Hang Up and Listen: The I Can't Believe It's Not Butler Edition

Slate's sports podcast on the NCAA title game, paying college athletes, and baseball's mythical origins.

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In this week's episode of Slate's sports podcast "Hang Up and Listen," Stefan Fatsis, Josh Levin, and Mike Pesca discuss UConn's ugly win over Butler in the NCAA title game and whether college athletes should be paid. Historian John Thorn also joins the show to talk about baseball's origin myths and his appointment as the game's official historian.

Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned on the show:

UConn beat Butler 53-41 to win the NCAA title.
The Wall Street Journal's Darren Everson and the blog Lost Lettermen on shooting in domes.
Brad Stevens, Scrabble fan.
Frontline's report "Money and March Madness."
HBO's Real Sports on whether college athletes should be paid.
The Washington Post's Sally Jenkins defends the scholarship model for college athletics.
USA Today estimates the value of an athletic scholarship.
John Thorn's book, Baseball in the Garden of Eden.
An excerpt from Baseball in the Garden of Eden.
Thorn's three-part series for Bleacher Report on his love of narrative rather than statistics.
Thorn was recently named Major League Baseball's official historian.
Commissioner Bud Selig told a fan that he believed Abner Doubleday invented baseball.

Hang Up and Listen's weekly Wadsworths:

Mike's Wadsworth: Guys who passed up Harvard to play basketball elsewhere. Also: Reggie Miller has better Hall of Fame credentials than Dennis Rodman.
Stefan's Wadsworth: Get to know FIFA presidential candidate Mohamed Bin Hammam.
Josh's Wadsworth: The Cricket World Cup, including captains and the powerplay.

Podcast production and edit by Abdullah Rufus.

You can e-mail us at .

Stefan Fatsis is the author of Word Freak and A Few Seconds of Panic, a regular guest on NPR's All Things Considered and a panelist on Slate's sports podcast "Hang Up and Listen." You can e-mail him at and follow him on Twitter. Josh Levin is a Slate senior editor. You can e-mail him at , visit his Web site, and follow him on Twitter. Mike Pesca is a correspondent for National Public Radio who covers mostly sports.

Illustration by Robert Neubecker.

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