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LAS VEGAS (AP) — Leon Spinks, who won Olympic gold and then shocked the boxing world by beating Muhammad Ali to win the heavyweight title in only his eighth pro fight, has died. He was 67. Spinks, who lived his later years in Las Vegas, died Friday night, according to a release from a public relations firm. He had been battling prostate and other cancers. His wife, Brenda Glur Spinks, and a few close friends and other family members were by his side when he passed away. A lovable heavyweight with a drinking problem, Spinks beat Ali by d...
The stat geeks are all excited, even if no one else seems to be. They've spent the first days of the baseball season analyzing a bunch of new numbers that show the possibilities — and probabilities — of runners scoring after being put on second base to open extra innings. What they've found is interesting enough, though the sample size is small. Still, deciding whether to bunt or not with the first batter has at least introduced a bit of strategy into a game that in recent times has seemed intent on eliminating any deep thoughts. Assuming the...
I'm not really sure what Twitch is, but I do know this — Blake Snell will wish he was never on it. He said on the social gaming site what a lot of Major League Baseball players are probably thinking. Like him, they're anxious about risking their health by returning to play and not happy they have to take a pay cut to do so. But after a rant as ill-advised as it was tone-deaf, Snell is now the poster child for spoiled millionaire ballplayers everywhere. And, really, let's face it. He deserves all the vitriol coming his way. ``I'm not playing u...
It's impossible to reconcile, so I won't even try. How can you love a sport so filled with tragedy and heartbreak? How can you cheer when you know getting hit in in the head can cause so much harm? Maxim Dadashev wasn't a world champion. He didn't have an entourage like Manny Pacquiao, and no one paid $74.99 to see him fight on pay-per-view. Like many young boxers, though, the Russian did have a dream. He would become a world champion one day, a goal that seemed possible after he won his first 13 fights, 11 by knockout. "He was a lovely young...
LAS VEGAS (AP) — The same bettor who took this city's legal sports books for millions of dollars on the World Series is looking to cash in again at the Super Bowl. The bettor placed a $500,000 wager on the Philadelphia Eagles at the South Point sports book, oddsmaker Jimmy Vaccaro said. If the money line bet pays off, the gambler will walk away with $1.32 million, with a profit of $820,000. "He's one of the guys who was floating around betting all that money on the World Series," Vaccaro said. "I don't think he lost a bet then, we'll see how h...
The seamy underbelly of college basketball has always existed, despite the halfhearted and mostly futile efforts by the NCAA to make sure everybody plays fair. Now that it's finally been penetrated by real lawmen, the only question is how many people the FBI ends up taking down. The number stood at 10 Tuesday after federal prosecutors moved to arrest, among others, a top Adidas executive, and assistant basketball coaches from Arizona, Auburn, the University of Southern California and Oklahoma State. They're charged in a bribery scheme to steer...
