Browsing: Sports

A Brief History On February 20, 1952, Los Angeles-native Emmett Ashford became the first African-American umpire to work in integrated (mainly white) professional baseball when he left his Post Office job to work for the International Southwestern League. Digging Deeper Ashford then went on to umpire in other mostly white professional leagues, reaching his minor-league pinnacle as the Umpire-in-Chief of the Pacific Coast League, where he trained and directed all the umpires and mediated arguments over rules.  In 1966, Ashford became the first black major league umpire, officiating in the American League. Ashford worked as a major league umpire until 1970,…

This Just In! Over the past month, we have published articles noting failed drug tests of some of mixed-martial arts’ (MMA) legends.  Notable fighters, including fighters who have won and held memorable championship titles, such as Anderson Silva, Jon Jones, and Nick Diaz have sullied their reputations with their actions. Now, news has come out that Jon Fitch, a fighter who has competed over thirty times in his career, failed a drug test taken before he fought on December 23, 2014 for the World Series of Fighting’s welterweight championship.  The results of the test have only been revealed this month…

This Just In! Well, it is déjà vu all over again… You may recall that on January 4th, we reported how mixed martial arts’ (MMA) greatest light-heavyweight fighter, Jon Jones, defeated an Olympian in a historic title defense.  Then, just a few days later, we unfortunately had to update our readers that Jones failed a drug test, thereby tarnishing his reputation.  Well, lo and behold, one month later, we write about Anderson Silva, the greatest MMA fighter of any weight class, returning to competition after enduring a horrific injury that almost derailed his career. Silva triumphed in his return (as…

A Brief History On February 3, 2014, one year ago today, Fox Broadcasting announced that the previous day’s Super Bowl XLVIII (no. 48) had been the most watched television event in U.S. history with 111 million people watching the Seattle Seahawks beat the daylights out of the Denver Broncos 43-8 in the Meadowlands of New Jersey. Digging Deeper This game was also significant as it was the first Super Bowl played in cold weather in an open-air stadium. Although both teams entered the game with a regular season record of 13-3, the game lost much of its competitiveness as the…

This Just In! Yesterday, January 31, 2015, we published an article about last night’s return of history’s greatest mixed martial artist (MMA) to active competition. Ultimately, in Anderson Silva’s five round brawl against infamous trash talking contender Nick Diaz, Silva triumphed, winning a somewhat close unanimous decision and bloodying Diaz up in the process.  Nevertheless, whereas Silva achieved fame as a middleweight champion, Diaz had won his championships at the lighter welterweight class.  Moreover, not only is Silva now 39 and arguably past his prime, he indicated after the fight that even his children want him to stop fighting. As…