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Byline: Will Leitch Making fun of Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig is so much fun it's kind of a sport unto itself. Selig has the hangdog countenance of a [...]

Byline: Will Leitch The last time the New York Knicks won a playoff series, a 15-year-old Carmelo Anthony had just finished his growth spurt. While the Knicks were outlasting the [...]

Byline: Will Leitch On the sliding scale of sports-fan optimism, Mets fans’ hopes for this year’s team fall somewhere between the Los Angeles Clippers and the Washington Generals. The Mets’ [...]

Byline: Will Leitch Is being the general manager of the Yankees a fun job? There have to be days when it’s not, when it’s too exhausting and ridiculous to hang [...]

Byline: Will Leitch Has your son or daughter (or cousin or neighbor’s child) asked you for a Carmelo Anthony jersey yet? My nephew already wants one, and he’s not even [...]

Byline: Will Leitch With all the thrills of the Garden this season, with the cries of 'M-V-P!' for Amar'e Stoudemire, with the first playoff appearance in seven years all but [...]

Byline: Will Leitch The storied 'J-E-T-S' chant is oddly abrupt. Someone shouts 'J-E-T-S!' and the crowd responds 'Jets! Jets! Jets!' and that's it. There's nowhere else to go with it, [...]

Byline: Will Leitch When George Steinbrenner bought the Yankees in 1973, he famously promised to 'stick to building ships' and leave the baseball management to baseball people. Within a year, [...]

Byline: Will Leitch By the time you read this, Derek Jeter may have signed his new contract with the Yankees. Or maybe his agent, Casey Close, is walking up to [...]

Byline: Will Leitch One year ago next week, the debate raging on our city's back pages was whether the New York Knicks should sign Allen Iverson. This was mostly because [...]

Byline: Will Leitch Somewhere up in my parents' attic in rural Illinois, in a box of old neglected toys that would make Woody and Buzz cry, lies a beaten-up G.I. [...]

Byline: Will Leitch It is no small irony that perhaps the most uplifting moment the New York Mets have offered their fans over the past four years involved team COO [...]

Byline: Will Leitch Amar'e Stoudemire is not Jewish. I am sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings here: I know everyone was very excited. The enthusiasm is understandable. He [...]

Byline: Will Leitch For the second consecutive year, the Yankees have had a relatively drama-free season. Sure, there have been the occasional headaches--A-Rod's endless and awkward quest for 600 homers, [...]

Byline: Will Leitch All it took to bring a screeching halt to the surprising Era of Good Feeling surrounding the Knicks this summer--no LeBron, but Amar'e! Anthony Randolph! Hope for [...]

Byline: Will Leitch By the time you read this, Yankees third-baseman Alex Rodriguez may have hit his 600th home run, becoming the seventh man in baseball history to do so. [...]

Byline: Will Leitch LeBron James is going to Miami; the Knicks, alas, will have to continue to rebuild the hard way. But take heart: They've signed All-Star forward Amar'e Stoudemire, [...]

Byline: Will Leitch Suffice to say Jeff Wilpon, chief operating officer of the Mets, will never be confused with George Steinbrenner. A former major-league hopeful--he briefly appeared at spring training [...]

Byline: Will Leitch,Ira Boudway If LeBron James comes here, it's not the end of his story: It's only the beginning. Glancing backward from the year 2018, we wondered: What would [...]

Byline: Will Leitch,Ira [...]

Byline: Will Leitch,Ira Boudway Hey, Lebron, it's us, New York. First of all, congratulations on winning your second straight MVP last week. Now, may it be the last one you [...]

Byline: Will Leitch,Ira Boudway It's not all glitz and glamour in New York. We are also home to the most legendary court in all of street basketball, Rucker Park, where [...]

Byline: Will Leitch,Ira Boudway We know you and your friends are not immune to the pleasures of the nightlife. And, as you've no doubt experienced on your visits here, Cleveland [...]

Byline: Will Leitch,Ira Boudway John Leguizamo 'LeBron, come to New York! Have you ever been to Scores, LeBron? There's no strip club like New York strip clubs. You can have [...]

Byline: Will Leitch,Ira Boudway This is just an abbreviated photo gallery of celebrities who attended a game at the Garden this year. Keep in mind that this was during a [...]

Byline: Will Leitch,Ira Boudway Before the 2009 All-Star Game, you told a reporter, 'I would definitely love to play with Chris Bosh. Being around him last summer [in the Olympics], [...]

Byline: Will Leitch,Ira Boudway You've built yourself a nice spread out there in Summit County, Ohio: six bedrooms, 33,000 square feet, your own barbershop, aquarium, recording studio, and bowling alley. [...]

Byline: Will Leitch,Ira Boudway Listen, we know you like Cleveland coach Mike Brown. He's a smart man and particularly skilled at coaching defense. You've done some fine things together. You [...]

Byline: Will Leitch,Ira Boudway We know you're a brand-savvy guy. We read where you said you wanted to be a billionaire. You don't need more business advice, and if you [...]

Byline: Will Leitch,Ira Boudway Over the years, the world-famous Carnegie Deli has paid culinary homage to everyone from Woody Allen to Venus Williams. Sandy Levine, the general manager (or 'the [...]

Byline: Will Leitch,Ira Boudway We left a big if in that last section. If you win. You would be forgiven for pausing on those three little words. Winning an NBA [...]

Byline: Will Leitch,Ira Boudway The newly refurbished Madison Square Garden, to be unveiled starting in 2011, will essentially be brand-new. The lobby, locker rooms, sight lines, and, of course, corporate [...]

Byline: Will Leitch,Ira Boudway We've already got Babe Ruth Plaza, Joe DiMaggio Highway, Lou Gehrig Plaza, Joe Louis Plaza ... you get the picture. For you, we're thinking big: Next: [...]

Byline: Will Leitch,Ira Boudway Derek Jeter Yankees, 1996, 1998-2000, 2009 'The parade is just crazy. That many people?' Keith Hernandez Mets, 1986 'I loved winning in St. Louis, but winning [...]

Byline: Will Leitch,Ira Boudway Sure, you could play it safe and stay in Cleveland, but look around you: That might actually be the risky choice. The team is only getting [...]

Byline: Will Leitch S ince Javier Vazquez was traded away from the Yankees--after the iconic grand slam then-Red Soxer Johnny Damon hit off him in Game 7 of the 2004 [...]

Byline: Will Leitch Runs batted in--RBIs--aren't always a useful measure of an individual hitter's skill, because you can only drive runners in when they're already on base for you. A [...]

Byline: Will Leitch Sarah Silverman lives in a very small apartment--possibly the smallest of anyone who has ever had her name in the title of a TV show. Her compact [...]

Byline: Will Leitch Last week, a Middletown, New Jersey, man named Chris Lisi paid his presumably hard-earned money to sit in the second row at the Izod Center in East [...]

Byline: Will Leitch The Yankees missed the playoffs in 2008, causing more civic agita than a decade of Knicks ineptitude, then spent their way out of the problem, committing $423.5 [...]

Byline: Will Leitch Now that A-Rod finally has his ring, can we agree that his admittedly odd personality doesn't affect his play on the field? This was a year riddled [...]

Byline: Will Leitch I n 2004, after Aaron Boone but before the great collapse, Chris Smith described a scene from Yankee Stadium in this magazine. 'On the night of July [...]

Byline: Will Leitch The common theme that emerged from the baseball commentariat in the wake of the Yankees' title was 'They bought it'--one of those arguments that is impossible to [...]

Byline: Will Leitch A s President Obama could tell you, there comes a certain point in your administration when the predecessor's mess becomes your mess. When Donnie Walsh took over [...]

Byline: Will Leitch Back in December, right before Christmas, the Yankees agreed to an eight-year, $180 million contract with first-baseman Mark Teixeira, completing a two-week spending spree the likes of [...]

Byline: Will Leitch ESPN.com's 'The Sports Guy,' the most popular online sports columnist in the country, has a new tome, The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports [...]

Byline: Will Leitch The crowd, however, was not disappointed, rewarding Jeter with a thunderous ovation as he jogged into the dugout. By the time he sat down, backup catcher Francisco [...]

Byline: Will Leitch In the beginning, zombie movies were truly frightening, the gold standard being George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead. But thanks to the uproarious (and scary) [...]

Byline: Will Leitch Which brings us to Eli Manning. The Giants, to much fanfare, signed the charmingly yokelish Giants quarterback to a six-year, $97.5 million contract extension last month, which, [...]

Byline: Joe DeLessio,Will Leitch 1. April 22 Yankees 9, A's 7 Melky Cabrera hits a two-run homer in the bottom of the fourteenth. Pie? No pie. It was cold. 2. [...]