A Basketball Carol

The Washington Generals always lose: to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. They lose on indoor basketball courts and outdoor courts. They lose on ships, they lose on aircraft carriers, they lose in prisons and they lose on the back of trucks. … This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come from the story I’m about to relate. If we were to believe that the Generals mostly lost to the Harlem Globetrotters, or almost always lost, or even won only as rarely as the Detroit Lions, then there would be nothing more remarkable about that day 40 years ago than a Lions upset victory over one of the unlucky three or four or five teams most years who happen to haplessly run into it.

Published: Jan 5, 2011
Length: 18 minutes (4,722 words)

The Social Network

Jose Canseco says he has regrets. The man is reportedly broke. The man is a pariah — he has been excommunicated by the high priests of baseball. He seems to believe this is because he told the truth about some things, because he admitted using steroids and named a few other players who used them as well. Perhaps he is right. And perhaps no one is ever entirely right.

Published: Dec 19, 2010
Length: 13 minutes (3,285 words)

The Mystery Of Erica Blasberg

How could a onetime rising golf star be gifted with top 10 talent yet struggle to break even on the LPGA tour, possess Madison Avenue magnetism yet be such a loner? But the most difficult thing to understand is this: Why did she take her own life?

Published: Dec 7, 2010
Length: 27 minutes (6,765 words)

The Courage of Jill Costello

After a promising junior season as a coxswain at Cal, she learned she was in the late stages of cancer. The next year was her best. “When she asked her doctors about rejoining the team, they looked at her as if she were crazy. Crew? She’d need all her strength just to make it through each day. Jill didn’t care. She told her mom she saw cancer as ‘just another thing on my plate.’ Besides, she’d had three goals for the better part of her adult life: to graduate from Cal, to cox the first boat and to win nationals. She saw no reason to change them.”

Published: Nov 29, 2010
Length: 27 minutes (6,879 words)

George and Sparky

A radio man nicknamed George Anderson “Sparky” way back in the early 1950s, in the minor leagues, back when George was doing what he always did — screaming at an umpire and getting himself tossed out of the game. The radio man said: “Look at the sparks fly! That’s one sparky fella!” George was out of control then — all spark and no plug. He only wanted to be a ballplayer, and he had no idea what would happen to him if he did not become a ballplayer.

Published: Nov 4, 2010
Length: 8 minutes (2,218 words)

The Hits That Are Changing Football

Dr. Ann McKee, an associate professor of neurology and pathology at Boston University who has been studying the brains of deceased football players, wanted to illustrate the damage that repeated hits to the helmet can cause. This slide of a cross-section of a human male brain, magnified 100 times, showed scores, maybe hundreds, of tiny brownish triangular bits of a toxic protein called tau, choking off cellular life in the brain.

Author: Peter King
Published: Oct 27, 2010
Length: 10 minutes (2,625 words)

Confessions of an Agent

I will never forget the first time I paid a player.

Published: Oct 18, 2010
Length: 28 minutes (7,187 words)

The Heart of Los Angeles

When Vincent Edward Scully first came to Los Angeles to broadcast Dodgers baseball games in 1958, he worried because he could not find the essence of the city. The center. The heart. He was 30 years old, and he had some clear ideas about what it took to call a baseball game.

Published: Sep 30, 2010
Length: 16 minutes (4,081 words)

Still Going Strong

He’s 40, but Jim Thome’s mind isn’t on retirement. He’s thinking about hitting the ball a country mile‚ and winning his first World Series championship

Published: Sep 27, 2010
Length: 11 minutes (2,997 words)

Five-Year-Old Slugger

The video of his batting-cage exploits has turned him into an internet curiosity and a media star. How can a kid so small and so young handle 85-mph heat?

Published: Aug 30, 2010
Length: 24 minutes (6,191 words)