Posts by Shane Ryan

May 31, 2013
The MLB Weekend Top 10: The Universe’s Biggest Rivalry

It’s time to count down the 10 best matchups, players, and forced narratives of the weekend! 10. Hot Bat of the Week: Carlos Gomez (MIL-PHI) .333/.367/.852 is his line over the past seven games, and Philly pitching hasn’t exactly been inspiring this season. I still would not watch any of these games unless someone had […]
May 31, 2013
Arvind’s Last Stand: A Long-Awaited Win at the Scripps National Spelling Bee

“What if Arvind finishes third again? How would he handle that?” I asked Arvind Mahankali’s parents while we waited for their son to return from one of the competition’s two computer-based tests. Srinivas Mahankali is a software engineer, and his wife, Bhavani, is a physician. “We will tell him he’s accomplished everything he needed to […]
May 29, 2013
Romain Bechu Is Coming for Tiger Woods’s Golf-Trick Crown

The first golf tournament I ever saw in person was The Players Championship. This was sometime in the late ’90s, I think. I was probably 12. Sorry, my records from that time are woefully incomplete. The point is, we went on a Saturday, and I have two very noteworthy recollections: 1. I saw Duffy Waldorf […]
May 24, 2013
The MLB Weekend Top 10: Yankees Cast Their Spell

In honor of the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee coming up this Wednesday and Thursday, you will find one of the winning words from the last 10 years of competition in each entry. When they don’t fit naturally — which will be always, if my prospicience can be trusted, since they’re weird and useless for all […]
May 20, 2013
Graeme Disses Rory: Five Points of Interest From the Weekend in Golf

After the high drama of Sergio vs. Tiger last weekend, producing the best Players Championship ratings in more than a decade, we were probably due for something a bit less energetic. But as a fisherman would say, a calm surface can disguise a roiling storm below,* and despite a tranquil veneer, the golf world was […]
May 17, 2013
MLB Weekend Top 10: Texas Exceptionalism Forever

And we are BACK, with your all-purpose* guide to the weekend in MLB action. *Single-purpose, really. It’s super limited in function. You can only read it. 10. no. 2 UNC vs. no. 3 Virginia (Friday, 8 p.m. and Saturday, 2 p.m., ESPN3) Whoa! Super controversial start! Who is this guy? He must think way outside […]
May 15, 2013
A Totally Normal Story: Luke Donald Won a Cow

Just another day here in the sportswriting world, with lots of normal stories about normal things. In the endless cycle of scores, predictable narratives, and boilerplate quotes, here’s the latest: Luke Donald won a cow at a Japanese golf tournament six months ago, and he would not be fucking denied! The story appeared on ESPN […]
May 15, 2013
Andrew Wiggins Chooses Kansas: A Postmortem

At the end of Andrew Wiggins’s signing ceremony Tuesday afternoon, a good chunk of the college basketball world felt deprived. Fans of Kentucky, Florida State, and North Carolina were chief among them, their hopes dashed when the no. 1 recruit chose Kansas instead. It wasn’t a great day for devotees of garish self-indulgence, either; Wiggins […]
May 13, 2013
Of Winners and Whiners: Tiger Dismantles Sergio

It’s rare in golf to see a gallery cheer for a bad shot, but it happens. The patrons of the game love to brag about the sport’s unique decorum, but there are times when rooting interest takes over and fans can’t help themselves. So it wasn’t a huge surprise when the spectators at the 17th […]
May 10, 2013
The NCAA Basketball Rules Committee Just Failed the Sport

This was an exceptional year for college basketball, in the sense that you had to be an exceptional obsessive just to enjoy an average game. The wonderful championship battle between Louisville and Michigan was a happy fluke, a last-ditch saving grace for a season when scoring dipped to levels not seen since 1952, an era […]

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