asked who on the team should not sport a Rayhawk: More »

Horse Race

Baseball Stat Geek Knows Exactly How Much Obama Will Win By

FROM GAWKER.COM: Nate Silver is the crazy kid who invented PECOTA for Baseball Prospectus and now he's made good in the political prediction world! Can I get a "Woop woop?" Baseball fans? More »

Fourteen-year-old Samantha-Jane Stacey, known as Sammy Sumo to her friends, becomes the youngest Australian to win a medal at the World Sumo Championships. [The Courier Mail]