Mary Bacon took a bullet while pilfering fruit as a child. Mary Bacon dropped out of school in the sixth grade and was pregnant by age 16. Mary Bacon had a romantic relationship with Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke. Mary Bacon was kidnapped by a stalker. That same stalker later tried to shoot her with a gun. Not all of those sentences are complete horseshit.

I find myself in a strange situation where people I love were traumatized and devastated by what happened to me, but I—the dude who actually suffered the injury—fell into a two-week time warp before waking up strapped to a gurney: emaciated, woozy, confused, and irritable.

“You are not your job.” The former staff writer finds a newfound joy in his restaurant career.

The rise and fall of basketball player Daniel “Gus” Gerard.

Riding along with the cowgirls bringing women’s bronc riding back to the rodeo.

One man’s quest to ride the strangest wave.

One of the most accomplished Himalayan guides works at an outdoor retailer in Lower Manhattan.

The NFL is doing everything it can to avoid paying former players who have dementia.

It’s worse than you thought.

In the 1980s, Billy Ray Bates, once dubbed “the Legend,” drank himself out of the NBA and ended up playing in the Philippines. For a few wild years, his legend grew—both on the court and in the bars.

Two men. Five days. Five boroughs. Five 140.6-mile triathlons.

How a bootleg prep school profited by ripping off teens with NBA dreams.

Twenty years later, looking back at an infamous paragraph.

The underbelly of Vox Media’s success.

A dispatch from Anthony Scaramucci’s SALT Conference.

“The sex abuse is a symptom of a culture that does not allow the athletes to have their voice.”

The second richest musician in the world, behind Paul McCartney, is James Dolan, owner of the Knicks and Madison Square Garden, whose band JD & The Straight Shot toured opening for Jewel behind an album that sold 113 copies.

The story of Jennifer Frey, a sportswriting prodigy who drank herself to death.

The so-called gambling experts who sell their picks, lie about their records, and get paid even when they’re wrong.

A photographer captured the moment when a race organizer confronted a woman who’d snuck into the race.

Brian Chavez was supposed to be the one who made it out of Odessa. It didn’t turn out that way.

On May 12, 2014, Nicole Holder told Charlotte police that she had been assaulted by Greg Hardy. He was arrested, charged, and convicted. Then the case was dismissed on appeal. After a season out of the league, Hardy is playing for the Dallas Cowboys. Owner Jerry Jones has called him a “real leader.”

This is the story, and the photos, of what happened that night.

“Norbert Grupe—a Nazi soldier’s son, boxer, professional wrestler, failed actor, criminal, and miserable human being who was never so happy as when he could make someone hate him—was once a man so beautiful that other men wanted to paint him.”

How an amateur photographer documented the greatest achievement in track and field history.

Why The Undefeated, a site announced more than two years ago, still hasn’t launched.