For his new book The Renegade Sportsman, Zach Dundas spent years seeking out and chronicling fringe sports, from Bike Polo to the Cresta Run. The result is a fascinating read that explores the many eccentric sports that promise more broken bones than money, yet somehow get to the heart of that mad, single-minded competition that makes sports worthwhile. We caught up with Zach to get his picks for a video gallery of his favorite not-fit-for-TV sports.

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Yesterday the 2012 London Olympics unveiled their official mascots, Wenlock and Mandeville, two one-eyed futuristic drops of steel. Based on a story by children’s author Michael Morpurgo, the metallic characters were “created” from the final support girder for the Olympic Stadium in East London. Sound strange? It gets much weirder. After the jump, we evaluate mascots from past Olympic games, separating out the best from the worst.

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You don’t need to be a Yankees diehard to find the daily photo updates on the Demolition of Yankee Stadium blog fascinating. In fact, it might give certain people (we’re looking at you, BoSox fans), a cheap thrill to watch the “The House That Ruth Built” slowly crumble. (Bronx kids too young to remember the former stadium, but old enough to use the new playing fields scheduled to take its place, are probably happy too.) Now that most of the upper levels have been gutted, construction crews are faced with loads of rubble and dust; that said, the project isn’t scheduled for completion until June. More photos — which were all shot yesterday — after the jump.

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James Hirsch’s comprehensive bio of Willie Mays charts the fascinating life of the intensely private baseball legend during the turbulent civil-rights era.

Commentary by Mays himself offers insight into some of his greatest plays — including the 1954 World Series “catch” — as well as his role in defusing a riot during the Marichal/Roseboro fight in 1965. Among other interesting facts revealed in the first authorized biography of the sports great: baseball was only Mays’ third best sport in high school, behind basketball and football.

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To be filed under Hipster Sports We Don’t Believe Really Exist. Like Muggle Quidditch. According to the Pittsburgh City Paper, who reported on the bicycle polo trend back in May,

The game is pretty straightforward: a 10-minute, three-on-three contest, played with homemade mallets, on bikes. The ball is a street-hockey ball. Keep it out of your goal, and get it into theirs — fairly similar to regular polo.

For a goal to count, it must be hit off the narrow side of the mallet, and it must go through the front of the “net”– really just two orange cones painted with “PGH POLO” in a bubbly, graffiti-style font. The net is a few feet wide, and games score in the single digits, generally.

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The New York Yankees rewarded their long-suffering fans on Wednesday night by clinching their 27th World Series title. Today they’re celebrating with a ticker-tape parade, complete with a performance by Jay-Z and a cameo by Spike Lee. The last time things were this crazy in the Canyon of Heroes was back in early 2008, in celebration of the Giants’ Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots. After the jump we run through some of the biggest NYC ticker-tape parades of the last century.

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From The Daily Show to NPR’s Fresh Air, LeBron James has been all over the media ticker tape to hype More Than a Game. With his marquee name and plenty of parquet squeaks, it’s a must-see for the basketball obsessed and a hearty yes for those who relish a rah-rah documentary. Others might wish that Kristopher Belman’s debut shone a harsher light on, say, underage athletic celebrity while relating the championship dream of an unseasoned high school coach and five hoop stars led by Ohio’s then-teenage King. Read More »

The title sort of says it all, but for those of intrigued, disturbed or simply interested in finding out how in the hell this happened, here’s the recap: Larry Johnson, a former employee of Alcor Life Extension Foundation, not “Grandmama”, reports in his new book Frozen, that a technician at the facility repeatedly took home run shots at the famed slugger’s severed head with a monkey wrench. A monkey wrench for Christ’s sake! Read More »

We’re not much for extreme sports, but we’ll break that rule for anything that involves a Slip ‘n Slide, ramp, and inflatable pool. A synopsis of what you will see after the jump, courtesy of a very bad French to English free translation site: “Jump of a huge toboggan in a swimming pool on the side of a mountain. The man who makes this performance broke the hushed up record the world of long jump in swimming pool from a toboggan. Good video;-)” Read More »

Despite the fact that the seven book series ended over two years ago and the latest film took a 60 percent tumble at the box office last weekend, it looks like Harry Potter’s grip on the muggle world may not be over yet. Quidditch, yes quidditch, is sweeping the nation’s colleges (broom pun intended) with over 200 schools interested in the sport, and 150 — from Princeton to LSU — already participating in the International Quidditch Association.  Read More »