The Whistleblower’s Last Stand

How Joe Paterno’s former protégé became the star witness in the Jerry Sandusky trial:

Long before the presentment became public, players, coaches and residents heard rumors — that McQueary saw Sandusky fondle the boy, or that they were engaged in horseplay. But suddenly the rumors were not only true, they had mushroomed into the biggest college football scandal in history, one that wasn’t just about the crimes of one man but about an administration’s alleged attempt to cover them up. Most people here were surprised at how the prosecutors quoted McQueary in the presentment. Anal intercourse? This was far more graphic than the rumors had it; more than a few people asked: Why didn’t Big Red stop it?

Source: ESPN
Published: Mar 4, 2014
Length: 27 minutes (6,852 words)

When 772 Pitches Isn’t Enough

Via Travelreads: Chris Jones on the unique culture of Japanese baseball and 16-year-old pitching phenom Tomohiro Anraku, seen as “a real-life Sidd Finch, his story so impossible that he’s been spoken about only in whispers or exclamations”:

“There has been talk in America that Anraku’s arm had been destroyed weeks earlier, in April, stripped of its powers at Koshien — a high school tournament that happens twice a year in Japan, in spring and in summer. Robert Whiting, author of You Gotta Have Wa and one of the West’s principal translators of Japanese culture, has a hard time capturing the meaning of Koshien, first held in 1915. ‘It’s like the Super Bowl and the World Series rolled into one,’ he says. ‘It’s the closest thing Japan has to a national festival.’ In the spring, 32 teams from across the country arrive at Koshien, the name of a beautiful stadium near Kobe but also the de facto title of the tournament that’s played there. (In the summer, 49 teams participate, one from each of Japan’s 47 diverse prefectures, plus an additional team from Tokyo and Hokkaido.) They meet in a frantic series of single-elimination games until a champion emerges. At any one time, 60% of Japan’s TV sets will be tuned in to the drama. More than 45,000 fans will be packed into the stadium, and if the games are especially good, many of those fans will be weeping.

“‘It’s not just baseball,’ says Masato Yoshii, who pitched in two Koshiens long before he joined the New York Mets. ‘It’s something else. It’s something more.'”

Source: ESPN
Published: Jul 24, 2013
Length: 23 minutes (5,986 words)

When The Beautiful Game Turns Ugly

The writer travels to Verona, Italy to examine why racism is so prevalent in soccer:

“It was a little stadium, and Boateng could see their faces. Fifty or so people called him an animal. He locked eyes with them and could see the hate. He pointed to his head, to say, ‘You’re an idiot.’ The chants went on for 20 minutes: Oo — oo — oo — oo.

“Boateng had been abused before and had ignored it. This time, he kicked the ball at the fans, took off his jersey and walked to the locker room. His teammates followed. Something important happened at this moment, which didn’t get reported much in the frenzy that followed: Most of the stadium stood and applauded him. Only the small group of fans screamed and whistled. Some laughed.”

Source: ESPN
Published: Jun 5, 2013
Length: 39 minutes (9,793 words)

Allegation Ends Coach’s Career

Former Minnesota State-Mankato head football coach Todd Hoffner’s career ended after being accused of producing and possessing child pornography. He’s fighting to get his reputation back:

“Hoffner and his lawyer held a news conference to address the judge’s decision. He wore a purple tie, the university color, and read a prepared statement about waking from a nightmare. But as he looked around the room, he was thinking more about all the things he might never get back:

“His team, which had gone 13–1 without him, earning Keen an award as regional coach of the year.

“His reputation, because a Google search for his name brought up images of him in an orange jumpsuit.

“His job, because the university said he was still under internal investigation and showed no signs of returning him to coaching.”

Author: Eli Saslow
Source: ESPN
Published: May 25, 2013
Length: 16 minutes (4,065 words)

Michael Jordan Has Not Left The Building

The former basketball star, at 50 and not ready to retire:

“Once, the whole world watched him compete and win — Game 6, the Delta Center — and now it’s a small group of friends in a hotel room playing a silly kid’s game. The desire remains the same, but the venues, and the stakes, keep shrinking. For years he was beloved for his urges when they manifested on the basketball court, and now he’s ridiculed when they show up in a speech.”

“His self-esteem has always been, as he says, ‘tied directly to the game.’ Without it, he feels adrift. Who am I? What am I doing? For the past 10 years, since retiring for the third time, he has been running, moving as fast as he could, creating distractions, distance. When the schedule clears, he’ll call his office and tell them not to bother him for a month, to let him relax and play golf. Three days later they’ll get another call, asking if the plane can pick him up and take him someplace. He’s restless. So he owns the Bobcats, does his endorsements, plays hours of golf, hoping to block out thoughts of 218. But then he gets off a boat, comes home to a struggling team. He feels his competitiveness kick in, almost a chemical thing, and he starts working out, and he wonders: Could he play at 50? What would he do against LeBron?”

Source: ESPN
Published: Feb 15, 2013
Length: 31 minutes (7,955 words)

The Damage Done

George Visger played for the San Francisco 49ers in 1980. Now, he’s diagnosed with chronic traumatic brain injury, frontal and temporal lobe disorders, generalized seizure disorder and cognitive impairment—and he’s trying to make sense of his life:

“On a postcard-perfect Southern California morning, George Visger is pissing blood. This comes as a relief. For me, mostly. But also for him. Things could be worse. He could be having a seizure. Or slipping into a coma. Which means I could be jamming a one-inch butterfly needle into a thumbnail-sized hole in the side of his skull, trying to siphon off excess spinal fluid while avoiding what Visger calls ‘the white stuff.’

“The white stuff being brain tissue.”

Source: ESPN
Published: Feb 9, 2013
Length: 35 minutes (8,849 words)

The Book of Coach

How late 49ers coach Bill Walsh wrote a 550-page book that became a bible for NFL coaches:

“So it was no surprise that Walsh instantly regretted retiring. Believing that he left at least one Super Bowl on the table, Walsh was ‘melancholy and terrible,’ according to Craig. That the 1989 49ers were more dominant in the playoffs under new coach George Seifert than they ever were under Walsh made it worse. Walsh hated that Seifert won a championship that year with his team, his West Coast offense, his philosophy; he so hated the ring that the team awarded him that he gave it away. ‘He didn’t want them to win,’ Craig says. ‘He couldn’t hand over the team he had created to someone else, because he wasn’t capable of it.’

“He tried broadcasting but quit in 1991. ‘I’m not going to sit for three hours and let some 27-year-old f– in my ear tell me about the game,’ he told Brian Billick, former Ravens coach and one of his many protégés. In 1992 Walsh returned to Stanford, where he had coached in the ’70s, but left after two losing seasons in three years, his magic gone. ‘He needed to be Bill Walsh,’ Billick says. ‘He needed to be a genius.’

“So he decided to write a book.”

Source: ESPN
Published: Jan 24, 2013
Length: 20 minutes (5,238 words)

Blind Ambition

An Iraq war veteran becomes blind during combat and learns how to live on:

“When the doctors told him the blindness was irreversible, he felt a rage and despair that made him feel like his head would explode.

“Castro began therapy a week after waking up, and he only halfheartedly endured the rehab sessions with a 6-foot-tall girl he called ‘Katie the Physical Terrorist.’ The first time she asked him to stand, he couldn’t. He could barely lift a one-pound dumbbell.

“Evelyn tried to focus him on the positives. Obliterated as his body was, his brain was OK — remarkable considering that traumatic brain injury, or TBI, has become the trademark of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and that thousands of soldiers sent to Walter Reed had to battle it. But in a way Castro wished he’d not been spared, because an intact brain meant the other thing he could actually see was exactly how much his life had been ruined. He’d ask, ‘What kind of man can I even be?'”

Source: ESPN
Published: Oct 8, 2012
Length: 20 minutes (5,197 words)

Urban Meyer Will Be Home for Dinner

The new Ohio State football coach made a promise to his family that he’d put them first. Will he keep it?

“Eighty or so people filed into the school cafeteria. Urban and his wife, Shelley, joined their daughter at the front table, watching as Gigi stood and spoke. She’d been nervous all day, and with a room of eyes on her, she thanked her mother for being there season after season, year after year.

“Then she turned to her father.

“He’d missed almost everything. You weren’t there, she told him.

“Shelley Meyer winced. Her heart broke for Urban, who sat with a thin smile, crushed. Moments later, Gigi high-fived her dad without making eye contact, then hugged her coach. Urban dragged himself back to the car. Then — and this arrives at the guts of his conflict — Urban Meyer went back to work, pulled by some biological imperative. His daughter’s words ran through his mind, troubling him, and yet he returned to the shifting pixels on his television, studying for a game he’d either win or lose. The conflict slipped away. Nothing mattered but winning. Both of these people are in him — are him: the guilty father who feels regret, the obsessed coach who ignores it. He doesn’t like either one. He doesn’t like himself, which is why he wants to change.”

Source: ESPN
Published: Aug 8, 2012
Length: 29 minutes (7,279 words)

Into the Wild

On the fate of Marko Cheseto, the former Kenyan track star who lost his career, his best best friend and his feet at the University of Alaska:

“He’s in the first days of his new life. A man who could run farther and faster than almost anybody in the world now sits to shower. He washes his hands only in warm water because his frostbitten fingers are sensitive to cold. He removes his legs at night and massages his stumps. In the morning, he fits his nubs into cups at the top of plastic shins, then pushes down hard, as if he’s squeezing into ski boots.

“He tells everyone he’s good. Losing his feet, he says, is sufficient penance for ignoring William. But privately, Marko says what his closest friends now know to suspect: ‘Just because I say I’m good doesn’t mean that everything is okay.'”

Source: ESPN
Published: Jun 18, 2012
Length: 17 minutes (4,420 words)