As Wednesday’s 4 p.m. deadline nears in the negotiations between the Texas Rangers and Yu Darvish, the most significant hang-up is reportedly the 25-year-old’s request for a five-year contract and the team’s preference for a six-year deal, according to Yahoo! Sports’ Jeff Passan. Understandably, Darvish aims to become a free…
In case you missed it — which would have taken some doing, since it somehow merited its own Deadspin item yesterday — Randy Galloway’s ready to bench one of the Dallas Mavericks’ high-profile, under-performing acquisitions, Lamar Odom, who had all of six points in 23-plus minutes in last night’s target…
This morning a few Friends of Unfair Park asked: Is WrestleMania really coming to Cowboys Stadium? Um … I dunno? Kinda looked like it, maybe: Several popular wrestling websites, including this one, keep saying that WWE’s signature event, which is closing in on its 30th anniversary, is scheduled to take…
We began the week with the broadcast version of Your Reigning World Champion Dallas Mavericks’ visit to the White House to deliver President Obama his jersey. Moments ago, I see, the White House posted this nice little look behind the curtain starring Dirk, Jason Terry, Coach Carlisle and a decidedly…
There’s a book on the subject: The Catch: One Play, Two Dynasties, and the Game That Changed the NFL. I refuse to read it. Or even link to it. Five years ago, Chris Berman recalled the moment for ESPN. Won’t watch that either. Al Michaels narrated this piece about how…
About an hour ago Your Reigning World Champion Dallas Mavericks finally got their visit to the White House, where President Obama was presented with his very own Mavs jersey. Obama welcomed the team, former Mayor Ron Kirk and, of course, “the shy and retiring owner of the Dallas Mavericks,” as…
In October we noted a report from Pittsburgh-based Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights that said the Dallas Cowboys are having team-branded clothing made in “gross sweatshop conditions at the Style Avenue factory in El Salvador” — which Cowboys Merchandise Ltd. chief operating officer Bill Priakos denied in a…
Jonathan Bales is the founder of DallasCowboysTimes.com, a site dedicated to film study and statistical analysis of the Cowboys. As the seconds ticked away in the Cowboys’ prime-time loss to the Giants on Sunday, Cowboys fans were left with that familiar taste in their mouths. (You know the one –…
Reports out of Japan this morning had Yu Darvish visiting Arlington today — why, they do not say. ESPN Dallas’s Richard Durrett reports the pitcher and his pops and their peeps are here “to take a look at the area and get a better sense of the Texas Rangers organization.”…
We all knew it when we saw it, with 14 seconds to go in the first half and the Dallas Cowboys down 21-0 to the New York Giants: That Sunday Night Football shot of owner and general manager Jerry Jones, his head buried in his hands, would become the defining…
Editor’s note: Jonathan Bales is the founder of DallasCowboysTimes.com and occasionally writes for The New York Times. We thought it’d be fun to have him break out the Xs and Os and Oh Shits before Sunday’s big game. We apologize in advance for the nerdiness. While the “play-in game” that awaits…
That sound you just heard? That was any and all illogically bloated expectations for the Mavericks’ season hitting the ground with a thud. This isn’t your typical championship defense. The Mavs made it clear in the off-season that they weren’t content to merely bring back all of the components of…
In a New York Times piece this morning, Penn State’s interim head coach Tom Bradley acknowledges: Many of the Lions wanted to skip their trip to Dallas on January 2, when Penn State’s scheduled to play Houston in the TicketCity Bowl at the Cotton Bowl in Fair Park. The reason,…
Our Mike Mezeul was at the AAC for yesterday’s season opener, where not a highlight was to be found between the buzzers. His slide show from the interior decorating session can be found here; The Official Banner-Raising Video follows, as do a few other distractions from a Christmas Day blowout,…
Yesterday, over breakfast, I lingered over the brief piece that appears on Page 44 of The New York Times Magazine: “A Day at the Ballpark.” My 8-year-old son, a baseball fan and aspiring catcher, saw the headline and the illustration — a photo of a well-worn baseball — and asked…
My relationship with Dallas before June 12, 2011, was tenuous. I got tattooed there with Dennis Rodman during the summer of 1994 and stayed for a week, but I was shit-faced the whole time. I visited for a few days during baseball’s winter meetings in 2000, when A-Rod signed with…
Saw a piece in the Penn State paper this morning about how sales for the TicketCity Bowl in the Cotton Bowl are “struggling,” at least when it comes to dispensing with Penn State’s allotment of 6,000 ducats for the January 2 face-off against Houston. So I called over to the…
Longtime Friends of Unfair Park will recall: In early 2009, United League Baseball co-founders John Bryant (yes, that John Bryant) and Byron Pierce said that come time for first pitch 2010, they would have a minor-league ballclub on the banks of the Trinity River. Why, they even rendered us a…
Speaking of local sports venues …A Friend of Unfair Park sends this dispatch concerning FC Dallas’s Pizza Hut Park in Frisco, which will no longer be called Pizza Hut Park. Leigh Anne Gullett, director of public relations for the MLS franchise, confirms: After North Dakota State and Sam Houston State…
Speaking of the Texas League, or, at least, teams once affiliated with the mighty Texas League …The Star-Telegram notes today that come January 3, LaGrave Field and the land around the Fort Worth Cats’ ballpark — valuable land too, as it sits between downtown and the Fort Worth Stockyards –…
Whilst perusing the eBay for some gifts on this here first day of Hanukkah, I came across the portrait you see above — significant for two reasons, I should think. First, of course, is the subject: Dick Burnett, for whom the late, great Burnett Field was named. As I’ve noted,…
In winning the well-publicized bidding for Yu Darvish shortly after 10 Monday night, the Texas Rangers have positioned themselves to sign the famous Japanese hurler to one of the riskiest contracts in baseball history. And unless the 25-year-old right-hander immediately establishes himself among the upper-tier dominant pitchers in the game…
