The latest issue of Tennis magazine is out with a little feature on the 10 most influential racquets of all time. If you’ve ever followed the sport, you can probably guess five of them off the top of your head. But buried in the entry on the Wilson Pro Staff 6.0 85 is this fascinating nugget:

Pete Sampras didn’t merely play with the Pro Staff 6.0 85; he insisted on playing with those produced in a former Maidenform undergarment factory on the [Caribbean island of St. Vincent] (early Pro Staffs were made in Wilson’s Chicago factory and later ones in China). When the St. Vincent factory closed in 1990, he stockpiled a bunch of the frames and got more from Wilson when he ran out. The St. Vincent Pro Staffs had a slightly wider beam due to older manufacturing techniques. According to Sampras’ stringer, Nate Ferguson, the St. Vincent racquets are also slightly stiffer than those made elsewhere.

This sort of thing always amazes me. There’s a story about Bill Bradley going to the opening of a YMCA or some such (maybe from A Sense of Where You Are?). Bradley was to dedicate the basketball court by taking a free throw. He missed the first free throw, clanging the ball off the rim. He took another one, with the same result. He grumbled that the rim was an inch off. Someone measured it and sure enough, it was.

I think we mortals often underestimate how different it is, as a simple physical proposition, to encounter the world as a professional athlete. It’s not just what you can do–it’s that you can actually see and feel things that normal people can’t.

PS: Why wasn’t the Wilson Profile included in the Tennis list? It totally revolutionized raquet design, even though it was more cricket bat than raquet.

Galley Brother B.J. sends along a link to the lobster knife fight. Which is kind of awesome.

What does this mean, exactly? I mean, on the one hand, it’s kind of awesome. But on the other, isn’t it wildly disturbing? Are we close to Cinnabon launching a Bukkake Blast flavor?

On the pick that Samuel returned for a TD yesterday, did anyone notice the vicious block that got thrown on Tarvaris Jackson just before Samuel got into the endzone? Dear God, it was righteous.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnTMQYWkb-s&hl=en&fs=1]

(BTW, Jackson deserves a ton of credit for hustling back and whole-heartedly trying to make a play, knowing he had a giant bullseye on him. That’s all heart.)

Is anyone else disturbed to see this guy as the normal-guy office-worker star of a Wendy’s commercial?

A brief FAQ and ode to Jane Espenson, here.

I did a short review for the Wall Street Journal last week about The Race for the New Game Machine and now all my nerd dreams have come true! The piece was noticed by G4, joystiq, kotaku, and gizmono. It’s like a white way of geek delight.

I mention this only because with mentions at AICN and TheForce.net already in the bag, I think this puts me just a LeakyCauldron away from hitting for the Nerd Cycle.

PS: If you’re into flame war stuff, just check out the PS360 battle royals in the comments on those links.

I forget whose maxim that was, but it’s a tried and true rule for journalists, which particularly holds for your bad pieces.

Last year I took after a writer named Lori Gottlieb for publishing this piece in the Atlantic about how women should settle and marry whichever schlub they can get their hands on because being a single mother is really hard. You can read my brief against the piece, and the editors at the Atlantic, here.

In any event, I was paging through Parents magazine today (no comment) when I stumbled over a piece entitled “I Heart Your Husband.” The first three paragraphs sounded remarkably familiar–turns out it’s Gottlieb, writing the same piece with different names and similar anecdotes.

I don’t mention any of this to impugn Gottlieb–she’s done nothing wrong and if she can get two high word-rate mags to buy essentially the same piece, good for her! And the second piece actually fits pretty well in Parents; it makes sense for them.

My point is that the Atlantic, which was once America’s most important intellectual journal, is now running copy on par with Parents magazine.