Articles by David Roth
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The Mercy Rule
Meet the Satire Called the Mets
Mets fans are not notably smarter or dumber, more or less entitled, or even sadder than the fans of any other flailing team. But thanks to their owners, the Wilpon family, the team's narrative is less a standard Shitty Owner Ruins Team story and more like a strange, sprawling satirical novel. Full story
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The Mercy Rule
Neon Waters Run Deep
adidas's new college basketball uniforms are just a dumb thing to look at and crack some jokes about. But the only compensation the athletes wearing them get is the enjoyment of the enhanced comfort provided by the breakthrough wicking polymers. Full story
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The Mercy Rule
That's So Jordan
Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player ever, and that being more or less beyond dispute does not make it something basketball fans are less excited to talk about. But in the decade since his last NBA game, talking about His Airness has become a different and stranger th… Full story
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The Mercy Rule
National Shouting Day
National Signing Day, the least telegenic televised "event" of all time, is a giddy beef auction presided over by the psychotic golf dads who coach high-level college football covered as if it were a moon landing. Full story
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The Mercy Rule
Why Breitbart Sports Will Fail, I Hope
It’s only fitting that after a career spent treating politics like a long football game between Black Nazi Communists and the Founding Fathers, Andrew Breitbart has posthumously lent his name to a sports-news website. Full story
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The Mercy Rule
The Lakers' Unreality Show
There’s a certain ugly thrill in watching these Lakers fail, but it’s not a lot of fun—it’s tough to take much joy from watching all these great players playing so poorly and unhappily, even with the leavening knowledge that their ill-tempered awfulness is probably preventing Jac… Full story
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The Mercy Rule
Hall of Lame
Like talk-radio types, Baseball Hall of Fame voters are blithely holding others to impossible standards in the most self-righteous way possible, and define “getting tough” as “accusing people you barely know of being cheaters instead of dealing with a complex issue.” The differen… Full story
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The Mercy Rule
Taken
There’s no reason why anyone should talk about or listen to other people talking about sports for hours and hours every day. There is not necessarily that much to say about men running and catching balls under the best of circumstances, and necessarily not that much to say in mos… Full story
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The Mercy Rule
The Pelicans’ Grief
Team names work best when they’re both goofy and ambitious. The very words Utah Jazz conjure someone pouring a quart of milk into a clarinet; the idea of a Sacramento King mostly just gives you the image of a winking Guy Fieri sitting on a pepperoni throne wearing a crown made of… Full story
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The Mercy Rule
Someone's Super Bowl
This is how we wind up with something like Saturday's SEC Championship Game, which is an orgy of crass bloat and khaki-clad excess to some, something much more important than the Super Bowl to a great many others, and objectively a good deal stranger a thing than we're supposed t… Full story
The Mare
A New Story by Mary Gaitskill 
Toppling a Delicate World
Being Gay and South Asian In America 
There's No Sex in Prison Showers
We Usually Wore Our Underwear 
Try Not to Destroy Your Life
The First Time I Took Molly 
A Teacher and Her Student
Marilynne Robinson on Staying Out of Trouble 
"Whitey" Isn't Very Popular in Boston
Interviews with Some of His Old Friends 
