“This is the story of Billy Conn, who won the girl he loved but lost the best fight ever.”

Argentina’s Lio Messi, the best soccer player on the planet, stands all of 5’7” and needed growth-hormone injections to get there.

With the 428th pick in the 1974 NFL draft, the Green Bay Packers selected…one of the most violent killers in U.S. history.

The brilliant, tragic life of Hall of Fame second baseman Johnny Evers.

Amidst the football-obsessed culture of small-town Christian colleges in Kansas, a player is killed at a party.

One year before his death, Mickey Mantle describes a life of drinking.

Basketball on a Crow reservation and a player named Jonathan Takes Enemy trying to escape.

The story of the 2010 NCAA championship game between Duke and Butler, and what would have been greatest shot in college basketball history.

A profile of Auburn quarterback Cameron Newton, junior college transfer and Heisman Trophy frontrunner.

A father and his 9-year-old daughter watch Harvard play Yale in football.

The story of a sudden death amid a high school recruiting scandal in Texas.

The complicated life and death of Hideki Irabu, a pitcher who was supposed to become a Yankee legend and found heartache instead.

The story of a high school basketball star’s sexual abuse conviction and its aftermath, told from all sides.

How a Peace Corps volunteer turned a high school basketball squad into Afghanistan’s national team.

How the Caltech basketball team, losers of 310 straight conference games, figured out a formula for winning.

On the legendary journalist and the book he never finished.

A profile of Ken Griffey, Jr., six years after he last played a baseball game.

He was supposed to be the Dallas Cowboys’ star running back. Instead, Joseph Randle is in prison.

What former NBA coach Monty Williams learned in the wake of losing his wife.

In 1993, his rookie season, more than 1,700 boys were named after Shaquille O’Neal. Now they’ve grown up.

The curious rise and spectacular crash of the Alliance of American Football, a new league that went under in just eight weeks.

On Mike Powell, a Chicago-area high school wrestling coach who hasn’t allowed a life-threatening illness to interrupt his life’s work.

In an era when America’s great sportswriters were as big as the athletes they covered, W.C. Heinz may have been the best of the bunch.

Shirley Dygert had never jumped before. Dave Hartsock jumped for a living. Neither of them knew what to expect when the parachute failed.

Muhammad Ali and his followers were the greatest show on earth. Then the show ended, and life went on.