Sign in Subscribe

Sports History

Hillsborough — home of the Wednesday since 1899

Why Is It Called Sheffield Wednesday? A Field Guide to Britain's Strangest Team Names

American teams are named like action figures: Giants, Warriors, Raptors. British football clubs are named like clues in a 150-year-old mystery: Sheffield Wednesday. Tottenham Hotspur. West Bromwich Albion. Plymouth Argyle. None of it is random — almost every odd name is a fossil of how the club was born.

Jerry Rice in Mississippi Valley State red, No. 88

On This Date: Jerry Rice Catches 17 Passes for 294 Yards — And Nobody Is Watching (Sept. 1, 1984)

On this date in 1984, the greatest receiver who ever lived had one of the greatest games any receiver has ever had — for a tiny school from the Mississippi Delta, on the road in Frankfort, Kentucky, in front of almost nobody who mattered to the NFL. Mississippi Valley State 86,

Bobby Thomson leaps home into the mob, Oct 3, 1951

The 5 Greatest Pennant Race Meltdowns in Baseball History

Every September, some fanbase starts doing the math with a lead that looks safe. This list exists to remind them: no lead is safe. These are the 5 greatest collapses baseball has ever staged — ranked by pure, exquisite agony. 5. 1951 Dodgers: The 13.5-Game Head Start On Aug.

The MECCA's Robert Indiana court from above

The Weirdest Places the NBA Actually Played

Today's NBA lives in half-billion-dollar palaces with courtside sushi. It did not start there. For its first few decades, the league played wherever it could get a lease — chocolate-town hockey barns, military drill halls, high school gyms, and one arena that is now, literally, a

Anaheim Stadium in color, the Big A behind left field

On This Date: They Broke Ground on the Big A (Aug. 31, 1964) — And the 5 Greatest Nights It Ever Hosted

On this date in 1964, Gene Autry — the Singing Cowboy turned baseball owner — stood on a patch of Orange County farmland where alfalfa and orange groves grew, and watched a shovel go into the dirt. The $24 million stadium that rose from that field would host a still-standing strikeout

College All-Stars under the Soldier Field lights

When the NFL Champs Had to Play the College Kids — Every August, for 42 Years

Imagine this today: the Chiefs win the Super Bowl, and their reward is an August exhibition against a team of unsigned draft picks — Caleb Williams, Marvin Harrison Jr., a coaching staff of legends — in front of 90,000 people. And if they lose, it counts. Not in the standings. Forever,

Joe Louis, heavyweight champion of the world

On This Date: The Night a Welsh Coal Miner Took Joe Louis the Distance (Aug. 30, 1937)

Joe Louis was supposed to need about 3 rounds. He'd won the heavyweight title 9 weeks earlier, he was the most feared puncher alive, and the challenger was a British underdog most American writers treated as a warm-up act. Instead, Tommy Farr — a coal miner's