An upstart football league goes horribly awry during its first season,.

On life after you accomplish your lifelong goal.

Mexico is now importing lots of its baseball talent from America.

Texans receiver DeAndre Hopkins says he owes his career to his mom. When you hear her remarkable story of survival, you’ll understand his devotion.

How a Sacramento Kings executive stole more than $13 million from the team—and almost got away with it.

A woman told police she was raped by three New York Mets. They were never charged.

How a group of 17 trans athletes came together last November to make history.

What happened when 59-year-old Paralympian Angela Madsen set out to row from California to Hawaii.

Inside the dual legacies of NFL players’ union boss DeMaurice Smith.

In the north Bronx, a small group of elite Ethiopian runners struggle to survive. The persecution they fled was far more harrowing.

Pedestrianism was a sport of epic rivalries, eyewatering salaries, feverish nationalism, eccentric personalities and six-day, 450-mile walks.

When the Arlee Warriors cleared an astonishing path to the state basketball championship, they brought healing to the community.

A new pro league is paying teenagers six figures to quit high school for basketball.

Basketball is considered one of the most difficult sports to effectively bet on, therefore gamblers like Haralabos Voulgaris who make a handsome living on NBA lines are a rare breed, whose knowledge of the game and personal statistical databases rival most of the league’s front-offices’.

A 1980 profile of Nolan Ryan by Tony Kornheiser from Inside Sports, annotated 30 years later by Michael MacCambridge and Kornheiser. The first story in Grantland’s Director’s Cut series, which “looks back at classic works of sports journalism and gives the writers, athletes, and other figures involved in making the articles an opportunity to reflect on their work and recall some deleted scenes.”

A trip to Turkey for a soccer game between bitter rivals and its accompanying madness.

“Someone has sliced open soccer’s hourglass, and the sand has come pouring out on to the streets.”

How coach Jurgen Klinsmann, “soccer’s Alexis de Tocqueville,” is trying to give the US an identity.

A 16-year-old runner, her coach and the lasting memory of an improbable race.

A profile of Costa Rica’s most famous bull, who is responsible for two riders’ deaths and a brand of craft beer.

The story of a St. Louis handball court.

The murder of an Olympic champion and the autopsy that shook a city.

When the best three months of your life are “called three of the uglier months in the recent history of the National Football League.”

A retired fighter worries that he has all the symptoms of CTE.

On the journey of 24-year-old Jose Fernandez, the Cuban defector turned Major League all-star, who died Sunday.