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A classic story of a Red Sox baseball legend, by Richard Ben Cramer, who died January 7: “It was forty-five years ago, when achievements with a bat first brought him to the nation’s notice, that Ted Williams began work on his defense. He wanted fame, and wanted it with a pure, hot eagerness that would […]

A sportswriter tries his hand at singing the national anthem at a baseball game: “The anthem is designed to humble you. The anthem is designed to ruin your shit if you get too haughty, and that’s a good thing. In fact, it’s ready to challenge you from the very beginning: “O say can you see […]

The story of Olympian Hope Solo, the U.S. women’s soccer star whose childhood and difficult relationship with her father—who spent time in jail for kidnapping her and her brother—shaped who she would become: “Solo’s last childhood memory of her father is from the following year. One day he reappeared in Richland, begging to take Hope […]

An oral history of the first all-sports talk station, WFAN, which included Don Imus, Mike Francesca, and Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo: “Jeff Smulyan (founder and CEO, Emmis Broadcasting): Imus was just getting out of rehab when we bought the station. His agent was a friend of mine; we laughed because we had a bad radio […]

How two comic-book artists created the characters beloved by kids during the 1980s and ’90s. The original turtles weren’t so cuddly: “The original Mirage comic book really wasn’t made for youngsters. The Turtles diced up enemies while spouting the occasional curse word, and one of the Turtles’ allies was hockey mask-wearing vigilante Casey Jones, who […]

Experiencing firsthand the boredom that overtakes the courtroom during the perjury retrial of the seven-time Cy Young winner: “As far as jury duty goes, you might think the perjury trial of the most decorated pitcher in baseball history would be the kind of blockbuster assignment you tell your grandchildren about. But if you’re enough of […]

An investigation of sports’ biggest conspiracy theories, starting with the 1985 NBA draft: “I believe in the fix. I believe in the hidden hand, that sports have a secret, redacted history. I believe that Game 6 of the 2002 NBA Western Conference Finals was a sham, that Spygate was a cover-up of a cover-up, that […]

[Not single-page] Ten years after Ken Caminiti became the first prominent Major League Baseball player to confess to steroid use, a look at four players whose lives and careers were forever changed: “The 1994 Fort Myers Miracle, a Class A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins, included four pitchers of similar attributes. They each threw righthanded, […]

The complicated business of helping Cuban baseball talent find their way to the U.S., and eventually the Major League: “At some point — either before leaving Cuba or postdefection — every player needs a baseball agent. The seedier practitioners of this trade are often called buscónes, or searchers. Sometimes they bully clients into paying. ‘I’ve […]

How the introduction of stats into MMA (mixed martial arts) will change how the matches are fought: “For all that enthusiasm, however, the sport has had a weak spot: It can be surprisingly difficult to say with any specificity what makes a mixed martial artist great, or what makes one fighter better than another. In […]