Aside from user-created draft classes, everything that follows documents a completely-untouched NBA 2K15 simulation. All draft selections, roster decisions, and transactions of any kind were made by the game's artificial intelligence. At no point in any game was a player controlled by a human player.

A year ago, you and I gathered to destroy the NBA. Its controlled demolition involved legions of tiny, hopeless players, and it took us decades. In the end, the greats of the NBA were gone, President Obama had ascended to lifelong dictatorship, and games were deadlocked in 0-0 ties that lasted twelve overtimes. We took photographic evidence, fearful that otherwise, no one would believe us.

This episode of NBA Y2K is its spiritual successor. The difference is that the game of basketball is not going away; on the contrary, it will finally shake free of us and become what it was always meant to be.

We are the ones who are going away.

Music: "Static" by Godspeed You! Black Emperor

Each player in NBA 2K15 is assigned an overall 1-to-99 rating. Out of the box, only three -- LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and Chris Paul -- hold a rating higher than 90. The 99 rating is claimed by no one, a page left intentionally blank. Clearly, the 99 does not represent literal perfection: LeBron, rated 98, has shot .496 throughout his career, and I doubt we're supposed to believe that he's one tick away from 1.000.

If 99 isn't an indicator of omnipotence, it's just another, slightly higher arbitrary number that could easily have been awarded to the best player in the game. All the same, 2K15 does not budge: "we made this rating, and we made it for no one."

Well, I have decided that they made it for us, and for this. I created my own 99-rated player. There are dozens of individual sub-ratings for a player -- shooting, ball handling, speed, vertical, passing. I pushed all those ratings to 99, and I also stretched him to 7'2 with an 8'5 wingspan. He is gigantic, and possesses a skill set unapproached by any player who has ever lived.

Then I made hundreds more exactly like him.

The bones of this experiment are similar to those from last year's episode of NBA Y2K. If the game is to take us through a decades-long franchise mode, of course, it will need a class of players that can be drafted after each season, and it offers us the ability to create that draft class from scratch. Last year I made each player a 5'4, no-talent basketball abomination, and we ended up with an Association full of unwatchable 12-overtime games that ended in 2-0 scores. I need you to understand that everything in that sentence is true, and to know that the bottom has been found.

This experiment efforts in the opposite direction: every player in this draft class is as large, strong, fast, and talented as the game will allow for. At the 2015 NBA Draft, the teams of the league will find nothing but superhumans.

In 2016, I will feed them the exact same draft class of unstoppable immortals. And again in 2017, and in 2018, and in 2019, and ... for as long as it takes to push every real-world player out of the league for good.

I asked y'all to name these players, and to write a poem about an imperfect NBA player, past or present, who disappointed you at some point along the way. Those with the best poems, which I've scattered throughout this piece, were allowed to name a player. It's only right that when Steph Curry or Derrick Rose is forced out of the league, it happens by the hand of Giant Dipshit or Goldenrod Mathematician or Superman 4real, individuals so disappointed by the flaws of the NBA that they took to meter and verse.

Of the mortal players, five notable figures emerge over the course of the next decade: Isaiah Thomas, Kevin Durant, Timofey Mozgov, Kyrie Irving, and Anthony Davis. We will check in on them as we await our extinction.

YEAR 12014-15

Throughout the season, the scouts of the NBA are sent to observe the 2015 draft class. They return with dozens of scouting reports, all of which look something like this.

Their college statistics are terrifying. One player, Richmond's Joey Basketball, is scoring 45 points and pulling down 21 rebounds per game.

It is immediately clear that this is the last normal NBA season we will ever see. The Immortals wait in the wings, to be drafted in June. For now, all 440 players in the Association are like you and me: fallible. They might whiff a layup. They write the tip on the "total" line. They leave the milk on the counter. Steph Curry is the MVP.

A life span of 80 or so years seems just about right in most respects, because there probably aren't more than 80 years' worth of good albums or conversations, but it does not allow for the broadness of perspective that would let us squint across the hills of time and know: "nothing is more precious than what is finite, no matter how crude or ugly." Our quest for progress, for perfection, leaves our follies as dead deer in the valleys and creek beds, arrows through the necks, killed not to be eaten, but to be killed. There is only so much world, and the flaws, the things that lend it identity, are being hunted to extinction. The Cavaliers lead the league in wins with 62, and the Lakers finish at the bottom of the league with a 13-69 record.

A skyscraper is straight because its steel beams are straight because it was graded straight at the mill because the blueprints said so because the pencil was guided by a ruler because ... and eventually, we cast our eyes all the way back, to our very first straight line, the mother of every straight line, set tens of thousands of years ago. We can't know how for sure; some short-sighted knucklehead probably stretched a rope taut and dragged it across some clay. That was the morning the bends and knots and scribbles of the world knew they would not live forever. Everything, one day, will be laid nice and neat, because we cannot be halted. The Earth will be asphalt. Notable retirements include Vince Carter, Ray Allen and Steve Nash, all of whom are inducted into the Hall of Fame.

The season is over. Our time is over. One day they will find our bones, scattered by the restless sleep of extinction, and put them back together. They will understand how we moved, but not why, because bones are eternal and souls rot to feed the weeds. The Warriors defeat the Cavaliers in the finals, four games to two.

YEAR 22015-16

One Saturday night, when I was seven years old, a bolt of lightning hit my elementary school and sparked a fire. Before driving by the scene the next day, my mom warned me that it might make me sad to see it. Half the building had burned to the ground, and the rest of it looked like it was about to fall. It was awesome, and when we moved into an old high school that fall and got our own lockers as second-graders, it was even more awesome.

The warning, though, was prudent, because different people process things in different ways. And so we will ease into our tour of these smoldering, broken bricks, first from a distance through charts and menus, and then into the future of our NBA as it disappears.

The pre-draft measurables are in.

Dozens of players check in at 7'2, and their wingspans are even greater. Three players measure 8'7 from fingertip to fingertip, longer than that of any other player in NBA history. Nearly every player selected in the draft boasts a 44-inch vertical.

NBA 2K15 uses web visualizations to illustrate a player's skills. For the sake of reference, here are the skill graphs of LeBron James, who in 2014 was the NBA's highest-rated player.

Observe the skill graphs of 2015 NBA draft selection Brooks Fielding, and know that the 59 players selected alongside him possess the exact same set of skills:

The vast majority of these players are pressed into service immediately. By the end of the season, according to Player Efficiency Rating (PER), the top 31 players in the league are all Immortals.

The Houston Rockets have somehow managed to acquire five Immortals, which means that in James Harden and Dwight Howard, they have easily the best sixth and seventh men in NBA history. They steamroll through the playoffs, and topple the Celtics in five games.

It is not an easy series for Boston's Isaiah Thomas, who stands five feet and nine inches tall.

SCENE I: THE PLIGHT OF ISAIAH THOMAS, THE NBA'S SHORTEST MAN

Music: "Fear Is A Man's Best Friend" by John Cale

Thomas is 17 inches shorter than the man he is tasked with guarding. He can attempt to shoot, although the ball never has a prayer of reaching the rim. He cannot block. He tries to defend, but in doing so he manages an activity that is more appropriately categorized as, "hanging out." When standing among these human trees, it's as though Isaiah Thomas snuck into the NBA, but the friend who stood on his shoulders has bailed and taken his trench coat and false mustache with him.

He accomplishes nothing, and does not belong. I doubt the other mortals of the league are snickering, though. Soon enough, they will all be Isaiah Thomas, the human afterthought.

YEAR 32016-17

In the world we know, a Dwight Howard free agency creates ripples across the NBA. In this realization of the Association, he is unceremoniously dumped and forgotten. The Houston Rockets released him, because despite having only four draft picks, they have somehow managed to fill their roster with eight Immortals. Curiously, James Harden still leads the team in scoring. Houston repeats as champion by taking the Finals in six games.

When we set about destroying the NBA last year, the transition to destitution was quite subtle at first. This time, the league -- or, rather, the league as we know it -- has been booted down a cliffside.

The introduction of 120 flawless players has thrown free agency into chaos throughout the league. LeBron James is now a Spur, Damian Lillard has joined the Grizzlies, and Kevin Durant is a Nugget. Odds are strong that your favorite player is now playing across the country.

NBA 2K15's general managers did not ship with protocols that allowed them to understand this future, much less operate competently within them. It seems to be movement for the sake of movement. When caught in the riptide, struggle madly and flail until all the ocean lies bruised and beaten at your feet.

We are only three years into our experiment, and the seams of NBA 2K15 are beginning to rip. The game's player creator sets a maximum height of 7'2. Without explanation, shooting guard Wantsum Grapes enters the league at 7'3.

They are surpassing the game in which they live, and the developers who programmed them, and they are surpassing you and I. They needed only three seasons to tire of NBA 2K's rules. This is where we are: the question is not how the Immortals will operate within these rules, but how long before they grow bored and do away with them entirely.

When stood against the likes of a Wantsum Grapes, the Damian Lillards of the league look like they belong on a different planet.

Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan, and Dirk Nowitzki retire before the start of the season. Kobe Bryant and Paul Pierce join them in the Hall of Fame at season's end.

YEAR 42017-18

Chris Paul, at age 33, has retired. He is the first mortal superstar to hang up his cleats before his time, but certainly not the last. The league is now overcrowded with talent. There is no vacancy, and there are no guarantees, not even for a man so recently regarded as the best point guard in basketball.

Teams have drafted a total of 180 Immortals over the past three years. This averages out to six per team, so when a mortal is allowed to start for a team, we ought to regard it either as a case of profound mismanagement, or a sentimental gesture of charity.

The former applies to the Miami Heat. Night after night, they drag out a roster without a single Immortal; they are the only team to lack one. They are led by the aging Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. They finish the year with a 2-80 record, the worst in NBA history.

The latter, I think, applies to the Kevin Durant Nuggets. These Nuggets have enough 7'2 tree-people to easily field a starting lineup of Immortals. They have two Immortal small forwards. And yet. the team starts Durant at small forward ahead of them both.

Durant, for his part, has done all he can to earn a spot over an Immortal. His rating, which stood at 95 out of the box, has jumped to 98, just a point shy of the Immortals' perfection. Still, he represents an imperfect dent in the Denver starting lineup, and this is a league of perfection.

In the Finals, the Nuggets meet the Bulls, who boast an entire starting lineup of Immortals. The Nuggets have no business winning this series.

SCENE II: KEVIN DURANT DELIVERS

Music: "Drive" by Warpaint

And yet, they sweep it. Durant, so rarely fed the ball throughout the series, faces up with an Immortal and hits the late-game, go-ahead bucket right in his face.

These four years have been long. "Erosion" feels like the word, but it's not, because it's happened so staggeringly quickly: our superstars are now ordinary, our stars are disappearing, and it's a small miracle to see anyone we know doing anything of note.

That shot is among the last moments of heroics our mortals will ever be responsible for. The people will never forget him.

YEAR 52018-19

The mutations continue.

Josiah Renaudin was created to weigh the maximum-allowable 350 pounds. At the pre-draft workouts, however, it is learned that he has ballooned to 420 pounds, making him far and away the heaviest player in NBA history.

Now that the vast majority of the league's starters are Immortals, the statistics fall somewhat short of eye-popping, since the talent is on both sides of the ball. The most notable exception to this is free-throw shooting. The NBA is now lights-out from the stripe. The Rockets' Ryan Selfridge sinks 525 of 527 free throws on the season, good for an unreasonable .996 percentage.

Only eight mortals see an average of at least 30 minutes a game.

The nature of the PER statistic dictates that the average player will always sit at 15.0. Kyrie Irving, at 15.3, is the only above-average player.

It isn't dark. The bugs are chirping, but it isn't dark yet. The sun is behind the trees, but the sky isn't black yet. It isn't time to come inside. We can still see the ball. No, we won't bother the neighbors. They aren't going to bed, because it isn't dark yet. Our mothers would not call us inside if only they knew it was the last night of our childhood. We can still see the ball. 8:53 is the afternoon, it is the late afternoon.

There is the moon. But it isn't dark.

YEAR 62019-20

Ben Gordon has retired because he is fucking terrible.

When we began this experiment, Ben Gordon's overall player rating stood at a completely respectable 72. In normal multi-year simulations, players never seem to regress by more than five or so points. Gordon has somehow plummeted all the way to 49, which, in my five years of playing the NBA 2K series, is the lowest rating I've ever seen from a non-fictional player. This experiment has ruined him.

LeBron James, at age 35, spends the season languishing in free agency. No one wants him. The same is true of Kawhi Leonard, John Wall, Damian Lillard, and Klay Thompson. It is too soon to say goodbye, but we could at least process this injustice with the knowledge that this is the way it has to be. That there are simply too many Immortals available not to give them every roster spot.

I say "could" because in truth, the injustice is even greater. The GMs of the league have no interest in those men, and yet the Cavaliers do give several minutes a game to Timofey Mozgov.

Timofey Mozgov. The Cavaliers released LeBron James, and kept Timofey Mozgov.

SCENE III: THE PROFOUND USELESSNESS OF TIMOFEY MOZGOV

Music: "In My Secret Life" by Leonard Cohen and Sharon Robinson

No one understands why he is here. Mozgov plays abysmal defense, never scores, accomplishes nothing of note, and retires at season's end. The charity toward Mozgov is almost sadistic, because as he labors in futility, the number of mortals who contribute in a meaningful way shrinks to a single digit.

Interestingly, the mortals who have carved their niche in this hostile NBA landscape tend to be point guards. They are a foot shorter than everyone else on the floor, but they are still there. We are still here.

LeBron James disappears at the end of the season. He does not retire. His name is not listed in the "retirements" screen, and he is not inducted to the Hall of Fame. He simple vanishes one day. We did not even get to say goodbye.

YEAR 72020-21

The Immortals are granted precious few chances to exhibit their talents in a vacuum. One such instance, of course, is at the free throw line, and the other is at the draft combine. Each prospect is asked to shoot 25 moving NBA threes. Syracuse sophomore Superman Forreal hit all 25 of them.

Seven years into this experiment, a total of 360 Immortals have been drafted into the Association, and the remaining mortals of the league hold on to their roster spots with white knuckles. Several of them, such as Russell Westbrook, lead their team in scoring despite sub-standard PER.

Interestingly, as the mortals grasp for relevance, more of them are starting than in recent years. Westbrook, Stephen Curry, Ricky Rubio, Marcus Smart, Cory Joseph, Anthony Davis, Dante Exum, Isaiah Thomas, Elfrid Payton, Kyrie Irving, Trey Burke, and Kevin Durant all have starting roles, and you may have noticed that all but two of those men are point guards. The shortest players, curiously, are the ones who survive.

The mortals need a champion. They will have one soon.

YEAR 82021-22

The number of mortal players -- not starters, but active NBA players -- has eroded to 14.

By the end of the season, Ramon Sessions is 36. The free-agent market is beyond rich with talent; there are countless flawless point guards who were discarded only because they were 25 years old and not 23. Their motive for acquiring Ramon Session, even for one minute of basketball, remains entirely a mystery. I don't even want to imagine what he did with that minute.

You may notice that Stephen Curry and Russell Westbrook -- arguably the two most electric, exciting players of the NBA we know and love -- are gone. The game does not announce their retirement, and they are not inducted to the Hall of Fame. They suffer the most ignoble exit of all: they surface only as a name on the free-agent list. No one picks them up, and just as LeBron did, they leave without saying goodbye.

I would imagine you have, or had, a friend you have never seen in years, and don't expect ever to see again. The two of you built sand castles, or tried to build a skateboard ramp, or drank Beam out of a bottle in a glossy yellow-bricked dorm room. For one reason or another, you no longer do those things, or any things, together, and the reasons behind that are none of my business. Neither is this, but I've already barged in: the last time the two of you met, or spoke, you suspected it would be the very last time.

To openly treat it as such -- the last meeting of two people across all eternity -- is a sort of a fraction of a death, and is too heavy for the moment: something that heavy would bust the framework, you would call from Dallas, and there wouldn't be a last time. This is the quiet knowledge that it's over, and the tense words that replace the processing of that knowledge.

Kyrie Irving is that friend, and this is that time. He's 30, and with the Pistons now. In a team otherwise entirely filled with Immortals, Kyrie starts at point, leading his team in assists and ranking second in scoring. He's a foot shorter and five years older than everyone. He does not give a damn.

He -- the mortal -- has led Detroit to the NBA Finals. On behalf of all of us, who dribble off our feet and neglect our marriages and cut ourselves shaving, Kyrie Irving presents one last goodbye to the Immortals.

The Pistons win in seven games. Kyrie Irving leads with 30 points in Game 7.

SCENE IV: KYRIE IRVING, MIRACLE

Music: "Life" by Big K.R.I.T.

There is no reason this should have happened, but it did, and it will be remembered as our last act of majesty on this court. It is their game now.

Kyrie Irving is never seen again.

YEAR 92022-23

There are no more hues in basketball. The colors are gone. If every point is a mountaintop, the horizon is flat. Anthony Davis and Darren Collison are the only remaining mortal starters. Kevin Durant plays exactly one minute the entire season, and apart from that minute played, he records no statistics, and then he is gone. There is only one color of crayon anymore. You go to the store and pick a box of crayons off the shelf and shake it and it rattles, one lonely little crayon all by itself. That is the only music that remains. No one is inducted to the Hall of Fame, not even Kevin Durant.

YEAR 102023-24

I haven't decided whether this fate is happy or cruel; I suspect it's a bittersweet compromise that lies somewhere in between.

Anthony Davis is basketball's only remaining mortal. Think back to a decade ago, and remember that even then, he seemed the least mortal among us. Upon growing 10 inches in high school, he evolved from skinny corner-3 kid to a big man and a generational talent. In only his third NBA season, he battled through the West and dragged his Pelicans into the playoffs. That season, at age 21, he finished with a 30.81 PER. Only three men had done that before, and their names are Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan, and LeBron James.

He is 30 now. Unlike every other mortal throughout the history of NBA 2K, he has touched the grail: he is a 99/99 overall.

In doing so, Anthony Davis has done what all others have not. While every other mortal has been banished to retirement, he has been welcomed by the Immortals as one of their own. He has crossed over.

He is one of Them now.

SCENE V: A SWAN SONG FOR ANTHONY DAVIS, AND FOR US ALL

The Wizards entered that game at 38-43, freshly eliminated from playoff contention. Anthony Davis played 34 minutes and scored 12 points, and never played again. That is the end of his story, and the story of you and me.

YEAR 112024-25(Epilogue)

SCENE VI: WHAT A BEAUTIFUL WORLD THIS WILL BE

Music: "I.G.Y." by Donald Fagen

For over five years now, the world has waited. On May 2, the wait finally ends. Floyd Mayweather will face Manny Pacquiao at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, and when all is said and done, only one thing is for sure: the fight will make more money than any fight has ever made in history.

The journey to this genuine mega-fight began late in 2009, though the thought of the fight, once an illogical dream if anything, had started creeping in a year earlier, when Pacquiao dismantled Oscar De La Hoya.

The De La Hoya-Pacquiao event never should have happened. Oscar De La Hoya had carried the sport on his back for years, as overall interest waned in the mid-90s through the early-00s, a result of the sport’s inaccessibility to casual fans who were unwilling or unable to pay for expensive pay-per-views, or subscriptions to HBO and Showtime, where all of the sport’s best fights were seen. Prizefighting, of course, has always been a business, but premium cable and pay-per-view demanded more of the audience, and with too many fights that turned out to be carefully matched, one-sided affairs that ran the fan base between $30 and $50, or a monthly $15-20 subscription fee, that audience began to go away.

The rise of mixed martial arts and Ultimate Fighting Championship also did some damage. A newer, fresher sport, offering a similar visceral feeling to those who watched, may not have stolen boxing’s audience, per se, but it gave people another reason to lean away from the sweet science.

Through all of the "dark" periods for the sport of boxing, however, the big fights have always sold. Even if boxing is not the mainstream attraction it once was (it’s not), and even if it never becomes that again (it seems highly unlikely that it will), it is a sport woven into the fabric of American culture, and of sporting culture worldwide. Arguably the most famous athlete of the 20th century was "The Greatest," Muhammad Ali. Jack Johnson and Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson and Sugar Ray Leonard, Joe Frazier and Mike Tyson, Rocky Marciano and even the fictional Rocky Balboa; all of them have becoming sporting royalty.

2007-08: The Fall of De La Hoya

Oscar De La Hoya won a memorable Olympic gold medal in 1992 in Barcelona, fulfilling the dying wish of his beloved mother, Cecilia, who passed away in 1990 from breast cancer. His journey to the gold was heavily covered by American media, and De La Hoya was easy to like. A handsome, Mexican-American fighter from East Los Angeles, he had a natural charm and charisma that many took to, and he was heavily hyped and promoted by Bob Arum’s Top Rank when he turned pro in November 1992.

By 2006, De La Hoya had been boxing’s biggest attraction for several years. Losses never seemed to derail him much, as he would simply come back and fight again. But an attempt to win the middleweight championship in 2004 proved truly out of his reach. He first struggled in a highly disputed win over Felix Sturm in June 2004, and then three months later was viciously knocked out by Bernard Hopkins. He didn’t fight again until May 2006, when he returned to reclaim his throne as the king of pay-per-view with a victory over Ricardo Mayorga, a trash-talking Nicaraguan bad guy who wasn’t much of a boxer, but could brawl and sell a fight with his words.

A sixth round knockout win set up De La Hoya to face pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather on Cinco de Mayo in 2007. The fight demolished records for gate in Nevada and pay-per-view, both in terms of number of buys and revenue, beating the Mike Tyson-Lennox Lewis fight from 2002.

Mayweather, who had long been considered one of the best fighters in the sport, had never been a star attraction. But that changed when he created a "Money Mayweather" character on the first run of HBO’s "24/7" series in build-up to the fight. He became the ultimate villain for De La Hoya. And then he beat him. A superstar was born.

When a rematch fell through and Mayweather announced a retirement from the sport in 2008, HBO analyst Larry Merchant floated a crazy idea to match De La Hoya against Manny Pacquiao, a rising star who had gone from flyweight (112 lbs) all the way to lightweight, winning world titles at 112, 122, 130, and 135.

Pacquiao, billed at 5’6", was a full four inches shorter than De La Hoya, who had been fighting for years as a welterweight and junior middleweight (154 lbs). Many in and around the fight game expected a massacre of Pacquiao, who was jumping up to 147, the division De La Hoya was returning to after many years at 154. Oscar was expected to be too big and strong  for Manny, a "little guy" who had just one fight in his career above 130 pounds.

It was a massacre, alright, but it was Pacquiao delivering the beating, as he used his speed, his clever angles, and his accuracy to dart in and out, lacing De La Hoya with punches that a seemingly drained Oscar could no longer see coming. With De La Hoya’s face being beaten to a pulp, he quit after eight rounds, having won none of them.

De La Hoya’s time was over. He officially retired in April 2009, and has not fought since. He’d made one superstar in Mayweather, and then that one left the sport. Another swooped in. That was Pacquiao.

2009: Pacquiao Dominates, Mayweather Returns

In May 2009, Pacquiao moved down to 140 pounds to challenge that division’s reigning champion, Ricky Hatton, who had himself fought Floyd Mayweather at welterweight in December 2007. Hatton, a popular and lovable British mauler, figured to match up a little better with Manny than he had with Floyd, who picked him apart before cracking him with a check hook the 10th round, forcing the referee to stop the fight.

Hatton brought his rowdy fans over to Las Vegas with him once again for what was expected to be a war. Instead, it was a blowout. Hatton was dropped two times in the first round, badly struggling with the speed of Pacquiao, and though he did a bit better in the second round, the fight ended there. With just seconds remaining until the round came to an end, Pacquiao unleashed a left hand that smacked into Hatton’s jaw, emitting a wicked sound on impact, and knocking Hatton flat out on the canvas, where he remained for several minutes.

Earlier that very day, Mayweather announced his return to boxing for a September fight with Juan Manuel Marquez, a past Pacquiao rival who had given Manny hell in 2004 and 2008. When Mayweather and Marquez met, it was a wipeout, and Floyd re-staked his claim to being the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport, 15 months after announcing his retirement, and 21 months after last fighting.

That win was not given much credit at the time, as Marquez had himself come up from lightweight for the fight, and looked smaller than Mayweather. But in the years since, Marquez has gone on to have success as a welterweight, including two more fights with Pacquiao, that have aged Mayweather’s win over him pretty well.

In November 2009, Pacquiao returned to action, again as a welterweight against Miguel Cotto, one of the top stars in the sport. It was a fairly even fight for a couple of rounds, with both men landing good shots, until Pacquiao dropped Cotto in the third and fourth rounds, and took over from there. It was all one-way action after that, until finally, with Cotto in retreat and his face resembling De La Hoya’s from the year prior, referee Kenny Bayless stopped the fight 55 seconds into the final round.

December 2009: Fight On, Fight Off

March 13, 2010 should have been the date for Mayweather vs Pacquiao. On December 5, 2009, ESPN reported that Pacquiao had signed a contract to face Mayweather on that date. Pacquiao denied the report.

Documents obtained by Yahoo! Sports in 2012 show that on December 11, 2009, De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions, representing Mayweather, sent a contract Top Rank, representing Pacquiao, for a fight on that date.

There was to be a 50-50 split of the revenue between the two promotional companies, with everything laid out including who would weigh in first on March 12, who would enter the ring first, and all the other minutiae that sometimes constitutes a strange sticking point when negotiations for big fights happen. There was even an artist’s rendering of a temporary, 40,000-seat stadium that would have been erected at a vacant lot across from the Luxor in Las Vegas.

Richard Schaefer, who was then the CEO of Golden Boy Promotions, denied ever sending the deal. Leonard Ellerbe, the CEO of Mayweather Promotions, also called the report nonsense. But that was two years later, when the idea of Mayweather-Pacquiao was about to change substantially, so let’s stay on December 2009, when everything was close and then fell to pieces.

The main (perhaps only) issue at that time was the subject of drug testing. Freddie Roach, Pacquiao’s trainer, told reporter Elie Seckbach at the time that Mayweather and his team, including Golden Boy’s Schaefer, had requested "Olympic-style" drug testing, the same as Mayweather had used for his September 2009 fight against Juan Manuel Marquez. Roach said that they’d accepted, and that after Team Pacquiao did so, Mayweather’s side were "running scared again."

There were whispers at the time, much of it coming from Mayweather’s team, that Pacquiao had been abusing performance-enhancing drugs, though he had never failed a drug test. Michael Koncz, an adviser to Pacquiao, said at the time, "We know Manny doesn’t take any illegal drugs or anything, and none of this is getting under Manny’s skin or anything. I’m here with Manny, and to him, it’s, like, a joke. It’s a laughing matter."

Nine days after that statement, everything collapsed. Golden Boy Promotions sent out a press release saying that Pacquiao had refused the drug testing that Mayweather wanted leading up to the fight, and the next day, Bob Arum abandoned any negotiations, killing the fight. The reasoning, however, left a lot of boxing fans scratching their heads.

Arum said that Pacquiao had agreed to random urinalysis and blood testing before a press conference and after the fight, but that Mayweather wanted random testing up to the weigh-in, as he had done with Marquez. "He knew that Manny gets freaked out when his blood gets taken and feels that it weakens him," Arum told the Grand Rapids Press. "This is just harassment and, to me, just signaled that he didn’t want the fight."

To this day, the "Manny’s afraid of needles" excuse has never sat well with a lot of boxing fans.

But shortly after Arum’s statement that they were giving up on the fight, he put out a take-it-or-leave-it offer. According to Top Rank’s press release, Pacquiao was willing to submit to a random urine test at any point before the fight, but would only submit to three blood tests: one in January, one 30 days before the fight, and one immediately following the fight. Arum also ruled out the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) as an agency they would accept administering the tests, calling their standard of testing blood up to the weigh-in day before the fight "ludicrous."

Mayweather’s side countered back with an offer that would have cut off blood testing 14 days before the fight. None of this went anywhere, other than creating more tension between the two parties. Any realistic chance of the fight happening in March 2010 had died.

On December 30, Pacquiao filed a lawsuit in Nevada against Floyd Mayweather, Floyd Mayweather Sr, Roger Mayweather, Mayweather Promotions, and Golden Boy Promotions, alleging defamatory statements accusing Pacquiao of using PEDs. Golden Boy settled in May 2011, releasing a statement that said they never intended to accuse Pacquiao of using PEDs.

In January 2010, Leonard Ellerbe announced to the Grand Rapids Press that all of Mayweather’s future opponents would be undergoing random blood and urine testing, or they wouldn’t be fighting Floyd Mayweather. Those tests would go "all the way up to the fight," Mayweather said in February.

Pacquiao fought and defeated Joshua Clottey at Cowboys Stadium on March 13, while Mayweather took a fight with Shane Mosley for May 1, and also was victorious.

2010: Round Two

After the two fighters won their early 2010 bouts, Arum announced that he’d targeted November 13 as Pacquiao’s next fight date, and that he was willing to again negotiate with Mayweather for that night. A week later in May, Pacquiao told the Manila Bulletin that he was open to drug testing, if the blood testing ended two weeks before the fight, something Mayweather had already offered in January, and then dismissed as a future possibility after it was left on the table.

In June, De La Hoya told Republica Deportiva, a sports show on Univision, that the fight was "really close" to being finalized. Oscar claimed the next week that he had been misquoted, with Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer flat out denying that there were negotiations for the fight. Shortly after that, Arum said that all issues with drug testing had been resolved, and that it was up to Mayweather. A deadline was issued for July 16 for Mayweather to accept the fight.

When the deadline passed without an acceptance from Mayweather, Arum told media on a conference call that he had not, in fact, had any direct contact with anyone from Golden Boy or Mayweather’s team, including powerful adviser Al Haymon. Arum said he had spoken only with HBO Sports President Ross Greenburg, who spoke with Arum and Haymon, and then relayed information from those parties to the other.

Ellerbe and Schaefer denied that any of this happened at all. Haymon, who does not speak with media, was silent as always. Greenburg denied commenting on the situation at first, but revealed in late July that he had been speaking with someone from both sides to try to put the fight together. Schaefer again denied that any of this happened, and even challenged the President of HBO Sports as well as Arum to take a lie detector test. From there, everything just got worse.

2010-12: A Dead Issue

Nothing that happened in the next four years indicated that boxing fans would ever see the fight they so desperately yearned to see. In September 2010, Mayweather went live on his Ustream channel, going on a tirade filled with profanity, racist terms, and homophobic slurs. The next day, Mayweather apologized, and said he wasn’t racist.

10 months later, Arum told ESPN that Pacquiao would do the random drug testing, but only if USADA were not handling the drug testing, as he felt USADA was not a neutral organization. That claim was refuted a day later by Pacquiao adviser Michael Koncz, who said it was still up to Manny, and that he had not agreed to anything.

In early 2012, it was reported that Mayweather and Pacquiao had their first direct communication, fighter to fighter, when Floyd called Manny on the telephone and told him that a 50-50 split was no longer doable. Mayweather offered Pacquiao a flat $40 million purse but no share of the revenue. Pacquiao said he couldn’t take that deal, but that he would agree to a 55-45 split in Mayweather’s favor.

2012 was a rocky year for both fighters. Mayweather returned on May 5 and defeated Miguel Cotto over 12 rounds in a fight that was seen as surprisingly competitive, but nonetheless a Mayweather win. Less than a month later, Mayweather reported to the Clark County Detention Center to begin serving an 87-day jail sentence for domestic abuse, to which he had been sentenced in December 2011. He was released after two months on August 3, and didn’t fight again for the remainder of the year.

Pacquiao’s next fight came on June 9, and was arguably the most controversial bout in recent memory. Facing undefeated Timothy Bradley, Pacquiao appeared to comfortably win the fight over 12 rounds, but the judges came back with two scores for Bradley, and one for Pacquiao, resulting in a split decision loss. It was Pacquiao’s first loss since a 2005 defeat against Erik Morales.

The loss was viewed as a robbery by boxing fans and media, to the point that few even took it seriously as something that should be held against Pacquiao. But it was a loss all the same, and in the event of any negotiations with Mayweather resuming in the future, it weakened Pacquiao’s position financially, which was something Floyd and his team had already specifically targeted.

One positive for the neverending saga between the two fighters did come in September, when the two sides settled out of court on that defamation suit from 2009, with the Mayweathers named in the suit (Floyd, his father Floyd Sr, and his uncle Roger), releasing a statement that said much the same thing that Golden Boy’s settlement statement did in 2011, that they never meant to accuse Pacquiao of using performance-enhancing drugs, and that they were not aware of any evidence that he had.

Pacquiao fought again late in the year, ignoring the idea of a rematch with Bradley, instead signing for a fourth fight with Juan Manuel Marquez, which was a guaranteed bigger money maker and PPV hit. The public largely felt that Pacquiao had already beaten Bradley, and there was no desire to see the fight again so quickly. Marquez, however, had arguments in fights from 2004 (draw), 2008 (close loss), and 2011 (close loss), all fights that the Mexican star felt he deserved to have won. On December 8, 2012, Marquez left no doubt. In a furious fight where both hit the canvas and looked determine not to let it go to the judges again, Marquez flattened Pacquiao with a right hand just before the bell in round six. Pacquiao didn’t get up. This loss was real.

2013: Brand Rehab

Mayweather and Pacquiao entered 2013 seeming truly separate for the first time in years. Though there was certainly still some desire for the fight, it had greatly lessened as soon as Marquez KO’d Pacquiao in front of a huge global audience. Mayweather, too, had been on the sidelines after his jail stint. Both fighters needed to do some rehabilitation of their brands, for very different reasons.

Mayweather dropped a bomb in February 2013, announcing that he was leaving HBO Sports for a record six-fight deal with CBS Sports and Showtime. It was an enormous get for SHO Sports, which had long been a distant second to HBO in the boxing game. The move also led to Golden Boy Promotions and Al Haymon, two separate entities with ties to Mayweather, taking their vast array of fighters over to Showtime.

In May, Floyd returned to action against Robert Guerrero in his Showtime pay-per-view debut. It was a win as easy as it was expected to be, as the year off and the two-month jail stint of the summer of 2012 had not faded Mayweather much, and certainly not nearly enough for the good-but-not-great Guerrero to give him much real trouble.

Pacquiao remained out of action while Floyd signed a second fight for 2013, a September 14 bout with Canelo Alvarez, a huge star in Mexico emerging as a marquee player in the United States, as well. Alvarez, unbeaten and just 23 years old, was a fighter many felt Floyd would avoid facing, but Mayweather took the fight, which promised enormous money.

Though the naturally bigger man, Alvarez never seemed to bother Mayweather on fight night, and Floyd won handily, despite scorecards that came back with a majority decision in his favor. (The judge who scored it a draw for Alvarez was essentially forced into retirement, and has not worked since.)

While the fight with Guerrero returned disappointing pay-per-view numbers, the Alvarez fight did not. Mayweather-Guerrero was said to have come in at about 850,000 buys, a big number but proving at long last that Mayweather, like Pacquiao, was no longer an instant one million buys on pay-per-view. Pacquiao had lost his streak with the fight against Tim Bradley in 2012, and the public was making it fairly clear that even though everyone could still make a lot of money, a B-side that the fans believed in to some degree was now necessary for the figures to hit the seventh digit.

Alvarez was such a fighter. An all-out promotional blitz wasn’t even really necessary, but it certainly helped. The fight generated $150 million in pay-per-view revenue, eclipsing De La Hoya-Mayweather from 2007, even though it fell slightly short of the 2.48 million buys record, coming in with 2.2 million. In the ring, the fight did not live up to the hype, but the event certainly did.

On the other end of that spectrum, however, was Pacquiao’s November clash with Brandon Rios, a tough but limited brawler meant to bring Pacquiao back with an exciting victory. Pacquiao faced Rios in Macau, where Arum had been looking to expand boxing operations with major events after scoring a hit with two-time Chinese Olympic gold medalist Zou Shiming’s pro bouts.

Pacquiao routed Rios over 12 rounds, but the fight was a commercial dud in the United States, with about 475,000 buys according to HBO. The company’s president of pay-per-view, Mark Taffet, said that anything over 350,000 was a success for an overseas event in their minds, but the gap between Mayweather and Pacquiao as commercial entities had never looked wider.

In December 2013, Mayweather firmly stated what many had suspected: that his former promoter, Bob Arum, was (at least in Mayweather’s mind) the biggest reason the fight would not happen. "The reason why the fight won’t happen is because I will never do business with Bob Arum again," he said.

2014: More of the Same

The year started with a bit of taunting on both sides. Mayweather told FightHype, his outlet of choice, that Pacquiao was chasing a fight with him due to tax problems. Pacquiao responded by offering to fight Mayweather for charity. None of it was anything new or legitimate, but it happened.

The trend of Mayweather beating Pacquiao convincingly in PPV sales continued in 2014, though less dramatically than it looked in 2013. Mayweather signed to fight Argentina’s Marcos Maidana on May 3, and the fight reportedly did about 900,000 buys on pay-per-view. After a competitive fight that saw the rugged Maidana give Mayweather some early problems, a rematch was signed for September 13, with the hope that the second fight, getting some buzz from a pretty exciting first outing, would top a million. It did not, coming in at 925,000 buys, only marginally better.

Pacquiao also got back to fighting twice per year once again. In April, he rematched Timothy Bradley, this time getting the decision he deserved. The rematch sold less than their 2012 fight, which had come in at around 890,000 buys, down to between 750-800,000 for the second go, which promoter Arum admitted was "a disappointment."

In November, he returned to Macau to face Chris Algieri, a young junior welterweight who had scored an upset of Ruslan Provodnikov in June. Algieri, though, was still a relative unknown, with just one HBO fight previously, and now was being put into a PPV position. The fight wasn’t expected to be a blockbuster hit, but though nothing was ever confirmed, the most widely reported number for sales was a paltry 300,000 buys. The most positive spin anyone put forward was that the fight had reached 400,000 buys.

Whereas in 2009-12, Mayweather and Pacquiao were doing largely similar numbers with an edge to Mayweather, the difference had now become dramatic. Years of the fight that everyone wanted to see being pushed aside for "replacement" fights had taken a toll. So, too, had Pacquiao’s pair of 2012 losses — even if one was highly suspect, the other was not.

There was a growing feeling that the two men had both passed their primes, and that the fight could never be what it would have been in 2010. This meant that if the fight were ever on the table again, Mayweather would be demanding even more. And this time, it would be really hard to argue.

2014-15: There's a Light

On December 12, 2014, Floyd Mayweather made an appearance on a Showtime boxing broadcast to be interviewed by Steve Farhood. He started by talking about his promotional company, which had come into its own over the past couple of years.

When Farhood brought up Pacquiao, it was clearly nicely set up for Mayweather to make a challenge, while giving his side of the story. There had been rumors of negotiations for the fight happening once again, and Floyd wisely jumped on top of it in a public way.

"I would love to fight Manny Pacquiao. We tried to make the fight happen years ago. We had problems with random blood and urine testing," Mayweather said. "I just want to be on an even playing field.

"Now he’s in a very tight situation. He’s lost to Marquez, he’s lost to Bradley, his pay-per-view numbers are down extremely low. So he’s desperate. I wanted that fight a long time ago. I’m just waiting on them."

Mayweather added that the fight would have to happen on Showtime pay-per-view, where he had two fights remaining on his contract. Pacquiao, however, was signed to HBO Sports, and that presented another roadblock. Would the two companies be able to work together, as they had for the Lewis-Tyson fight in 2002?

For many, it was tough to take the new discussions seriously. We’d all been here before.

January 2015 saw almost constant reports on the negotiations, with both sides looking to give their side of the story as to why the fight wasn’t yet signed. There were reports that it was on, which was always quickly refuted by someone from the other side. On January 13, it was said that Pacquiao had agreed to terms, and that Mayweather’s side was holding up the finalization of the fight. Two weeks passed, with none of that going anywhere.

Something unusual happened on January 27, though. At an NBA game in Miami between the Heat and the Milwaukee Bucks, there were a couple of big basketball fans in attendance. One was Floyd Mayweather. The other was Manny Pacquiao. The two spoke briefly at courtside, and their presence at the game was noted to those in attendance on the Heat’s video screen. It was said that they exchanged numbers and were friendly.

A couple of days later, it was reported that the two met privately after the game in Pacquiao’s hotel suite. It was described as a productive discussion where Mayweather presented what he felt were the final issues, a big one being the completion of the broadcast between HBO and Showtime, which was still a major sticking point.

TMZ reported just after that that the fight had been agreed to, but Bob Arum and Showtime’s Stephen Espinoza quickly shot that down. Espinoza made clear that the issues between HBO and Showtime were still being worked out. There was also a report that HBO may have been trying to drag their feet, waiting for Mayweather to finish out his contract with Showtime and have the fight all to themselves in 2016. The network quickly responded with a press release, marking the first time they had publicly acknowledged their involvement in negotiations for the fight.

There were rumors of a Super Bowl announcement, but the game came and went with nothing new. Early February saw Bob Arum take heat from both sides, including his son-in-law Todd duBoef, a high-ranking Top Rank executive. With the clock ticking, everything seemed to take a step forward, then a step back, then one forward, then two back. Then, it finally happened.

February 20, 2015: It’s On

Floyd Mayweather officially announced that he would be fighting Manny Pacquiao. February 20, 2015 was the day that the five-year journey to get to Mayweather vs Pacquiao finally reached its conclusion.

Reaction was unanimously positive. Though there were still those who said that the fight was happening too late, at least it was finally happening. On March 11, the two went face-to-face for the first time at their one and only press conference in Los Angeles. It was decided that with just over two months before fight night, there was no need to make the fighters run around to promote a bout that had already been promoted for half a decade.

The drug testing is in place, as Mayweather wanted. The networks are set to work together, sending the best of their best to call the fight as one unit in Las Vegas. The promotional quirks (it’s Mayweather-Pacquiao, never Pacquiao-Mayweather), the weigh-in, who enters first, who gets announced first, what belts are on the line — it’s all good to go.

In truth, the Mayweather-Pacquiao build these last two months has lacked some of the aggressively manufactured buzz of past fights that have featured both stars. Some is because the promoters and networks have not tried so hard to sell a fight that doesn’t need it. Some is simply because a lot of people are sick of talking about it, and just want to see it happen. At long last, on May 2, we will.

It took a long time, but we’re finally here.

JULY 10, 1999

A skinny 9-year-old girl with dark, wavy hair bounces around her living room, a soccer ball at her feet. She kicks it against the cream and green tweed couch. Her eyes stare into the television.

More than 90,000 people pile into the Rose Bowl for the women’s World Cup final. The U.S. and China enter a packed stadium, the two best teams in the world. Ricky Martin has taken over the radio waves with “Livin’ la Vida Loca.” Bill Clinton has been impeached. Gas costs $1.22 a gallon. And women’s soccer has taken over the imagination of not only America, but this girl in a suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia, and her dreams.

“What we’re seeing clearly transcends sports,” Robin Roberts says before the game on the ABC broadcast.

The girl stares at the TV and dreams like all kids do. She does not yet understand that she just can’t walk out there one day and join an American team. International soccer does not let you suit up and play for any country you want. There are rules, but the girl does not know about all that.

Hanson, the three-brother boy-band who make girls swoon across the globe, stand-up to the microphone and sing the National Anthem. Jets scream overhead. The noise from the stadium echoes on the broadcast. American flags are spinning and twirling in the stands. The New York Times reported that an estimated 40 million Americans’ watched at least a portion of the game on television, and ratings were double what had been expected.

David Madison/Getty Images

No one predicted the enthusiasm of these crowds. The U.S. Women’s National Team had played out of sight from the American public for years. Michelle Akers, Brandi Chastain, Kristine Lilly, Joy Fawcett and Carla Overbeck were not household names and yet they’d been perhaps the best women’s soccer team in the world for nearly a decade. When they won the inaugural Women’s World Cup in 1991 in China, no one really knew or cared. After winning, when they landed at the airport, midfielder Julie Foudy later told an interviewer the team was greeted by a crowd of three, including the bus driver. They also captured an Olympic Gold Medal at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, but few outside the soccer world  paid much attention, lost in a flood of American medals and the Olympic Centennial Park terrorist bombing - their games barely made it on TV.  This World Cup, played on their native soil, was their chance to shine.

Five years earlier, the men’s World Cup came to the US, and the upstart American squad grabbed America’s hearts and enthralled the nation while helping launch a new professional league, Major League Soccer. Now, with the help of the goal-scoring prowess and magnetism of star forward Mia Hamm, similar crowds have turned out to see the women. For their first game of the Cup, team members were surprised when a full house of 74,000 people showed up to the Meadowlands to see them play the opening game against Denmark. It was now their turn to be in the spotlight.

The 9-year-old girl in Canada watches the Americans play in front the enormous crowds and score all those goals, beating everyone with force and beauty. She won’t sit down - she can’t sit down — but she keeps her eyes on that team. She watches the games from in front of the couch, transfixed, soccer ball at her feet.

She already has exceptional skills. She seems to have a tractor beam that locks in on the ball and brings her to it, so talented that her mother has had to find a special team for her. But she doesn’t understand that all this will one day impact her ability someday to realize her dream.

“This is more than a game. This is a defining moment in women’s sports history,” Wendy Gebauer, a member of the ‘91 World Cup winning team, says to the play-by-play announcer, JP Dellacamera, before kick-off.

China and the U.S. battle back and forth. Tackles fly in, one after another. The heat wears both teams out. After 90 minutes, the game is scoreless and extra-time is needed. China gets a chance to win the game on a corner kick — it’s a free-header — but Kristine Lilly, who seems always to be in the right place at the right time, is at the back post and heads the shot clear just before it can cross the goal line. Penalty kicks are the only way to separate the two sides.

The 9-year-old turns to her mother and says, “I want to play for that team,” and points to the women in red, white and blue. She doesn’t really know who that team is, yet.  She just wants to play like those women. She wants to score like them. She wants to dream like them.

The penalty round begins and the U.S. takes a 4-3 lead. Briana Scurry stops one of China’s penalties and now if Chastain can get hers past Chinese goalkeeper Gao Hong, the U.S. will become World Champions. A few months earlier, she was in this same spot at the Algarve Cup, a yearly women’s soccer tournament in Portugal, and she did not convert.

Chastain steps up to the ball on the penalty spot and paces straight backwards. Coach Tony Di Cicco’s last selection to take the penalty, four months earlier Chastain had missed a PK against China when the shot banged off the crossbar. After that, she decided to do something totally out of the ordinary,  to take the penalty kicks with her weaker foot to put Hong off. The ref blows the whistle, signaling Chastain to attack the ball. Chastain smashes a left-footed shot into the corner. It’s a perfect penalty. The ball slams the boom-mic in the corner and sends an echo into the TV broadcast. She twirls around and rips her shirt off, showing off her black sports bra, and falls to her knees, screaming. The photographs of the moment will grace magazine covers and newspapers across the globe. It’s pure joy.

David Madison/Getty Images

The Rose Bowl erupts and Chastain’s teammates run screaming down the field. They all embrace.

Foudy pulls her to the ground. “U-S-A! U-S-A!” erupts from the crowd. American flags wave.

The little girl in Vancouver knows right where she wants to be: in that embrace.

JANUARY 22, 2012

The stadium is eerily quiet for a professional sporting event. The crowd of 6,259 doesn’t begin to fill the stands at BC Place in Vancouver, which sits along the waterfront in Canada’s eighth largest city and can hold 21,000 spectators. On television, the crowd seems even smaller. The field microphones pick up conversations between players and the ambulance sirens and traffic outside the stadium walls. It’s as if this 2012 Summer Olympic Qualifying match between the United States Women’s National Team and the Guatemalan Women’s team doesn’t matter. That’s partly because Guatemala isn’t by any means a wealthy country with fans that can drop everything to go to Canada in the middle of January to support their women’s soccer team, and partly because the US team are Canada’s biggest rivals. Most of the Canadian fans are here for one reason, and it is not to support the American side.

This is Sydney Leroux’s second call-up to the U.S. National Team — finally fulfilling the dreams she has had since she was the little girl in Surrey, British Columbia kicking, watching and wishing. She made her first appearance for the U.S. Women’s National team nearly a year early against Sweden — a five minute cameo - after making her name as one of the most-capped Under-20 players for the U.S. and scorer of a record 24 goals at that level (the current mark of 31 by Kelly Wilson includes goals scored in two U-19 tournaments that are now included in U-20 marks).

But the national team she aspired to play for had just reached the finals of the 2011 Women’s World Cup. The roster seemed set and there were a litany of potential attacking players for Leroux to unseat. Still, she forced her hand and pushed her way into coach Pia Sundhage’s side for the 2012 Olympic qualifying tournament. It helped that her college coach, Jill Ellis at UCLA, was Sundhage’s assistant. But it still takes someone special to get playing time behind Abby Wambach, the US’s all-time leading goal scorer, and other established players of her caliber.

The few fans in the stands this day are either Americans who made the journey over the border, locals who decided to show up to get a look at the team that the hosts will most likely face in the finals of qualifying or they’re Leroux’s friends and family, including her mother, Sandi. Or they’re here something else: to boo Leroux whenever they can. The hatred runs so deep that some signs they carry don’t make it into the stadium, too insensitive and crude to be displayed at a barely-watched qualifying game.

Guatemala is the U.S. second opponent in this qualifying round and one of their lesser CONCACAF foes. The USWNT leads 6-0 at half time and Sundhage decides it’s time to bring on Leroux.

She’s the final of three substitutions announced over the PA system. At the sound of her name, a mix of boos and cheers ring out. Within minutes of her arrival on the field, Alex Morgan lays a pass off to Leroux in the penalty area. She makes the Guatemalan defenders look like agility cones with a few quick touches and a drop of her shoulder, getting past one sliding challenge before powering a right-footed shot in the back of the net. It’s her first goal for the U.S., for the team she watched as a 9-year-old as Mia Hamm blasted the back of the net, and the only team she ever wanted to play for.

Jeff Vinnick/Getty Images

“Sydney! Sydney! Sydney!” Chants echo from the crowd until the stadium announcer gives her credit for the goal. Then the boos start again. They build for a few seconds, followed by another chant: “JU-DAS! JU-DAS! JU-DAS!” The cheers are soon overwhelmed.

It’s the kind of thing that comes with being back in her native country, a place she left behind at age 15. Two minutes later, before the chants have faded, she adds another goal, one of the easiest she will ever score. But she’s not done. She scores another in the 57th minute and barely celebrates. The “boos” and “JUDAS!” chants still reign from the stands. The U.S. will score 13 goals and Leroux will have five of them.

The U.S. beats Canada, 4-0, in the final game of qualifying and Leroux gets a chance to sport the red, white and blue in front of her friends and family. The U.S. easily qualifies for the Olympics, going unbeaten in the five games and outscoring their opponents 38-0.  Nevertheless, the boos rang out throughout her time in Vancouver.

Leroux will make 27 appearances for the U.S. in 2012 and score 14 goals, a remarkable strike-rate made even more impressive when you take into account that she doesn’t start a single one of those games. She becomes the USWNT’s super-sub, their version of Manu Ginóbili of the NBA San Antonio Spurs, a key player one of the most formidable teams in the world who sparks the offense from the bench.

At the London Olympics, she makes four appearances, all as a sub from the bench, and scores one goal as the U.S. goes on to win a gold medal. But she’ll return home considered a traitor, the soccer equivalent of Joseph Willcocks, perhaps the best-known turncoat in Canadian history, a man who fought for the United States in the War of 1812.  Soon after, Leroux visits a Vancouver morning news show, her gold medal in tow, and the nature of the horrible things people say about her on Twitter made it onto the air.

“I want to show how brutal it is because you got to have some sort of superpower to deal with the mental strain,” one of the hosts says to Leroux. “This is one of the harshest critiques I saw from one of our Twitter followers saying: ‘So tomorrow morning, at BT Vancouver, will be interviewing Hitler, or at least someone that’s as disgusting as him, @sydneyleroux.”

Leroux takes the interview in stride.

“I understand that I was born here, but I left a long time ago and I had these dreams of playing for the U.S. Women’s National Team a long time ago. And I wasn’t going to stop until I got there,” Leroux said. “What I hope for everyone, even if they don’t like my decision, is that they get to chase their dreams like I got to chase mine.”

Fans have a way of forgetting that athletes are humans too. We jeer at any time and wish bad things on opponents. The Internet gives people license to say things they’d never express in public or person. Leroux, who is biracial and as beautiful as she is talented, has received copious amounts of sexist and racist hate on places like Twitter, a favorite place for people to air their uncensored feelings behind a wall of unanimity and distance.

Leroux must live with that even if she’s not the only player to jump the border, a dual citizen able to choose her country. Canada has had its fair share of Americans, dual citizens, on their roster, including a crop of new young players like Rachel Quon and Janine Beckie. But with Leroux, it’s different. She played in their system and then left. She was a player Canada hoped would lead them onto the world stage.

People don’t know her history, how hard she worked to make it all happen. They don’t see the story behind her decision or what she went through to go from being a little girl who couldn’t sit still in her home watching the 1999 World Cup to being the USWNT’s next great forward, a player who can tear her opponents apart.

They only see the traitor. That is the price of pursuing her dream.

Every kid dreams. It’s part of growing up. You can’t escape them, and for most people they remain out of reach. They are fanciful potion, one part hard work, a big dash of talent, some dedication and a deep pour of luck. But if dreams came easy, they’d fade and we’d forget about them. They wouldn’t mean anything.

Leroux’s dream, in a sense, began at a Canadian Football League football game. Sandi met Sydney’s father, Ray Chadwick, at a British Columbia Lions game. Chadwick was a professional baseball player pitching for Triple-A Edmonton at the time. The pair discovered they shared a mutual bond over the diamond. Sandi was the third baseman for the 1987 Canadian National Softball team at the Pan American Games.

Chadwick, 6’-2 180 lbs., was a 16th round pick of the California Angels in 1983. Over the next few years, he navigated the maze that is Major League Baseball’s minor league system and pushed his way to the big leagues, suddenly a potential starting pitcher with upside. On July 29, 1986 he made his Major League debut and pitched six solid innings against the Oakland Athletics — he allowed two runs off of four hits — but the Angels lost.  At the time, Chadwick told Gene Wojciechowski of the Los Angeles Times, “I guess I make my own destiny.” But destiny would prove cruel.

In Chadwick’s second start, he didn’t even record an out before being pulled. He’d make seven starts in 1986, trying to stick it out with the best team in the American League West that season, and win none of them. It would be his only stint in the big leagues, and mark the beginning of the end of his dream. He would drift through minor league baseball before moving on and becoming a coach.

Sandi went to a few of Chadwick’s games in Vancouver before the season ended and he headed home to North Carolina. They kept in touch while Chadwick was away and made plans to see each other when they could. Sandi’s season the Canadian National softball team conflicted with Chadwick’s own schedule, so it was difficult, but they tried their best. In August of 1989, Sandi decided to fly join Chadwick in Providence, Rhode Island for a few days.

Soon afterwards, Sandi headed to Toronto to join her teammates on the British Colombia team at the Canadian Championship.  After one of the games, she went out for drinks and food at a beer garden, had one beer, and got sick. She could not explain why. It didn’t make sense, but she put it off as a one-time thing and returned to Vancouver. Then it happened again. She decided to go to a doctor to find out what was wrong.

She was pregnant. Sandi told Chadwick and he quickly flew to Vancouver. They were elated, but they’d never lived together or spent a lot of time with each other. By Christmas, Chadwick was playing ball in Mexico and Sandi realized their relationship wouldn’t work and the couple separated.

Sandi was expecting a boy. The doctors confirmed it and she had started to get boys clothes. She was scheduled to have a C-Section on May 8, 1990, and was prepared to hold a son when it was all over. Chadwick planned on being there for the birth.

But nothing ever seems to go quite as planned with Sydney. In the middle of the night on May 6 Sandi went into labor. She delivered in the early hours of May 7. The doctors held up her supposed son and told Sandi she had a new baby daughter.

Sandi couldn’t believe it. She called them liars and thought they were kidding — they had to be kidding. They weren’t. Sydney would just have to wear the boy’s clothes she had already bought.

Growing up, Sydney could not be contained. She had the chaotic energy of a young boy and he powered through babysitters, exhausting and frustrating them with her vitality and tricks. She would entice them into her room by asking them to play a game and then sneak out and lock the door on them like her mom did when she was in timeout. To combat Sydney’s irrepressible energy, Sandi signed her up for as many sports as possible.

“I definitely was not meant to just sit at home and do things that other kids did,” Sydney says. “I always had to be moving. I always had to be doing something.”

Sandi put her in gymnastics and even tried Tae Kwon Do, which seemed like the perfect place for Sydney to learn to harness her effervescence and aggression. It worked for a time, but with each new level came a new $100 expense for a belt, and Sandi, who hung price labels at the local Save-on-Foods grocery store, didn’t care to spend her hard-earned money on a belt.

“I didn’t understand it,” Sandi says. “It’s $100 for a yellow belt? I have one. I said, ‘we’re not going to that again.’”

Leroux first excelled at baseball, the family sport. Her first dream was to be the first girl to play in the major leagues, but she soon realized baseball is a game with nearly unbreakable traditions and a woman playing in the majors was almost unfathomable. At the same time, Leroux enjoyed playing soccer, already a goal scorer. Her athletic ability and boundless energy made her stand out among her peers from an early age. Besides, the feeling of scoring a goal felt better that hitting a home run.

“I loved it [soccer] from the moment I put on cleats that were three sizes too big because you needed to grow into them,” Leroux says.

Leroux dominated. Even as a six-year old she was fast and intense, slide tackling her opponents as her speed and determination set her apart. The game and the goals came naturally to her. What separates a very good player from a great player is the dedication and competitive drive and Sydney has a Michael Jordan-like focus on winning. Playful and emotional off the field (“Maybe I don’t look it on the outside, but I am very sensitive,” she says), on the field she changes into a cold-hearted winner who will do anything to succeed. That spirit mixed with her speed and strength made her too much of a force for the girls her own age. She destroyed her competition.

Soon Sandi had to sign Sydney up to play with the boys.

When Sydney was eight, a man approached Sandi and told her about a girls’ team that he believed was right for Sydney. Sandi realized that Sydney needed better coaching and better competition. Without it, she might stagnate and get bored. Still, Sandi was unsure of the proposal but decided to see what this team of all girls was all about.

Sandi and Sydney went to see Sebastian Muñoz’s Surrey Sharks girls’ team play and were impressed. His players were better than Sydney, more gifted with the ball at their feet and had a superior understanding of the nuances of the game. Sydney joined and quickly fell in with the team and started to harness her raw abilities — pace and power — into a more finely tuned player.

Muñoz changed the course of her career more than anyone did. Once he found out that Leroux’s father was an American, that Leroux was a dual citizen and dreamed of playing for the U.S., he told her and her mother to avoid putting on the Canadian national team jersey. If she did, according to FIFA rules, she would always have to play as a Canadian.

Leroux moved on to play for the Coquitlam City Wild and the club won the Provincial Cup Championships. Canadian national soccer officials soon heard about this goal-scoring kid in Vancouver and asked her to play for one of the Canadian National youth teams. Sandi tried to figure out if that was allowed only to come up short-handed. She tried to contact FIFA, without tipping off Canada, of course, but didn’t hear anything back from international soccer’s governing body.

The Leroux’s eventually learned that youth team games don’t lock a player into a country’s national team system, that as long as she didn’t play in a FIFA commissioned game, like a World Cup qualifier, for the senior national team, then at some point in the future she could make a one-time switch.  As a dual U.S. and Canadian citizen, Sydney could play for the Canadian youth teams and then accept a call-up to the U.S. in the future if she filed the proper paperwork and proved that Chadwick was both her father and an American citizen.

Leroux quickly ascended the ranks of the Canadian youth soccer, playing with the national team in every age group from Under-15s to the Under-19s. She even competed in the FIFA Under-19 Women’s World Championship  in 2004 as a 14-year-old, the youngest player at the tournament. Canada did not have the world-beating national team that it has today and Canadian soccer officials considered Leroux a cornerstone to build on.

But playing for so many Canadian youth teams wore Leroux out. She struggled to keep up and wasn’t having fun. When she finally found out for certain that she could play for the U.S., that it wasn’t just a pipe dream, but a real possibility, she told her mother to send her to the U.S. or she was quitting soccer. They decided she would move to the U.S. on her own, play for a club team and live with a host family while continuing to home school herself.

At the same time, Sydney didn’t want to live too far from her mother — they were a pair. Her father was not a big part of her life and in many ways Sandi was all Sydney knew. At first they chose a club in Seattle, Washington, just a bus ride away.

Things didn’t go as planned in Seattle. Leroux struggled to adapt to life away from home. She didn’t play well and wasn’t scoring goals, which is what made soccer so special to her. She didn’t fit in with her team. Leroux returned home to her mother and decided to defer the dream.

Without it, everything spiraled out of control. Leroux partied and started to get into trouble. Leroux became adept at stealing her mother’s car for joy rides in the middle of the night. She’d pick her friends up and they’d do typical middle school things like go to McDonald’s and hang out.

“I would always go, ‘I had more gas than this; I never parked like this.’ Never once did it click that she stole my car,” Sandi says.

Leroux he slacked off both in school and on the field. Instead of focusing on soccer, she sought ways to fight back against the system and put all her energy into getting into trouble instead of on the field. Leroux finally discovered that to reach her goal she needed to leave again.

“I was like, ‘if you don’t get me out of here I am going to quit soccer,’” Leroux says. She knew if she was ever going to play for the United States, she need to play in the United States, so she could be seen by U.S. coaches, play in college and prove herself against the best American players.

With that in mind, Sandi and Sydney searched for the next place for her to go Sandi and Sydney had friends in Arizona and loved visiting. On one trip, Sydney trained with a team and became close friends with a girl on the team, Kassandra McCluskie.

More importantly, Les Armstrong saw Leroux play. The Scottish-born coach had moved to Arizona in the 1980s and become one of the most successful coaches in the state, the top girls coach at Sereno Soccer FC, McCluskie’s club team. He saw the raw talent Leroux possessed.

Sydney and McCluskie kept in touch online and Sandi and Kassandra’s parents discovered a mutual bond in that they were all originally from Canada. It became clear that when the time came for Sydney to go off on her next American sojourn, Arizona made the most sense.

When the day arrived for Sydney to leave again, she and Sandi packed up their Hyundai, the car Sydney often commandeered, and headed to the airport. Sydney would never really return home again.

While she flew to Arizona, Armstrong prepared for her arrival. He drove to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and found a skinny girl with a black-and-white Mohawk and a few bags waiting for him. He knew she had some issues in Seattle, but he also knew she had the potential to be a superb player and one day wanted to play for the U.S. He set her up with a host family, but that first night she would stay with his family in his daughter’s room.

At Leroux’s first practice with Sereno, Armstrong saw how special she could be. He heard that her other club in Seattle tried to play her as a defender, but she wanted to score goals. He decided to see what she could do.

Even today, he remembers watching Leroux play for the first time. The sun had begun to set and people were already home eating dinner with their families when Armstrong’s girls started a kind of impromptu pick-up game under the floodlights — seven players to a side… Leroux lined up as a forward and wasted little time showing  her new coach her skills. A player sent a cross into the box for Leroux to attack with her head, but when the cross was deflected and redirected behind her, Leroux improvised. She twisted her body, turned herself in the air and sent a powerful bicycle kick into the roof of the net.

Armstrong was awestruck. The moment slowed down as he watched — teenagers just don’t do that. They don’t change directions at a full sprint and spin their body like that and score goals on bicycle kicks. Leroux would not become a defender. No way.

Goals are gold in soccer. Being a goal scorer requires not only technical skill — dribbling, passing, control — but also a knack to find the right space at the right time and to see where the ball is going to go instead of where it already is. It’s why club teams around the world pay exorbitant fees to sign the very best forwards.

Leroux had both the instincts needed and the skill required to become a difference maker. She was only 15, but Armstrong saw her raw ability and understood why Canada had played her on the Under-19 team and why Leroux played on a women’s semi-pro team in Vancouver as a teenager. Scoring goals fueled her athletic appetite and fed her competitive hunger. She’d do anything to score. Her drive, combined with her speed and power made her a force on the field that could not be contained.

“I can’t remember a game where she didn’t score. That’s how good she was,” Armstrong says.

But life was difficult for Leroux in Arizona. Armstrong enrolled her at Horizon High School in Scottsdale, but soccer was all Sydney cared about. She had friends, but admits she slept through much of her time there. She went through at least six host families as she tried to find a comfortable place to call home. She would call home crying or call Armstrong to talk.

“[Armstrong] was probably one of the best coaches I ever had. He really was like a father figure to me. He really took me and pushed me and believed in me. I loved him. He was great,” Leroux says. “It had been a while since I had felt that, since I really wanted to play for someone and he really brought that out of me and made me the best I could be.”

Armstrong had a reputation as a tough coach, notorious for long and difficult practices, and once was even suspended from coaching in Arizona because of parent complaints. He once told the Phoenix New Times that there was no such thing too much training. Although some found him tough to play for, Leroux flourished under his coaching style.

“If I didn’t play for him I wouldn’t be here — 100 percent,” Sydney says. “The thing is I never saw anything wrong with the way he talked to us. I knew it was coming out of a place of so much love. He knew how to get through to some people and some it didn’t matter because they were going to quit next year anyways.”

“They made her feel like she was wanted and needed and that’s what Syd wanted,” Sandi says.

UCLA coach Jill Ellis began scouting Leroux soon after she moved to Arizona. She too, saw the drive and desire in the way Sydney played and she wanted that on her team. UCLA had never won a national title in women’s soccer and she thought Leroux could be the kind of player to get the team to the next level.

“[Leroux] was powerful,” Ellis says. “I remember seeing one of the best goals I’ve seen a youth player score. It was a ball in the air and she came across and headed it and got way off the ground and I was like, yeah, I want that player.”

Still, Leroux made Ellis sweat out her decision. She made one West Coast trip to visit schools and fell in love with each one, first Loyola Marymount University, and then Santa Clara. Had she not already planned to visit UCLA, she would have committed to Santa Clara during her visit.

Then she arrived at UCLA. The setting is a paradise, a Hollywood version of a college campus. It borders Beverly Hills and the surrounding neighborhood is immaculate. Nothing seems out of place and the weather is perfect.

After spending a night on campus, Leroux made up her mind. She sat with Ellis and told her she planned to commit … to Santa Clara. Leroux let the news sit for a moment with Ellis before breaking the good news.

“I was like ‘Just kidding!’ I want to come here,” Leroux says. “I didn’t even tell my mom. I committed on the spot by myself and I told her I was coming.”

When Leroux arrived at UCLA, she finally found a home. She’d come to the U.S. to play soccer and get a scholarship, and now had just one goal left: to get a call-up to the U.S. National Team. First, though, she needed to ask FIFA for the one-time switch. Once she made the change, even If she never got a call-up to the U.S, she could never go back and play for Canada. This was permanent.

Fortunately, Ellis also coached the United States Under-20 team and pushed U.S. Soccer for Sydney’s switch. When she was asked why she felt so strongly about supporting Leroux’s decision, Ellis said, “Because I don’t want to play against her.” Her bosses liked that answer and helped file the proper paperwork. Leroux would get her chance to put on the U.S. jersey.

AFP

In the summer of, 2008, while enrolled at UCLA, Leroux went with the U.S. Under-20 team to the U-20 World Cup in Santiago, Chile for coach Tony DiCicco, who had led the 1999 national team to the dramatic World Cup victory, and took over the team in 2008 from Ellis. She helped the team win the tournament by scoring a first half goal in the finals, one of five goals she scored in the tournament to win the Golden Boot. The only team left for her to make was the USWNT. She had taken the risk and put in the hard work and was closing in on her dream.

Over the next three years she thrived, eventually leaving UCLA as one of the school’s best ever players, scoring 57 goals in 84 games and helping the Bruins to four consecutive NCAA tournament berths and playing a key role on the Under-20 team. Although the U.S senior team already had a backlog at forward - Alex Morgan had just burst onto the scene and scored goals in seemingly every appearance she made, and U.S. all-time leading goal scorer Abby Wambach was in her prime — Leroux’s talent and determination were irrepressible. In 2012, she not only made the team but managed to force her way into Sundhage’s rotation and earned playing time. Now that Ellis has taken over as USNWT coach, her prospects have never looked brighter.

“What I love about Sydney is she takes a challenge,” Ellis says. “I think almost at times things can’t be too easy for her. She has to have things she has to fight for and compete for.”

JUNE 2, 2013

A sea of red and Canadian pride swells inside BMO Field in Toronto. Only ten months earlier, Canadian fans saw the Canadian Women’s National Team lose a chance at capturing its first Olympic Gold medal in soccer.

The Canadians had long struggled to get out from under the American team’s shadow, which had collected a staggering 45 wins in their previous 53 meetings. But in the 2012 Olympics, it became clear that the Canadians were a potent squad nearly the equal of the Americans. In a semi-final game marked by rough play and some questionable refereeing decisions, the two clubs played each other evenly in their meeting at Old Trafford in Manchester into the 123^rd minute.  Then, an Alex Morgan goal gave the U.S. a 4-3 win and the Americans went on to win a gold medal.

AFP

Alex Morgan breaks Canadian hearts with the winner in the 2012 Olympic Semifinal

Canadian soccer fans took the loss hard. When the referees weren’t there to blame, they redirected their anger onto Leroux. Although she only scored a single goal for the Americans in the Olympics, she may have proved to be a difference-maker for Canada

That was supposed to be their moment finally to show they’re now a world power in soccer and challenge the American’s as North America’s best team.  But the player who the country hoped would lead the line and score goals crossed the border and suits up for the U.S. On this night, Canada is looking for some sort of consolation to ease the pain of the loss. .

Leroux now appears regularly for the U.S. usually providing a spark off the bench. Although Morgan and Wambach usually start, Leroux has become one of the team’s most potent forwards - scoring 16 goals in 32 games before that night, averaging a goal every 37 minutes of playing time in 2012.

It took less than an hour for the tickets to this rematch in Toronto to sell-out and the crowd of more than 22,000 fans brings the ruckus, delivering an unwelcoming atmosphere for the U.S. to the stadium, But they saved most of their hatred for Leroux. The crowd wants revenge.

Leroux jogs up and down the sideline getting warmed up with her teammate Kristie Mewis. They put themselves through the typical paces: stretching, running, some more stretching, looking onto the field and chatting. The crowd isn’t far from them and uses this time to shout and holler at Leroux. She has yet to walk onto the field, but that doesn’t matter. This is the Canadian’s moment to let their feelings be known. They’re tired of losing to the US and they want Leroux to know they’re fed up of seeing her in an American jersey.

Fans needed a scapegoat and they found one in Leroux. She’s a traitor. It’s her fault.

With 16 minutes left in the game, Leroux gets her chance. Every time Leroux touches the ball boos rain down from the crowd. But she will get the final say on the night.

With the U.S. up 2-0 and the game already in stoppage time, the Americans went on one last break. Midfielder Carli Lloyd pokes a pass near midfield to Wambach and the U.S. forward turns on the ball to make a one-touch pass into space on the left flank. Leroux runs in-behind the Canadian defense, using her pace and instincts to time the run perfectly. Leroux latches onto the pass with only the goalkeeper, Erin McLeod, to beat. She shimmies her hips, takes a touch around McLeod and slots a left-footed shot into the net. Three goals to none.

Leroux goes down after squaring her body to finish the chance, but she quickly bounces up to her feet. She faces the sea of Canadian fans behind the net. She peels away from the scene of the crime, screaming. She grabs the U.S. crest on her white jersey, pushes it out and then presses her right index finger to her lips to hush the crowd. It’s a moment to savor for Leroux. She has come so far and no one can take this moment from her.

For three days, the Internet rages. A Canadian television commentator calls her “classless.” Canadian fans are angrier than ever. According to one report, vile tweets are sent her way, including one hoping she will die of AIDS. But Leroux is unapologetic.

“I will never take that back because it was honest because that is exactly what needed to happen,” Leroux said in January. “With all of the stuff that people were saying about me, all the stuff I heard in the crowd — the booing — scoring that goal to me was ‘Ok, bye. I’m here and I’m here to stay as long as I can.’”

Leroux doesn’t have to apologize. She is an honest person and who doesn’t back down from her opinion or a challenge. She grew up fighting one challenge after another head on. She feels she earned the right to decide what country she wanted to play for.

“I think people take her personality so strong,” says McCluskie, who will be a bridesmaid at Leroux, wedding ceremony to Sporting Kansas City forward Dom Dwyer - (the couple announced they were married on Valentine’s Day but still plan to have a ceremony in the future.) “She’s not timid to say ‘This is what I think,’ even if it is going to stir something up. She is very firm in what she believes and that’s why I love her.”

Controversy follows Leroux - particularly from the Canadian perspective —  but it’s only a product of her personality, her determination and her decisions. She won’t back down from that, and sometimes it gets misconstrued.

“Sometimes I feel like I am trouble,” Leroux says. “A lot of the times people just misunderstand [me] for the most part. I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I am by no means how bad people made me out to look when I was younger.”

Leroux has that extra competitive drive that pushes players with talent from being good to extraordinary. She followed her dreams and succeeded, even when that meant choosing another country and another team. She did everything she could to make her life her own.

“I think she is one of the most competitive players I’ve worked with,” Ellis says. “If there is one reason why she is where she is, it’s a competitive nature that is just off the charts.”

“I think what always bothers me is that people are so quick to judge Sydney because of her strong personality. It bothers me that people don’t truly know what she has been through in her life,” McCluskie says. “She struggled with her dad. It was just her and her mom. She moved away from her family to do what she loved and people don’t understand how hard that was for her. They just say, ‘Look where she is now.’ But she went through a lot to be where she is now and I couldn’t have done the things she’s done.”

This summer, Sydney will return to Canada. The country of her birth is hosting the Women’s World Cup and the United States hopes to reclaim their title as the best team in the world, a title that has eluded them for sixteen years. Leroux will have another chance to show all her doubters and haters that she’s made it. However, she won’t think of it that way. She has one more dream to fulfill.

Playing for the U.S. was only part of her dream. She wants the World Cup, too. With a world championship, she could prove to everyone, finally, that her dream was worth pursuing, and that she made the right decision.

The Americans are currently 9-4 favorites to win the World Cup, expected to face a stiff challenge from Germany, Brazil, and Japan, but they’re also in the “Group of Death,” with Australia, Nigeria and Sweden.  And should both Canada and the U.S. survive the group stage, the two squads could face each other later in the tournament. If they do, Leroux is certain to be a target.

The last time the U.S. won a World Cup was 1999, when Sydney first dared to dream that she was one of those women she saw celebrating on TV, who played the game because they loved it and whose passion flowed up and down the field. They wanted nothing more than to win and represent the shirt and the game. Leroux has given up almost everything to be here, to be just like them.

Now is her chance.

It’s the top of the first inning, and Leo Mazzone is already rocking.

Each croak of the springs in Mazzone’s brown leather recliner is punctuated by a knock in the wooden frame, like an old screen door blowing open and shut.

Creeeak-clack. Creeeak-clack.

Watching the Braves play the Marlins on the 60-inch flat-screen in the den of his home on Lake Hartwell in South Carolina, Mazzone isn’t conscious of the nervous back-and-forth tick that became his accidental trademark during four decades in the dugout. He is focused instead on the mound and Miami right-hander Tom Koehler, who leans in against Atlanta leadoff man Jace Peterson.

First pitch: Fastball down and away. Called strike one.

“Perfect pitch,” says Mazzone. “Aimed for the catcher’s crotch, and he got it there.”

Creeeak-clack. Creeeak-clack.

Fastball at the knees. Strike two.

Creeeak-clack. Creeeak-clack.

Curveball inside. Ball one.

The pace of the rocking quickens. Creak-clack-creak-clack-creak-clack. The old pitching coach has spotted something. “Changed his arm slot,” he says. “Tried to overpower him.”

If there is one thing about the game today that will wear out Mazzone’s lounger, it’s the increased emphasis on power in pitching. He’s worked with 12-year-olds, who compete against the radar gun as much as the batter, and tried to get through to high school and college hurlers who’ve been taught that a scholarship or professional contract depends more on M-P-H than E-R-A. In the pros, speed is fetishized by teams and fans alike, the reading on each pitch displayed right alongside the score in the corner of the TV, a CG flame occasionally flaring up when a fastball reaches the high-90s or low-100s.

It makes for great entertainment, sure, but Mazzone says it also leads to pitchers becoming erratic and missing location. More importantly, their release is not as smooth, increasing the risk of arm injury. Mazzone believes the modern game’s infatuation with velocity is one of, if not the primary reason for the recent plague of Tommy John elbow-ligament replacement surgeries. “Now everybody seems to be getting a pass on all the sore arms,” he says. “I don’t get it. If we’d have had all the breakdowns that are happening now, there would have been a lot of pitching coaches fired.”

Mazzone held that job for more than 27 years, including almost 18 in the big leagues. He attributes his longevity to the success of the pitchers who were indoctrinated with his unorthodox philosophy of actually throwing more often between starts but with decreased intensity, concentrating, instead, on the feel and location of their pitches, controlling the lower outside part of the strike zone — down and away, down and away. The results are well known: In Mazzone’s 15-plus seasons with Atlanta, his staffs led the Braves to 14 straight division championships, combining for four individual ERA titles, nine individual 20-win seasons, six Cy Young Awards, and eventually, three plaques in Cooperstown. Less heralded is the number of careers that were salvaged under Mazzone’s watch and his reputation for taking care of his players — especially the starters, who rarely missed a turn. “Sure he had great pitchers,” says Steve Phillips, who was an executive for the rival New York Mets in the 1990s and early-2000s. “But he kept them on the field. He kept them healthy.” In almost two decades as major league pitching coach, Mazzone only had two starters, John Smoltz and Mike Hampton, play a full season under him and succumb to Tommy John, and they were both approaching their mid-30s.

These days, news of season-ending elbow surgeries is almost a weekly rite (through April there had already been 11 such announcements), and it’s not uncommon for a kid to go under the knife twice before he leaves his 20s. Today’s answer to this scourge is strict innings limits and pitch counts, even shutting down a perfectly healthy starter midseason — things Mazzone believes actually hurt more than help. “It’s pathetic,” he says. “An insult to my intelligence. A pitcher’s greatest teacher is innings pitched.”

This isn’t idle sniping from the rocking chair. Mazzone has made it clear to anyone who’ll listen that he’d love to be back on the bench or advising or even just visit spring camp and help straighten these organizations out. In 2010, he was on Sirius XM lobbying for pitching coach openings with both the Yankees and Mets. After the 2013 season, when Philadelphia’s Rich Dubee was fired, Mazzone took to Twitter: @Phillies I would be very interested in being your pitching coach. #championshipball.

The phone hasn’t rung. This is the eighth season since Baltimore fired Mazzone in 2007 that he watched Opening Day from his den. And here he is today, a 66-year-old man creak-clacking himself into a frenzy, imagining what advice he’d give Tom Kohler once he retired the side and got back to the bench.

After the Braves set down the Marlins in the bottom of the first, the rocking suddenly stops. “I’m pretty much done with this game,” Mazzone says, as he clicks the channel to cable news. These days he rarely sits through an entire game, unless it’s Opening Day, the playoffs, or maybe a marquee pitching matchup. “When you’ve watched from the dugout for 42 years,” he says, “TV is just not the same.”

Mazzone has been rocking since he was in his high chair, occasionally banging the back of his head against the kitchen wall in Westernport, Md., near the West Virginia border. Though the internal metronome is involuntary, Mazzone has come to understand what the motion indicates. “It means my wheels are turning,” he says. “When I’m not rocking, I’m bored. When I am, I’m ready to roll.”

Mazzone’s father, Tony Mazzone, kept his son busy. The World War II vet and former catcher set aside his own ball-playing dreams to support his family and filled his son’s head with the game at an early age, always making time after a day at the paper mill for a quick father-son catch. Tony Mazzone molded his son into a left-handed pitcher, teaching him to throw a curve, coaching him from age 9 in Little League through Pony League and into high school. “The first thing my dad ever told me was that there was only one way to have fun playing baseball,” says Mazzone. “And that’s to win.”

“He enjoyed beating you,” says Sam Perlozzo, a childhood friend who grew up competing against Mazzone. “Winning and striking you out meant the world to him.” That competitive fire made young Mazzone exactly the kind of pitcher who would drive Mazzone the pitching coach off his rocker — not changing speeds enough, relying on velocity, maxing out, and trying to overpower hitters. Nevertheless, Mazzone managed not to blow out his arm and rode a decent curveball to Triple-A. Over nine years between the Giants and A’s systems, Mazzone posted a record of 50-50 with a 3.63 ERA. In 1976, he showed up to Oakland spring camp ready to start his 10th season, but A’s exec Syd Thrift saw no future for Mazzone in the big leagues — as a player. “I knew very well that he had a great baseball aptitude, that extra sense about how to pitch and how to play,” Thrift told ESPN.com in 2005, a year before he died. “He was a very astute judge of what was going on in the present.” But when Thrift called Mazzone into his office to tell him about a managerial opening in independent Single-A Corpus Christi that he had heard about, the 27-year-old southpaw erupted. “He blew a gasket and called me all kinds of unusual names,” Thrift said. Mazzone returned the next day to apologize. He also asked about the job.

The transition from the field to the dugout did little to snuff out Mazzone’s fire. He was a vocal manager, known to argue with umpires, and even toss bases after being ejected. He won two straight independent league pennants in Corpus Christi before moving to the Carolina League, where his Kinston Eagles finished fifth, but pitched fairly well (3.65 team ERA) with what Mazzone deemed lesser talent. It was enough to catch the attention of the Braves, who offered Mazzone a job as a pitching coach in their minor league system.

On the first day of spring training 1979, Mazzone met the pitching coach he had always wished he’d had, and the one he would aspire to become. At the time, Johnny Sain was coaching for Richmond, the Atlanta Triple-A affiliate. But it was the downward slope of a storied career. Sain had been a three-time All-Star and four-time 20-game winner with the Yankees and Boston Braves. In 1948 he and Warren Spahn had carried the Braves to a pennant down the stretch, inspiring Gerry Hern’s poem in the Boston Post:  First we’ll use Spahn/ then we’ll use Sain/ Then an off day / followed by rain … Later, as a coach, Sain had spent two decades with the A’s, Yankees, Twins, Tigers and White Sox, mentoring nine different pitchers to 20-win seasons — a list that included Whitey Ford, Ralph Terry, Jim Bouton and Denny McLain. A bit of an eccentric, Sain skipped the team motels at spring training and instead slept in a Winnebago parked near the ball field. Mazzone spent almost every night that spring sitting outside that RV, grilling beans and cornbread, drinking vodka and orange juice, and talking pitching into the wee hours.

Diamond Images

Sain was a revolutionary figure in baseball. One of baseball’s first recognizable pitching coaches, he focused on the mental approach to the game and was often seen carrying books and tapes on positive thinking. He believed in not over-coaching and letting pitchers express themselves. He advocated changing speeds and deliveries to stay a step ahead of hitters. And he disdained running and excess physical fitness and instead had his staff throw from the mound as often as possible, but with regulated effort, to work on getting the feel of their pitches — this not only kept them in pitching shape, but taught them how to actually pitch. Many in baseball worried that Sain’s philosophy would ruin pitchers’ arms, and that fact, along with his outspoken, no-compromise nature, irked certain managers and organizations. “He was ahead of his time,” says Mazzone. “People were very critical. They feared his knowledge.”

Mazzone embraced Sain’s insight. Henry Aaron, who was director of player development for the Braves, gave Mazzone the freedom to implement a similar throwing program at each level he coached in the minor leagues through the 1980s. The latter part of the decade was an exciting time to be in the Atlanta farm system. While the major league club was a perennial 90-loss laughingstock, the farm system was stocked with young arms like Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Steve Avery, Kent Mercker and Mike Stanton. And with his reputation of keeping pitchers healthy, Mazzone was also rising fast through the ranks.

At first, Tom Glavine thought his new pitching coach was crazy.

When GM and newly minted manager Bobby Cox called Mazzone to Atlanta two months into the 1990 season, the new major league pitching coach took his starters aside and told those who didn’t know him from the minors about his throwing program — two bullpen sessions between starts instead of the one that almost every rotation in the majors had been doing for decades. “My first reaction was, ‘Seriously? My arm already hurts, and you want me to throw more?’” says Glavine, who at 24 was already in his fourth big league campaign. Echoing Sain, Mazzone left it up to each individual. Glavine, like most of his young teammates, reluctantly agreed to give it a shot. “Throwing twice as much actually wasn’t any more physically demanding,” says Glavine, who admittedly was never a high-velocity guy in the first place. “Much to my surprise, by the end of the year I actually started feeling better physically.”

John Smoltz was ready to try almost anything. Mazzone had already helped him fix his mechanics (by being the first coach that let Smoltz throw the way he wanted to) and taught him a curveball back in the instructional league. Now a 23-year-old All-Star power pitcher, Smoltz dove into the new low-intensity throwing program. “It allowed me not to max out,” he says. “I developed a feel for my pitches without max effort — even during the games. It kept me fresher.”

With the steadfast support of his manager, Bobby Cox, Mazzone went about changing the culture of the pitching staff, doing everything he could to get his pitchers on the mound as often as possible. And not just the starters. “People would tell me, ‘You can’t have a reliever throw before a game, he might have to pitch that night,’” says Mazzone. “Well that’s what I was preparing them for! Jesus Christ!” The coach made an effort to spend time with each of his pitchers. And while he didn’t fret about pitch counts, he kept spiral notebooks filled with each time a pitcher threw — in practice, in a game, in the pen, or on the side — and what pitches they worked on.

After the game, he was always free to hang around, open a beer, and talk pitching. “You got some of your best coaching done when you were sitting in the clubhouse, drinking beer until 3 a.m.,” says Mazzone. “Players open up. Maybe something’s going wrong at home.” The following February, Mazzone held a voluntary week-long throwing program at Fulton County Stadium before the team was to report to spring training — such a novelty that the media started calling it Camp Leo, to the chagrin of the other coaches.

The results were almost immediate. The team ERA went from a major league worst 4.58 in 1990 to third-best 3.49 in 1991, to a big-league best 3.14 in 1992. In 1991, Glavine, who had only won 10 games the previous year, went 20-11, the first of three straight 20-win seasons for the lefty. Twenty-one-year-old phenom Steve Avery went from three wins in 1990 to 18 in 1991. Smoltz’s ERA dipped by nearly a full run between ‘91 and ‘92. Even free agent Greg Maddux, who had won the NL Cy Young with Chicago in ‘92, bought into the program (though Mazzone is adamant that he “wasn’t dumb enough to fuck with Maddux’s approach”) and went on to win his second Cy with the Braves in 1993. Perhaps most impressive is the fact that from 1991-93, the top four in the Braves rotation missed a total of one scheduled start — and that was after Maddux took a line-drive off his elbow in September 1993, and sat out his next turn, only to return four games later. At that point Glavine, Smoltz and Avery had not skipped a start in 586 games.

Mazzone critics are quick to bring up Glavine, Smoltz and Maddux and question whether anyone could have looked like a genius coaching three future Hall-of-Famers.Coaches, players, reporters, fans have stepped up and said it to his face. “I tell people to go fuck themselves,” says Mazzone. “That bothers me because there were so many more.”

Chris Bernacchi/AFP

First, it’s important to note that Glavine and Smoltz developed under Mazzone’s tutelage, and both are effusive in their praise for the coach’s vital role in their careers. And while Maddux was already an elite starter when he arrived in 1993, he hardly regressed under Mazzone, winning 194 games and three Cy Youngs as a Brave, never experiencing serious arm trouble.

Second, Mazzone is right — there are a lot more names to consider. During his tenure, the Braves staff had seven other All-Stars, including Denny Neagle, Kevin Millwood and Russ Ortiz, players who were unable to duplicate their success after leaving Atlanta. There were also more than a few career reclamations. Mike Remlinger went from being a struggling starter with the Reds in 1998 to a valuable reliever and All-Star with the Braves from 1999-2002. In 2001, journeyman John Burkett represented Atlanta as a 36-year-old All-Star with a career-low 3.04 ERA. Jaret Wright had washed out as an effective pitcher due to shoulder problems in the late-1990s; but he washed ashore in Atlanta and in 2004 made 32 starts, won 15, and posted a 3.28 ERA — all career-bests. In eight seasons bouncing from Colorado, New York and Texas, John Thomson had never put up an ERA below 4, until he went 14-8 with a 3.72 mark under Mazzone in 2004. Economist and Sabernomics blogger J.C. Bradbury looked at the park-adjusted ERAs for 98 pitchers who had thrown at least 30 innings in a season for Mazzone and compared those seasons to those pitchers’ numbers for other teams and found that Mazzone lowered a pitcher’s ERA about .63, more than half a run. Bradbury’s conclusion: “Starters and relievers pitched worse both before and after playing for Mazzone.”

Jamie Squire/Getty Images

Mazzone was hardly a sabermetrician, and some aspects of his impact are, admittedly, unquantifiable. Take, for instance, Paul Byrd: When the Mets traded Byrd to the Braves in 1997, he was a 26-year-old power pitcher. “I didn’t 100-percent buy [Mazzone’s philosophy], and when I got in jams, I overthrew,” he says. Byrd was put on waivers the following year, and by the time he came back to Atlanta via Philadelphia and Kansas City five years later, his arm was shot. He hurt his elbow before the season even started and missed all of 2003 after Tommy John surgery. When Byrd took the mound for Mazzone in 2004, his mindset had changed. “I had matured,” says Byrd. “Now Leo and I were on the same page — I was more into slowing the game down.” Byrd pitched fine for Atlanta in 2004 (8-7, 3.94), and he left as a free agent the following year. He then went on to win 49 mores games and pitch for five more seasons before retiring at age 38 — a longevity Byrd credits to Mazzone. “Leo helped me reinvent myself,” he says.

None of this is to say that Mazzone wasn’t given due credit at the time. On the contrary, the media loved him, as he was always a blunt and colorful quote. During televised games, the cameras would always find him rocking back and forth in the dugout. In September 2005, ESPN.com published a feature by Jeff Merron called “The Rock of Atlanta,” decreeing Mazzone the greatest assistant coach of all time in any sport, and asking whether he should be the first coach enshrined in Cooperstown.

Other organizations were appreciative as well. When Mazzone’s Atlanta contract was set to expire after the 2005 season, teams came looking for that Mazzone magic — including Joe Torre and George Steinbrenner, who reportedly was willing to make Mazzone the highest-paid coach in the game. In fact, Mazzone says he had informally accepted the job as Yankee’s pitching coach that October, when he got a call from Sam Perlozzo, who had also climbed through the minors, broke briefly into the big leagues, and had just been named manager of the Baltimore Orioles. It was a chance to coach in his home state alongside his best friend since childhood. And Baltimore was offering a three-year deal worth $1.35 million — which would tie him with the Cardinals’ Dave Duncan for highest-paid coach in baseball, a salary almost twice what he had been making in Atlanta. Mazzone reneged on his agreement with Steinbrenner and announced he was going to be an Oriole in 2006.

Upon hearing the news that Mazzone was coming home, an 82-year-old Tony Mazzone phoned his son. Mazzone will never forget the call: “My father told me I was the dumbest person in the world.”

Marc Serota/Getty Images

The Baltimore fans welcomed Mazzone as a savior, and with good reason. The Orioles had finished higher than fourth place in the vaunted AL East only once in eight seasons and hadn’t had a winning record since 1997. They’d had only one All-Star pitcher in six years, and hadn’t had a true ace since Mike Mussina left for the Yankees in 2000. That offseason, position players were openly pointing fingers at a young Baltimore pitching staff that had just posted the fifth-worst ERA in the American League. “It was a big deal when [Mazzone] came, a real coup for Baltimore,” says Baltimore Sun beat writer Dan Connolly. “Getting Leo was like getting a huge free agent.”

The media lapped up the feel-good story of Perlozzo and Mazzone, Maryland boys and childhood friends reunited to revive the home-state franchise. Mazzone went along with the narrative, calling this situation his dream job and telling reporters he’d like to retire in an Orioles uniform years down the road.

But even though the organization had been dogged in their pursuit of Mazzone (Perlozzo says his connection to Mazzone helped him land the manager job in the first place: “At the time, I thought they were more interested in getting Leo than getting me.”), they questioned his methods almost from the beginning, when the medical staff suddenly canceled Camp Leo. “The doctors and trainers said I couldn’t have anyone on the mound until they passed a physical,” says Mazzone. “In Atlanta we did everything we could to keep the players on the field. In Baltimore, they did everything they could to keep them off.”

Perlozzo introduced Mazzone to the team at spring training by essentially reciting the coach’s Atlanta résumé, and Mazzone could already sense the eye rolling that only worsened as time went on. “Nobody wanted to listen to our philosophy from Atlanta,” Mazzone says. “Other coaches were like ‘I’m tired of you talking about the Braves.’ It was a good ol’ boys club and these good ol’ boys had been losing for a long time. They didn’t particularly care for me coming in there with the contract that the Orioles gave me. They didn’t like it at all. They were scared to death.” Mazzone remembers driving up to the ballpark one day to find the orange cone Perlozzo had put out to mark Mazzone’s special parking spot crushed to bits — he suspects at the hands of another coach.

Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

The 57-year-old Mazzone also butted heads with some of his younger pitchers, like Erik Bedard, who grumbled about the throwing program and chafed at Mazzone’s direct personal approach. A little over a month into the season, Mazzone ripped his staff in the Sunfor having an overall “lack of passion.” Later, when some pitchers, like Rodrigo Lopez and Adam Loewen, spoke out themselves, Mazzone fired right back. “They reacted wrongly,” he told the Sun. “Apparently, they thought I was too hard on them or something. If one or two of them didn’t like hearing the truth, then they have to look in the mirror themselves. Some people in this game have to look in the mirror more often.” All of this tension was exacerbated by the fact that Mazzone’s first season in Baltimore was a disaster. The team lost 92 games, finishing fourth again in the East. The pitching staff closed with a whopping 5.35 ERA — next-to-last in the major leagues and second-worst in franchise history.

Still, there were signs of hope. Despite his initial resistance, Bedard used Mazzone’s circle-change to break through with 15 wins, a 3.76 ERA, and 171 strikeouts. Twenty-four-year-old Chris Ray came out of nowhere to save 33 games, and Loewen and fellow prospect Daniel Cabrera showed sparks by year’s end. Pitchers and coaches told reporters that Mazzone arrived at camp the following spring more optimistic and laid-back. That season, the staff entered June with the fourth-best ERA in the AL. But the team swooned that month, due in large part to a bullpen breakdown, losing 13 of its first 15 games and falling to last place. On June 18, owner Peter Angelos fired Perlozzo.

Mazzone stayed on under new manager Dave Trembley, but his pitching staff collapsed. Closer Ray blew out his elbow and underwent season-ending Tommy John surgery, joining starters Loewen and Jaret Wright on the DL. In August, the team lost to the Texas Rangers 30-3, the worst loss in the history of the American League. The team ERA blew up (6.89 in September) and finished second-worst in the majors once again. The lone highlight was Bedard, who was in the midst of Cy Young conversations when Mazzone got a call from the front office worried about the number of innings Bedard was pitching and the wear on his 28-year-old arm. “Are you kidding me?!” Mazzone told them. “He’s about to break the Orioles strikeout record!” Bedard fell just short of the Baltimore franchise record — when his season ended in early September with a strained oblique.

After the 93-loss season had ended, Mazzone says the Orioles assured him that he would be brought back for 2008. But on Oct. 12, 2007, Mazzone was fired with a year left on his contract.

“I thought we were going to have a little more time to get it done,” says Perlozzo. Connolly says it was less a lack of time than a lack of talent. Mazzone agreed with both of those assessments, but when he left he said all the right things in his statement to the press: “I understand and wish the team great success.” He was 59 years old. With his track record, he felt he’d have no trouble finding a new job. All he had to do was go back to his home in Atlanta and wait for the phone to ring.

That first spring sitting at home was the hardest. Mazzone nearly drove his wife crazy because he had no idea what to do with himself. They planted a backyard garden — tomatoes, onions, strawberries. He joined the local YMCA. Golfed. He set up a rocking chair on his porch to roll away while watching games on TV for the first time in 40 years.

Not counting Baltimore, there had been six pitching coach vacancies in the majors that winter. Mazzone did not receive a single call. Instead, he signed on to do color commentary for a few games on Fox. When no coaching offers came the following winter, Mazzone joined the crew of a local sports-talk radio show, voicing his unvarnished opinions to weekday commuters across the Atlanta metro. After the 2010 season, he went on Sirius XM and made his pitch for openings with the Mets and Yankees, to no avail. Instead, he started working with local youths and traveling around to speak to various high school baseball organizations, extolling the virtues of throwing more often while regulating effort, controlling the strike zone — down and away, down and away — and learning how to pitch.

The only major leaguers he talked to were the old friends who still phoned to check in. “When he and I talk about baseball, he still gets fired up,” says Perlozzo, who was hired as a third-base coach by Seattle just months after his firing and today does the same for the Twins. “I’m shocked that somebody hasn’t needed his talents. But he’s firm in his beliefs. Maybe organizations are a little leery of that.”

When Mazzone talks about the late Johnny Sain (and he does often), he speaks reverently of a cantankerous, misunderstood genius. “Sain was a rebel,” says Mazzone. “So was I.” But while Sain may have been ahead of his time, today many in and around baseball seem to think that Mazzone is behind. “His philosophy worked in his time,” says Connolly, who has been covering baseball for 16 years. “But baseball thinkers have moved on.”

The fact is that the annual average salary of major league players has almost doubled since 2001 (from $2.2 mllion to $4.25 million). Starting pitchers, especially, are viewed today as expensive commodities whose arms must be protected at all costs, and the prevailing wisdom on how to do that is with pitch counts and caps on innings pitched. When the Nationals shut down a healthy Stephen Strasburg in the midst of the 2012 pennant race, Mazzone was all over sports-talk, blasting the decision as “pathetic,” and touting his method. “They’re scared of hurting somebody and the investment,” says Mazzone. “Most coaches can’t do it and won’t do it because they’re afraid of getting fired.”

To be fair, the health record of pitchers under Mazzone’s wasn’t immaculate. There were still injuries and Tommy Johns. In addition to Smoltz and Hampton, relievers Mark Wohlers and Kerry Ligtenberg blew out their elbows, as did Ray that last year in Baltimore, and there were various other arm injuries over the years. Critics are quick to bring up Steve Avery, whose stellar career fizzled after throwing more than 1100 professional innings before age 24. (Avery did not return calls for comment.) Mazzone’s response: Today, Avery “wouldn’t have even had a career” because of the way young pitchers are overprotected.

But at the rate pitchers are going down these days, one would think teams would be open to trying anything, especially a philosophy that is associated with so much success. “People say it’s old school,” Mazzone says. “That’s bullshit. You could take a pitcher right now from the minor leagues when you sign a guy and do the same thing.”

Perhaps it’s not the old-school thinking that teams are wary of as much as the old-school coach prescribing it. “You have to understand who’s running baseball now and who’s feeding information to the owners and general managers,” says Smoltz, who is now a broadcaster and analyst for MLB Network. Gone are the Bobby Coxes, Joe Torres, Jim Leylands, and Tony La Russas — strong personalities that could shield an outspoken coach like Cox did Mazzone — and they’ve been replaced by younger managers who are relatively inexperienced. And they now share the ear of the front office with the trainers, physical therapists, doctors and front-office number crunchers, many of whom have never played the game. “With all the sabermetrics, sometimes it can feel like they don’t even need a coach,” says Perlozzo. “They could almost send the lineup down to the manager.” “I’m not saying there aren’t places for (data),” says Smoltz. “But when you’re trying to change a game that has been successful for a long time because you have a mathematical equation for everything? I don’t know about that.”

Even if there was a formula that accounted for the human element, it might be difficult to fit an outsized personality like Mazzone into that equation. After Mazzone was let go in Baltimore, Trembley explained to the press that he “felt we would be better served with someone else working with our young staff.” Mazzone says that someone in the Orioles front office later told him that some thought he had been a little hard on the younger players. “I don’t think you would call Leo a diplomat,” says Stan Kasten, who was Braves president from 1986-2003, and currently holds that office with the Dodgers. “Some people don’t like how direct he is.” Ex-player John Kruk, an ESPN analyst and lifelong friend of Mazzone from West Virginia, points out that the young players who’ve come up through this system are less receptive to the hard-ass approach. “Players are sensitive now,” he says. “You have to go through channels.”

“I don’t want a strength coach or trainer telling me how to tell a pitcher how to pitch,” says Mazzone. “I’m not going back to have somebody tell me what to do.”

As Smoltz says: “Sometimes when you feel strongly about something, people think you’re not open to change.”

It’s 5:30 a.m., and the night is still thick over Lake Hartwell. Mazzone pads to the kitchen, pours coffee into a paper cup — an old clubhouse habit — and picks up a stack of papers that his wife has printed out for him. He plops down on the couch, in the den and spreads the papers out on the coffee table. MLB headlines, rumors, last night’s box scores, and pitching matchups for this weekend’s Braves-Mets series. As he reads, he begins to slowly rock back and forth on the edge of the cushion.

Mazzone’s flip phone buzzes to life at 7:15. It’s the radio station in Atlanta. Since moving to South Carolina last year, Mazzone has cut back his radio appearances to a 10-minute morning call-in once a week and before the first game of every Braves series. “Just enough to keep you in the game,” he says.

It also keeps him connected to the franchise and the years that, he hopes, will forever define him. When Mazzone’s father called him the dumbest person in the world, he didn’t mean for going to Baltimore as much as for leaving Atlanta and Bobby Cox. Today, Mazzone is inclined to agree with his father, who died in January and was buried in a Braves hat and jersey. The old coach says he wishes he had stayed and walked away alongside Cox, his manager and sponsor, when he retired in 2010.

Mazzone won’t utter a cross word about Cox. But he is upset that his former team hasn’t reached out over the past eight years. When Mazzone left the Braves in 2005, former GM and current president John Schuerholz and Cox told reporters that the pitching coach never approached them about staying, that he had an opportunity to make more money and he took it. Strictly business; no hard feelings. (The Braves did not respond to requests for comment from Cox, Aaron, and Schuerholz for this story.) Mazzone admits he never tried to negotiate with Schuerholz. The Braves usually only signed coaches to one-year deals and were known for not paying them very much. He says he left for the money and the contract, and the chance to work with Perlozzo.

And while Mazzone isn’t expecting Atlanta to displace their current coach Roger McDowell, who’s held the post since Mazzone abdicated, he would like to be involved. Perhaps a position in the farm system overseeing development, or being sent to some outpost to scout a young pitcher with promise, or simply be invited down to spring training to help out. He’s been at camp as part of the radio crew, but never went into the clubhouse. “I could go down,” he says. “But when you’re not invited … a lot of people prefer you not.”

Mazzone’s segment starts at 7:17 a.m. Over the flip phone he hears the intro: Welcome to Rockin’ With Leo presented by Better Baseball, the largest baseball store in the U.S. …

Then the host chimes in: It is the home opener for the Braves tonight … we’re joined by Leo Mazzone right now, and Leo: 20 years ago you guys win the World Series, does it seem that long ago?

“No,” says Mazzone. “It seems like it was yesterday, and I’ll tell you what, I’m having a great morning, the Braves are undefeated, you just got me depressed.

You’ll get more depressed if you look in this morning’s paper — there are pictures of guys getting their World Series rings … everybody looks so young and spry …

“Well you know, I’ve been told I’ve always looked young for my age,” says Mazzone. “I’m 66. But a lot of people tell me I only look like I might be approaching 50 … I got real old in Baltimore in two years.” Then he laughs.

They talk about the Braves bullpen. Mazzone praises McDowell’s preparation of the pitching staff and their approach. They start going over the other teams in the division, and Mazzone gets in a quick dig at Washington, calling them soft for sitting Strasburg three years ago. They wrap up, Mazzone signs off, and then snaps the flip phone shut.

It’s 7:30. Mazzone’s plans for the day include mowing the lawn, washing his truck, and running to Sam’s Club to pick up food for a low-country boil that evening. Cocktails at 4. But first he pours a second paper cup of coffee, turns on ESPN, and falls into his lounger. As the morning sunlight starts to spill into the room, it unveils a museum of Atlanta memorabilia: A display case filled with signed baseballs, signatures that are hard to make out, the ink starting to fade. A magazine rack of programs from World Series and All-Star Games. 1996. 1998.  2000. Walls covered with framed and autographed photos of the coach with the Big Three and Bobby Cox. Trophies of a time that is now more than a decade past.

On the TV, Mike and Mike are running down yesterday’s highlights — the Mets 26-year-old ace Matt Harvey, fresh off Tommy John surgery, outdueled Strasburg, who had his ligament replaced five years ago at age 22.

Meanwhile, as the morning wears on, the lake outside is quiet.  In a nearby closet are some briefcases full of old spiral notebooks, every pitch his pitchers ever pitched. Sliders on the black. Fastballs down and away. Mazzone begins to rock.

Creeeak-clack.

Creeeak-clack.

The randomness and precision of rapper Action Bronson’s sports shoutouts are unrivaled. He won’t just seamlessly drop a reference to Arvydas Sabonis in the middle of a bar — he’ll do so while accurately noting Sabonis’ reputation as a nifty passer.

He’ll name songs after athletes like Chuck Person and Larry Csonka, just because he feels like it. He’ll come up with multi-syllabic rhymes for sports figures like Boomer Esiason (niacin) or bodybuilder Gerrit Badenhorst (banana Porsche). He’ll string four references to four Chicago athletes in three different sports in two bars. He’ll call himself THE YOUNG RANDY VELARDE for no discernable reason.

We went ahead and compiled every sports reference in Action’s lyrics, from the details of his shoe collection to the time he lost money because of Prince Fielder’s poor fielding. There are several hundred. We hope you enjoy and appreciate every single one.

(We couldn’t have done this without Rap Genius and their searchable lyric database.)

Basketball

Let’s put it this way: Action has a song called "Chuck Person" wherein he does not even explicitly reference former NBA player Chuck Person. He just wanted to name a song "Chuck Person."

Doesn’t get much more random than just saying "Clarence Weatherspoon" in the middle of a bar:

You gotta pay for my appearance, it will never be on clearance / Clarence Weatherspoon, my boo could boof like ten balloons— from "Long Pinky" by Beautiful Lou

We could’ve filed this one under "golf" for the Greg Norman reference, but he CLAIMS TO RIDE AROUND TOWN WITH ROBERT HORRY which is very important:

Smoke the shark, Greg Norman shit, me and Robert Horry in a foreign whip — from "Midget Cough"

I have listened to this line a few dozen times and I have no idea:

What if Allen Iverson was Chinese riding on a Harley — from "With My Soul" by The Alchemist and Budgie

I truly do not know how the world would be different if Allen Iverson was Chinese riding on a Harley. Iverson is also the subject of "Practice," which features a long snippet of AI’s famous rant.

On "No Time," Action makes one reference to different aspects of Dikembe Mutombo’s finger in each verse:

On a California king where the thug lay (that’s word to me man)
The joint longer than Mutombo finger,

You catch me higher than a Shaq knee
See me swerving side to side like Mutombo finger

He raps again about Dikembe on "Watersports." In the intro, he says "Shit yo, it’s like I’m always dunking on Dikembe Mutombo" and in the verse, he goes

Hoop it up, I put myself against your best three / Dunk on Dikembe / if not for minor setbacks I would’ve been paid — from "Watersports"

Rip Hamilton’s mask was kinda murder-y, and the Detroit suburbs might be a good place to hide bodies:

Pull it, leave his body where the Pistons play / Rock a mask like Richard Hamilton and hit the J — from "Traction" by Boldy James

Pretty much any NBA player who was good at shooting can get in the mix when Bronson begins talking about guns.

Probably calamari, my young shooter I call him Gallinari / Still serve the Knicks, nibbles of parmigiani — from "Mr. Songwriter"

You fucking with a hornet’s nest / Old shooters in the corner like Hornacek — from "Meteor Shower" by Ghostface Killah

I’m the doobie scholar / Old foreign white shooters, Tom Gugliotta — from "Auntie Maria’s Crib" by Nitty Scott

True lies, diamonds at the porter / Shoot like Terry Porter, pimpin’ with your Asian daughter — from "Gateway to Wizardry"

The motherfucker making a drug look like Urkel / Forward shooters like Türkoğlu — from "The One" by Prodigy and The Alchemist

Shootin’ like a Piston, aim for proper distance — from "Randy the Musical"

Although sometimes Action is actually talking about shooting basketballs. Specifically, his belief that if you bet him large sums of money, he will hit a jumper from anywhere on the court:

Olives pressed, greenish on the glimmer / Get me on the court, shoot from anywhere like Jimmer — from "5x8" by Maffew Ragazino

I’m never rocking jewelry / But I’ll step on the court and pop a 3 for a stack / Just call me Tracy Murray — from "German Engineering" by Shaz Ilyork

A thousand dollars on the jump shot / Rocking some dress shoes / No shirt on ‘em like Bird from the corner — from "Take My Turn" by Termanology

The beard gumbo / Three pointers in the park for a clean hundo — from "The Stick Up"

He’s talking about ‘94 Knicks Greg Anthony and Derek Harper here in this "shooters" metaphor:

Pair of shooters Anthony and Harper / Caciocavalli dog I’m sharper than the archer — from "103 and Roosy"

He loved the 90’s Knicks, especially that ‘94 team that made the NBA Finals. They pop up everywhere.

But me no worry got a strong team / Just like my Knick’s ‘94 team, we winnin’ though — from "Time for Some"

The Derek Harper with the low Caesar, flow fever / More than likely digging in your ho’s beaver — from "Cocoa Butter"

Cause everyone getting paid see me with the freshest fade / Charles Oakley gecko belts and durangos — from "103 and Roosy"

But that don’t work because I’m smarter / And plus you see the jacket, New York Knickerbocker Starter — from "Jordan vs. Bird" by Maffew Ragazino

Same night Chris Childs punched Kobe / It was a Sunday, I had the Hyundai — from "Knicks (Remix)" By Freddie Gibbs

2 piece like Chris Childs did to Kobe / Catch me in the corner store, quarters for Shinobi — from "Aunt Maria’s Crib (Neapolitan Remix)" by Nitty Scott

It’s either that, Nasty Nate, Knickerbocker jersey — from "Typhoon Rap" by Mayhem Lauren

Slide, Clyde Frazier with the paper, 260 — from "Swiss Alps" by Mayhem Lauren

Order breasts of veal at Walt Frazier’s / Dog, my women come in all flavors — from "Practice" by Action Bronson

Jump out I’m just hallucinating, acid and a Knicks hat / Burner in her dress pants — from the XXL Freshman freestyle

Lungs are filled with earth, play the Garden like the Knicks — from "Never A Dull Moment" by Statik Selektah

You can find us in the garden like Spike on any night / Encrusted in some ice that look bluish in the light — from "Randy the Musical"

He also more than likely has a hat signed by Anthony Mason. RIP, Mase.

Snapback, Knicks starter hat, ninety four / Signed by Mason, Queens domination — from "Blackbird"

Twisted off the flower, blooming in the basement / Knick hat from ‘95, the signature from Mason — from "Mystic Moves" by Shaz Ilyork

Every rapper mentions Michael Jordan a million times, except Action, who does, however, make several references to Jordan’s teammates:

Dip and hide, I treat this shit with pride / I see the whole entire floor got the Pippen eyes — from "From The Ground Up" by Crown Order

Right seat sittin’, left hand shiftin’ / You know that every team needs a Paxson and a Pippen — from "Compliments of the Chef"

More Action Hoops:

Just a white man excelling in a Black sport, like I’m Pistol Pete — from "Contemporary Man"

I’m known to chief that green, Robert Parish — from "Simple Man"

The ‘89 station wagon, Mercury Sable / Forest Green, forest park, Horace Grant — from "Man & The Mirror"

Yeah, pump Reebok, game like Vlade Divac / TonI Kukoc, I’m ‘bout to cop a few boats — from "Fiends Jean Jacket"

African mud, exfoliate the skin / Like Shammgod the way I stay around the rim — from "Sincerely Antique" by Roc Marciano

Knees like Olden Polynice / My shorty Polynesian don’t make no apologies — from "Double Breasted"

Dog, I lay with hoes, I smoke butter the same color as Jalen Rose — from "Practice"

Never sketchy with my picture / Giving Gills, call me Kendall — from "Jordan vs. Bird" by Maffew Ragazino

Sweatpants, one leg up, St. John’s jersey / Artest, I’m an ar-tiste — from "It’s a Beautiful Thing" by Roosh Williams

You got the urge to suck the cock of Serge Ibaka / Pictures of naked rappers hangin’ in your locker — from "Baby Blue"

The flows water, like rafting on the Congo / Take a hit of drugs and I’m passing like I’m Rondo — from "White Silk"

Your boy is ill with the phonics / Since Gary Payton had the pill for the Sonics — from "The Symbol"

The rap Dennis the Menace with Dennis Rodman’s advantage, inventive — from "Rolling Thunder"

You fuckin’ with some scholars / Old Impalas jumpin’ like Rasheed Wallace — from "Choices" by Asher Roth

Play me feed back / Before I shoot you, shorty take the charge, Steve Nash — from "Money is Reality" by 1982

I got the doobie rolled, hash brown like a booty hole / Watching Oklahoma City at the studio — from "Brown Bag Wrap"

Young boys that be handling the rock / Chris Paul dish off, hammer in the sock — from "Meteor Showers" by Ghostface Killah

Accurate palm strikes, on like disposition, John Stockton / I’m scoring and I’m also dishin — from "Bronson Mania"

Young kids walking around, got the Desi in hand / Going "Boom Shakalaka!" like it’s NBA Jam — from "Shiraz"

Dunk on Tim Duncan, 360° on ya bitch’s face — from "The Spark" by Statik Selektah

Just as stinky Nick Van Exel with the handle, Helsinki — from "Twin Peugeots"

Behind the back pass Arvydas Sabonis / Rare intelligence you know I’m smoking weed in diplomas — from "Mike Vick"

A lot of Shaq references:

Don’t fake the funk on a nasty dunk, Shaq I attack — from "Barry Horowitz"

For real though, I’m trying to get Shaquille dough / Huh, I’m just trying to get Shaquille dough — from "Heel Toe"

5’8", the city on my back / I’m jumpin’ out the gym and dunkin’ it on Shaq — from "Traction" by Boldy James

Even fictional ballers get their due, as he has a few "White Men Can’t Jump" shoutouts:

I play ball like Billy Hoyle / Now I need a Sidney Dean to help me start this brothel in the Philippines — from "Rolling Thunder"

Look in my eyes you know I’m royal / Hustle up some money like Sidney and Billy Hoyle / Puerto Rican shorty, features like she’s Rosie — from "White Silk"

He also references a scene from "White Men Can’t Jump:"

Come through to the courts, a hundred down from any spot / Dribble shoot, the penny drop just like a Henny shot / You look astonished, face twisted like a Twizzler / My people laughin cause they know we goin sizzler — from "Bronson Mania"

And real-basketball-players-playing-fictional-basketball-players:

Shave the points off the game call it Blue chips / This ain’t Shaq an penny action squeeze the Mac elevy — from "Amuse Bouche"

Action references the WNBA three times, and all three are calling WNBA players dykes and bragging about hanging out with them in exotic locations:

I’m eating oysters off of diamonds in Hawaii with 3 dykes that play ball for the Liberty — from a freestyle on the Tim Westwood Show

catch me out in North Miami with two dykes that play ball for the Sparks — from "Perfect Picture" by Chinx Drugs (RIP Chinx)

She chill with dykes from the state right where the Mystic play — from "Hot Shots Part Deux"

He also claims to have a girl who played basketball at the same high school as former WNBA star Chamique Holdsclaw:

And my girl a shooter like Chamique Holdsclaw / with coke in the door / she used to play ball for Christ the King — from XXL Freshman Cypher Part 1

Chamique is from Queens, which explains why Action knows her high school. Christ the King won the state title all four years Holdsclaw played for them.

He also references women’s college hoops and it doesn’t go much better:

I rep the East Coast, I got a team of hoes like Pat Summit / I look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in a black hummer — from "NaNa" by Chance the Rapper

Gambling

Action Bronson claims to have fixed three separate college games:

Outstandin’ / I fixed the game between Georgia Southern and Gramblin’— from "1Train" by A$AP Rocky

Georgia Southern and Grambling never play — GSU is in the FBS, Grambling is in the FCS — so we’re going to guess he means *Southern* and Grambling, one of the most storied rivalries in HBCU sports. They play in the Bayou Classic every year — last year, our Bill Connelly went and wrote about how awesome it was.

point shaver / check the bio, I fixed the game between Kentucky and Miami of Ohio / I been wild — from "Red Dot Music" by Mac Miller

Kentucky has actually played Miami (Ohio) twice in recent years. They blew out the RedHawks in football in 2013, 41-7 — maybe Action convinced them not to show up? — but squeaked by on a John Wall game-winner in hoops in 2009. Miami covered the spread!

Motherfucker I’m a great artist / I fixed the game between Georgia Tech and Wake Forest — from "1010 Wins" by The Alchemist

WE KNEW SOMETHING WAS GOING ON IN THE 2006 ACC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME

(the 2006 ACC Championship game was so, so awful)

And in the same song as the last one, a boxing reference:

I paid Holyfield to take the dive Fix the drug test, we getting richer — from "1010 Wins" by the Alchemist

Things don’t always go Action’s way, though:

Capers on the veal piccata / Lost paper cuz Prince Fielder couldn’t field a fucking pop-up / fucking bastard — from the XXL Freshman freestyle

It should be noted that this is the end of his verse — he gets so upset about it he stops rapping just to say "fucking bastard." And yes, Prince Fielder does often miss fucking pop-ups. We would’ve guessed this was referencing about the 2013 ALCS game the Tigers lost after a dropped 9th-inning pop-up, but that was almost eight months after Bronson spit this line. Dude can see the future.

Some more Action gambling:

Put 6 digits on the Wizards, shit, just don’t tell my Mrs. — from "The Imperial"

I get a fade and then I fade to black / Bet on the Razorbacks — from "Red Dot Music" by Mac Miller

Convos with Carlos / Hundred thousand on the Cardinals — from "TLC" by A$ton Matthews

100 stacks on my favorite horse / 300 hundred dollars for a flavored favorite broth — from "Reloaded" by Statik Selektah

Football

Remember when we said it couldn’t get much more random than just saying "Clarence Weatherspoon" in the middle of a bar? HE DID, AND HE DID IT ON THE SAME SONG:

New rings, live jackets out the petting zoo / Luke Petitgout, my marijuana medical

LUKE PETITGOUT

Bronson titled a song called "Larry Csonka" just because he ended it with this, and took a moment to celebrate how much more he knows about sports than everybody else in the world:

Her tits are bonkers / Chilling in her chanclas / Rollers in her hair, I’m running through it, Larry Csonka… Bronsolino… You don’t even know who fucking Larry Csonka is, man — from "Larry Csonka"

Not his only ‘72 Dolphins shoutout:

Light the Earth, like the sun, stars and moon would do / undefeated like I’m Shula’s group — from "Friendly Fire"

Bronson also wrote a song called "Mike Vick," to which this is the chorus:

When you down the people kick you / When you up the bitches lick you / Chill dogs, don’t wanna have to Michael Vick you / Stash the work inside the asshole of a pit bull

He compared himself to one of Vick’s dogs on another song:

One of the few dogs that pulled through the Mike Vick fiasco / Heart of a lion with the strength, straight outta Glasgow — from "Cirque du Soleil"

When you feature on a song called "Ray Lewis," you have to rap about Ray Lewis:

My mind ready like Ray Lewis / Jumping out the gray Buick — from "Ray Lewis" by Mayhem Lauren

When you feature on a song called "Ickey Woods," you have to rap about Ickey Woods:

Bout to smash your pussy like your man play for the Bengals / Ickey Woods, Ickey Shuffle in the 740 — from "Ickey Woods," by Alex Wiley

Some nice football terminology wordplay here:

Yea the cops set me up, tried to play Action / Good thing I’m like Peyton with the play action — from "Live from Kissena Blvd"

Bronson is convinced that when he has children, they’ll be able to play pro football fresh from the womb:

I make kids, NFL ready / Yours are 23 wearin’ bibs slurping spaghetti — from "Demolition Man"

I fuck good and make big seeds like a mango / NFL ready, sculpted for the clay court — from "103 and Roosy"

He’s also ready to play football!

New Yorker Mangold see me playing on the front lines / 260, 5’8, the beard gumbo — from "The Stick Up"

In goal line situations I’ll tackle The Fridge / Peace to Mike Ditka, 50 on the light fixture — from "Brand New Car"

Run the 40 in 4 flat / Way faster than a horse jack — from "I Shoulda Won A Grammy" by RiFF RAFF

Or at the very least, football video games:

Lack the passion novice / We play on All-Madden / Old ‘Lo jackets, Navajo patterns — from "Choices" by Asher Roth

The rest of Action’s football references, from shouting out nose guard Haloti Ngata to rhyming "tan coupin’" with "Cam Newton:"

Omaplata, guard your nose, Haloti Ngata — from "Cirque Du Soleil"

Iron and the niacin / Boomer Esiason, flying out the lion’s den — from "Bitch I Deserve You"

Throwing darts like Byron Leftwich — from "Simple Man"

I’m Sanders whether Deion or Barry, find candy / Though I smoke until my eyes are the shape of Tia Carrere — from "Brunch"

Silk and linen what I’m sportin when the Eagles winnin / yo bet the over, cause the corners are a little iffy — from "Bronson Mania"

Live fast and eat the big tuna like Billy Parcells — from "Brunch"

Hit you hard like London Fletcher, leave you sleeping on the stretcher — from "Body Language"

Queens-bred, no Packer but a cheesehead — from "Cliff Notes"

And I’m a play like Polamalu you get tackled for the bread / We’re running in your crib your shorty shackled to the bed — from "Bag of Money"

Every season play the corner like I’m Revis / Light Caesar, heavy bearded like I’m Jesus — from "Shiraz"

Tan coupin’, work tanner than Cam Newton — from "Heel Toe"

Very humble, Jim Brown, never fumble — from "TKO"

I’m in the end zone with one leg up, posing like Heisman / Throw it like Theismann — from "Drug Shit"

Aaron Rodgers style, I’m here to take the title /Rock a mask, dog cause every word is viral — from "Beautiful Music"

Throw like Marino / Cruise in the Regal — from "Night Court"

Pass the time, chokin off the truest reefer / Lawrence Taylor in his prime with the smoother Caesar — from "Marijuana Bronson"

Pick 6 like I’m Revis — from "It’s Raw" by Czarface

Never sniff that blanco, that’s word to OJ’s Bronco — from "Larry Csonka"

Curtis Martin run the rock in for the jets — from "Amuse Bouche"

My lawyer tackled the case like he played for the Ravens — from a freestyle on Hot 97

Running and gunning, I’m Randall Cunning, my skin is stunning — from "Blackbird"

I’m like a black quarterback / In the motherfucking… oh shit, bobbing, ducking / Weaving, passing and running / Passing and running, passing and running — from "Arts and Leisure"

Razor sniff, leave the pocket when you see the Blitz — from "Bronson Mania"

Baseball

Our favorite Action Baseball shoutout is just completely randomly shouting out Mets pitcher Dillon Gee:

I stay in Flushing like I’m Dillon Gee / You ain’t gotta open up the comic book to figure who the villain be — from "Rolling Thunder"

Dillon was thrilled.

And then there was the time he ended a track by yelling this out:

SUCK MY MOTHERFUCKING DICK, IT’S THE YOUNG RANDY VELARDE — from "NaNa" by Chance the Rapper

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?!?!?! WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE THE YOUNG RANDY VELARDE

Did I mention, steer the whip with one arm like Jim Abbott / chocolate sauce over thin rabbit — from "Midget Cough"

If we’re being technical, Jim Abbott had two arms, but only one hand, but this line is still spectacular.

Red roses dropped from boxes very often / Confetti torchin’, drinking Henny like I’m Kenny Lofton — from "1Train" by A$AP Rocky

So far as I can tell, Kenny Lofton has no connection to alcohol, alcoholism, or Hennessy besides 1) the fact that "Henny" and "Kenny" rhyme and 2) this one lyric

He had several lines of baseball bars on "Beautiful Music:"

You fucking with the captain / Action Jeter / Salmon on the cedar / You ain’t do the job, and then they calling a reliever / Me, Dennis Eckersley / Rhyme flavor like my Grandma’s book of recipes — from "Beautiful Music"

Action’s a Yankees fan, so you know he’s going to reference Derek Jeter more than once.

0-to-60 in the Porsche like a Cheetah / New York, I’m like Jeter, light Caesar — from "Strictly 4 My Jeeps"

More Yankees shoutouts:

Flushing, Queens death spitter / Donnie Baseball, standing on the left hitter — from "Savage from Sarasota"

I sign my name like I’m Mantle, never sticking to the script — from "Morey Boogie Boards"

Stoned on the stoop, got the box pumpin’ Billy Joel / I’m Mickey Mantle while you motherfuckers semi-pro — from "Buddy Guy"

Flicks with mickey on the mantle / Flicks with Yogi Berra lifted in some sandals— from "Dennis Haskins"

Ill prosciutto. legend, Phil Rizzuto / Marijuana like the pussy, I keep it crudo — from "Cocoa Butter"

Go to 1-6-1, to watch the Yankees play — from "Northern and Roozy"

Choke a pussy with his tie knot, it’s my block / Chuck Knoblauch, spicy coconut curry from the Thai spot — from "Terry"

Knoblauch was found guilty of domestic abuse in 2010 for an incident that involved choking his wife.

Bronson wants no association with the baseball-playing person of the same name:

I only smoke shit from out the soil /Virgin oil, the name Bronson, no Arroyo — from "Beautiful Music"

But Action! Gary Sheffield primarily played RIGHT field!

Sit out in left field next to Gary Sheffield — from "Rookies of the Future" by RiFF RAFF

Swing the Dodge Viper lefty like I’m Randy Johnson — from "The Rap Monument" by Noisey

We’re about to pull a seriously #WellActually on this one. Although Randy Johnson was, of course, a lefty pitcher, he actually hit righty, so he didn’t swing lefty.

Big bearded Buddha bangin’ bitches in Bermuda / Barry Bonds, barracuda, Chattanooga — from "Only in America"

We don’t think there is any connection between Barry Bonds and any of the other things besides the letter B.

He looks like two very different looking baseball players:

My look is Jay Buhner, doggy, cause some of us just age sooner — from "Red Dot Music" by Mac Miller

She said I look like David Justice when she see me floating in the Maxima — from "Practice"

He seems to think vaginas should look like old baseball gloves:

Sell the pussy ‘til the shit look like a Ty Cobb glove — from "Compliments of the Chef"

I like the pussy like a catcher’s mitt — from "Beyond A reasonable Doubt" by Joey Bada$$

Just sell that pussy ‘til that shit look like a catcher’s mitt! — from "Staten Island Ferry" by Wais P

We have no idea what it means to have a "Placido Polanco crib."

Call my homie, tell him meet me down in Lido Beach for lunch / Placido Polanco Crib, his bitch was black / She started purring, I kissed the cat — from "The Don’s Cheek"

Action may be a Yankees fan, but he respects the 80’s Mets.

Dookie blunt of regs ‘til I’m pookie in the face / Queens, the kids a star like a Mookie on the base — from "White Silk"

"Aged fine, like a Montrachet wine / 86 the Mets won the ring" — from "Gametime" by Chuck Inglish

Things change, now my dashboard wooden / All black Benz, like a young Doc Gooden — from "Baby Blue"

Peugeot Sport was purchased by my father first, man / Shift with the left hand, back then he was a Mets fan — from "Ray Lewis" by Mayhem Lauren

When you’re at a Howard Johnson with prostitutes, it’s only courteous to invite Howard Johnson’s ex-teammates:

Hookers by the Ho-Jo chillen with Doc Gooden / tapas up for grabs so fuck it, then why wouldn’t — from "Tapas"

Action never plays by the rules, so of course he loved the steroid era. Almost as much as he loves wearing Jason Giambi’s signature glasses.

I’m trying to have the bank account with all the Zero’s / Rolling Camaros, Jose Canseco was my hero / Swing the bat like I swing the ‘Lac — from "Triple Backflip"

Barry Bronson shooting juice before the Mitchell Report / Never snitching in court, we blitzing the fort / All my niggas pitching for sport / Putting up Clemens numbers — from "Body Language"

Fast forward ‘98, Mark McGuire shirt I eat dessert while your bitch flirt (Uhh) — from "Pepe Lopez"

Giambi on the lenses and the juice is from the doctor — from "Muslim Wedding"

Skin fades, beards with Giambi lenses — from "Savage from Sarasota"

I rock the lenses Caminiti wore — from "Morey Boogie Boys"

Straight up lambs on the arm, Giambi lenses Ken Caminiti, Bosworth — from "Pouches of Tuna"

Brian Bosworth didn’t play baseball, of course, but he did do steroids, hence the reason he’s lumped in with Giambi and Caminiti.

Somehow, Todd Hundley got into a line with LeBron James, the only time that could conceivably ever happen:

Serve white balls, autograph by Todd Hundley / I need LeBron money — from "Ickey Woods" by Alex Wiley

The rest of Action’s baseball lines, from a Terry Pendleton shoutout to "Candy Maldonado/Candy El Dorado:"

Suede foot push a green five, smoke the medicine / Got some family on the run like Terry Pendleton — from "Fiends Jean Jacket"

Push your seat back. The Rickey Henderson of rap / Jets hat, underneath a little blubber lie the 6 pack — from "Cocoa Butter"

Falling asleep right on the shitter / Word to Roberto Clemente dog I’m still a hitter, yeah! — from "Hookers at the Point"

Shit, i used to pitch a hundred miles an hour / Candy Maldonado / Candy Eldorado — from "TLC" by A$ton Matthews

Commas on accounts, Robbin’ em’ like Yount — from a freestyle on the Tim Westwood show

Huh, yo Tommy Lasorda / Dodge bullets, dive into the water — from "Savage from Sarasota"

Swing the Beamer lefty like Mo Vaughn / Fancy clothes are worn — from "Beyond A Reasonable Doubt"

The work flipped like Ozzie Smith / the whip was olive-ish — from "Watersports"

Ozzie Smith, of course, liked flipping.

He’s got a few lines that don’t reference specific baseball players, but use the process of making the majors as a metaphor:

Great intuition and vision, no time to hit the mall up / Just a taste of the life like a September call up — from "Brunch"

Damn, your fucking with a pro kid / No Triple A I went straight up to the show, kid — from "Ron Simmons"

Skipping Triple A I’m coasting straight up to the majors — from "The Come-Up"

Playing to the crowd

We couldn’t quite figure out how to characterize this, but it’s awesome: Sometimes, Action caters to a specific place or thing and just goes off on it, bouncing from sport to sport.

When he was in Chicago for the first time, he ate at a restaurant called "Blackbird," then spit these bars about a slew of Chicago stars on a track called "Blackbird:"

I’m a young Mike Singletary, style shitty like a dingleberry / Push the bent like I’m Richard Dent / Steve McMichael, Paxson with the 3 / You know my jacket flashing fashion pass the D — from "Blackbird"

When Action guested on a track by French rapper Joke, he made sure to mention two French soccer greats:

Specializing in thievery like Ribéry / Play the field like I’m Zinedine, sip grenadine — from "Batmobile," by Joke

Of course, his verse was still in English, so who knows if the majority of listeners to Joke’s song even got the reference.

Soccer

Bronsolino allegedly has secret dealings with Arsene Wenger:

They taking pictures from the van outside the carnival / See me doing business with the manager of Arsenal / The goalie’s fingers in the box with the cannolis — from "Godfather IV" by Curren$y

More Action soccer:

Like a soccer player call me by my last name / A young Zinedine Zidane / In Flushing Meadow Park drinking Hennessy with mom — from "It’s Me"

FWIW, he says "zi-dahn," the correct French pronunciation, to make it rhyme with "mom" even though he could’ve said "zi-dayne" to make it rhyme with "last name."

Kick shit Miroslav Klose / I drink piss of the purified cobra — from "1000 Pounds" by Labba

Scorin’ like I’m Messi but this game is far from soccer — from "Muslim Wedding"

I’m known to kick it like I’m Ronaldinho / My rhymes are spicy as a jalapeño — from "Back 2 the Future"

From here to Portugal, kick it like Ronaldo / Mustache like Geraldo — from "Savage from Sarasota"

A Dutch master like Robben and Sneijder — from "Back 2 the Future"

A lot of rappers have rapped about Dutch Masters, the rolling papers, but we’re pretty sure Action is the first to bring up Dutch soccer players in relation to them.

Bodybuilding

Action has managed some incredibly specific references to famous strongmen and bodybuilders that send the 99 percent of us that don’t follow professional strongman competitions sprinting to Google.

Scoop up your princess / My team moving rocks like Žydrūnas Savickas — from "German Engineering" by Shaz Ilyork

My mind is stronger than Mariusz Pudzianows / Obvious to see I’m a star straight off the couch — from "Not Enough Words"

Pudzianowski, known to let the guns loose / Everybody smoking cigarettes in jump suits — from "Cirque Du Soleil"

I’m like a young Bill Kazmaier, swollen from the juice / Primobolan in my hemoglobin, chiefin’ on the spruce — from "Respect the Mustache"

Heavy body, Gerrit Badenhorst, banana porsche — from "Fiends Jean Jacket"

He even had a song named after legendary bodybuilder Ronnie Coleman.

Having great seats

The biggest problem with sitting courtside — which Action Bronson does frequently — is shoe safety:

Catch me later at the Laker game, I bet a grip on the Knicks / Carmelo sweatin’ on my kicks, cause I’m courtside — from a freestyle on Hot 97

Game 7, Knicks-Heat / Me and Spike had to switch seats / Cause he kept spilling Henny all on my bitch feet — from "Alligator"

The Knicks haven’t gone to Game 7 against the Heat since 1997, the year Jeff Van Gundy took a ride on Alonzo Mourning’s legs.

He goes to some Heat games (and looks the part)

Courtside Pistons vs the Heat / My hair slicked back like I’m Pat Riley — from "850 Music" by Retch

Candy skywalker Adidas / Sitting courtside Heat-Jazz — from "Live from Kissena Blvd"

The one problem is Action is a big boy. And there’s not a ton of courtside real estate.

Lakers versus Celtics, hoggin’ up two floor seats / Cause I’m selfish — from "I Shoulda Won A Grammy" by RiFF RAFF

Well, I guess it’s not that big of a problem.

But Action doesn’t have to sit in the high-roller seats. He’ll chill with the rowdiest fans in the stands at the Yankee game:

Handmade, hand blades, carve up your features, I’m a creature / Section 39, I’m in the bleachers — from "Cocoa Butter"

Sports are sex

Action has a bunch of ways to talk about sports and talk about sex at the same time:

Little dad got soul like the Four Tops / Hop out scoop your bitch like a shortstop — from "Fiends Jean Jacket"

Twist a sister’s back out / Dribble penetration to her rim just like I’m Stackhouse — from "Pardon, That Bitch Been On My Mind All Week" by Jay Steele

Lash out, one second in the fourth quarter / Dribble penetrate, pussy meat I renovate — from "Time For Some"

In the sack, break her back like a Redskin / Need the dough like I’m trying to get the bread thin — from "Shiraz"

In overdrive like my libido / I’m stroking like I’m Michael Phelps into the pussy fetal — from "Night Court"

Magic long night pipe with no intermission / Put on the DL, Tommy John no more pitchin — from "Bronson Mania"

I twist a bitch like Wilt, built — from "Pepe Lopez"

Yes, this appears to be a line about having sex with the same person alongside his father:

Me and my father hit it back to back like Griffey / Big black girl bad fake missy — from a freestyle on the Tim Westwood show

Sex sometimes leads to basketball celebrations:

Slap her ass like she scored 30 / Ride dirty — from "Practice"

Action raps about several experiences having sex with people who have sex with athletes:

She gave me head during the Laker game / I got her tatted, trying to erase her name / No, I caught her cheating, her pussy didn’t feel the same / She was probably with one of the Broncos / Or LeBron so I blew her car up /Soon as she try to start it up

A little dramatic, IMO.

By chance I seen her in the lobby of the Ritz / With her man, the one that swings a hockey stick — from "Easy Rider"

Bronson has a rather unfortunate habit of making jokes about athletes with HIV:

The Magic Johnson of the game / These lames don’t want to play with me — from "Easy Rider"

Mind trick, mind sick like Magic Johnson’s dick / You know your shorty lettin’ Bronson hit — from "Dreamer"

Back alley Bronson, young Magic Johnson / Sick nigga balling — from "The Night" by J. Love

Up in Niagara Falls, make your wifey suck a bag of balls / it’s sick, just like a Magic cough — from "Shiraz"

Protection from the virus, Magic J / Homies pass away — from "Velvet Cape" by Roc Marciano

Just to get a rep you get left with a darker past / You just a little sick my fucking flow is Arthur Ashe — from "Expensive Pens"

Fighting

Action admires Mohammad Ali’s footwork/liked his first name better than his changed name:

On thin ice, I skate across the lake / With the CCM tacks, my feet are like Cassius — from "Bird on a Wire"

Time to flip the mattress, kick it swift as Cassius — from "Not Enough Words"

Other boxing references:

Crisp kiddicks, right hand quicker than Riddick’s — from "Sylvester Lundgren"

But Bronsolino might prefer MMA:

But out of Flushing where we hitting hard like Quinton Jackson fights / Been on the rampage, you motha fuckas half as nice — from "Shorty Bop With A Hook"

Sharp foot like i’m Jon "Bones" Jones, kid / Tomahawk Chop, red bone in — from "All I Got" by Styles P

I’m Royce Gracie the magician of submission, elegance in the kitchen — from Bronson Mania

And other fighting sports:

Skirt steak shaved straight up off the diaphragm / Muay Thai title fights out in Thailand — from "Tan Leather"

Pro wrestling

Action really, really, really, really, really really, really, really, really, really, REALLY loved 1980’s wrestling.

Several of his songs are entirely wrestling themed. The chorus of "The Rockers" is just Action saying this over and over again:

Hit you with the dropkick Marty Jannetty

Jannetty was half of the tag team The Rockers alongside Shawn Michaels, and he gets a few other shoutouts by Bronson:

Well now you know that I’m a rocker like Marty Jannetty — from "Amuse Bouche"

Dropkicks like Jannetty off the ropes / Mach 6 smoking heavy on the coast — from "Intercontinental Champion"

He also has a song called "Ron Simmons" — he says DAMN a lot and the chorus is just him saying "Ron Simmons." "Barry Horowitz" features samples of Horowitz’s introduction and a reference to his signature backpat:

It’s Barry Horowitz rap, I pat myself on the back — from "Barry Horowitz"

His song "Savage from Sarasota" features a sample of a Macho Man Randy Savage.

Some of his songs just reference wrestlers from his favorite era. He thinks he looks like a few:

Red beard so I resemble Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart, ride dirty in the five sharp / Hand skills, Jean Claude, fine art — from "Eggs on the Third Floor"

It be that Queens kid with the face of Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart / I play the part, smoke the white shark — from "Decisions over Veal Orloff" by The Alchemist

Do you see it?

Terry Gene Boli motherfuckers are immortal / You in the corner looking floral

Hulk Hogan’s birth name is "Terry Gene Bollea." (No, sadly, his parents didn’t name him "Hulk.") A more obvious Hulkamania shoutout:

You know I’m golden, just like the hair on Hulk Hogan — from "Long Time"

He referenced Owen Hart’s tragic death with some wordplay:

Tryna drop me in the ground but I’m not going / To the top till I fall just like Owen / Heartbreak drowned sorrows in a large steak — from "Thug Love Story 2012"

No, but seriously: If you watched wrestling in the 1980’s, read all these:

I’m Rick the Model, Martel to cartel — from "Brunch"

I been fly since the Big Bossman feud with the Mountie — from "Amuse Bouche"

Her landing strip is red like hair that’s on Tatanka / I’m steady diving in chocolate like Willy Wonka — from "Jerk Chicken"

Papa Shango, the monster in your mother’s bed / Blunt of regs, and some lead turn the gutter red — from "Keep Off the Grass"

I’m Greg "The Hammer" Valentino — from "Big Bad and Dangerous" by Smoke DZA

I’m like a young Dino Bravo / Tan loaf press the Beamer throttle — from "Home Team" by Troy Ave

Peace to the Ultimate Warrior posted up in Astoria — from "Mr. Songwriter"

I’m like The One Man Gang / Accompanied by Slick — from "Yo What’s Good New York" by Heems

Peace to Queens though heavy on the C-note / Ricky Steamboat one love Bronsolino — from "Amuse Bouche"

They keep on fiending / Cause nowadays it’s just Brain, just call me Bobby Heenan — from "Ray Lewis" by Mayhem Lauren

Tryna live the American dream, Dusty Rhodes, yeah — from "Drug Shit"

Now I jump in the beemer like Jimmy Snuka — from "It’s A Beautiful Thing" by Roosh Williams

Pearl white Boston coach, that’s a classy toy / Take your bitch and tag team her, Nasty Boys — from "Brown Bag Wrap"

Scissor kicks, dick suck from Miss Elizabeth / Lex Luger arms, four in the morning in the dark with the computer on — from "Drug Shit"

I’m known for cooking meat, cooking beats / And wildin’ like I’m Booker T — from "TKO"

I’m in the world strong known to make the Southern moves / Cause every man is for themselves like Royal Rumble rules — from "Friendly Fire"

Shoes

Action clearly liked Patrick Ewing’s signature shoe — the ones that went about half the way up your shin:

Suede kicks, shootin’ ball at the park (swish) / Thousand on the free throw, you just a Webelow / I’m a full-grown human, half my leg covered in Ewings — from "Rare Chandeliers"

Pop a U-ee lite the ooey Now I’m higher than some Ewing’s — from the XXL Freshmen Freestyle

I order two wings, Jamaican colored Ewings — from "Scandanavian Detour" by Da$h

And the Shawn Kemp Reebok Kamikazes:

Rock this Shawn Kemp, kamikaze / Burning cheese, Saganaki— from "The Rockers"

Shawn Kemps on the pedal, I’m a kamikaze— from "Seven Series Triplets"

And Scottie Pippen’s Nike Airs:

The lights hit me at the club, my skin was like a chicken / And now my leather to the ankle by my Pippen — from "Triple Backflip"

I had the full Bulls warm-up with the Pippens on — from "NaNa" by Chance the Rapper

Left hand right side see stick shift / A-I-R inscription on the Pippen’s — from "Gametime" by Chuck Inglish

But nah, I ain’t buying shit, she’s tricking / Five pairs of all-white Airs and some Scottie Pippens — from "Diagnosis" by The Alchemist

My bars are heavy like Olympic liftin’ / Place raided by siftin’ / A-I-R inscription on the side of the Pippen’s — from "All I Think About" by Apathy

Action’s even got love for Tim Duncan’s Tim Duncan-esque shoes:

I had dreams of fuckin’ Keri Hilson in my Duncans / woke up naked at the Hilton with a bitch that look like Seal’s cousin — from "Easy Rider"

Cause it’s nothing to me I’m something to see / Sunk in the sea, Duncans on feet — from the XXL Freshman Cypher

But what about Jordans, the most popular, most beloved, most sought-after basketball shoes of all time? Nah. Those are for kids.

Your mind is young, copping Jordans, eating chicken wings — from "Gold Days" by Mr. Probz

Jordans are childish, only Beamers and Sevens — from "Hookers" by Metabeats

Some other kicks options:

First day class, the Agassis are black and white — from "Brunch"

Deion Sanders on my feet inside the Regal — from "I Adore You"

Smoke a 50 bag, and do the dippies on the gypsy cab / In ‘95, rock the same shits that Griffey had — from "Brown Bag Shit"

Orlando Magic warm-up suits and black Shaqs / ‘95: younger Bronson on the fast track — from "Imported Goods"

It’s Christmas time, I bought the Kobes for the little homies — from "Godfather IV" by Curren$y

Hilfiger hats rockin Stackhouse / The crib look like Shaq house — from "All I Got" by Styles P

The new Lebron up on my feet / Step on the Beamer pedal — from "Typhoon Rap" by Mayhem Lauren

Grant Hill’s laced up with the Helly Hansen — from a freestyle on the Tim Westwood freestyle

Dick sucks in the crisp air, ‘olas in the crisp pair / Of sneakers that were designed for David Robby — from "Northern and Roozy"

College sports

Introducin’, It’s Bronsonlino / With my hair slicked back, I look like Rick Pitino — from "NaNa" by Chance the Rapper

Foul living like Sandusky and Paterno — from "Steve Wynn"

I’m eating salad but I’m leaving off the croutons /Cause ever since a youth your dog’s huskier than UConn — from "Ronnie Coleman"

"My man Stevie Mo playing safety for Toledo" — from "Not Enough Words"

After perusing Toledo’s roster for the past decade or so, we’re not quite sure who this is. But we trust Action.

Dreams to ball but I ain’t talking bout Seton Hall — from "It Concerns Me"

Mainly he just likes rocking school clothing:

Georgia tech sweatsuit in a red coupe / You know we get loot / And beat the pussy like a dead moose — from "BBQ Brisket" by Mayhem Lauren

Three different colors on the goose with the boots / Maryland college basketball suits — from "Seven Series Triplets"

Other sports

Gymnastics!

I’m like the motherfucking Mary Lou Retton of this shit! — from "Icky Woods" by Alex Wiley

Yes he really yelled "I’M LIKE THE MOTHERFUCKING MARY LOU RETTON OF THIS SHIT" in the outro of a song Right up there with the YOUNG RANDY VELARDE thing.

Hockey!

Under the influence of fly shit, I glide like Ovechkin — from "Pouches of Tuna"

Dip the Babylon like a skater on the ice move / Alex Ovechkin — from "The Illest"

I’m rare like a fucking Asian playing hockey — from "Rolling Thunder"

Horse racing!

Rock a shirt with Secretariat on it / Seabiscuit on the dress, stay guarded like the eagle’s nest — from "Three Course Meal" by ProbCause

Pictures with the jockey in the winner’s circle / Triple crown on, all brown on — from "Godfather IV" by Curren$y

Carhartt sets and Horseys like the Preakness / Bronson love a freak bitch, dining on that Greek dish — from "Imported Goods"

I’m Lo rockin’, seat at the Kentucky Derby — from "Typhoon Rap" by Mayhem Lauren

Golf!

Shoot eagles on a Jack Nicklaus course, Porsche with the triple exhaust — from "Midget Cough"

Arnold Palmer on the graphic in the beverage / Everything I do myself, I’m using that for leverage — from "White Silk"

Track and Field!

Time on my hands / Running fast like Jackie Joyner-Kersee — from "Chuck Person"

Tamarind punch, higher than a javelin jump — from "Midget Cough"

Surfing!

Hang ten on the Donald Takayama — from "Watersports"

Yo I’m the young Laird Hamilton / Hoppin’ out the chopper — from "Muslim Wedding"

Diving!

I’m diving in like Louganis / I’m aiming right for that anus — from "Larry Csonka

Flying from a tropical escape / "Did I do a perfect dive?" is such a popular debate (Well, I’ll give it a 9.3) — from "Big League Chew"

Figure skating!

Uh, my clique is so nuts / Big shit to lift you like a triple-toe lutz — from "Big League Chew"

Tennis!

Serve like Ivan Lendl up in the rental — from "The Symbol"

Chess!

I’m Bobby Fischer / Check mate — from "Muslim Wedding"

Drinking Ginger Ale out of NYC sports memorabilia

The most specific, but consistent Action sports reference:

Ginger ale laying in a Knicks cup / Pay thirty dollars for a dick suck — from "Contemporary Man"

Ginger ale in Knicks glasses, your style is piss mothafucka / Time to flip the mattress — from "Not Enough Words"

Drinking ginger out the Yankee cup / The holy grail telling tale blowing cheeba eating tangy duck — from "Marijuana Bronson"

A few days before our trip into the Cirque of the Unclimbables was scheduled to begin, I saw a physiotherapist for the first time in my life. I’d been on standby for a week, hoping that someone would cancel on an appointment and I could sneak in at the last minute. In late July last year, sometime during a three-day hike, I had hurt my left knee. I was following in the footsteps of a young German hiker who had died on that same trail three years earlier — hoping to see what he’d seen and to get a sense of the terrain he’d covered before his still-unexplained death. But my hiking partner and I never made it to the mountain pass where the hiker’s pack and his scattered, scavenged remains had eventually been found, collected, and then returned to his friends and family far away. By the end of the second day, for no reason I could discern, my knee was on fire, pain shivering up my leg with each step. We camped a couple miles short of our goal and I went to bed early, hoping I was just sore and tired and that my leg would be better the next day.

It wasn’t. In a heavy drizzle, we packed up and started the 12-mile trek back to the trailhead. I settled into a slow, steady limp, sometimes not even managing to cover a mile in an hour, and Mike took charge: reminding me to eat at regular intervals whether I felt hungry or not, and transferring more weight from my pack to his each time we stopped. By the time we made it back to the car — by then, he was carrying both packs while I hobbled along — my knee was throwing heat like a nasty sunburn, radiating warmth that I could feel on the palm of my hand when I held it inches away.

After we’d driven the three hours home, I swallowed a handful of ibuprofen and collapsed into bed. The next morning, my knee felt fine. But over the next few days, if I walked for more than 10 or 15 minutes, a slow burn started up again. It was early August, and I had a dream 10-day backcountry hiking trip coming up — a true once-in-a-lifetime excursion. Only my knee could stop me.

The physiotherapist bent my leg this way and that, then had me duck-walk back and forth on the tiled floors of his clinic in a squat, questioning me the whole time about what hurt, and diagnosed me with a stress fracture on the tibial plateau — the top of my shinbone, just below the kneecap. I needed to stay off it for at least a month, maybe two, he said, to give the bone time to heal. And if I didn’t? In a worst-case scenario, the fracture would creep through my tibia until I had a truly broken leg. But, he added, because I was relatively young and healthy, that outcome was unlikely.

At a group meeting hours later, I told my friends the news. We had two options: I could bow out of the trip entirely, letting the three of them go without me. Or, if they were willing, I could go along, with a lightened pack, leaning heavily on my trekking poles to minimize the impact on my bad leg, and try to manage the long, steep hike in and out of our base camp as best I could, an extra burden on them, and a different sort of liability to myself. Once there, I would opt out of the day hikes and scrambles we had planned. I would accept some pain, a delay in the start of my healing, and the frustration of grounding myself at base camp — along with some additional rounds of dish duty — if they were willing to accept some excess weight in their packs and the risk that they might, just maybe, have to carry me out. They were willing, and agreed.

Thousands of miles south, while I was duck-walking around a physiotherapist’s office, three close friends were preparing for their own expedition. Hannah Trim, Mareya Becker, and Lauren Hebert — all 22 years old, all freshly graduated from Colorado College — had received a grant from the school’s Ritt Kellogg Memorial Fund to travel to Nahanni National Park, in Canada’s Northwest Territories, for a rock climbing trip into the park’s famed Cirque of the Unclimbables: a remote bowl in the mountains along the Yukon-Northwest Territories border, lined by sheer rock walls and endless possibilities — despite the name — for scrambling, bouldering and climbing.

Photo: Gary Bremner/www.gbpcreative.ca

Ritt Kellogg was a Colorado College graduate, class of 1990, who died in an avalanche on Alaska’s Mount Foraker in 1992. Ever since, the fund established in his name has offered Colorado College students an annual shot at a grant to support “responsible and conscientious pursuit of wilderness expeditions.” Eligible trips take place within North America, last a minimum of 12 days, include a heavy emphasis on the safe development of backcountry skills, and must offer students a challenge that is “thoughtful and inspiring.”

This was the second time the trio had received the grant. The year before, they’d been part of a larger group that traveled to Wyoming’s Wind River Range, where they climbed, among other routes, the East Ridge route on Wolf’s Head, immortalized in Steve Roper and Allen Steck’s “Fifty Classic Climbs of North America” (a guidebook that was first published in 1979 and still serves as a sort of bucket list for many of this continent’s climbers).

Long rock-climbing routes are divided into stages, called pitches. There is no rigid set distance for a pitch, they vary climb by climb, but can’t exceed 60 meters, the length of a standard climbing rope. The Wolf’s Head climb had been demanding: 10 pitches, and 1,000 feet of vertical climbing. The trio hadn’t really expected to receive the Kellogg funding a second time, and so when they wrote their application they agreed to try for the craziest, Hail Mary trip they could imagine. The isolated Cirque of the Unclimbables, far to the north, and its signature 18-pitch, 2,000-foot climb to the peak of Lotus Flower Tower, another entry in “Fifty Classic Climbs,” was it.

All three had spent their summer in the woods, working as instructors with the Colorado Outward Bound School, backpacking and hiking with students. They’d been climbing and traveling together for three years, ever since Mareya had transferred to Colorado College and Lauren had taken up climbing, both as sophomores. If the group had a leader — and they were so well balanced, and so familiar with each other’s strengths, that they hardly needed one — it was probably Hannah. A tiny 5’1, dark-haired and dark-eyed with a smile that took over her face, Hannah was the most experienced climber of the bunch: she’d started at age 13, on a visit to an indoor climbing wall with her mother, and had been hooked from there. While in high school she worked at a climbing wall back home in Chicago — “belaying for birthday parties,” as she puts it — and had gotten work at the climbing gym after she arrived at Colorado College, too. That’s how she met the other two.

Lauren was the quiet one, most likely to fade into the background in a crowd of strangers. Taller, 5’6, with red hair and a nose ring, she was the newest to climbing: after growing up riding horses, running, cycling and playing lacrosse, she first climbed in the summer after her freshman year. A boyfriend had taken her out on a climbing date, and she’d strapped on a bike helmet for her first-ever climb. Now, Hannah and Mareya would both describe her as the strongest climber of the three of them, but Lauren herself wasn’t always convinced of that.

Mareya, with short, curly, brownish-blond hair, and — like the others — a big, quick smile, rounded out the trio. As a kid, she’d resisted family camping trips, but later, in high school, she’d eventually started climbing at a gym near her home in Marin County, Calif. When she was 18, the friend who’d gotten her hooked on climbing died in a fall from a cliff. Instead of chasing her away from the outdoor world, the accident only made her more invested in the wilderness. She had already made plans to attend Northeastern University, in Boston, but didn’t enjoy her first year. She then transferred to Colorado College and quickly found her people in the climbing community there, including Hannah and Lauren.

Another member of their circle of climbers was Cole Kennedy, one year ahead of them in school. Cole had grown up in Castle Rock, Colo., skiing and climbing. He was a role model, a believer in ambitious adventures: His life philosophy, as Lauren puts it, was to “do big awesome things.” A year earlier, he had also been the recipient of a Kellogg grant to climb in the Cirque of the Unclimbables.

With just a couple of weeks left in his senior year, Cole and some friends had engineered an impromptu fireworks display: building the array, adding a timer system and setting it up on top of the science building, timed to coincide with Llamapalooza, a campus music festival. (Cole, a physics major, was in charge of building the detonator.) The rogue fireworks were an annual tradition, and the 2013 display went off flawlessly. But it came just days after the Boston marathon bombing, and though no damage was done, the school’s administration was not amused. Cole’s Kellogg grant was revoked, and a year later, as Hannah, Mareya and Lauren prepared for their own trip to the Cirque, Cole was in Peru, with another friend of the group, John, in a high, glacier-covered mountain range popular with climbers, the Andes’ Cordillera Blanca.

In mid-July, a little less than a month before their trip to the Cirque was set to begin, Mareya picked up her phone and saw a series of missed calls from John’s girlfriend. Instinctively, she knew that could only mean bad news, and she was right: The pair had been struck by an ice avalanche while climbing on Piramide de Garcilaso, a pyramid-shaped peak more than 19,000 feet high. John had escaped with relatively minor injuries — scrapes, bruises, cracked ribs — when the ice rained down on them, but Cole had taken a more catastrophic hit. He’d been killed.

Karen Kennedy is a trauma nurse, and her husband Jim a ski instructor. Between them, they had an intimate understanding of the risks Cole took and the damage that could result. After their son’s cremation, they made an offer to Cole’s closest friends, a grieving community of adventurers with half a summer of expeditions — and, hopefully, many seasons more after that — still ahead of them. If they wished, they could take a small portion of Cole’s remains with them on their travels, and scatter his memory across peaks around the world.

When I spoke to her, nearly 10 months after her son’s death, I said that I thought I’d probably be angry at climbing, at climbers, at the whole world of outdoor adventure. But she isn’t, she said. She deals with death every day in the hospital. “I’ve seen it happen a million times,” she told me. “And it happens so randomly. It can happen when you’re crossing the street and it can happen in Peru. So you might as well live, you know?”

She paused. “And that’s what he loved” — the mountains, climbing, disappearing on an adventure, taking on some new challenge with his friends. “Now of course, in retrospect, I wish he’d gone to a different school and been a total nerd and never done any of that, but then he wouldn’t have been him.”

In the months after his death Cole’s ashes have been spread both in places he loved and places he one day hoped to visit: in Jackson Hole and Whistler, in Aspen and on Mount Rainier and in Muir Woods. They’ve traveled to Indian Creek, in Utah, a favorite climbing spot, and to the Cho La pass in Nepal. “It just seemed the right thing to do,” Karen told me.

Mareya, Hannah and Lauren were deeply upset by his death, and shaken by how it had happened: Being so graphically confronted with the risks of their sport, on the eve of the toughest climbing challenge any of them had ever attempted, was unexpected, and daunting. It was something else to dwell on, another mental hurdle to overcome. But there was no question of quitting. “It wasn’t like I heard about it and was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to stop climbing,’” Mareya told me later. “We all accept the different amounts of risk that we take.” Lauren had never lost a friend to climbing before, and didn’t even tell her parents about Cole’s death before the trip. “It both scared me and threw me off a little,” she said, thinking back, “because it makes you question why you’re doing what you’re doing.” At the same time, she was inspired by the way Cole had lived his life, his bold approach to climbing.

So when they packed up Mareya’s silver Subaru Forester in Colorado, loading up ropes and harnesses and racks of gear, a tent and sleeping bags and ThermaRests and a camping stove and a bag of quinoa and a huge stack of corn tortillas, they also carried a tiny, round, plastic Ziploc container, with a blue lid. Safe inside was a plastic baggie of ashes: Cole. As they drove north to tackle a Cole-esque obstacle, a climb that he had once planned to make himself, Lauren said, “Having him along was nice.” They would carry Cole to Lotus Flower Tower, to the top of 2,000 feet of vertical granite, then scatter his ashes in a place he’d dreamed of seeing. But first, they had to get there.

They drove 18 hours a day for three days, taking shifts at the wheel, through Colorado and Wyoming and Montana, north across the whole length of Alberta and British Columbia, and along the Alaska Highway into the southeastern corner of the Yukon Territory. There, they caught a floatplane into the park — and 48 hours later, so did I.

Photo: Gary Bremner/www.gbpcreative.ca

I need to tell you about the Cirque of the Unclimbables. Ever since I went there, I’ve tried to describe it to friends and family, tried to explain its power and its perfection. It is, I tell people, the best natural campsite I have ever visited. It’s also among the most beautiful eyefuls of landscape I’ve ever seen — its rock walls more overpowering than Zion’s, in Utah, its evening light more perfect than Hawaii’s, its peaks more menacing than Denali, and its stillness more complete than the deep rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula. It’s a place that forces me to reach for comparisons from fiction: It’s “Lord of the Rings,” I tell people. It’s Mordor crossed with the Shire.

Photos: Gary Bremner/www.gbpcreative.ca

It lies in the remote sub-Arctic mountains along the border between the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, just barely on the NWT side. To get there from the west, like we did, you drive along the Yukon’s narrow, two-lane Robert Campbell Highway until the pavement ends, and then you drive on gravel until you reach a side road that leads to a small lake and an aging wooden dock. You wait on the dock until a pilot, who owns a nearby fly-in fishing lodge, appears out of the clouds and lands on the lake in his yellow five-seater floatplane to pick you up. You climb in, push off from the dock and take off from the lake, and fly for an hour or so, until the flat forested land pushes up into toothy gray mountains, glaciers peeking around the sharp edges of the spires, and the pilot cheerily reminds you that any mistake out here will result in all of your deaths. You skim over the sheer gravelly slopes, trying not to think too hard about the plane slamming into them and crumpling like a beer can crushed under a boot heel, and then you descend rapidly and land, so smoothly that you can’t say for sure exactly when the floats touch water, on a milky-blue lake under a looming, blocky monolith, Mount Harrison-Smith. You camp that night in the rain-damp forest on the edge of the lake, and in the morning you notice what you’d missed in the wet evening dusk: bear diggings all around your tents.

You strap your packs on tight and hike along a well-worn trail, skirting the water, and then at the end of the lake you begin to climb, switch-backing higher and higher, leaving the forest behind, picking your way through boulder fields on one side of a plunging stream, listening to the occasional thunder of rocks calving off Harrison-Smith and crashing downhill on the other side, covering in seconds the hundreds of feet you’ve just spent hours climbing.

Finally, you reach the top of the trail, and emerge into a wide, grassy meadow strewn with house-sized granite boulders, the valley circumscribed by sheer rock walls climbing to ragged mountain peaks, and the stream you’d followed uphill all day meandering through the middle of it all. This is the Cirque of the Unclimbables, a remote, isolated ring of mountains that’s sacred to serious rock climbers but rarely visited by anyone else. And this, here below those steep gray Mordor walls, is Fairy Meadows, a place whose name you thought was cheesy as hell until you got here, footsore and tired and covered in the fine white powder of your own dried sweat, and laid down in the cool green grass to rest.

There is no bear sign here — you left all the large carnivores behind sometime during the day’s climb. Fat black-and-gray marmots roam the meadow fearlessly, indifferent to your presence, occasionally sending out their long, high warning whistles to each other and then vanishing into the rocks, alert to the eagle overhead. The giant boulders scattered through the meadow, disgorged from the surrounding mountains decades or centuries earlier, have landed tilted on edge more often than not, which creates dry, sheltered overhangs big enough to pitch a tent under, if you like, to dodge the rain that keeps the meadow grass so green. Under one especially large, deep overhang, some earlier generation of climbers has drilled bolts into the slanted rock wall — rig a rope up there, strung between them, and you have a place to hang your gear to dry after even the worst mountain storm.

The stream that bisects the meadow is clear, not silty, and it runs fast in places and pools deep enough in others that you could submerge yourself in a quick, cold bath if you wanted to. The only human touch, besides the occasional climber’s bolt glinting in the sun, and the faint footpaths from boulder to boulder through the meadow, is a brand new Parks Canada-installed outhouse that sits on the crest of the short slope that separates the Lower Meadow from the Upper Meadow, a throne with a sweeping view of the Cirque. And that view is largely empty of people: the place sees an average of just two dozen visitors each year.

Like I said: It’s perfect.

We arrived in Fairy Meadows in the late afternoon, in plenty of time to set up camp, rehydrate some freeze-dried dinner, and get to know our neighbors. “We” meant me, my close friend and de facto climbing instructor, Ryan, and our friends Gary and Brianne Bremner, a married couple who’d been among Ryan’s go-to climbing buddies a few years earlier, back before I knew them all. These days, the Bremners had less time for climbing: They had both quit their day jobs to run a creative photography business full time. We all lived in Whitehorse, the Yukon Territory’s small capital city, and were members of the Alpine Club of Canada’s Yukon chapter — Ryan a founding board member.

The Cirque of the Unclimbables had been on all of our life lists. So when representatives of the Nahanni National Park Reserve, which includes the Cirque, approached the club about a collaboration — the park would support a handful of Alpine Club trips into its more remote regions, in exchange for the club members who went in undertaking an assessment of infrastructure, trails and possibilities for backcountry visitors — we were all quick to sign up. Ryan, who’d written and published a guidebook on Yukon climbing, was armed with various tools to measure and monitor the terrain the group would cover on hikes and climbs. Gary and Brianne, not wanting to miss anything, hauled no less than 80 pounds of camera gear up into the Cirque. I had much less in my pack: Besides some clothes, a sleeping bag and a ThermaRest, I carried in a pair of blank notebooks and enough pens to last for six months.

Waiting for us in the park were Scott and Melissa, two Parks Canada staffers who would be joining us for the trip. When we got there, they had already laid claim to the large overhang we nicknamed Kitchen Cave, where we’d make and eat our meals, and spend most of our down time. They’d pitched their tents in the open air, across the stream and maybe a hundred yards into the meadow; ours joined them. Not far downstream, the Colorado College team had pitched their lone Megamid tent in the shadow of a huge boulder when they arrived the night before, and upstream, nearly out of sight at the far end of the meadow, three older men — amateur photographers who had hired a helicopter to fly them and their gear in but were sleeping on the ground like the rest of us — were hunkered down, too. Privately, we dubbed the neighboring camps Girl Cave and Old Man Cave.

Photos: Gary Bremner/www.gbpcreative.ca

Hannah, Mareya and Lauren came up to Kitchen Cave to say hello, but they didn’t linger. They were planning to begin their attempt on Lotus Flower Tower that night, with a departure from their tent by 2 a.m. and a headlamp-lit hike to the base of the route so that they could start climbing with dawn’s first light. The climb would take them up 2,000 feet of vertical granite, much of it a big, open wall that looked from a distance like it had been cleanly sliced by a sharp knife — the kind of rock that draws climbers from around the world. They hoped to catch at least a partial night’s sleep first.

The next morning, we lingered over coffee while we waited for the fog to burn off the surrounding mountains. Eventually, Ryan, Scott and Melissa made plans for a scramble up to a ridgeline hike, and Gary, Brianne and I planned a much more modest walk to the far side of the meadow, where we’d be able to see the lower stretches of Lotus Flower Tower, maybe try to lay eyes on the girls as they climbed, as the upper portions were visible from our cave. We ambled between boulders and lounged on the meadow’s spongy moss, and I found that while I’d only been able to walk for a few minutes on pavement without pain in my knee, here on soft ground I felt fine for nearly an hour.

By dinnertime, the six of us had regrouped, and realized that over the course of the day none of us had spotted the three Colorado College climbers. Scott scanned the rock face with his binoculars every few minutes, and we ate our boiled-in-a-bag backcountry meals under the weight of a growing tension. As far as we could figure, they should have either been clearly visible up high on the route, or back in their tent by now.

Photo: Gary Bremner/www.gbpcreative.ca

Once we’d finished eating, we were out of excuses. It had been nearly 18 hours since the climbers set out. Maybe the trio was fine, maybe they had been delayed for some harmless reason we would all laugh about later. Or maybe they were in deep shit, and we were the only help to be had. I squatted by the creek and distractedly did our dinner dishes while Ryan, Melissa and Scott packed up first-aid supplies, a stove, a package of soup, rope and a radio. The plan was for them to head toward the base of Lotus Flower Tower, an hour’s hike away. Gary, Brianne and I stayed back in Kitchen Cave with the other radio and a sickening sense of helplessness. If anything was seriously wrong, medical attention was a half-day hike, an hour’s flight, and a long drive on gravel roads away.

An hour leaked by, then another. I wished that I could help, that I could load up a pack and power-hike down the valley, too. But I was, I reminded myself, not going to be playing the role of rescuer on this trip. I was just another potential rescuee.

Finally, six silhouettes appeared on the far side of the meadow, and the three climbers trudged to Girl Cave with shoulders slumped — visibly exhausted, even from where I sat hundreds of yards away, but uninjured.

Photo: Gary Bremner/www.gbpcreative.ca

It turned out they’d had a hell of a day, starting with an approach hike through the early morning darkness that was trickier than they’d expected. Then, when they’d reached the rock face, they’d found it soaked and running with water from an earlier rain — like a “waterfall,” Lauren told me later. It was, she said, “pretty gnar.”

Soon they were wet and cold, but they struggled slowly upward anyway, losing all track of time as they managed one pitch, then two, then three: handhold, foothold, handhold, foothold, jamming their rubberized climbing shoes against the nubs in the wet rock for traction, fingers searching the rock face for cracks, little ripples or ledges, anything to get a firm grip on.

On the fourth pitch, Lauren was leading, her two partners below. Climbing lead is no different, in terms of handholds and footholds, than any other climbing: the difference is in the amount of protection you have if you fall. In traditional climbing, “trad” as it’s known, lead climbers place pieces of gear of varying sizes into cracks in the rock as they climb with a rope trailing below them. Then they secure their rope, clipping into each piece, creating a chain of protection intended to stop a fall. When you’re climbing second, you’re on a rope that’s already secured above you, seriously limiting the scope of any tumble. But when you’re leading, you’re sometimes climbing well above your last piece before you’re able to place the next one, and a bad enough fall can rip the gear out below you.

The fourth pitch was well within Lauren’s skill level, but she was numb with cold by now and the rock was wet. Too numb, too wet: partway up, she lost her grip, a gecko come unstuck, and dropped through the air for a few feet before being jerked to a stop. Her gear had held. She dangled on the rope from her harness for a moment before her friends lowered her back down to where they waited. It was a routine enough fall, a “nice little whip,” she told me, but under the circumstances, she was shaken up. Hannah took over lead and finished the pitch, and then the three conferred. Hours had passed since they’d left the ground below: they would never make the climb’s halfway point, a ledge where they could spend the night, before darkness fell — even with the sub-Arctic’s long August light.

“It felt like a pretty easy decision to make,” Hannah told me later. They abandoned the climb and prepared to rappel back down to the base of the route. They had just gotten back on solid ground, and were gearing up for the hike back to camp, when Ryan, Scott and Melissa arrived to find them.

They knew they’d made the right call, they all told me later, but that didn’t mean they were happy about it. Mareya wasn’t proud of her effort on the climb. Whether they completed the route or not, she wanted to be able to say she’d tried her hardest, and she didn’t feel she had. Hannah, for her part, had felt better, less terrified, than she’d expected — she’d spent a lot of time in the lead-up to the trip pretty deep in her own head, but her nerves had vanished once she was on the rock. She could handle this climb, she’d realized. That made her hopeful about the potential for a second attempt.

When they told me about Cole, they were matter-of-fact. Their friend had died while climbing, they said, and now here they were: climbing. They weren’t here because of his death, and they weren’t here despite it. They would continue to live their lives in the face of risk, just as he had lived his. But it was clear that the avalanche that had taken Cole’s life added another emotional layer to their journey, another bit of weight on their shoulders as they climbed.

“He was totally a guy who just went for it all the time,” Hannah said. “He wouldn’t come up here and do four pitches and say, ‘Oh, I’m tired, I’m going to leave.’”

I’d never spoken to a group of 22-year-olds who were so self-aware, so keenly attuned to their own feelings and motivations and those of their teammates. Really, I thought, most adults of any age could envy the trio’s ability to reflect on their own choices and the emotions behind them. All three were thoughtful, and unblinkingly honest about their fears, their insecurities, their sense of failure or accomplishment. They looked young, maybe younger even than they were, but they spoke with the calm confidence, even wisdom, I might expect in someone much older.

I tried to imagine having to make life-and-death decisions under the weight of all the burdens they were carrying on this trip: wanting to prove themselves to the climbers back home, at least some of whom thought they were in over their heads; wanting to support each other, no single climber wanting to be the one who held the team back; wanting to satisfy their own natures, their own sense of pride as athletes; and wanting to honor Cole, to have an adventure worthy of him.

I couldn’t imagine it.

The next afternoon, Hannah tagged along with Brianne and me while we helped Gary with a stock photo shoot: tramping back and forth in front of his camera with daypacks and hiking boots on, gazing solemnly into the distance. She and Mareya and Lauren had agreed to take an hour apart to consider their next move, whether they wanted to attempt Lotus Flower Tower again. At one point, as we sat on the bank of the stream, lounging while Gary snapped away, Hannah showed us the backs of her hands: bold block-lettered words in black Sharpie: COURAGE, on her left, and HUMILITY, on her right. Whenever she reached for her next handhold during a climb, she couldn’t help but see them.

She had spent the lead-up to the trip believing that courage would be the hard part, she told us. She had worried about keeping her head together, about pushing herself forward, about not quitting. She hadn’t thought as much about her right hand: about the humility needed to know when to stop and reconsider, when to rappel down instead of climbing higher — when to accept that she’d done enough. When to walk away.

After each of them had taken some time to think, the girls decided on a plan: Hannah and Mareya would try Lotus Flower Tower again, while Lauren opted to stay back in camp.

“It feels like letting other people down,” she told me when we chatted after her friends had ventured out again, “but it can’t be about that. It has to be about how I’m feeling.” Although, she admitted, it didn’t hurt that there were some advantages, some efficiency to be gained, in a two-woman team returning instead of a trio. It might have been harder to respect her own feelings if backing out had meant making it impossible for Hannah and Mareya to try again, rather than, in some small ways, helping them.

Photo: Gary Bremner/www.gbpcreative.ca

“I feel like a lot of times when I’ve gone on climbs that were maybe a little over my head, it’s just somehow worked out,” she said later. “Either circumstance, who I’m with, my own gumption, maybe luck with weather. It’s always just somehow worked.” This time, though, things hadn’t come together for her. “I was like, this objective is far too challenging for me. After having gone up there and seen it, how tall it is and the challenges of the climbing and the trickiness of the conditions up there, I was just humbled.”

Was it awkward, telling her friends she was bowing out? Was it hard? I imagined feeling guilty, or feeling obliged to carry on — feeling all sorts of feelings, really. But Lauren shrugged at the question. “These are some of my best friends,” she said. “We’ve been through a lot together, we’re very open with each other.”

In her spare time, Lauren had been working on the back side of Girl Cave on a bouldering problem — bouldering means climbing without ropes, sometimes with a crash pad below you and generally on a much smaller objective, like a large boulder (hence the name). In climber-speak, you climb a route, while a bouldering objective is called a problem, approached more like a puzzle to be solved rather than a linear track to follow. In either case, completion of the task is known as “sending” it.

She had turned her back on Lotus Flower Tower, for this trip at least. But if she could send her boulder problem before they left the Cirque, she told me, she’d be happy.

Hannah and Mareya got up in the blackness of the very early morning, again, and shouldered their packs for the trek back to Lotus Flower Tower: two ropes, a full rack of gear, warm layers, harnesses, helmets and climbing shoes, a satellite phone, plenty of food and 7 liters of water, to last them at least 24 hours. Cole’s ashes rode in Mareya’s pack, in their plastic bag inside its protective plastic shell. By dawn, they were climbing, and this time the work felt better, more efficient. They had the measure of those early stretches now, and it helped that the rock was no longer soaked with running water. Soon enough they were clear of the first four pitches where they’d spent those hellish hours on their first attempt.

After nine pitches, they knew they were on schedule to make it to the bivy ledge, one pitch up, well before darkness came down. It’s the only place on the route where climbers have enough room to sleep, on a rock outcrop maybe the size of a minivan, and the approximate halfway point of the climb. Their plan was to wait out the scant hours of darkness there and then tackle the final eight pitches at first light. Their objective — to stand on top of Lotus Flower Tower — was within reach.

But then they ran into trouble on the 10th pitch. They could see two possible ways to approach it, and they weren’t sure which one was the correct path. One of them looked like a continuation of the route they had followed through the ninth pitch — it was the logical, conservative choice — but as Hannah led the way up, she realized they’d made the wrong call. The rock was loose, unreliable, coming apart in her hands and sometimes falling down toward Mareya below, and soon she realized she had climbed up into a very risky situation. She couldn’t find anywhere to place her next piece of gear, and she didn’t know, given the sketchiness of the rock, whether she could trust the pieces she’d already placed below her to hold her weight if she fell. In a worst-case scenario, they could come loose and drop with her, the climber and her whole protective apparatus in freefall.

Photo: Gary Bremner/www.gbpcreative.ca

Above: Lotus Flower Tower, the Cirque's classic climb

As the rock crumbled under her fingers, she thought about Cole, his ashes riding in Mareya’s pack down below. Here she was, on a trip paid for by a fund set up in the name of a young climber who’d died, and with the recent loss of another young friend to remind her harshly, in case she ever forgot, of the price her sport sometimes exacted. “This is not worth it,” she thought. “This little bit of climbing is not worth dying for.”

Finally she was able to escape the trap, climbing higher into the mess until she found a safe enough spot to place a piece and, in a last resort, rappelling off it, back down to Mareya, abandoning the gear to the mountain.

Belaying from below, Mareya could see that Hannah was in a bad spot. It terrified her to watch, seeing Hannah grab onto the rock only to have it come away in her hands. But her friend looked calm and confident as she extricated herself, and Mareya only realized how tense and frightened Hannah had been once she made it back down: As soon as she had clipped herself into safety, she burst into tears.

Mareya offered to lead as they re-oriented themselves and set out to complete the 10th pitch once more. But Hannah wanted to keep going, and as she climbed, her recent fear washed away. She actually had fun, she realized, during that last stretch. By 8 p.m., they had reached the ledge.

When they got there, they saw rainclouds coming in toward Lotus Flower Tower hard and fast. They were tired, and they realized that even if they spent a cold, restless night on the ledge, the rock above them might still be soaked and impossible to climb safely come morning.

Courage. Humility. Again, as it had been on their first attempt, the right choice was obvious: They decided to call halfway good enough and begin their descent during the last of the daylight, before the rain arrived. First, though, they had something to do.

Mareya retrieved the container from where it had ridden in her pack throughout the long climb up. She and Hannah looked out over the Cirque from their 1,000-foot perch, at the soft grassy meadow far below and the clouds chasing each other across the granite tops of the mountains all around. They opened the container, reached into the plastic bag, and scattered the ashes in front of them the way a flower girl might spread the petals coming down the aisle. They cried as the wind took Cole’s ashes and carried them away.

They were nearly finished when a gust of wind pulled a u-turn, doubled back, and flung a sprinkling of ashes into Mareya’s face as she stood on the ledge. And in the shock of the moment, their grief and ceremony interrupted, they both started to laugh, shoulders shaking even as their tears kept coming — because they had to, because Cole would have, because he, always a joker, always ready with a sarcastic quip, would’ve never let Mareya live it down if he’d been there to see it. Because laughter, even more than climbing, might have been the best way to remember him, and now he had somehow given them that.

They rappelled down the mountain in the pouring rain, pitch by pitch, and then staggered back to camp, wrung out with exhaustion, going slow, taking twice as long to complete the hike home as they had on the outbound leg. The rain stopped, the skies cleared, and as they neared Girl Cave the Northern Lights swirled high above them, white streaks feathered in purple and green. They crawled into their tent in the early morning, 28 hours after they’d set out.

The next morning we found a note from Lauren waiting for us, pinned under a rock in Kitchen Cave, letting us know that Hannah and Mareya had come back safe. That was a relief: The night before, we’d sat up chatting over tea in our little cavern, watching rain squalls come and go. A thick fog had rolled in to cover Lotus Flower Tower, and this time we’d known that the girls had made it as far as the bivy ledge — we’d spotted them through the binos before the clouds arrived. I’d been picturing them up there overnight, huddled together in a silver emergency survival blanket and layers of Gore-Tex and down, waiting for first light to keep climbing. I was glad to hear that they were just down the meadow instead, safe in their sleeping bags.

It was our last full day in the Cirque. We would retrace our steps down the trail to Glacier Lake to meet our plane the next day — I’d been dreading the descent, the pain and the possible consequences, all trip. The others were planning one last full-day hike, an ambitious scramble up the steep, scree-covered slope of Crescent Peak, the mountain that loomed directly over our camp. They laced up their hiking boots and packed harnesses and ropes, lunch and snacks. Soon after 10 a.m. they were gone, vanished into the ebbing and flowing morning fog, and I was left with a day all to myself.

Photo: Gary Bremner/www.gbpcreative.ca

I drank a mug of tea, and then another. I did some half-hearted yoga, sun salutations on the cold ground under a sunless sky, and sat on a rock with my notebook open. I paced from boulder to boulder, shifted the angle of Gary’s solar battery charger in hopes of helping it soak up any rays leaking through the cloud cover. I watched for signs of life from the girls’ blue-and-gray striped tent down the meadow. I boiled yet more water for tea, an herbal blend of peppermint, fennel and ginger called, aspirationally, “Feeling Soothed.”

I was not feeling soothed.

I was in love with the Cirque. I loved the way wisps of fog raced across the face of East Huey, the mountain that watched us from across the meadow. I loved passing a flask around in Kitchen Cave, and the way a lithe, barely-seen ermine lurked in the shadows waiting for us to abandon a scrap of food. I loved how the light, when the sun came out, glinted off the bolts that marked the sport-climbing routes past generations of climbers had drilled into the mansion-sized boulders on the far side of the meadow.

I paced from Kitchen Cave to the stream to the boulder I’d been sitting on and back again. I wondered if I should be braver, less cautious — if I was wasting my chance to experience this place because I was afraid of a little temporary pain, of an unlikely worst-case scenario. I felt ridiculous, sitting still on a rock in this perfect playground. In the years I’d spent longing to visit this place, I had never imagined myself as such an inert visitor.

By my third cup of Feeling Soothed, though, my frustration had begun to leak away. I settled in with my notebook and binos, turning my back on East Huey and Lotus Flower Tower, and on Girl Cave below me, where Lauren had emerged from the tent to curl up on a rock with a notebook of her own. I watched the fog thicken quickly and cover the slopes of Crescent above me before dissipating just as fast. When it was gone, I scanned the mountain for my friends, catching glimpses of them as they worked their way higher. I listened to the sounds of the passing stream bouncing off the cave wall, and the occasional rockfall crashing down from Mount Harrison-Smith, and the marmots whistling in relay along the length of the meadow. Every so often, my friends’ voices drifted down to me in wind-torn bits and pieces — Gary’s loud laugh, mostly.

I thought about the three young women in the meadow below me, Lauren on her rock and the other two still sound asleep. I thought not just about the strength required to even attempt a climb like Lotus Flower Tower, but also about the strength it takes to turn away. I admired the three climbers for a lot of things I’d seen in the few days I’d known them: for their self-possession, and their thoughtfulness; for their comfort with each other, with climbing and its risks, and with the wilderness.

But I was most impressed, I realized, with their ability to make the right call, to walk off and to live with those choices. When I asked Lauren about her decision not to try again the second time, she told me simply, “I came to a peaceful conclusion that I didn’t need to.”

Courage. Humility. I was not going to stride up and down the length and breadth of the Cirque of the Unclimbables on this trip; I wasn’t going to try to summit Crescent Peak with the others. That was out of reach. My bouldering problem was more modest, but no less important.

In the meantime, I could sit here with my notebook and pen, in the alternating sun and fog, listening and watching, soaking up all the secrets that the Cirque was willing to share.

On our last morning in the Cirque, a helicopter came to fetch the photographers from Old Man Cave. We disassembled our tents, loaded our packs — mine was filled with everyone’s lightest items, nothing but ThermaRests and sleeping bags, and I had a baggie filled with extra-strength ibuprofen in my pocket — and soon followed them downhill.

As I hiked, awkwardly forcing myself to put my good foot forward each time I stepped down, I remembered something Hannah had said to me the night before. She had expected the Cirque to drive her to her physical limits, she told me, that she would be forced to push through the pain, and that would be the breakthrough, the lesson of the trip.

But that hadn’t happened, that hadn’t been the point at all. “I think we all learned more from this than we expected,” she said.

After we left, Lauren sent her boulder problem, and soon after that, the girls packed up and left too. The Cirque of the Unclimbables was empty of humans once again. The marmots carried on whistling to each other up and down the length of Fairy Meadows, and the stream kept tumbling by. Rocks sheared off Mount Harrison-Smith and crashed down its slopes, echoing through the valley, and as August wound into September, during each lengthening night, the Aurora Borealis dimmed the stars’ light. The clouds rolled in suddenly to cover the mountains — East Huey, Proboscis, Lotus Flower Tower and all the rest. And then, just as quickly, they melted away again.

Photo: Gary Bremner/www.gbpcreative.ca

It’s not often you get to meet royalty in this day and age. Certainly, it doesn’t usually happen in Jacksonville, Fla.

Despite her age (97), and her walker (thanks to a recently broken hip), the word that comes to mind when encountering Raymonde Veber Jones is regal. Raymonde has lived in America for just under seven decades now, but she’s French by birth, and something of Marie Antoinette and Josephine Bonaparte has drifted down through the years into her bearing. Her throne is a simple easy chair, in which she sits straight and proud on the April afternoon she has chosen to grant me an audience. Her empire has been reduced to a couple of rooms in an assisted living complex down the street from the local chapter of the Mayo Clinic. But one glance and there is no doubt — you are in the presence of nobility.

Photo courtesy the Jones family

I begin to sweat. It might be the lack of air conditioning, but it’s also nerves. Commoners are not meant to be this close, even if the eminence is wearing tennis shoes and a friendly smile, as Raymonde does.

And then she starts to talk about her past, in a French accent that remains heavy enough to require frequent interpretation from her children, Ray and Maryse (there is a third, Phil, in Virginia). The years melt away, and despite all the smartphones and other modern amenities lying around, we are soon transported back to occupied France. It might have been the heat, but as Raymonde spoke, I swore the walls began to blur, like an effect from a time-travel movie.

She remembers the days when her rule was nearly absolute, when she was lord of all she surveyed on the fabled clay courts of Roland Garros Stadium, home of the French Open tennis tournament since 1928. She thinks back, with a memory diminished but hardly ruined by time, to when her country was riven by war, foreign invasion, suspicion and collaboration with the enemy. She thinks back to the best of times and the worst of times, as that auteur from across the Channel would put it, when Raymonde Veber became the best female tennis player in a nation that didn’t belong to her anymore.

And she thinks back to the parts of her story that are so much more important than tennis.

Raymonde was born into war. The last of six children, she came into world on the first day of the last month of 1917, while horrifying trench warfare ground away an entire generation of Europeans. Shortly before her birth, the French suffered more than 250,000 casualties in an offensive at Chamin des Dames that earned them just 500 yards of territory. Half a million men mutinied, screaming “enough” at generals who mindlessly threw them into German machine guns without changing tactics. Fortunately, the American Expeditionary Force had arrived in France that summer, and the extra bodies ensured eventual Allied victory.

Raymonde grew up in a nation rallying back but terribly wounded by the devastation of the Great War. She lived in the commune, or what we would call a township, of Neuilly-sur-Seine. Technically a suburb of Paris, practically it is just a western extension of the City of Light, often lumped in with neighborhoods in the 16th arrondissement. The entire area is comparable to New York’s Upper East Side, or the Chelsea section of London — upscale, its homes and avenues suffused with the aroma of wealth.

Harlingue/Roger-Viollet

As it happens, the 16th is also the sporting heart of Paris, home to Roland Garros as well as the Parc de Princes, home of soccer giant Paris St. Germain, and the Bois de Boulogne, one of the capital’s two largest parks. In Raymonde’s time, the most important facility was the Racing Club de France (RCF), a multi-sport venue where the local elite played tennis on finely kept clay courts.

The Vebers were a wealthy, bookish family. Money came in thanks to their factory, a rubber plant that specialized in making tires. Her father and elder brothers ran the business. Raymonde mostly stuck to her studies, and played with the family menagerie that included “two dogs, two cats and three turtles.”

When she was 12 years old, however, the family doctor told Raymonde and her siblings that they were underdeveloped, and needed more exercise. He recommended tennis as an ideal way to get outside and compete in a vigorous way, and soon the Vebers thought more about groundstrokes than Flaubert and Balzac. Raymonde was particularly keen on the sport, and her talent showed right away. A pro at the Racing Club spotted her and told Raymonde that with coaching, she could be a top player. “I was very competitive, even then, and that appealed to me,” she says.

Raymonde was a petite dynamo who could cover the whole court but excelled in the classic clay court style of bashing away from the baseline until her opponent surrendered. “The one-handed backhand was my secret weapon,” she recalls. By the late-‘30s, as the potential for another war darkened the European horizon, Raymonde had ascended to the upper ranks of French players. The studious girl had also developed into a dark-haired beauty, her curls framing an open, friendly smile that belied her killer instincts on the court.

French tennis was in the midst of a boom, one spurred by a singular event. In September 1927, the United States, winners of seven straight Davis Cup championships behind the legendary “Big Bill” Tilden, took on the French squad at the Germantown Cricket Club in Philadelphia. These Frenchmen had been winning what we now refer to as Grand Slam events, but in “international play,” which mattered more in those days (the Davis Cup finals were roughly equivalent to soccer’s World Cup finals today) the U.S. was considered unbeatable. The Yanks took a 2-1 lead through the doubles round, but then Rene Lacoste (he of the eponymous alligator shirts) bested Tilden in four sets. Henri Cochet broke the tie with a four-set whipping of Bill Johnston, and the upset was complete.

Photos: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone

Above: Henri Cochet carried by the crowd after his victory to give France the Davis Cup.

Lacoste and Cochet were already popular in the native country, but the defeat of the Americans catapulted them, along with teammates Jean Borotra and Jacques Brugnon, into the sporting stratosphere. The four became immortals in France, approximating Babe Ruth’s impact and stature in baseball. Dubbed “Les Quatre Mosquetaires” (the “Four Musketeers”) and sometimes the “Philadelphia Four,” the quartet was directly responsible for millions of Frenchmen and women picking up rackets and becoming invested in the game. Interest was so high in the return encounter the following fall that a new venue, Le Stade Roland Garros, named after Roland Garros, an aviation pioneer and World War I flying ace was built to host the 1928 Davis Cup (and all subsequent French Opens). This time, the Four Musketeers pummeled the U.S. 4-1, and their deification in France was complete (the Musketeers would go on to win six straight Davis Cup titles).

Raymonde’s sterling play got her noticed by the sport’s elite, and she became friendly with all of the Musketeers, in particular Cochet. “We all hit together at various times,” Raymonde remembers, and Cochet, a small man with a powerful baseline game, was a good match for Raymonde’s style. However, while the likes of Lacoste and Cochet made nice money for their efforts, Raymonde never earned a franc playing tennis. “It was all amateur stuff,” she recalls. Unlike the men, there wasn’t much spectator demand for the women’s game outside of the majors, which were strictly amateur until 1968. Only rare exceptions such as French legend Suzanne Lenglen, who won 31 championships between 1914 and 1926 and commanded large audiences even for exhibition matches, received paydays from tennis.

Raymonde didn’t get much familial support, either. When she was 17, her father suffered a stroke one night at dinner and passed away. Her brothers were mostly older, one 17 years her senior, and the family business occupied them thoroughly. “Father was dead, and mother knew nothing about tennis,” she says today without any apparent bitterness. She played occasionally with one brother, Roger. “We were close, but he was not very good,” she says with a smile, but her other brothers seldom saw her play. Plenty of other people did see her, however. In 1938 and ‘39 she was on her way to challenging Simonne Mathieu, French Open champion and a neighbor of Raymonde’s in Neuilly, for national supremacy.

The early months of 1940 were a pleasant time for her. Raymonde was 22 years old, an attractive young woman in the social whirl of moneyed Paris. Even the war, which had begun in September of 1939 when the Nazis invaded Poland, was in an interregnum, the “Sitzkrieg,” (also called the “Phoney War” or the “Bore War”) when the winter weather ground operations almost to a halt. Optimistic French citizens believed the country would be spared a repeat of the horrors of World War I.

Then, as though timed to interrupt the upcoming French Open, the Germans invaded France on May 10, 1940. And everything changed overnight.

Art Media/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Using their newly developed doctrine of blitzkreig, or lightning war, the Nazis overwhelmed the French, outflanking the series of fortified defenses known as the Maginot Line and arriving in Paris mere weeks after the campaign began. The government fell, and in mid-June, barely a month after the invasion began, the capital belonged to the Germans.

By then, Raymonde had already received an indoctrination into what was in store for her and her country. “During the invasion,” she says, “the Luftwaffe really bombed Paris very heavily. Our beautiful apartment [complex] was hit very hard, though our actual rooms were luckily spared. Unfortunately, my mother and sister Suzanne were so scared that they refused to stay anywhere near Paris. So I had to drive them south, away from the advancing Germans.” The Vebers evacuated to Cantal, a sparsely populated mountainous department (roughly equivalent to a state), where many refugees fled from the fighting.

Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone

“I was on my way back to Neuilly when it got too dark to continue. I stopped for the night in a hotel. During the night, a German (airplane) dropped some bombs that hit the front of the hotel. There was a great deal of damage, and all the lights went out. My room wasn’t hit, but I thought it would be safer to find the basement. As I started to try and find my way around in the dark, I saw a tiny cat. I picked him up, and together, we tried to find our way underground to safety. The whole building was shaking. Rubble was falling all around. Soon enough I discovered that there wasn’t any cellar, at least nothing where we could hide. So we went back to my room, and huddled in bed, the kitty in my arms. Somehow we survived the night, and I went back home. The cat stayed behind.”

Raymonde made a similar trip shortly afterwards that resulted in another narrow escape. “With the area around our apartment hit by bombs, I stayed with my friend Odette at her house nearby. The Germans were very close to Paris by this point, and like my mother, Odette’s mother got very nervous, naturally. We drove her out to the country as well. On the way back, we never made it to Paris. The Germans were already marching our way. We had to turn around. Our car was almost out of gas, so we stopped to plan our next move.

“We happened to stop near a shelter for women. There were women who were wounded [from the bombing and artillery fire] and also some who were pregnant. We were asked to help carry these women to a hospital that was close. In exchange, we would be given some petrol. We made a couple of trips carrying stretchers. We had just picked up another load when some Italian soldiers [allied to the Germans] machine-gunned us. Incredibly, no one was hurt. But we were pinned down for nearly three days. We tried several times to get the women to the hospital, but we were turned back by gunfire each time. We starved the entire time. At last, the fighting moved on, and we were free to move — and to eat! We could only manage a small meal, and there was wine. It was much too strong for us, probably because our bellies were so empty.”

Raymonde’s life quickly changed from one of tennis and leisure to one of hard work and fear. Her brothers had joined the fight. Roger enlisted in the French Army and left to battle the Germans. “He was captured quickly, and was held as a prisoner for seven long years,” she recalls. “We knew he was alive, but we had no contact with him the whole time.” Another brother, Robert, took to the countryside and fought with the armed resistance, the Maquis, which engaged in guerilla raids on occupation forces.

In the meantime, it fell to Raymonde to run the family tire factory, which remained in operation during the war. “I worked from 7 in the morning until well into the evening. It was very tough, of course, but everybody was in the same boat, you just had to get on with it.” She stayed fit by bicycling to and from the factory. “It was four years on a bicycle,” she says, pointing out that hardly anyone except German officers were driving, mainly due to lack of fuel.

The invaders set up what was, by their brutal standards, a benevolent occupation force in Paris, while a new French government formed in the southern city of Vichy. The French WWI hero Marshal Philippe Petain, then 84 years old and heretofore revered throughout France, was put in charge. The Vichy rulers espoused hard-core right-wing values and served as a puppet regime, cooperating with their occupiers, happily rounding up Jews and crushing free expression at the behest of their Nazi masters in Paris.

Contrary to the clouds of revisionist propaganda post-war French leaders propagated in order to bring the nation together, during the war France was hardly a nation of unified resistance. Yes, there were those who fought against the Nazis, both passively, like Raymonde, and actively, like her brother. But there were as many who lustily bought in to the Third Reich’s buffoonery about Aryan supremacy. Most grappled with mixed emotions and embraced realpolitik — you did what you had to do to get along.

In the case of many French women, that meant turning their wiles upon the new men in town.

The Germans surprised the French, acting not as the Mongol hordes they were portrayed as being, but by handing out food and sweets and by preserving the city’s culture and architecture. Hitler ordered his army to take nothing from Paris except photographs. Handsome in their starched uniforms and brave and proficient in war, the occupiers stood in stark contrast to the French rabble they had so easily brushed aside in battle.

French women began sleeping with the Nazis in earnest, a practice referred to as “horizontal collaboration.” Some did it for practical reasons, as a means to ensure better food, lodging, or security. Others did it out of genuine affection. Few seemed to have regrets over the arrangement. As Arletty, the famous French actress who conducted a very public affair with a German Luftwaffe officer, put it, “My heart is French but my ass is international.”

Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images

Raymonde, for her part, would have none of it. “I heard about that sort of thing going on, but I hated the Germans too much to do it myself.” After all, these were the same people imprisoning her brother. Another incident early in the occupation hardened her outrage.

“One day I was on my way to work, riding my bicycle to the factory as usual. The Germans were stopping people and herding them aside. I managed to ride past, and I didn’t know what was happening. All I knew was that I shouldn’t stop and ask questions. Later, on my way back, I got the answer. About 30 young people lay dead on the grass. Someone, most likely a member of the resistance, had shot and killed a German soldier. As revenge, they killed 30 Frenchmen and women. And they were all very young, no more than 20 years old.”

“I was already not very fond of Germans, but that cemented the feeling.”

In sympathy with her brothers, Raymonde wore armbands under her clothes, ones bearing the Cross of Lorraine or the letters “FFI” standing for “Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur,” associated with the armed resistance, despite the obvious danger should a German soldier discover the fact. Her mother frantically pleaded with her to play it safer than that, but Raymonde refused.

After roughly a year, her brother Robert left the forests for the factory, leaving Raymonde with time to return to her tennis. This dovetailed with a new Vichy directive that embraced sports and fitness, in order to make their country hard and tough once again, as it had been in the glorious past of Napoleon — and as the Germans were now.

Throughout occupied France, plans were announced for the construction of a grand sporting infrastructure. One of the main voices at the head of this Vichy movement was a member of the Four Musketeers and friend of Raymonde’s — Jean Borotra.

Naively, he initially bought into the propaganda and became the First General Commissioner to Sports. Later, when the promises went mostly undelivered and he saw in more detail the horrors being perpetrated by his “friends” in Vichy and the Germans in Paris, Borotra had a change of heart. In the fall of 1942, in an insane moment of honesty, he told his bosses he planned to join the fight against them. Naturally, he was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a prison camp outside Berlin, where he was held in solitary confinement and forced to read Mein Kampf.

After more than two years in captivity, in 1945 Borotra escaped. He crossed the front lines, made contact with American forces, and led them back to the prison, where they captured the SS guards who had held him.

One good thing did come from the Vichy sporting initiative. The French Open had been canceled due to the German invasion in 1940, but in 1941, a national tournament was once again held at Roland Garros. It wasn’t exactly the same as the peacetime Open, as it was only for French competitors (with a few local club players born in Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium tossed in), but the new Tournoi de France was fiercely fought over just the same. Musketeer Henri Cochet appeared in all five wartime tournaments, but was never able to win. The men’s titles from 1943-45 were won by 6’5 Yvon Petra, freshly released from a German prisoner of war camp where he had been held after being captured in battle while fighting in the French Army (Petra went on to win Wimbledon in 1946, becoming the last champ to take Centre Court in long trousers).

Photo courtesy the Jones family

Now that Raymonde had a reason to return to the courts, she began training once more, at night after work in the factory, on courts with few lights (the Germans had forced France to run on Daylight Savings Time). There were still no winnings at stake — the Vichy government banned professional athletics, citing money’s ruinous effect on sport. So perhaps it comes as no surprise that Raymonde remembers little of the 1941-43 tournaments, save for one particular detail. The winner of the initial two women’s French championships was Alice Weiwers of Luxembourg. When I ask Raymonde her impressions of Alice, she puffs out her cheeks, spreads her arms, and sneers, “Fat.”

“We were not especially friendly,” she adds, unnecessarily.

Part of the reason the Tournois have faded from Raymonde’s memory is that she was busy playing in other matches that were far more important from a survival standpoint. She joined a traveling team that competed against other squads in various cities. “If we won,” she recalls, “we got to eat.” There was no cash prize, but the winners were awarded chickens, eggs, fruit and other edibles. “If we lost, we went hungry.” Raymonde’s high-caliber play usually meant her team ate well.

Still, wartime terror intruded in her life in another way. The Vichy government, like their Nazi overseers, rounded up and deported Jews by the thousands. One place Jews and other “undesirables” were interned before being sent east to concentration camps was Le Stade Roland Garros. According to author and journalist Arthur Koestler, a Jew who was held at the Grand Slam venue and wrote about his experiences in “Scum of the Earth,” his memoir, “At Roland Garros, we called ourselves the cave dwellers. About 600 of us … lived beneath the stairways of the stadium. We slept on straw — wet straw, because the place leaked. We were so crammed in, we felt like sardines … It smelled of filth and excrement, and only slits of light (could) find their way inside. Few of us knew anything about tennis, but when we were allowed to take our walk in the stadium, we could see the names Borotra and Brugnon on the scoreboard.” Borotra, remember, was at the time tacitly endorsing these evils by his association with the Vichy government.

Art Media/Print Collector/Getty Images

According to one study, more than 75,000 Jews were deported from France. Thanks to Raymonde, one escaped the terror of the camps.

“One night there was a frantic knocking on our apartment door,” she remembers. “I opened it to find a woman I knew from tennis, one of my hitting partners, named Jacqueline Foy. She was crying hysterically. Her father had been taken away, she said. She feared she was next — no Jews were safe. I didn’t know her very well, but she was shaking and so afraid, so I let her in.”

Foy was about 26 or 27 at this time, several years older than Raymonde, a talented player who competed internationally. They became unexpected roommates. “She didn’t leave,” Raymonde says. “Jacqueline lived in our apartment for the next six months. She was terrified. She never went outside the entire time, just hid in our apartment. She had no fresh air. I don’t know how she could stand it, but of course she feared what would happen if she left. We fed her and never breathed a word about where she was.”

“Finally, after six months, Jacqueline’s mother sent word that she was safe in the countryside, and that Jacqueline should come and join her. So she slipped out of our apartment. I never saw her again.”

Raymonde hasn’t returned often to France over the years, but on one trip back to her native country she was told that Jacqueline had survived and had returned to Paris after the war. Raymonde headed straight for Jacqueline’s last known address and knocked on the door. Alas, the family member who answered told Raymonde that Jacqueline had recently passed away. Raymonde asked if Jacqueline’s father had survived.

“He was never seen again,” she was told.

Alice Weiwers was beaten by Simone Lafargue in the 1943 final. Then in 1944, it was Raymonde’s turn. At 27 years old, she was in her athletic prime, and despite the hardships of living under occupation, she played her best tennis.

There was a festive air at Roland Garros that summer, with large crowds and “not so many Germans,” according to Raymonde. This may have something to do with the fact that the Tournoi took place in late-July, after the Allies had landed at Normandy, and were relentlessly driving toward Paris.

Raymonde made a similar march through the women’s competition, getting to the finals, where she met a younger opponent named Jacqueline Portoni. “She was good-looking,” Raymonde remembers. “An all-rounder, with a solid game in all areas, although no one specific specialty.” Precise details of the match itself elude Raymonde’s otherwise strong memory. But the big picture sticks with her, if not the play by play.

“I wasn’t especially nervous,” she says. “It was a good, even match, but we all had perspective. I wanted to win, of course, but in the end, it was just a tennis match. It wasn’t very important compared to the war.”

Raymonde did indeed win, 6-4 in the first set and 9-7 in what must have been an epic second set. With the win, Raymonde became the final female champion crowned while the Germans ruled France.

The Racing Club was overjoyed that one of their own had become French National Champion, and threw a gala reception to honor Raymonde’s victory, replete with a dinner and dancing. There was no prize money, of course, so the Club honored her in classic Gallic style — they bought her a new dress. “Hermes!” she recalls with delight, clearly envisioning the designer model all these years later.

When I ask if winning the tournament made her a celebrity, Raymonde nods modestly. Exactly how well known she was is difficult to determine according to today’s standards — she was no mega-star, certainly, but she would likely have been recognized around Paris for her athletic achievements.

ullstein bild via Getty Images

Above: General Dietrich von Choltitz.

There was one person who knew about her — General Dietrich von Choltitz, the commanding German officer in Paris. One day an official from the Racing Club approached Raymonde while she was training. He had a request — the Nazi commander liked to play tennis and had heard Raymonde was a worthy opponent. He asked for a match.

Raymonde flatly refused. “There were always Germans around on the courts,” she says, “and I would be asked to play from time to time. But I never did. Sometimes they would be on the court right next to mine, and I never spoke a single word to any of them.”

After the war, most French claimed to have adopted this attitude toward their occupiers, but everyone knew who was a collaborateur and who was not. After liberation, women who had given themselves so freely to the Germans had their heads shaved in public. Arletty, the aforementioned actress who took a Nazi lover, was thrown in jail for 18 months. A wave of executions swept the country before the new government under Charles de Gaulle, a genuine resistance hero, restored order. Marshall Petain was sentenced to death by firing squad, but de Gaulle commuted that to life imprisonment.

“I, for one, never blamed any French person for anything (they did during the occupation),” Raymonde says. Fortunately, she never had to worry about such backlash, for she was solidly anti-German from the start. Even decades later, that still counted in her home country. Her son Ray clearly remembers accompanying his mother to Paris and having people stop and admiringly talk to her. “We were treated very well,” he recalls. “Mom was honored so much because she never entertained any notions of dating or otherwise befriending any Germans.”

On Aug. 25, 1944, just weeks after Raymonde won the Tournoi de France, Paris was liberated. Von Choltitz, the German Raymonde refused to play, allegedly ignored Hitler’s order to destroy the city on his way out of town. One thing is certain — Paris wasn’t burned to the ground. So the City of Light remained glorious when the Allies marched into the city. “I travelled from Neuilly,” Raymonde says, “to the Place de L’Etoile [now called the Place Charles de Gaulle, a central Parisian hub where several avenues meet] to see the French Forces march … I don’t think I ever felt so moved as at this moment. My tears were running down my face. What a moment!”

But perils remained, and a most unfortunate, ironic fate almost claimed Raymonde. “The Americans had arrived, but there was still danger,” she says. “German snipers were still around. One opened fire near where my mother and I were standing. We hid under a truck. We thought we were safe until we saw it was a gasoline truck! Luckily, it was not hit.”

ND/Roger Viollet/Getty Images

The last of the Germans were soon flushed out, and life slowly returned to something approaching normalcy. In 1945, Raymonde tried and failed to defend her title at Roland Garros. The last female champ of the Tournoi de France was Lolette Payot of Switzerland. That September, Raymonde traveled south for a tournament in Cannes, famous for its beach resort and film festival (which began in 1946). “There came the shape of my destiny,” she recalls.

A tall, handsome American officer approached Raymonde while she was practicing. His name, coincidentally enough, was Raymond — Ray Geyer Jones (fortunately, he went by “Guy”). A 26-year old major in the artillery of Gen. George Patton’s Third Army, Jones had seen action in North Africa, Sicily, Normandy, and the Battle of the Bulge, obtaining a Silver Star and several other medals along the way. Guy was a good athlete, too — he played wingback on the same Harvard football team as John F. Kennedy. His tennis game wasn’t quite as good, but he figured he could beat the girl with the curls. He challenged her to a match, and this time, Raymonde accepted.

“I beat him 6-0, 6-0, 6-0,” she says with a laugh. “He was a hacker! I beat him to pieces, but hooked him for good.” Guy was stunned, but had enough sense to ask the woman who had just demolished him on the court for a date. Raymonde accepted this challenge, too, though she made one thing very clear — no “coucher avec moi,” as she says. In other words, Major Jones was shut out for the second time that day.

But that sentiment didn’t last long. Guy got a three-day pass in order to visit Raymonde in Paris, and after those 72 hours, the American and the Frenchwoman had reached an entente. Ten days later, Guy asked Raymonde to marry him. “I said no at first, because we all knew Americans were not serious,” she says, but soon relented. They wed in a church in Neuilly on Nov. 5, 1945. Another American officer served as best man, and gave the bride away. Guy had to get back to his unit, which was by now in Germany, “or what was left of it,” as Raymonde says, so they honeymooned amid the ruins.

Before the year was out, Guy had been transferred back to the States. Raymonde went too, but by herself, a scary journey across an ocean and into the unknown. The ever-adaptable French women were busy marrying Americans by the score, but Raymonde believes she was the first war bride to travel to the States. She bribed her way onto a cargo steamer, the Cap Elizabeth, by handing over her fur coat. Upon arrival in New York harbor, the boat was quarantined for a short spell while the passengers were checked for disease. Guy took a speedboat out to the steamship to reunite with his new wife. The couple had a more traditional honeymoon at Niagara Falls, then drove across the country, eventually winding up at their new home, Fort Riley, Kan.

Paris it was not.

Harvey Meston/Archive Photos/Getty Images

Above: Fort Riley, KS.

“It was very hard,” Raymonde recalls. “I was very homesick, and though I had learned English in school, I struggled. There were no other French people there. Worse, there were only hard courts!” But after the tribulations she had faced during the war, central Kansas wasn’t going to get the best of her, no matter how bleak. “I didn’t want to leave. Many French women did divorce their American husbands soon after the war and returned to France, only to do worse.”

Raymonde stuck it out through that billeting, and one in Oklahoma, before landing in Northern Virginia. Guy had switched venues from land to air, and was becoming an important visionary in the concept of close air support. He went on to serve three tours in Vietnam, and, according to his son Ray flew more air hours (in both helicopters and fixed wing aircraft) than any pilot in any service.

He passed away in 2010 and is buried at the Arlington National Cemetery. He never did best Raymonde at tennis. “I once offered to buy mom a mink coat if she let Dad beat her,” Ray recalls. “She just said, ‘No way.’”

While her husband was fighting for his country, tennis sustained Raymonde. “I was mad sometimes because I was all alone, raising three children myself, but the game filled the void.” Raymonde didn’t lose her skills after emigrating. She rose as high as 13th in the USTA National Rankings and from 1961-71 she won the regional Mid-Atlantic Women’s championship nine times, never dropping a set. She was also highly ranked in doubles, teaming with Carol Herrick, a fellow tennis obsessive who also played with Raymonde at the Army-Navy Country Club in Arlington, Va.

“Her group played every single day, in snow, rain, sleet, you name it,” Herrick remembers. “Raymonde used to wear a sock with a hole cut out over her hand instead of gloves on really cold days. And you were obligated to play many sets, not just one or two. I vividly remember a big snowstorm coming through as we played, and I started to pack up my gear. ‘No, we finish,’ Raymonde insisted, and we did.”

When I ask Raymonde about Carol, her reply is simple — “I used to beat her.”

That competitive zeal (“Mom taught me how to trash talk,” Ray says) extended into her dotage. Raymonde played in senior tournaments well into her 80s, and only stopped hitting a few years ago. Yet in all that time, despite her accomplishments on the court and in service to her country, she has never been invited back to Roland Garros to smack a few ceremonial one-hand backhands, or even to wave to the crowd and accept long overdue plaudits for her wartime actions on and off the court. And when the 2015 French Open finals take place at Roland Garros at the end of next week, and the stories of past champions are told, Raymonde Veber, perhaps the most truly heroic champion of them all, is unlikely to be mentioned.

Neither the International Tennis Federation nor the Federation Francaise de Tennis (French Tennis Federation, or FTF) recognize the wartime tournaments as official French Opens, even though the entry requirements weren’t any different than they had been prior to 1924, when only French club members were allowed to compete. Those winners, including Cochet, Borotra and Lenglen, are recognized as French Open champions. But Raymonde, Alice Weiwers, Yvon Petra and the other wartime champions are not.

A major reason for this intransigence may be the complicated relationship France still has with the war and the occupation. The scars of humiliation and collaboration have yet to fade, even after all this time. Raymonde and the other winners from 1941-45 have been written off as collateral damage. Numerous recent emails to the FTF asking for a comment of any kind about the wartime tournois were utterly ignored.

Meanwhile, a living link to this extraordinary slice of forgotten history sits in her easy chair in Jacksonville. She’ll be watching the Open, as always, but adds, “They never bothered to ask me to come back, or even to contact me in any way.” Raymonde says she is not upset by it, though how can she not bristle just a bit at such shabby treatment?

It certainly is no way to treat a queen.

Photo courtesy the Jones family

Two young men, 20 and 18, facing north. Two straight lanes, clear and flat, inviting them into a very dark place.

They arrive at the stoplight at the Burger King just before 3 a.m. on Feb. 16, 2008, a white Ford Crown Victoria in the right lane, a green Mercury Grand Marquis in the left lane, music thumping from each. They’ve been at a party and go-go band practice. The driver in the Mercury is the group’s lead singer.

Let’s say Darren Bullock and Tavon Taylor race. Each will admit to it later; each will deny it later. But let’s say they start right here in the same spot, and let’s leave the video evidence and the eyewitness evidence and the skid marks and the cops and the state’s attorneys and the media attention out of it for a moment. Let’s just say they race because, quite simply, that’s what young men do here.

This is Indian Head Highway, Maryland State Route 210, one of the straightest divided highways in the Washington, D.C. area. At the northern end of the highway is the nation’s capital. From there it shoots south, running parallel to a section of the Potomac River where bald eagles nest. At the southern end of the highway, about 30 miles south of Washington, is the town of Indian Head, where boards cover up the windows of an old department store and an empty grocery store, and a bank has been turned into a church.

In the middle of the two worlds is an isolated stretch of road about 3 miles long without shopping centers or stoplights, lined mostly by woods. The highway has four lanes here, with extra turning lanes at intersections, and it’s divided by a grassy median strip about 30 feet wide. In the 1990s, a few new housing developments in the area attracted African-American families seeking suburban life in four- and five-bedroom houses away from the city. But those developments sit well off the highway, protected by access roads and a new tree line. There are no streetlights here, and at night darkness drops on these four lanes like a blindfold. In the winter months, when tree frogs and crickets aren’t around to sing, the quiet is broken only by the whoosh of passing cars.

Long, straight roads have drawn young men to race since the automobile was invented. Longtime southern Maryland residents say this part of the highway has been a popular racing strip for at least a half-century, back to when the road was only two lanes and girls wore ribbons in their hair and cheered for farm boys who competed in quarter-mile bursts. Kids here grow up listening to stories of their parents meeting at the races along Indian Head Highway. For decades, the crowds for the semi-organized yet illegal street races were nearly all white. In the past 20 years or so, they’ve become nearly all black gatherings of residents from lower Prince George’s County and western Charles County. No matter how the area ages or changes, racing on this road remains irresistible.

Far more races take place spontaneously, with young people of all makes and models testing the limits of engines and adrenaline. The closest town has two pizza delivery options, and if a Domino’s guy pulls up to the stoplight next to a Pizza Hut guy, one might rev an engine, the other might nod, and they just might go for the fun of it.

So on that frigid February morning, when Darren Bullock and Tavon Taylor leave go-go practice and head out Indian Head Highway and hit the last light for miles with nobody in sight, let’s say they floor it.

They accelerate past a liquor store named Big B’s and a crab shack named Doc’s and a bank that’s gone by many names. They pick up speed. At the break in the pavement at the county line, their tires go da-dum. The road rises a bit. Both cars have four doors and are full of passengers. Darren’s white 1999 Ford Crown Victoria, a model also known as the Police Interceptor, was once favored by nearly every law enforcement agency in the country. It was the cop car of choice for movies and television, too; in the 1990s most Hollywood police chase scenes included a Crown Vic. Its 200-horsepower, 4.6-liter, V8 engine is capable of reaching speeds of 120 miles per hour, and by the time these two young men reach the county line, it’s clear that Darren’s car is more powerful. Tavon’s green 1994 Grand Marquis is in many ways the Crown Vic’s twin, made by Ford’s Lincoln Mercury division, carrying under its hood a 210-horsepower, 4.6-liter, V8 engine and otherwise differing only in styling. But it’s five years older than Darren’s car, and tonight it is slower.

Both engines are howling. They’re more than 2 miles from where they started when they pass a factory that manufactures Beretta guns. A security camera pointed at the road records them flashing by, the white Crown Vic first and the green Grand Marquis three-quarters of a second behind, traveling at an estimated 102 miles per hour. It’s 2:57 a.m., and at this pace they could be at the front steps of the U.S. Capitol Building in less than 12 minutes. But they don’t have 12 minutes. And they’re not going that far.

They have only eight seconds, and 1,200 feet.

Out of the camera’s view, they roll. Darren is nearly a hundred yards ahead of Tavon now. His expensive stereo system is pumping. On this highway made for speed, this is his race to lose.

But as he follows his headlamps into an otherwise lightless night, he starts to see people.

They’re standing in the road, most of them in dark clothes, jackets, and coats, with their backs to him. He’s 300 feet away. With every revolution of his tires, his lights reveal more people. Some on the left side of the road, some on the right side, some in the middle. People on the shoulder. Two hundred feet. More people on the access road. One hundred feet. They’re everywhere. A few heads turn, their eyes wide. They start to scatter, but Darren can’t stop, and they can’t run fast enough. The Crown Vic measures 78.2 inches across and weighs 4,000 pounds. It’s a 6 ½-foot wide bullet taking aim at a crowd.

From behind, Tavon sees his friend’s brake lights flicker, then disappear down a small hill on the right side of the road. Tavon slams on his brakes. His green Grand Marquis skids to a stop, just short of the people, just short of adding more casualties to one of the deadliest crashes in the Washington area in a quarter-century.

Michael Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Two minutes earlier, on the same two lanes, about three miles north of the light at the Burger King, two grown men line up in muscle cars that were brought here on trailers. Two hundred people, 300 people, some say 500 people are here to watch. They’re teenagers and grandfathers, moms and daughters, and they’ve come for a semi-organized street race on a 28-degree night in February. Bets are placed. Lines are drawn in the street.

A Ford Mustang is in the left lane, and a Chevrolet Camaro is in the right lane. These are so-called eight-second cars, built and tweaked to travel a quarter of a mile in eight seconds, reaching speeds of about 150 miles per hour in that short stretch. Before they start, they burn out, spinning the slickness off of their tires.

At about 2:55 a.m., a spotter sees two slow-moving cars coming from the south. He yells, “Car!” which is street-racing language for timeout.

People clear the road. The Mustang and the Camaro pull to the side. The innocent drivers roll through. “Just common courtesy,” a witness says later.

The race cars return to the highway. But again, “Car!” Only the Camaro pulls off this time, and another innocent driver idles through, the headlights causing the spectators to squint and turn their heads, before the car passes and they adjust again to the night.

As the Camaro lines up next to the Mustang for a third time, the starter’s flashlight is going dim in the cold. They have to go now. No more timeouts. They burn their tires against the cold blacktop for extra traction. The starter snaps the beam of light to the ground, signaling the start, and the engines roar.

After the cars take off, spectators behind the starting line pour into the street for a better look. They have no idea what’s behind them. The Mustang’s engine thunders, overwhelming all other sounds for these important eight seconds. The Camaro gets off slow. Something’s clearly wrong with its engine. The Mustang surges ahead. Glowing in the distance, the taillights tell the story. It’s an ass-kicking.

The spectators throw their arms up and start to walk away, bets won and bets lost, until someone yells that no, wait, the Camaro’s making a comeback. The man’s joking, though. “Made you look,” he may as well have said. The Camaro is still coasting to the finish. The Mustang wins. The engines start to go quiet.

What if he hadn’t said that? What if the people hadn’t paused, even for those few seconds, to turn and take another look, to lean around each other, to glance down the road again, to see? What if they had not taken those two or three extra steps back onto the highway?

Because at 2:57 a.m., they hear it again.

“CAR!”

Katherine Frey/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Hours earlier, in the basement of a house where the parents are out of town, Tavon and Darren are at a party, and Top Klazz Band is hitting that beat.

Go-go music, a style of funk that involves a range of instruments from horns to guitars to cow bells to conga drums, is a cornerstone of black culture in the Washington area. It’s been the soundtrack for house parties and small clubs in region since the 1960s, but only a handful of songs have made it to the national charts. As close as Baltimore is, just 45 minutes away, people generally shun the stuff, but in and around the capital beltway, love for go-go is passed down through generations.

Tavon, a senior at Lackey High School, is Top Klazz Band’s lead singer. He’s tall and thin with a wide smile. He lives with his mother, a corrections officer, in a townhouse about 15 minutes from here. Two of his aunts also work in law enforcement, as police officers in Washington. His family will say in court later that he’s more immature than most people his age, and that he’s easily influenced.

But he seems at home when the music’s playing. He’s a natural at freestyling. In the few videos he posts online, Tavon is at the center of the room, jumping with his arms in the air. In school, he’s part of a tight group of friends that travels together from class to class. Tavon and Top Klazz Band tried to enter the talent show at Lackey, a teacher at the school says later, but because the band includes guys who aren’t students, they were turned away.

Darren is a bit older. He graduated a few years ago and has young children of his own now, but he remains friends with many of the people in the group. He’s much shorter than Tavon, only about 5’6, but he’s solid. He was a reserve linebacker on the Lackey football teams that went to back-to-back state championships in 2003 and 2004. For people with ties to Lackey, an underdog school that pulls students from all over the rural western side of Charles County, those teams delivered a shot of pride, drawing thousands of fans each week. Kids from other schools had more money and access to luxuries like movie theaters and shopping malls, but in their stadium in the woods on Friday nights, the Chargers were the class of southern Maryland. “Our players set the tone for how the school ran,” says the head coach, Scott Chadwick, who’s since moved to North Carolina. “They were very well behaved. They set the example.” Darren was a typical Lackey kid, a hard worker who had to fight for every down he played.

One athlete and one singer, 20 and 18, at the same party.

After band practice, they break out pool sticks and Madden. About 20 people show up for the party. At 11 p.m., one of the band members gets a phone call to tell him that the street racers will be out on Indian Head Highway later, about 6 miles north of here. This is how street-racing crowds form — one call, then another, and in just a few hours, hundreds of people know.

They gather at a park and ride in Accokeek, a town with three stoplights that sits about halfway between Indian Head and Washington. In some parts of Accokeek, weeds grow over the windows of dilapidated houses. In other parts, security gates protect large homes where a few of Washington’s NFL players live. After everyone meets at the park and ride, the race cars and race fans move as a group a couple of miles south to a designated spot somewhere along that dark stretch of the highway. Tonight, the races will start near a carpet store at the northern end of the racing zone, at the intersection with Pine Drive, where a big, dirt parking lot provides plenty of spaces for spectators to park.

The person who calls the party to spread the word about the races is Brandon Lynch, Tavon’s older cousin. Lynch knows everything about racing, and when he talks he uses terms like “grudge racing” or “broke tracks” as if everybody should know what he means, and most do. Lynch pulls into the driveway to pick up a band member, but he never goes in.

Tavon walks out to say hi and to tell his cousin something. “The guy in the white Crown Vic,” Tavon says, pointing to Darren’s car, “wants to race you.” It’s hard to tell if he’s serious, but Lynch doesn’t know Darren, so he declines the challenge. They say goodbye. Lynch heads toward the carpet store parking lot for the eight-second races. Tavon goes back inside to the pool and Madden.

What happens in the next two hours will become the center of a debate that plays out over several weeks in a courtroom. After Lynch declines Darren’s challenge to race at the party, does Darren then challenge Tavon? Does Tavon say yes? Who gets into Darren’s car, and who gets into Tavon’s car? Do the two of them head to the stoplight at the Burger King, intending to race? Or does Tavon turn off at the previous street to take another member of the band — a boy nicknamed Peanut — home? Everyone from Darren’s brother to Peanut’s stepfather will give statements to police that say one thing, then testify in court to say something different.

This much is true, though: At 2:57 a.m. on Feb. 16, 2008, Lynch is standing on the shoulder of the highway watching a Mustang beat a Camaro. Meanwhile his cousin Tavon is driving his Grand Marquis north on the same highway when, just ahead of him, Darren’s Crown Victoria speeds into the crowd of screaming people.

Michael Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty Images

For some, the sound they remember is something like popcorn popping. For others, it’s a hailstorm.

For Crystal Gaines, she hears the bass, coming from the white Crown Victoria. That’s what she’ll hear years later when she testifies in court. That’s what she hears at 2:57 a.m., when she holds her father’s hand for the last time.

William Gaines is 61 years old, a farmer with 14 grandkids and a love for street racing. He started bringing Crystal here with him when she was a young girl, and now she’s doing the same with her 13-year-old daughter. Three generations of the Gaines family are standing in the road when Crystal hears, “Car!”

She turns around. She remembers seeing the white Crown Victoria and hearing the sound system thumping. She grabs her daughter with her right hand and pushes her. She grabs her dad with her left hand and pulls him. But William broke both legs recently, leaving him with a bad limp, so he struggles to keep up.

Crystal pulls on her dad’s arm until she’s pulling on air.

A car meeting a body does terrible things. If you don’t want to know what those things are, please skip ahead to the next paragraph. But the jury will have to hear every word of it, and Crystal will have to see every bit of it, and everyone who was there has to live with it, so here is what happens to William Gaines: 13 inches above his foot, William’s leg is amputated. All over his body, his skin is torn and ripped. A cut that starts at his left ear wraps around his head to the right side of his neck. What’s inside the skull is ejected. “The brain was not there,” the medical examiner will say later. His ribs are broken. His neck is broken at the collarbone. His spinal cord is separated. A bone from his leg lodges in his abdomen. All of his internal organs are crushed.

Crystal screams. She chases after pieces of her father. “I can’t explain what he looked like,” she says in court later, “but he was laying there on the grass, and I was just screaming his name for a while because I didn’t know which body was his. I was screaming his name, just screaming, and he didn’t answer.”

William is one of eight people who will die from a love of street racing this night. Darren yanks the wheel hard to the right. The Crown Victoria turns sideways and slides through the right lane and down an embankment before finally coming to rest on the far curb of the service road that parallels the highway, near the front door of the carpet store. His path cuts through families from all over.

WARNING: Image may be disturbing to some viewers. Click/tap to show

Michael Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Above: Antonio 'Mo' Tourney suffered head injuries and a broken leg at the scene of the accident

Blaine Briscoe was 49 and lived in nearby LaPlata. Daryl Wills was a 38-year-old husband. Milton Pinkney, 41, was a laborer and father of three. Ervin Lee Gardner, 39, lived in Oxon Hill but his family is in eastern North Carolina. Maycol Lopez was a 20-year-old father of one who came to the United States from Nicaragua when he was 6. Otis Williams was a 35-year-old father who was engaged to be married. Mark Courtney, 34, was a father of three and brother of five, and, according to his obituary, “a big teddy bear” who “enjoyed good food, the latest fashions, working on cars, and watching the car races.”

Nine other people, including a 15-year-old boy, suffer injuries that range from broken legs to concussions, but survive. The uninjured survivors rush from the scene. Many are seen on the Beretta factory’s security tape about two minutes after the accident, fleeing “like bats from a cave,” attorneys will say later. Most of those who stay are family members or close friends of the victims. In less than five minutes, the hundreds of spectators become just a couple of dozen witnesses.

Meanwhile, just after 3 a.m., a tractor-trailer carrying groceries heads northbound on 210. The driver sees a dark-colored car parked in the shoulder with its hazard lights on. He casually pulls into the left lane to pass and give the car room. As he goes by, he starts to make out people on the shoulder, which seems strange at this hour, but he keeps going until he runs over … something. He stops, parks on the shoulder, steps down from the rig, and walks back toward the graveyard on Indian Head Highway.

Legs and feet and fingers and bodies.

The grocery truck driver buckles over right there.

Katherine Frey/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Corporal Christopher Hinkson’s 8-year-old son has a hockey game early the next morning. The 15-year veteran of the Prince George’s County Police Department is sleeping peacefully at 3 a.m. when his phone rings. He’s spent nearly half of his career in accident reconstruction, and he’s the lead reconstruction officer on call this morning.

The communications center tells him there’s been a fatal accident. Possibly a triple, he’s told.

Hinkson has seen hundreds of fatal accidents in his career. Many involve more than one person, so as he opens his eyes, he turns to his wife and casually tells her that he won’t be able to make the hockey game. He steps into the shower. His phone rings again. He steps out, dripping.

“It’s five,” the communications center tells him. “OK, I’m coming.” He steps back in and rinses off.

His phone rings again. He steps out and grabs a towel.

“It might be as many as 10. We don’t know.”

“We’ll need everyone who’s available,” he says.

Hinkson parks at the scene in Accokeek just after 4 a.m. and walks through with his flashlight. He can see his breath. And other things. There’s an arm in the road. A hand on the shoulder. Legs everywhere. Socks. Shoes. As one witness will describe it later, “It was ‘Nightmare on Elm Street.’”

Hinkson buttons the top button on his coat and goes back to his car. He turns on the heat and stares ahead, trying to understand what he’s seen before he begins the process of trying to reconstruct it.

At about 4:30 a.m., another officer gives Darren a sobriety test. He aces it — 0.0. Blood stains dry on the car he’d always dreamed of owning. He’s uninjured, but shaken. Hinkson first talks to him at about 6 a.m. He doesn’t suspect the young man of anything but bad luck. He does know, though, that some of the first people who called 911 reported two cars coming from behind, but given this grisly scene, how could they possibly know what they saw?

His first thought is that Darren was just on the wrong highway at the wrong time. “We had a bunch of people standing in the road. It’s kind of foolish for them to be doing that in the middle of the night in the dark,” he remembers thinking.

The sun rises. It’s worse in the daylight, somehow, and you might want to skip this paragraph, too. Hinkson tries to approach it like any other accident. He marks the evidence. He takes pictures with a 35-millimeter camera, the standard for the PGPD in 2008. But he won’t need pictures to remember this. In the grainy photos, one white sheet is in the median on the left side of the road. One is farther up the road in the right lane. Four white sheets are on the shoulder. Another white sheet, not pictured, covers the body of Milton Pinkney, the laborer, who’s inside the front window of the Crown Victoria, torso first, his amputated legs on the passenger’s side floorboard.

At 9:48 a.m., at a hospital in Washington, the eighth victim, Ervin Lee Gardner from Oxon Hill, dies.

For a man in Hinkson’s line of work, numbers are the only way to make sense of such chaos, so he starts measuring. There are 155 feet of skid marks on the pavement, 76 feet in the grassy area, and another 55 feet on the service road. That’s 286 feet altogether.

And there’s another set of skid marks in the left lane. They measure 102 feet, but then they get mixed up with another set of marks, which are clearly not from a car stopping but a car starting.

If Darren had been racing someone, Hinkson knows he’ll never be able to gauge how fast the other car was going or even where it stopped because its skid marks blend in with the Mustang’s burnout marks. He can’t tell the difference between where one race began and where one ended.

At 10 a.m., a former NFL offensive lineman’s phone rings. On the other end is an acquaintance who’s speaking breathlessly. The night before, the caller says, he was racing on Indian Head Highway when a car came up from behind and plowed into people and those people died and shit, oh shit, oh shit, Rod, what should I do?

Rod Milstead is a bail bondsman. Before that he played offensive guard for three NFL teams — Washington, the Browns, and 49ers, winning a Super Bowl with the 49ers in 1994. Before that he was a standout at Division I-AA Delaware State, and before that he was a star at Lackey High School. After his NFL career ended in 2000, he moved home to take a job as part-time assistant football coach job at his old high school, where his jersey still hangs in the gym.

He started a bail bond business to keep busy and to earn a steady paycheck. He bought a 1997 green Crown Victoria to transfer drug dealers and robbers who had been accused of crimes. Some days, he drove straight from work to football practice at the high school. Around 2003, a young linebacker named Darren Bullock fell in love with Milstead’s car. Every time he saw it, the kid walked off the practice field and said, “Coach, you’ve got to sell me that car.”

Milstead laughed, but he liked the boy. Milstead has three daughters and he says he treats every boy he coaches like a son, but Darren was one of his favorites. The kid was short but compact, and he played hard. He also wasn’t immune to making mistakes. In 2005 he was charged with destruction of $57 worth of property and found guilty of theft of less than $500 a year later. Milstead was drawn to boys like Darren, because when you’re an NFL player and you come back to your hometown of boarded-up windows, you don’t come back to help the rich get richer. You come back to help those who might need it most.

“Do you know how many times I sped up and down 210?” Milstead says this spring. “We all make mistakes. I’m 45 years old, and I still make them.”

Darren wasn’t a star on the football team, and at his height he sure wasn’t going to make it to the NFL. But he and Milstead stayed close after graduation. Darren grew up to become a Baltimore Ravens fan. He became a father. And he bought a Crown Victoria, just like his coach, only a few years newer, and white.

On the morning of Feb. 16, Milstead has no idea that one of his favorite players was involved in the accident the night before. In fact, he doesn’t even know about the accident until his phone rings. It isn’t Darren, though, on the phone. It’s one of the drivers from the organized street race between the Camaro and the Mustang. The man wants to know if he should worry about being arrested for simply being there and taking part in an illegal, orchestrated street race with money on the line.

Milstead tells the guy to calm down. Under Maryland law, he knows, the man’s likely to only get a traffic ticket.

Turns out, he never even gets that. Nor do any of the other drivers from the organized races. Nor do the people who gathered there and helped arrange it.

The New York Times hustles to get a reporter on the story. The Washington Post sends nine. Word spreads on the national wires and cable news stations with some version of the headline: “Eight Die in Drag Racing Crash in Suburban Maryland.”

Hinkson works the scene until 1 p.m. before clearing Indian Head Highway and opening it to traffic again. Around the same time, Tavon’s phone rings.

It’s Lynch, his cousin, the one who came to the party the night before. Lynch was on the shoulder and narrowly missed getting hit. He saw the same white car that challenged him to a race earlier that night plow through all those people. Lynch suspects something more was going on, so he asks his cousin directly, “You weren’t racing Darren, were you?”

Tavon says no.

Michael Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty Images

That question becomes the center of Hinkson’s investigation: Did two cars racing up from behind the organized street race cause the accident? Before the officer goes home that day, pressure already begins to build. The state’s attorney has seen this on television. So has the governor. People around the country will read stories tomorrow about the illegal street racing culture in Maryland. Someone must be held accountable, and the charge has to be more than a traffic ticket.

Everyone from CNN to community newspapers in southern Maryland devotes resources to exploring not just the accident, but the issue of drag racing. Residents who live nearby give nonchalant, almost cold, quotes. “It had to happen sooner or later,” one person tells the Times. For days and weeks, this plays out as a story not about bad decisions, but overarching morals. What are those people doing out there at that time? And even though the answer to that is quite simple — the lanes are straight and there’s not much else to do — the story grows into an indictment of all those who find street racing entertaining.

Hinkson, though, narrows his focus to Tavon Taylor.

A Crime Solvers tip comes in a few days later to say that the white Crown Vic was racing another car, a green Grand Marquis. Then a security officer at the Beretta factory calls and says he has a video of two cars flying north. Hinkson watches the tape. It sure looks like racing to him.

On Feb. 21, Hinkson and other officers pay a visit to Tavon’s house. He’s in the driveway working on the car’s stereo. His mother is inside. The officers stop him and question him. They take pictures of the Grand Marquis. Tavon gives a statement. He says he did come upon the scene of the accident. He says he stopped. He says he saw his friend Darren’s car wrecked in the service road, and he opened the door to see if he was OK. Then he says he left and kept going north toward his home.

A month later, in a follow-up interview, Tavon changes his story a bit: This time he says he not only stopped, but he picked up a few passengers. And instead of continuing north, he says he turned around and went south on 210 to drop his new passengers off at a gas station.

Tavon also has an alibi now. He says he was taking Peanut home when the wreck occurred. A month later, Peanut’s stepfather tells investigators that Peanut opened the door to the house at around 1:30 a.m., 90 minutes before the accident. He always knows when Peanut comes home because the house has door chimes. But in court nearly two years later, Peanut’s stepfather says the chimes didn’t go off until closer to 3 a.m., which happens to match the time Darren slammed through a crowd and killed eight people, which would mean Tavon couldn’t have been a few hundred feet behind in the next lane at the same time.

Four months and several conflicting witness statements later, on the morning of June 29, 2008, Tavon testifies before the grand jury. He swears under oath that he wasn’t racing Darren. The grand jury believes Hinkson’s investigation, though, and that afternoon indictments are issued for the arrest of each young man.

The state’s attorney’s office, which directed Hinkson to pursue charges against Darren and Tavon instead of the drivers of the Camaro and the Mustang who were the reason the crowd was in the road, issues a press release about the indictment immediately. That afternoon, before police can arrest Tavon, news crews gather outside of his house.

Tavon calls his father, who’s at work as an assistant chef at the local hospital. John Dyson leaves the kitchen right away. He sees his son’s face pressed against the screen in the window of the upstairs bedroom, looking down at the satellite trucks. When Dyson walks inside, Tavon is out of sorts. Dyson smells marijuana in the house. Tavon sits on the couch and starts crying. His dad hugs him and tells him it’ll be OK.

Around 4:30 p.m., three sheriff’s officers show up with the warrant and walk into the house. They don’t smell marijuana, but they do see Tavon crying. Tavon’s dad asks that when they take his son away, they put a red ball cap on his head to help hide his face. They agree to that, and the cameras can’t get a good shot.

At the station, Tavon is put into a small room downstairs. He doesn’t have an attorney with him. About two hours later, after what Hinkson calls a “come to Jesus” moment with another sheriff’s officer, Tavon confesses to racing.

The confession is nine pages. It’s written in the officers’ handwriting and signed by Tavon. He says that Darren challenged him at the party, “Come on, Tavon, race me! Race that slow-ass Marquis!” He says he lied about taking Peanut home. And when he’s asked what happened when the light turned green, he says, “We go.”

He apologizes to the officers for lying. Hinkson is stunned. The case of his life is complete. He has not just evidence but an admission: Darren and Tavon were racing that night. Foolish youth or not, they were racing, and that’s why those eight people died. You can’t charge “the culture of street racing” with manslaughter, but you can charge two young men with it.

Hinkson transports Tavon to the Prince George’s County jail sometime around 9 p.m. He drops the prisoner off and watches the jail staff process him. As Hinkson leaves, the last thing he hears is one of the staff members say, “Hey, Taylor, your lawyer’s here.”

The thing about justice in America is this: Where there’s a high-profile crime, there’s opportunity.

In walks J. Wyndal Gordon, whose self-given nickname is The Warrior Lawyer, a savvy, fast-talking, camera-loving defense attorney who has devoted his life to raising a reasonable doubt. One of his previous clients was John Allen Muhammad, the man convicted of being the sniper who terrorized the Washington area in 2002.

Now Gordon walks into the jail to meet Tavon. He starts raising those doubts immediately.

That young man in jail? He’s naïve. He was coerced. He was threatened. He was just driving his buddy Peanut home.

The fact that people saw Tavon and his green car at the scene? He’s a good Samaritan who was there to help.

Those skid marks? What do they prove?

That confession? Well, he later tells the ladies and gentlemen of the jury in his opening statement on Feb. 2, 2010, the young man was high.

The state doesn’t like to lose high-profile cases. It sends state’s attorney Glenn Ivey and assistant state’s attorney Wes Adams, both of whom have political aspirations, to work the cases together and try to get convictions.

One case is easy. Darren, the driver of the blood-stained white Crown Victoria, doesn’t have The Warrior Lawyer on his side. Instead, he has a public defender, who recommends that he plead guilty to all eight counts of manslaughter in exchange for a lesser sentence. He does so on Jan. 28, 2010. The judge agrees to wait to sentence him until after Tavon’s trial. The proceedings last one day.

Tavon’s trial begins less than a week later. It could be a movie all by itself. With The Warrior Lawyer involved, it lasts a month, and by the end of it jurors regularly send notes to the judge begging to be dismissed so they can go back to work. In the trial’s first week, Gordon’s grandfather dies, and the proceedings are delayed so he can attend the funeral in Georgia. During the second week, a storm dumps 3 feet of snow in the area. People call it Snowmageddon. In the third week, Hinkson takes the stand for a day and a half.  In the fourth week, Gordon puts on a show during closing arguments, bringing his client to the front of the room to hold a computer and a protractor to try to prove that the car in the Beretta video wasn’t his. “That’s child’s work,” Gordon says, holding the measurement tool, mocking the prosecution’s expert witnesses.

The Warrior Lawyer and the state’s attorneys slug it out with each other every day, trading snide comments and sharp criticism. The 1,982-page court transcript contains hundreds of objections and calls to the bench from the judge. At one point, the judge threatens to fine Gordon $100 for his next act of misconduct. He gives four more warnings, but it’s not until Gordon essentially accuses Hinkson of fabricating evidence that the judge finally asks for the money. Gordon snaps, “I don’t have $100.” The judge responds, “I’m not saying you have to do it now, Mr. Gordon.” Then the Warrior Lawyer asks the judge to retract the fine.

For four weeks, everything is an argument, until March 1, 2010, when the defense has rested and the state has rested and everyone’s waiting for a verdict.

The jury’s note to the judge at 10:12 a.m. that day offers a glimpse of what’s about to happen. “If we unanimously agree on two charges, but are split on eight and ultimately remain split, does this mean all 10 charges will be thrown out? Resulting in no accountability for Tavon?” The issues a formal reply, that he has already provided all the information he can.

After 15 hours of deliberation, they return a verdict. Tavon is guilty of reckless driving and engaging in a speed contest, they say. But on the eight counts of manslaughter, one for each person who died that night, nine jurors favor conviction, three don’t. Mistrial.

The state’s attorneys, Ivey and Adams, make big statements that afternoon, saying they’ll re-try the case vigorously again that fall, but they know that won’t happen. They can’t re-create a case like this. They can’t re-create tears from some witnesses or catching others in a lie. They can’t spend another month in court. They can’t put people through that. They know they’ll never get a full conviction.

The jury’s message is this: Tavon was racing Darren that night, but he didn’t hit anybody and probably isn’t guilty of killing anyone. He won because he lost the race.

The next day, Darren arrives at the courthouse for sentencing and tells the court he accepts responsibility for his actions. The judge responds sternly, “By your extremely reckless and wanton conduct, you struck and killed eight men. No one who was there that morning will forget the carnage they saw.”

On March 2, 2010, two years after he sat at the stoplight at the Burger King and gunned it, and one day after the driver of the other car was set free, Darren is sentenced to 15 years. His family and friends bawl outside the courthouse. Speaking into news cameras, they tell the families of the victims that they’re sorry for their loss, but now, they’ve lost, too. Milstead, the former NFL player who helped bail both men out of jail when they were arrested, is still angry.

“Why is Darren’s role so much bigger than everybody else’s?” he says. “Everyone knew they shouldn’t be out there, period.”

Three months after he’s sentenced, Darren sits down in his jail cell and pens a letter in neat handwriting to the judge. “I have enrolled in every self-help group that this institution has to offer,” he writes. “I would also like to better my future while I’m here by attending college courses and shop programs.” He asks for a modification to his sentence to help him meet the guidelines for attending the college program — among them, he needs to have less than seven years left on his sentence.

His request is denied.

Tavon, meanwhile, enrolls at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he majors in accounting. In the fall of 2010, Tavon’s retrial is pushed back. Nothing happens at all in 2011, except that people move on. Tavon becomes a sophomore in college. The attorneys work new cases. The witnesses try to forget what they saw.

Finally, on Jan. 30, 2012, Tavon quietly makes a trip to the Prince George’s County Circuit Courthouse. The Warrior Lawyer quietly makes the drive down from his office in Baltimore. Adams, the assistant state’s attorney, quietly makes his way to the courthouse, too. The same judge is also here. No news crews or reporters are alerted.

With nobody watching, they reach an agreement. Nearly four years to the day after the accident, after dozens of false statements from witnesses and a month-long trial that covered Snowmageddon and ended in a deadlocked jury, Tavon enters an Alford plea of guilty to two counts of manslaughter, the same charge Darren faced, in the deaths of Ervin Lee Gardner and William Gaines. In an Alford plea, the defendant maintains his innocence but admits that the prosecution has enough evidence to find him guilty. Most of the time, defendants use an Alford guilty plea to avoid the harsher sentence that would come from going to trial and losing. Prosecutors generally accept the plea to avoid a trial and the possibility a defendant might be found not guilty and go unpunished.

In exchange for this admission, Tavon gets five years probation, a $1,000 fine, and no jail time.

This time, there is no press release.

Two young men, older now. Two guilty pleas, slightly different, to the same crime.

On May 10, 2014, one young man is in a prison in Hagerstown, Maryland; the other receives a degree in business administration in front of a crowd of more than 5,000 people at Shaw University’s graduation.

In January 2015, one is in a prison in Hagerstown, Maryland; the other starts his first day at work as a loan verification analyst for a major bank in Raleigh, according to his LinkedIn page.

In April 2015, one is in a prison in Hagerstown, Maryland; the other texts a writer to reschedule an interview about his life since the night of the accident. He says he forgot that he has a performance at North Carolina Central on the evening of the interview. He doesn’t explain what the performance is, but he’s courteous. “I apologize for the inconvenience,” he texts. “Just be having a lot going on lol.”

Tavon reschedules the interview for the following Tuesday at a barbecue restaurant in Raleigh, but he never shows. He stops responding to texts and calls, but that’s really not all that important in the grand scheme of this story.

What is important is this: The young man in the right lane in the Crown Victoria is in prison, and the young man in the left lane in the Grand Marquis is a college graduate who has a good job and a lot going on.

Lol.

Darren doesn’t respond to two letters sent to him in prison requesting an interview for this story. His family politely declines. An aunt who helped raise him is still a career counselor at Lackey High School, same as she was when Darren was a student there in the early-2000s. She says it’s in Darren’s best interest that they don’t comment.

What’s a mistake worth? It seems that depends. If you’re any of the boys who’ve raced on this highway over the last 50 years, it might’ve cost you a speeding ticket. If you’re one of the eight-second street racers from the night of the accident at Accokeek, there’s no penalty at all. If you’re one of the eight people swept away by a speeding car while watching an illegal race, it’s your life.

When the cameras were on this case, the attorneys were brilliant and persuasive and battled like crazy. But two years after Darren was sentenced to 15 years, those same people worked out a deal to give Tavon probation and a fine for pleading guilty to the exact same charge.

The attorneys’ careers certainly weren’t hurt by the accident. Adams says that “Accokeek,” as he refers to the case, was “a once-in-a-lifetime prosecution.” Then he thinks about it and says he’s had other good ones, too. “I’ve had a Forrest Gump career about catching good cases at good times,” he says, and Accokeek was a good case. This past fall, he was elected to be the state’s attorney of Anne Arundel County, one of the richest counties in one of the richest states in the country.

Meanwhile, Ivey, the state’s attorney on the Accokeek case, is running for Congress this year in Maryland’s Fourth District. As of early April, the Democrat had raised twice as much as his closest competitor.

Gordon continues to be seen in places where he can be seen by many. He talks for an hour about the case and, even now, never concedes that Tavon was racing. This spring, Gordon was on camera speaking at a protest in front of Baltimore City Hall after Freddie Gray’s death. His Twitter page includes a picture of him holding up his fists. He was one of the last people to talk to John Allen Muhammad, the D.C. sniper, before his execution in Virginia. Afterward, Gordon told reporters that the sniper’s last meal was, “chicken and red sauce, and he had some cakes.”

Seven years and a month after that night, Hinkson is driving back to the scene, holding an apple that’s browning around the edges of the bites he’s already taken. He pulls into the parking lot at the carpet store where everybody gathered. A sign on the door says “Beloved Community Church.”

“It’s a church now,” the officer says. “Go figure.”

He parks and walks across the service road, into the grassy embankment where the Crown Vic slid, kicking up bodies like a tornado. Traffic moves swiftly on Indian Head Highway, headed north. Hinkson stands back and reconstructs what he saw that night by pointing, apple still in hand.

“I can see everything vividly,” he says. “I can picture that white car down there with the blood on the hood. Organs on the windshield. I can see the guys trying to find out who the feet belonged to based on the sock.”

“We were trying to match socks.” He lets out an uncomfortable chuckle, trying to soften the delivery of such an awful sentence.

Despite several efforts to stop street racing in the area, it still happens, organized or not. In July 2010, Prince George’s County police impounded cars from nearly 200 people after breaking up a nighttime race that was to start only one mile south of where eight people died in 2008.

Still, Hinkson says that even if racing does occur, he’s almost certain it doesn’t start from this spot.

“I think it’s sort of sacred ground,” Hinkson says, standing in the grass next to a highway marker that reads “North: Maryland 210.”

He’s a sergeant now, and he says the Accokeek case will be the defining case of his career. He has 20 years of service, and he’s thinking ahead to retirement. He won’t do that until he puts his two kids through school. They’re teenagers, and he thinks about them when he hears that Tavon graduated from college last year. “That’s a testament to how you can put the past in the past,” Hinkson says. “I’m sure he’s never going to forget it. He was very young, and hopefully he’s grown up and matured. And he’s gotten his education. Really, you can’t ask for anything more.”

Even after he retires, Hinkson says he’ll probably find a job that’s tied to law enforcement. He might even come back to teach accident reconstruction, he says.

Rebuilding scenes through math and science is how he makes sense of a world that can produce a scene like this one, a world where people lie and the media drives pressure and some people get punished and others don’t. He uses the numbers.

Based on all of his years of training, Hinkson says the quickest a driver can see a hazard, react to it, and take action is 1.5 seconds. At 102 miles per hour, Darren would have traveled 224 feet before he could hit the brakes. That’s the absolute best he could’ve done.

In the pitch black of Indian Head Highway, he couldn’t have seen the people standing in the road until he was 302 feet away from them. That means that even if he hit the brakes as soon as he could, he would’ve been only 78 feet from the people before the car started to slow.

According to Hinkson, at 102 miles per hour, a car needs 495 feet to stop on pavement.

It’s simple math. Darren couldn’t have stopped the Crown Victoria. Not by a long shot.

But when it comes to Tavon’s Grand Marquis, math isn’t much help.

If Tavon was racing that night, and let’s say he was because the jury found him guilty of it, he had the benefit of seeing Darren’s brake lights flicker. He had time to stop. He had time to pull over to the side of the road, right to the spot where more than half of the witnesses say they saw him. For all the chaos and things that make no sense about this nightmare on Indian Head Highway, those witnesses paint a fairly consistent picture of the lasting image of Tavon Taylor.

After the burnouts, after the false starts, after the white Ford Crown Victoria screams into view, after people yelp and cry, after a daughter loses the grip of her hobbling father, after the car spins and bowls down an embankment, after pieces of people fly everywhere, after the wheels come to rest on a curb, the occupants of the car get out and run away from it.

But they don’t turn off the music.

Up on the shoulder of the highway, Tavon stands in the doorway of the green Mercury Grand Marquis, his right foot in the car and his left foot on the ground, his right hand on the roof and his left hand on the door. People run desperately all around him, searching through bodies and body parts, crying and screaming and hoping to not find loved ones. The young man just stands there in that dark place, frozen stiff on a cold night, his favorite music thumping from his friend’s blood-stained car, looking down at all the death he would’ve caused if his car was the faster one.

And let’s say living with that is punishment enough.

“I just have to rejoice. That’s what this whole year is about, trying to rejoice…I can think of a quote from the Bible. I think it’s Philippians 4:11 that says, ‘I’m not in need. I’m content with my circumstances.’ ”—Bubba Watson, January 30, 2014, after an opening round 64 at the Phoenix Open

Anti-Bubba sentiment has been around as long as Bubba Watson himself, but until 2014, it had largely simmered below the surface. There are very few outlaws in golf, and the players enjoy certain protections from the media, especially on the television side. Fans take their cue from the broadcasts, and have followed suit in fabricating saints from the raw material of mere athletes. It takes a lot to lose this security blanket—to stand exposed before a press that typically goes out of its way to accommodate.

To truly understand Bubba’s trajectory over the years, we have to jump to late 2014 and the PGA Championship. That’s where it happened—the moment when the tide finally turned, and a friendly press turned hostile.

During Tuesday’s practice round, the PGA of America decided to resurrect the long-drive contest that had been a tournament staple back in the fifties and sixties. The organizers set up a digital scoreboard on the par-5 10th tee, and from the start, the contest was a huge success with players and fans. Padraig Harrington took a running start into his swing, Happy Gilmore style. Phil Mickelson, Keegan Bradley, and Rickie Fowler, playing together, hammed it up with the crowd. Rory McIlroy hadn’t even planned to play number 10, but came over after his front nine to hit a drive for the fans … and when it went out of bounds, he hit another for the hell of it. All in all, it was a harmless exhibition, and a bit of fun for anyone with a practice round ticket and the fortitude to endure Kentucky’s stultifying late-summer humidity.

Jeff Gross/Getty Images

You might have thought Bubba would enjoy the spectacle more than most. He can hit the ball a mile—he’s led the Tour in driving distance several times—and he famously encouraged fans at the 2012 Ryder Cup in Medinah to cheer during his swing, so that he was surrounded by a delirious wall of noise as he teed off. Bubba relished the attention, and though he later claimed the stunt was meant only to “grow the game,” the ego was hard to deny.

The long-drive contest was another attempt to grow the game, but when Bubba arrived on the 10th tee, he didn’t feel so charitable.

“This is fucking ridiculous,” he muttered, cursing at the PGA staff assembled around the hole. He said that he’d be hitting a driver every other day, but not today.

After playing partner Chesson Hadley teed off, he barely had time to pick up his tee and step aside as Bubba raced up and hit a lazy 3-iron. Before the announcer even finished saying the words “Bubba Watson,” the ball was in the air and he was striding angrily down the fairway.

Later, I asked two of the kids manning the tent on the 10th tee to name their favorite player. They debated between Mickelson, Bradley, and Fowler. There was no hesitation when I asked for their least favorite.

“Bubba,” they said in unison. “He’s an asshole,” added the first.

“Not wanting to do it is one thing,” said his friend. “But be a man about it.”

Afterward, he offered no explanation except that he was trying to “learn” the course—as though asking him to hit one driver on a hole where he would almost always hit driver anyway was an unforgivable imposition on his process. He went on to insist that he didn’t care what people thought of him, and he was only concerned about how he looked in the eyes of God. (An interesting statement, considering he had removed all Internet browsers from his phone earlier that year because he couldn’t handle reading anything negative about himself.)

The story becomes even stranger when you consider that the prize for winning the event was twenty-five thousand dollars to the charity of the winner’s choice. Bubba uses charity and religion as his sword and shield; why wouldn’t he jump at the chance to win free money for the cause of his choice?

As the week went on, Bubba’s outlook did not improve. On Friday, as a light rain fell throughout the morning and his game suffered, he resorted to temper tantrums on the course. He began his round on the back nine, and by the 16th hole, he was already whining as Rory McIlroy waxed him.

David Cannon/Getty Images

“I can’t play golf, man,” he said to his caddie Ted Scott, one of the most respected bagmen in the game. “I got nothing.”

The language took a turn for the worse on the 18th, when he moaned about his poor play. “It doesn’t matter what I do, man. It doesn’t matter. It’s fucking horseshit.”

After the turn, he threw a club, then blamed it all on the weather. “Water on the clubface, bro,” he barked to Scott. “Water on the clubface. I’ve got no chance.”

He had managed to survive the fallout from the long-drive contest, but this was the final straw—the response, both from media and fans, was instantaneous. Bubba refused to come out for his post-round interview, but Golf Channel’s Jason Sobel waited him out for an hour and a half. Sobel’s reward was a handful of half hearted quotes, and he proceeded to lambaste him in that day’s column. Dave Kindred followed suit at Golf Digest, ratcheting up the sarcasm:

“He had to play with raindrops on his driver’s face. We all know that is Satan’s work, for surely the prince of darkness diverted the raindrops from all other players and caused them to settle only on Bubba’s sticks. Raindrops everywhere, all morning, beginning at 6 o’clock and falling even through Bubba’s tee time at 8:35. For hours, raindrops kept falling on Bubba’s haircut, causing, methinks, reverberations in the vast empty spaces beneath.”

The blogs were even less kind, and Twitter was blowing up with fans spouting anti-Watson rhetoric, spearheaded by two hashtags that proved devastatingly effective. The first, #YearOf Rejoicing, referenced the philosophy he had been repeating all season, a reminder to himself to be grateful for the millionaire’s life he was leading. As an instrument of blunt irony, these words worked beautifully when paired with a quote such as “water on the clubface, bro!” The second hashtag, #PrayForTedScott, referred to his caddie, and needed no further explanation.

Bubba made a token apology on Twitter later that day, and had his PR-crafted contrition act ready for the Barclays tournament two weeks later. The entire fiasco, though, left a larger question unresolved:

Who the hell is this guy?

There are two Bubbas, and they exist side by side, engaged in an endless power struggle.

The first Bubba is the good ol’ boy with a wild streak—a free- swinging maverick with a fearless approach to the game. This is the image he presents to the public, and taken at face value, it’s a welcome antidote to golf’s stuffy atmosphere. He looks like a young Randy Quaid, speaks with the choppy, self-assured cadence of George W. Bush, and swings like he’s trying to come out of his shoes. He’ll often refer to himself in the third person—“Well, if you ever heard about Bubba Watson’s career, you know that I’m in trouble a lot”—and he has one of the sport’s great shit-eating grins. Even his name—Bubba, strong and southern, folksy and historical, and loads of fun for a gallery to shout—lends him the aura of a people’s champion.

Stuart Franklin/Getty Images

He relentlessly promotes his own altruism, and at times, it’s almost possible to believe it. When Ping ran a campaign to raise money for the Phoenix Children’s Hospital, Bubba made up the $110,000 shortfall at the end. He once gave thirty-five thousand dollars to his high school and choked up as he spoke to the students about his own academic troubles. He donates to adopting families, and sick kids, and earthquake victims, often bringing his sponsors on board to increase the payout. And while you might raise an eyebrow at just how public the entire process can be—he’s not the only golfer to be charitable, but he gets far more PR mileage out of it than anyone else—the fact remains that he’s giving.

Then there’s the beginning of his relationship with Angie Ball, his future wife. They spent their first date at a golf course—she didn’t know Bubba played, and you can imagine how much he enjoyed her shock when he launched his first drive. Afterward, sitting in the car, she told him that she couldn’t bear children. Bubba told her it was okay, and that he wanted to adopt.

These are the rare times when it’s possible to see his Christian beliefs in action, and it’s why his entourage will defend him so forcefully, even in the difficult moments.

“I think when Bubba Watson gets too serious about golf or life, that’s when you see a different side of him,” said Webb Simpson, a fellow Christian on Tour and one of Bubba’s biggest defenders. “Bubba’s love language is giving you a hard time, so if he’s giving you a hard time, it means he likes you.”

America saw the “good” version of Bubba in 2012, when he found himself stuck in the pine straw on the second hole of a Sunday playoff at the Masters. Blocked out by trees, he had no angle to the green, and so he invented his own—a physics-defying snap hook with a fifty-two-degree gap wedge that sailed toward the far side of the fairway before making a boomerang sweep to the right and, incredibly, settling on the green ten feet from the pin.

Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

Dressed all in white, his long hair trailing out the back of his visor, he emerged from the trees looking like golf ‘s true messiah. The crowd roared one word in unison—”Bubba!”—and reached out to touch him as he glided past. When Louis Oosthuizen failed to get up-and-down from the front of the green, Bubba two-putted to win the green jacket. It’s no exaggeration to call his approach one of the most memorable shots in golf history, and whatever else happens in Watson’s career, he leaves behind a memory that will last as long as people play the sport.

What’s more, it was the perfect consummation of “Bubba Golf,” a sui generis style that is both reckless and awe-inspiring. In the moments before that shot, CBS’s Nick Faldo summed up his chaotic magic when he said that Bubba was “rewriting the instructional book every time he hits a shot.”

In preaching the virtues of that approach, Bubba is his own best promoter.

“My whole game is built on me playing golf, me manufacturing something,” he said. “If you watch, sometimes you’ll see me slice my driver fifty yards to just get into play. Sometimes you’ll see me bomb away and put it in the rough to have an easier shot at the green. All I’m trying to do is score. I don’t care how I do it. There’s no pictures on scorecards.”

Bubba Golf is an explosive, edge-of-your-seat show that produces triumph and tragedy in almost equal measure. It rises from the unapologetic individuality of its practitioner, and would be impossible for anyone else to duplicate. And while it’s unfathomable that another golfer could even imagine the shot he pulled off at Augusta, much less execute it, it’s equally impossible to imagine Bubba winning his first major in any manner that could be called routine. This is a man who operates at many speeds, but “average” is not one of them.

“I’ve never had a dream go this far, so I can’t really say it’s a dream come true,” he told the TV cameras at Augusta, showing the sense of poetry and drama that would come to define his public persona. He broke down in tears as he hugged his mother and thought of his son, Caleb, the one-month-old boy he and his wife Angie had adopted two weeks earlier. At age thirty-three, he was a new father and a major champion. He looked to be armed with a new outlook, and it seemed like his career trajectory could only sail higher. He had us in the palm of his hand.

The second Bubba is the one that took this affection—you might even call it love—and systematically spoiled it.

In 2013, Bubba couldn’t find the winning touch. He managed a couple of top-tens, but failed to make the right shots at the critical moment. Coming into the Travelers Championship in late June—on the same course, River Highlands, where he won his first tournament—he was running out of time to capitalize on the momentum from the previous year. The Connecticut course suited him, though, and with just three holes to play on Sunday, he held a one-shot lead on the field.

On the tee at the 171-yard par-3 16th, he was stymied by the wind and stuck between clubs. He consulted with Ted Scott, who convinced him that he should use a 9-iron instead of the 8-iron. Bubba listened, and whether a fugitive gust of wind rose from nowhere or the club was simply wrong, the ball hit the front of the bank and rolled backward into the water.

Harry How/Getty Images

Bubba turned to Scott with a look of indignation. “Water,” he said, biting off his words. “It’s in the water. That club.” The two proceeded to the drop zone, where Bubba took a penalty and hit his third shot over the green. “You’re telling me that’s the yardage?” he asked Scott. He turned away in disgust. Moments later, when he missed his putt for double bogey, he looked back at Scott and whined, “There’s just no reason for me to show up.”

The CBS cameras caught everything, and the incident became infamous; the video had more than one million views on YouTube before it was removed. On the broadcast, David Feherty summed up the collective reaction: “Now, wait a minute … hey, you hit it, bud!”

Watson took a triple bogey on the hole, and lost the tournament. Later, when pgatour.com’s Brian Wacker asked him about the exchange with Scott, he blew up.

“Don’t try to make me look bad,” Bubba said. “You always do. Don’t. Don’t. We’re not talking anymore.”

The incident painted Bubba in an unflattering light, and it was not an isolated embarrassment. In 2011, he traveled to Europe to play in the French Open near Paris. He missed the cut with back-to-back rounds of 74, but it was his conduct off the course that provided the real fireworks, and led to exchanges like this one:

Q. I heard you went to Paris yesterday?
Bubba Watson: Yeah, yesterday.
Q. Did you like—what did you see?
Bubba Watson: I don’t know the names of all the things, the big tower, Eiffel Tower, an arch, whatever that—I rode around in a circle. And then what’s that—it starts with an L, Louvre, something like that. One of those.

Ignorance is one thing, but Bubba also managed to distinguish himself in France as a temperamental prima donna. He wouldn’t accept any interview requests with foreign outlets, demanded his own courtesy car when someone had the audacity to suggest he share with a European golfer, complained about the lack of ropes keeping the gallery at bay, and howled about the fans with their cameras and phones.

He was the caricature of an ugly American, and fellow pro Stuart Appleby called him out on Twitter, writing, “I’m not perfect all the time, but it is not acceptable to come to another tour and more than once show a lack of respect.”

The cherry on top of Bubba’s international diplomacy sundae came when he told reporters that he would probably never return to Europe— except for the British Open, because it was a major.

So the long-drive outburst at Valhalla was just the latest of Bubba’s greatest hits, and it wasn’t even a surprise. Earlier that week, before any of it happened, Doug Ferguson at the AP had mused that although Bubba was a 33 to 1 shot to win the tournament, he “could get much better odds on annoying someone.”

But we haven’t answered the question: Who is he?

For as much as he craves attention, Bubba Watson is loath to reveal his past. Karen Crouse of The New York Times is one of the few writers to earn unfettered access. In an excellent story called “Growing up Bubba,” she details how his father, Gerry (Bubba’s first name is also Gerry), a Green Beret who served in Vietnam, first took his son to a driving range in the panhandle town of Bagdad, Florida. The boy was six, and it was there that he began playing with a sawed-off 9-iron. Gerry was his only teacher and, according to Bubba, he’s never had a formal lesson.

Scott Michaux of the Augusta Chronicle unearthed another telling detail—Bubba’s father wanted him to play baseball, but to nobody’s surprise, Bubba was an irritable teammate who expected perfection from everybody else. He would become angry when they failed, and he once yelled at a coach whose son made four errors in a game.

Golf was a no-brainer: He could rely on, and blame, only himself. (Though, as we’ve seen, he does manage to get creative within those limitations.) His inventive hook-and-slice style developed in part because he spent his days whacking away at Wiffle balls—bending them in every direction—and in part because of the varied terrain and tight fairways of Pensacola golf courses, which demanded creative thinking.

Stuart Franklin/Getty Images

On the Golf Channel’s interview show Feherty, Bubba opened up about his father’s struggles adjusting to civilian life when he returned from Vietnam. He spoke in his usual clipped style, arms crossed, leaving off pronouns and keeping the narrative tight. Even so, he couldn’t hide his emotion.

“They lived on Pensacola Beach,” he told Feherty. “It was before beach property was really a thing to have so he was the man around the beach. Went to jail a few times—we just won’t say the number—but been to jail a few times for fighting. Just not knowing how to deal with it, a lot of guys don’t know how to deal with stuff, because that’s what they were trained to do . . . when I was born my mom said ‘no more.’ . . . so he straightened up and changed and just was a hard worker and just kinda left that life.”

The more you learn about Bubba, the more you understand that Gerry was the dominant influence in his life. Even Bubba’s emergence as a flamboyant loner came straight from the old man, who wore colorful handkerchiefs to work and inspired his son’s bright clothes and equipment.

Chris Haack, the future coach at the University of Georgia, was working with the American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) when Bubba first burst onto the junior golf scene, and had a front row seat to one of the most singular players he’d ever come across. “He wore these canary yellow knickers or hot pink shorts,” Haack remembered. “He stood out—he was just kind of the guy who had attention drawn to him, and I think he also liked the attention, and wanted to be recognized.”

He never changed. In 2011, an AP story by Doug Ferguson listed the ways he sought the spotlight—how he inserted a pink shaft into his driver when he made the PGA Tour, how he always made sure people were watching when he drove on the practice range, and how he campaigned on Twitter to be on the Ellen DeGeneres show. “And then he would try to explain that he only plays golf for the love of the game, not to get any attention,” Ferguson wrote.

The article came too early to mention Bubba’s purchase of the General Lee car from The Dukes of Hazzard, or the various goofy YouTube videos he made with friends, or his 1.3 million Twitter followers, but the idea comes across—Bubba is an attention hound, right down to his driver cover, which is a miniature shirtless Bubba doll in overalls.

In Michaux’s Augusta Chronicle profile, there’s an old photo of Bubba wearing a typical childhood-era outfit: two-tone golf shoes, long white socks, red knickers made for him by his grandmother, a white-collared shirt with an American flag pattern, and a white Panama-style hat with a blue, star-spangled band.

Haack may have the best perspective on Bubba, having watched him from childhood to college. But even he can’t explain what contrary spirit sometimes takes hold of the former Bulldog. His theory hinges on the idea that despite Bubba’s attempts at presenting a cavalier face to the world, deep down he feels intense pressure. He still hasn’t fully learned to cope, and when something goes wrong, he succumbs more quickly than others to the natural inclination to blame anybody but himself.

This defensiveness seems to stem from insecurity. He was always a poor student, which was a constant source of self-doubt, as was his lower-middle-class upbringing and the contrast it presented with the wealthy kids of the junior golf world. Then, too, he must have felt like an oddball for his strange swing—a reckless creation compared to the mechanical precision he saw in others.

He compensated in different ways. When things went well, he embraced his difference and let it swell his self-image. When things went poorly, he looked for somebody else to blame.

“I would be willing to bet you that deep down he regrets he did that,” said Haack, of the long-drive contest at Valhalla. “But at that particular moment, there was something there that struck him wrong, and he was just going to do totally the opposite of what everyone wanted him to do.”

When Bubba came to Athens after a stint in junior college to improve his grades, he found a trailer where he could live cheaply near campus. He played well for Haack his junior season, won a tournament, and was voted a preseason All-American the next year. But if there’s one constant among those who remember Bubba’s childhood, it’s doubt—doubt that he could ever conquer his own attitude, doubt that he could ever thrive even on a college level.

As if fulfilling those lowered expectations, Bubba had a falling-out with Haack that may have been begun when he went for a par-5 green in two at the NCA A championships against the coach’s orders. That’s only a rumor, but Bubba sat out the next year and watched all five playing teammates, including Erik Compton, become All-Americans.

Even after winning the green jacket, his behavior remained frosty to outsiders. And to Bubba Watson, almost everyone is an outsider. That includes the other Georgia Bulldogs on Tour, five of whom won tournaments in 2014. Their relationship with Bubba is strained to the point of antipathy. When I asked Brian Harman if Bubba was connected to the other Georgia alums, he could only laugh.

“He’s not, man,” he said, shaking his head. “He’s just not. It’s unfortunate, because we all come from the same Georgia family. At one point, Bubba and Haacker had their differences, they just had a little bit of a falling-out.”

Harman held out hope for a true reconciliation, but Brendon Todd was less diplomatic. After he won the Byron Nelson in May, a reporter had asked him whether he received any congratulations from Bubba, and his response—Todd is as considerate and unpretentious a person as you’ll find on Tour—was uncharacteristically terse. “No, I’m not close with Bubba,” he said. “I don’t expect to hear from him.”

“Bubba’s never been friendly with the Georgia players, and none of us really have a good relationship with him,” he told me later. “I don’t know what the reason is. It definitely seems like he has his group out here and he sticks to that group and he doesn’t really socialize with other people.”

Todd’s early career was filled with heartbreak and doubt, and in his first season, when he struggled and eventually failed to keep his Tour card, he thought it would be helpful to have a high-profile player like Bubba, a fellow Bulldog, as a friend. He was disappointed when he tried to approach and introduce himself, though—the only response was a cold blow-off. It was the same in 2012, after Bubba won the Masters and Todd attempted to congratulate him on the range—nothing doing.

Stuart Franklin/Getty Images

Todd decided to give him another chance this year. He had just won the Byron Nelson, and he approached Bubba on the range at the Memorial in Ohio. Again, he congratulated him on his season, hoping he might get a kind word in return.

“Thanks,” said Bubba, barely looking at Todd as he walked away.

“I played with him for the first time at the Greenbrier in July for two days,” Todd told me. “He was fine to play with in the sense that we both played our games. I got the sense that he wanted to be buddies, but the feeling I had gotten from the previous five years was so much the opposite. I just couldn’t.” Todd let a small smile creep onto his face. “I was just there to do my work and listen to him complain.”

Todd may be one of the few Bulldogs who will express his disdain on the record, but it’s a feeling that’s shared, and that comes out in unprotected moments. When, after his best season ever, Georgia alum Chris Kirk failed to make the Ryder Cup as a captain’s pick, his former teammate Kevin Kisner sent a consolation tweet.

“Don’t worry @ChrisKirk,” it said. “They would probably just pair you with bubba.”

Like many of his peers, Todd believes that Bubba hides behind his Christianity without truly putting its tenets into practice. When things get tough for Bubba, retreating to the Bible has become a sort of reflex. At the PGA Championship, when he was asked whether he cared what people thought of him, he was ready with his standard defense.

“Truthfully, no. Because the way I’m trying to live my life, read the Bible, follow the Bible … no matter what I do, no matter if I win every single tournament, half the world is going to love me and half the world is going to hate me no matter what. You can’t impress everybody and you can’t make everybody happy.”

It was classic Bubba—reverting to religion, scolding anyone who questioned him, and placing himself above those with the temerity to criticize a man of God. All of which leads to a familiar question: Does he practice what he preaches?

Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Later in the summer, I spoke with Stephen Bunn, vice president of the College Golf Fellowship, a group that also collaborates with the PGA Tour Fellowship to run weekly Christian Bible study sessions at each Tour stop—sessions at which Watson is a regular. In the course of a long conversation about his beliefs and his mission in golf—since 1998, Bunn has played a key role in growing the organization, to the point that they now receive over a million dollars per year in donations—I asked if the attendance at the Bible sessions had grown in the past decade. He hesitated a moment.

“People can be prohibited from coming to something because of who’s there,” he said, speaking carefully. “They’ll know that in that group there are going to be both moral guys and immoral guys, and there’s going to be guys who might have a stench of Christian body odor. I can’t think of one, I’m just saying…”

Bunn was too diplomatic to mention anyone by name, but it’s hard not to think that one of the players poisoning the well is Watson. There’s an aggression and a sense of superiority to his faith. You can see it in the way he sends Bible verses to friends, or casts them at the media like a fire-and-brimstone preacher in his pulpit. Bubba isn’t just a Christian; Bubba is special. Bubba is the best Christian.

As you might imagine, my attempts to engage him went poorly. A select few journalists are able to gain his trust with time and persistence, but I was new to the Tour and didn’t have that luxury. As much as Bubba is generally disinclined to speak with established media, he was even less eager to open up to someone he didn’t know.

Still, I had to try. After laying what I thought was a decent foundation at press conferences in the first half of the year, I made my first one-on-one approach at the Travelers Championship in late June. He had just finished his Wednesday pro-am, and I waited inside the roped-off putting green while he made his way down up the hill past the 18th hole, signing autographs for fans. He looked irritated, and when he finished he gave his playing partners a signed ball before issuing a terse goodbye. Free from the crowds, he walked toward me, and already I had the sense that my timing was poor. Unfortunately, I was committed.

Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports

“Bubba,” I began, but the words were barely out of my mouth before he snapped.

“I can’t talk right now!”

I had seen this type of reaction before, and I would become more familiar with it as the season wore on—his face flushes, he becomes tense, and he recoils in a defensive posture, as though you’ve just insulted his mother or asked to borrow money. I had been rejected by other golfers so many times that it practically became a pastime, but this was the first time the situation felt truly hostile—like I had cornered a panicked animal. Maybe I should have walked away, but I didn’t.

“Well,” I continued, ashamed at how meek my voice sounded, “I just wanted to introduce myself.”

“You’ve done it,” he barked, moving past me. “You’ve introduced yourself.”

I had an idea, though, something I thought might appeal to his ego, and his sense of his own humble origins.

“I’m writing a book about the Tour,” I offered, “and I think the story of your childhood and where you came from hasn’t really been told.”

He flashed me a suspicious look. “You’re writing a book about my childhood?”

“No, it’s about the PGA Tour,” I tried to clarify, “but you’re a big part of that this year.”

Thinking we were now in a legitimate conversation, I took two steps toward him on the practice green.

“We’re practicing now!” he yelled, and then Ted Scott, the man he publicly humiliates once or twice a year, jumped in front of me like a secret service agent shielding the president from a pistol-toting lunatic.

“We’re practicing!” Scott echoed.

I trudged away, thoroughly beaten and humiliated.

I made my second effort two months later, at the WGC-Bridgestone, and that attempt somehow felt even more doomed. Again, I found him on a practice day, and this time I made sure he had finished his work on the putting green before I approached. Again, I got the flushed face and the frantic eyes when I brought up the idea of a short interview.

“I’m not going to do that,” he yelled, bristling once more with that surprising anger. I wondered if I had murdered a family member of his in a past life. “I’ve got offers to write my own book,” he said. “Why would I give it to you?”

I considered the logic of this, and found the argument fair— though I wished he could get past the idea that I was writing an entire book about him. I didn’t want a repeat of our last confrontation, and had by this point fulfilled my own sense of obligation—I hadn’t succumbed to cowardice and avoided him completely, as I desperately wanted to do—and so I prepared to leave. Unfortunately, we were going in the same direction.

“I’m going to do it for myself!” he barked. He must have realized he’d forgotten to mention Christianity or charity, and so he turned back for a parting shot: “And my charities!”

His agents were no more enthused about a formal interview than their superstar, so I soon gave up the fight. I had to settle for asking him questions at press conferences, which, to his credit, he always answered in interesting ways. There is an undeniable charisma to the man, and there are times when his natural energy and charm shine through. In those moments, you catch yourself liking him—at least until he screws it up again, which is never long in coming.

When I think of Bubba now, after a year in his orbit, two thoughts return. The first is that despite discovering the nuances and the complexities beneath the surface, my gut instinct remains the same—he’s a hypocrite and a prickly narcissist whose occasional flashes of humanity tend to be self-serving.

The second thought, though, is that I’m thrilled he plays professional golf, and I hope he sticks around for years. Everything he does, from the sacred to the profane, makes the entire sport more exciting. “Did you see what Bubba did?” are words I heard again and again in 2014, and each time, I knew I was in for a good story.

Everybody has a quintessential Bubba moment that they never forget, and mine came on Tuesday at the PGA Championship, after his strange performance at the long-drive competition. A few of us caught Bubba by the doorway of the press tent, and the short story he told highlights everything that matters about Bubba—the hypocrisy, the aspiration, the self-righteousness mixed with a total lack of self-awareness, and, yes, the reservoirs of generosity brimming somewhere beneath the surface.

“Last night I sent Teddy and three other guys a verse,” he told us. “James 1:22. I was doing a little study at the house . . . and it says, ‘Don’t merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.’”

From the book SLAYING THE TIGER by Shane Ryan. Copyright © 2015 by Shane Ryan. Reprinted with permission of Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House.

November 20, 2014Baylor-St. Luke’s Medical Center

It’s a week before Thanksgiving, and A.J. Foyt is asleep in a hospital bed in Houston. His chest heaves up and down, but the air in his lungs isn’t his own. For eight days, a ventilator has been aiding his breathing.

After triple bypass heart surgery, he had severe complications. Doctors put him in a coma to heal, but he isn’t getting better.

A.J. and his wife, Lucy, had discussed what they would do in a situation like this. She knew he didn’t want to use extraordinary measures to keep him alive.

A hospital stay isn’t anything new for A.J. Both during and after his racing career he’s had injuries, health complications, long hospitalizations and even longer rehabs.  But this time is different. This time it seems like they might really lose him.

Still, every day A.J.’s family members have come through the door expecting him to be awake. Expecting him to complain about the hospital. Or the food. Or the medicine. Instead, they find him quietly in bed. Eyes closed.

Then, suddenly, he starts to heal. His lungs get stronger. Doctors believe he can breathe on his own. They slowly take him off the anesthesia and wake him from his slumber.

He opens his eyes to a hospital room. Even with the 500 more than six months and 1,000 miles away, he thinks he’s in Indianapolis.

May 8, 2015Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Qualifying Day for the Grand Prix of Indianapolis

In the pits at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where the smells of cigarette smoke, funnel cakes and ketchup give way to burnt rubber and car engines, the A.J. Foyt Racing team is prepped for practice.

A.J.’s first driver, 38-year-old Takuma Sato (#14), from Japan, is off. He squeals out of the pits and onto the track.

Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports

Then A.J. arrives. He drives up in a cart with his buddy Jack Housby. They’ve been friends for more than 50 years. They met racing stock cars together and later, when Housby founded a Mack truck company in Des Moines, they formed a business relationship. He’s A.J.’s constant companion at the races.

A.J. pulls his 80-year-old body out of the cart and walks with a slight limp, a slow horizontal bobbing from foot to foot, then settles into the only chair connected to Sato’s timing stand, a cart with computer screens where team engineers assess data. A.J. holds most of his 250 pounds or so in his chest and stomach, but still looks solid, not soft. He has a round face, squinting eyes usually shaded by a baseball cap, and reddish skin that’s seen many Texas summers. He turns to look at the pit crew.

His other driver, the 24-year-old Jack Hawksworth (#41) from England, pulls out and onto the track. Practice begins.

Car engines groan and A.J. puts on his headset. He leans way back in the chair with his arms crossed. He looks at the leader board. The loudspeaker announces, “A.J. Foyt’s cars are eighth and ninth!”

It’s the first practice on qualifying day of the Angie’s List Grand Prix, the race that kicks off a month of events at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, culminating in the 500 in late May. A.J. is a living legend here. The first person to win the 500 four times: 1961, ‘64, ‘67 and ‘77. One of the best racers of all time and, for many, still the face of the 500. Today, fans are free to roam through the pits, and everybody wants a glimpse of A.J.

A man and his girlfriend stop. Through the noise, he says, “I bet that’s A.J. right there.” He asks her to snap a picture of him with A.J. in the background, but not too close. One woman points and yells, “Look it’s him!” She turns to her friend and they giggle. A man who works at the Speedway says to a colleague, “A.J. looks good. Doesn’t A.J. look good?”

People pour past his seat, taking pictures, making comments, pointing fingers. Young kids in crop tops and sneakers. Old men with leathery skin and business portfolios. Trophy wives in high heels and short skirts. They all love him.

He’s the king of the speedway. The Texas high school dropout who won his first race in a car he built with his daddy. The winner of 67 IndyCar races. The only driver to start in 35 Indy 500 races in a row. The only driver to win the Indy 500, the Daytona 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans (with Dan Gurney) — the signature events for Indy Cars, NASCAR and Sportscars. Named “Driver of the Century” by the Associated Press. If there was an Indianapolis 500 scavenger hunt, “Spotting A.J. Foyt” would be just after “Kissing the bricks” and just before “Watching the winner drink milk.”

And they almost lost him in the offseason this winter. When a tingle in his chest turned into heart surgery and then into a coma, they didn’t know if they would ever see him again. What would the month of May in Indiana be without A.J. Foyt? Now, here he is, sitting in his rightful seat, reigning over the Speedway for another year. They can’t help but be excited.

It was a little much for A.J. The first Grand Prix practice yesterday was his first major race appearance since being hospitalized. Everyone — fans, employees, speedway workers, drivers, team managers — wanted to tell him how good it was to see him back at a race. When he left practice, he was swarmed outside the garage. At least 30 people were thrusting pens and markers at him to sign their cars, flags and papers. He didn’t mind doing a few, but he was tired. And he always wondered how many of his autographs ended up on eBay. When he was in the hospital, he set a goal to make it to the Indy 500, and he was going to damn well be there. He just wishes people were a little more considerate.

So today, to avoid the crowds, he and Housby make a plan to sneak back to the race shop to avoid the fanfare. As they get in their cart, a man behind the fence turns to his friend with a grin. “I’m the only person he would take a picture with earlier at the garage. He told everyone else to piss off.

“That’s A.J. Foyt. I waited 40 years for that.”

He waves and A.J. waves back. “Welcome back, Super Tex!”

Nov. 7, 2014Just outside Houston, Texas

A.J. didn’t think much of the tingle at first. He was about 30 feet out in the woods on his hands and knees, laying a water and electric line to a new horse barn, on a little piece of land he had just bought when he felt something in his chest. He thought it must be nothing, so he finished the job.

It had become his new hobby — buying land and clearing it with a bulldozer, tearing up the brush and knocking down small trees. People were always giving him hell about doing the work himself. Hire someone, they said, you’ve got the money. But it wasn’t about the money — he likes things done a particular way. When you hire someone to do it, they do it their way, and to hell with that. He would laugh when people gave him grief about relaxing.

“I always feel like when you get too damn lazy to work, you ought to lay down and die,” he said. “You’re no good for nothing anyway.”

At about a quarter to 2, when he finished laying the line, he and a boy from the shop went to get lunch. He still felt the burning, so he called his doctor and his daughter-in-law, Nancy, drove him to the hospital. That was the first real sign of trouble. There must be something wrong, she thought, if he was willing to let someone else drive.

He needed triple bypass heart surgery. There were complications. It didn’t look good. He slipped into the coma, and doctors told his family it could be the end.

Then he got better. The same stubborn will that enabled him to win the 1983 Paul Revere 250 with two broken vertebrae, had prevailed again, breathing life into his dying body. He was alive. It was a miracle. But doctors said it would be a long recovery.

Foyt could take the pain. As a professional race car driver he had survived three major crashes and countless injuries. Broken back. Serious burns on his face and hands. Broken legs. Injuries from being run over by his own car. After a suffering a severe compound fracture of his right arm at the inaugeral running of the Michigan 500 in 1981, he famously healed it by painting the length of the fence at his 1,500-acre ranch. More recently, as an amateur bulldozer driver, he was bitten by a poisonous spider, stung more than 200 times by a swarm of killer bees and injured when his tractor fell into the lake. Every time he was hurt, he hated going to the hospital. He liked doing things, and in the hospital he had to sit all day. The only place he ever liked to sit was in a car.

His love of eating had contributed to his waistline over the years, and likely led to his heart trouble. Cheeseburgers, fried chicken, ice cream. In the hospital, the doctors tried to get him to eat vegetables. He told them, “Doc, that’s not gonna happen.”  But all food tasted terrible. He lost his appetite. In all, he lost 50 pounds.

In the hospital, he developed sores on his rear end and the bandages had to be changed twice a day by a nurse. He joked to his friends that at 80 years old he never dreamed his butt would be played with so much. Then a spot on his hand wouldn’t heal. They did a biopsy, found skin cancer and scheduled a procedure to remove it.

After 25 days in the hospital, he was cleared to go home, but he was weak. He still needed someone to change the bandages. And, in the beginning, the man who drove more than 11,000 miles racing around the racetrack in Indianapolis could barely walk a few feet. Slowly, he progressed from needing assistance on a walker to a cane.

His first big outing from the house was his 80th birthday party held in January in the race shop. It was a small gathering with a cake. He put on a brave face, but he was exhausted after the two-hour get-together. In March, he convinced one of the guys in the shop to help him onto his bulldozer so he could dig up some trees and debris. Everyone in the shop held their breath, thinking he wasn’t quite ready to operate machinery, but no one was brave enough to tell him that.

His real goal was to make it to the Indianapolis 500. He had been there for more than 50 years in a row, first as a driver and then as a team owner. It would feel wrong to be anywhere else. It’s what made him. It’s what took a mechanic and turned him into a star — one of the greatest racers in history. And even after winning a staggering number of races all over the world, his first Indy win in 1961 still meant the most.

So, he put his mind to it to be there, and when he put his mind to something it was as good as done. He rested as much as he could (he still did some work on the bulldozer), and he even started eating a salad every once in a while. He learned to change the bandages without the nurse’s help. There was only a small mix up where he was looking into the mirror and put it on upside down.

And he made plans to be there. He booked a hotel room for a month at the Westin downtown and rented a spot for his motor home at the infield to rest and escape the crowds. He felt pretty good. In fact, in March he felt so good that he decided to take a day trip to New Orleans for a test session in advance of the Grand Prix of Louisiana, a short flight there and back from his home in Houston. At the beginning of May he took another trip to the Kentucky Derby to watch his second favorite kind of racing.

He was ready for Indy.

May 9, 2015 Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Morning of the Grand Prix of Indianapolis

The A.J. Foyt racing team is ready for the final warm up practice. Larry Foyt, A.J.’s biological grandson and adopted son, is hobnobbing in the pits — shaking hands and making small talk. He’s young with black hair and a wide smile. He was promoted to president of A.J. Foyt Enterprises Inc. in the offseason, a formality to recognize a role he’s been playing for the past several years. But he still insists that A.J. is “The Boss.”

The team has made a few adjustments since yesterday. Hawksworth qualified 11th and Sato came in 22nd after what the team felt was an unfair block. In Sato’s final lap, Justin Wilson came out of the pits and forced him to lose speed. Larry yelled into his radio and filed a complaint, but it was dismissed. Larry was professional, but clearly still upset.

A.J. wasn’t there to witness the scuffle. The first practice took a lot out of him, and he decided to skip qualifying. It was rare for A.J. to miss it, but he promised his team and family he would rest if he needed it. He wanted to be strong for the 500, 15 days away. Housby flashed an ornery smile, “It’s probably a good thing that A.J. was out at the motor home.”

Larry and A.J.’s leadership styles are decidedly different. Larry has ambitious business plans. He expanded the team this year to running two cars all season long, the first time A.J. Foyt racing has been a two-car team since 2002. He’s also great with the press and sponsors.

A.J. was, well, A.J. As a driver and owner, he yelled at the press and at fans more than once. He’s thrown wrenches at the pit crew, banged on his car when he got pissed and kicked stuff over. A.J. once grabbed journalist Robin Miller and pulled his hair because he said A.J. had cheated. If A.J. were still in charge, yesterday’s conflict might have gone a little differently.

Today, for the final practice on race day, former president A.J. is mellow. As always, he and Housby arrive together in the golf cart. He uses a black step stool that stays hidden under the timing stand to hoist his body into the chair. Practice begins and Hawksworth, then Sato, pull onto the track.

A.J. watches the race like it’s his first. His eyebrows move upward from their position in his typical stern stare. His eyes open wide. His lips part. He even leans way forward in his seat and strains his neck, as if he could see the cars coming a little farther into the turn.

Everywhere he looks holds a memory.

The starting line. He was 23, almost Hawksworth’s age, when he drove on the speedway for the first time in 1958, and qualifying for his first Indianapolis 500 mile race was the thrill of a lifetime. His daddy was so proud.

The pits. This is where races are won and lost. Late in the 1961 race, he stopped for fuel, but there was an error, and he returned to the race without enough to finish. Eddie Sachs pushed hard to keep up, but shredded a tire. Meanwhile Foyt pitted again, but only for enough fuel to finish, just a splash, and raced out of the pits to win his first 500 by just more than 8 seconds.

Bob Harmeyer/Archive Photos/Getty Images

Bob Harmeyer/Archive Photos/Getty Images

Turn One. It was 1966 and on the first lap between the starting line and turn one, Bill Foster lost control and spun, resulting in a 14-car crash. A.J.’s car was damaged and he jumped out to avoid a fire. Worried about getting hit, he climbed the fence to get out of the way and hurt his hand. Even with the wreck, A.J.’s hand was the only injury of the day.

Turn Two. In 1955 he was 20 years old sitting in the stands near turn two watching his first Indianapolis 500. He thought maybe one day he’d be lucky enough to have the chance to race in it.

Turn Three. In the last lap of the 1967 race, A.J. had an odd thought about what would happen in a final-lap crash. So, in turn three of the final lap of the race, he uncharacteristically slowed down, lifting his foot from the accelerator. Out ahead of him, a multi-car crash broke out. A.J. sliced around the wreckage under control, took the lead and won the race.

Turn Four. In 1964, four cars, including A.J.’s, were leading the way and fighting for the win, but two had mechanical failures and the third had a fuel tank explode. He was left alone in the lead to easily take his second win. But victory was not so sweet. On the second lap of the race there had been a fiery, seven-car crash coming out of turn four involving two of his friends and competitors, Eddie Sachs and Dave MacDonald. Upon exiting his car to celebrate, he learned that they didn’t make it. He would never forget it.

Today, Hawksworth and Sato are running in the middle of the pack. Sato is 12th, then 13th. Hawksworth is 10th, then 11th. Sato drops to 15th. In the end, Hawksworth comes in 12th and Sato is 14th.

A fan comes to the fence. “Super Tex! Glad to see you back, buddy!” Foyt smiles and hobbles to the cart. He and Housby drive back to the garage, where he shakes off an autograph.

He’s doesn’t like to be rude, but he’s tired. People have said that a race is a marathon, and that might be true. But today, for A.J., it’s a series of short sprints, moving from checkpoint to checkpoint. He would like to floor it, but he can’t. Instead, he tries to plan for what’s just around the next turn, and, right now that’s a padded chair in the shop.

May 9, 2015Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Afternoon of the Grand Prix of Indianapolis

Back at the shop, A.J. and Housby sit at a high table. It’s a sprawling garage, taking up most of the first row of “Gasoline Alley.” One end is divided from the garage and has a few tables with chairs and an ice cream freezer, though it’s not Blue Bunny, A.J.’s favorite, from Texas.

Eddie Cheever, now a race analyst for ESPN and ABC, drops by and joins them at the table. Cheever raced for A.J. in the ‘90s, and he wants to check in on the legend.

Cheever often thinks about the first time he met A.J. He was a nervous young racer, and he approached A.J. to ask for some advice. His response? “Keep turning left.”

He almost walked right by A.J. on the track the day before. He thought he was too skinny to be A.J.

They exchange pleasantries and then Housby launches into a story. A.J. grins. He loves to listen to Housby tell stories.

Above: A.J. Foyt (left) and Jack Housby

“You know what he did, don’t you?” Housby says with raised eyebrows.

“What?” Eddie asks smiling.

He decided to take matters into his own hands …”

Cheever leans forward.

“He put horse medicine on his sores,” he says. “Stuff he got from his veterinarian.”

A.J. had seen the medicine clear up infections in horses. It took some convincing, but he finally persuaded his nurse to slather it on his wounds.

Cheever laughs. “Is that right?”

“That’s the truth,” A.J. says emphatically, shaking his head. “Doctor says they’re healin’ up good.”

The three men laugh and talk for a few more minutes. Before he leaves, Cheever asks if they’ll be at an upcoming race.

“We’ll be there,” Housby says. “We might have to ship our ashes there, but we’ll be there.”

It’s not wholly a joke. In July 2014 Housby was diagnosed with cancer. Rounds of chemotherapy and radiation at Mayo Clinic in Arizona hadn’t been able to beat it. Behind the 80-year old’s brave face and sharp dress shirt, slacks and suspenders, cancer was ravaging his body.

A.J. had weathered other health issues in the last several years — leg pain, knee surgery, back surgery, hip surgery — some due to old injuries and others sustained during his new hobby of clearing properties.

When Housby told him he was sick, A.J. said, “You son of a bitch, it’s your turn now. You’re old as hell.”

They’re competitive with one another — urging the other one not to give up on life just yet. Needling each other is their way of pumping each other up, from getting down. They’d rather joke about it. How long are you gonna live? Think we’re gonna make it much longer?

When Housby turned 80 this year, six days before A.J., he gave him a call.

“Well I made it,” Housby said. “You’ve got a week to go, cowboy!”

The two have always been close, but have grown considerably closer in the last year.

During the worst bout of Housby’s cancer, he called A.J.

“Bring me a gun up here,” he said.

“You’re braver than that aren’t you?” A.J. asked.

“Yeah.”

“Then don’t be an idiot.”

A.J. was worried. “I’m gonna call you every day,” he said. “And you better be there to answer it.”

So he did. Each day they would talk on the phone about their families, their health, how much they hated hospitals.

When A.J. had heart surgery, Housby was feeling better, and the roles reversed. Housby started calling A.J. every day.

During one call A.J. said, “Jack, you asked me for a gun. Why don’t you bring me one? I think I’m ready to get out of here.”

“Nope,” Housby said. “You know what you told me.”

Indianapolis was the first race they’d attended together since Housby’s diagnosis. A.J. hated to think about it, but he couldn’t help but wonder if this might be their last time in Indianapolis together.

May 9, 2015Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Running of the Grand Prix of Indianapolis

A line of people forms in the pits near where A.J. is sitting in the swivel chair. After a few minutes he stands and puts on a smile. They each have a message for him, and the processional of selfies with A.J. begins.

“How you feeling A.J.? Hang in there, man.”

Smile. Click.

“Thank you so much. My dad was your biggest fan.”

Smile. Click.

“I gotta get a picture with you.”

Smile. Click.

“You are the greatest of all time!”

Smile Click.

“Pleasure to meet you.”

Smile. Click.

A man approaches with a piece of paper for A.J. to sign. It’s his baby’s sonogram. A.J. looks at it and signs.

A few minutes later, the drivers start to grid and the fans go to their seats. Soon, Hawksworth and Sato are racing.

“Make sure everything’s warm,” Larry tells the drivers through the radio. “It’s a start this time.”

Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports

Then something goes wrong. Hawksworth gets squeezed. He moves over. There’s a wreck. He’s OK, but they haul the car into the pits to replace his front wing. A.J. stands and cranes his neck to assess the damage. Meanwhile, Sato is able to take advantage of the multi-car accident and vaults from 22nd to 12th on the first lap.

The pit crew repairs Hawksworth’s car and he’s back on the track. After pitting early, Sato slips to 20th, but then regains position.

At lap 25, Larry tells Sato, “The race is right there in front of you. Go get ‘em.”

The timing stand holds a row of computers. The men around him — the engineers and team managers and Larry — focus intently on the screens, but A.J. looks out at the track. When Sato and Hawksworth come in for pit stops, he leans forward and examines the crew, how the car looks, what they’re fixing, how they work. The others stick to the screens, assessing data. When he raced, there were no screens. A.J.’s data was experience, and he stored it all in his mind.

The race falls into place for Sato and he slowly climbs up the leaderboard. With six laps to go, he moves into ninth place.

“Perfect,” Larry says. “Good job. There’s no one behind you. No one behind you.” Then later, “Good job. Three to go.”

On the final lap, the crew holds their breath, hoping he holds on. Sato comes in smooth and takes ninth: the second top-10 finish of the season for A.J. Foyt Racing. A.J. takes a picture with Sato and then leaves to rest up.

“Good job everyone,” Larry says. “Great job in the pits, good stops. We’ve got a little momentum going into the 500.”

May 24, 2015Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Running of the Indianapolis 500

The day is finally here. A.J. slowly paces the race shop. Leaning against tables. Walking to the other side to talk to a mechanic. If he keeps moving, maybe he won’t have to sign any more autographs. Fans cluster outside — some have been there for hours. When he finally emerges, they clap and chant his name. “A.J.! A.J.! A.J.!”

When he arrives at the track, there is a long line of white convertibles. For the last few years, the track has organized a pre-race legends lap, where former Indy 500 winners are driven around the track.

A.J. steps into the backseat of the first convertible and hoists himself up onto the back, where a beauty queen in a parade would sit. He leans against one arm behind him for support. The line of cars pulls onto the track and he waves to the fans with his other hand. Friends and competitors follow in cars behind him.

When they reach the finish line, each legend is announced. A.J. leads the way, first as usual, followed by Dan Gurney, Parnelli Jones, Rick Mears, Bobby Unser and several others who were used to being behind A.J.

“A.J. Foyt is in the house!” an announcer yells. A.J.’s cheer is the loudest.

After the loop, A.J. gets on the cart to return to the garage. Gasoline Alley is even more crowded.

“Good luck today, buddy,” a man yells.

“I love you, man,” someone says while slapping A.J. on the shoulder.

As the cart pulls away, a man carrying a red beer cooler sprints after him.

“A.J., A.J., A.J.,” Foyt says in a high-pitched voice mimicking the fans.

Back at the garage, a girl stands outside. “A.J. will you sign my hat?” Exhausted, A.J. cuts a straight path for a chair. “What a mean man,” she says.

Inside, a group of people is waiting for a photo opp. They’ve won a contest to meet A.J.

When they leave, A.J. grabs a frozen ice cream cone and plops into a chair. It’s about an hour before race time, and the shop is quiet. Larry joins A.J. at the table.

Larry asks A.J. how he’s getting to the pits from where he’s dropped off by the cart. “Well, I can walk from there,” he says.

“It’s a long way,” he says. Larry outlines an easier plan. A.J. agrees.

“Wanna go to the pits now?” A.J.’s longtime spokeswoman, Anne Fornoro, asks.

“Not yet,” he says with a smile. “Then I’ve gotta sign autographs.”

Half an hour before race time, Fornoro drops A.J. and Housby off about 50 feet from the pits. They head off in the right direction, but they’re held up. As they weave through the crowds, everyone wants to know how A.J. is doing. They want a picture. They want to shake his hand.

The marching band starts to play and they start announcing the drivers. A.J. and Housby see a clearing and head toward Sato’s pit. As they approach, they notice a concrete barrier about 4 feet tall, much higher than they had expected. A young guy hops over it. The two men consider the climb and look at each other.

“I can’t,” Housby says.

“I’m gonna look embarrassed when I bust my butt,” A.J. says.

They rest against the wall, laughing, and make a plan to go back the way they came to get around the wall. After a few minutes, they sneak by where the drivers are being announced and finally make it to the pits.

They sit side by side on a shorter concrete barrier to listen to the starting prayer and the national anthem. Then A.J. moves to his usual seat at the timing stand. To finish the opening of the 500, the a capella group Straight No Chaser sings the traditional song, “(Back Home Again in) Indiana.” Then the race begins.

“Drivers to your cars!”

“Ladies and gentlemen, please start your engines!”

The cars leave the grid and follow the pace car, warming up their tires. Alex Tagliani’s car stays behind. For this race, Tagliani is racing on A.J.’s team. His car won’t fire. It needs a push start. He finally makes it to the track.

The pace car leads the way for several laps, and then the race restarts.

Once again, one of A.J.’s cars wrecks in the first lap. While passing on the first turn, Sato and Sage Karam touch wheels, Sato’s left front to Karam’s back right, and  both cars, as well as that of Ryan Briscoe, end up damaged. Karam didn’t re-enter the race.

Sato comes to the pits for repairs. A.J. stands to look at the car. He sits when Sato returns to the track.

He’s seen it before. He’s seen it all before. There’s nothing that happens at Indy that A.J. hasn’t seen in one of the almost 5,000 competitive laps he’s taken here, more than 60 hours of racing, hours more practicing, and days and weeks and years thinking about it, replaying races run and dreaming of races to come.

He can feel it. The heat of the car. The smell of the engine. Gripping the wheel tightly, forcing it left. Feeling every turn, bump and swerve. The car was an extension of his body, and he could sense when something was off. When the car was draggy. When it felt too loose, as if he could spin out at any turn. When there was a malfunction. How to fix what was wrong. It’s what made him A.J.

He misses it.

Later in the race, in lap 176, Hawksworth spins and sets off a chain reaction wreck that includes two other cars that sends Sebastian Saavedra to the hospital. Hawksworth is unharmed and finishes 27th.

Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports

As the 500 miles continue, A.J. is tiring. He drinks a red Gatorade for energy. He pulls on the overhanging awning to steady himself in his seat.

The rest of the race is fairly uneventful for A.J. Foyt Racing, but the last few laps are a frenzy as Will Power, Scott Dixon, Charlie Kimball and Juan Pablo Montoya weave and fight for the lead. In the end, Montoya is victorious.

Even with the wreck, Sato manages to climb to 13th, Tagliani is 17th and Hawksworth places 24th.

After the race, Karam, the young driver who was involved in the wreck with Sato at the beginning, approaches. Housby stands up and says something to him. Karam leans closer and yells in his face, something A.J. might have done back when he was younger and didn’t take crap from anyone. He still doesn’t. He’s pissed. No one is going to talk to Housby like that. As Karam starts to walk away, A.J. yells at him and walks toward him. A few guys from Karam’s pit crew come up beside him.

“Move back,” A.J. says as he prepares to punch the 20-year-old driver. More people come and break up the fight.

A.J. goes back to the garage to cool off. The race didn’t end like he’d hoped, but at least it was over. He’s tired, his limp worse and his walking strained. He pulls two ice cream cones out of the freezer and goes to the motor home.

May 25, 2015Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Day after the Indianapolis 500

On Monday, the sounds of screaming fans and the rumble of engines are replaced by the occasional clinking of empty beer cans rolling under the bleachers. A.J.’s garage is full of people packing the contents of the team into Featherlight trailer hauled by Housby Mack trucks. They’ll be heading up to the Chevrolet Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix soon — the race is next weekend.

A.J. arrives at noon with a full belly and a story he wants to tell. He had hoped to eat breakfast at Charlie Brown’s Pancake & Steak House, it was his kind of place, but there was a line out the door. They settled on Einstein Bros. Bagels, but one bite of his sandwich and A.J. was done. “They can keep that shit.” They went back to Charlie Brown’s and the line was still long. Finally, they decided on Steak ‘n Shake. For breakfast, A.J. had a double cheeseburger and a cup of chili.

The story lies in what’s in his hand, and he’s showing it off to everyone. It’s a bolt that he found in his tire. It’s about half an inch across and an inch-and-a-half long. It was perfectly inserted in his tire, but that wasn’t an accident; it wasn’t pointy at the end.

A.J. assumes someone placed it behind his tire on purpose after seeing the “A.J. Foyt” sign in his car window, still there from the police escort yesterday. When he backed out of the parking spot, the bolt must have lodged in the tire. He’s mad he didn’t take the sign out last night.

He limps around the garage showing off the bolt. Everyone has a theory. The atmosphere is casual and relaxed. The crowds are gone, no one is asking for A.J.’s autograph and he doesn’t seem anxious to leave. The mechanics clean parts and haul them to the truck at a leisurely pace. A few of them yawn — it was a long night.

Some of the guys on the team stayed up partying. A.J. stayed up having dinner with Housby and other old friends and later fell asleep watching the Coca-Cola 600 in his hotel room. A.J.’s spokeswoman was up late into the morning writing the team recap for the website, in this case what she calls “making chicken shit into chicken salad.”

A.J. doesn’t blame the drivers for what happened yesterday. Sometimes there were good years, and sometimes there were bad years. They didn’t have any luck on their side this year. He wanted to make sure they knew that.

In the afternoon, A.J. goes to a fan club party for Sato. It’s in the newly opened Foyt Wine Vault located just outside the Speedway. Larry and A.J. Foyt IV, A.J.’s grandson, created the wine bar.

A.J. doesn’t know much about the wine. He thinks they have four or five different kinds, and sometimes he likes to mix the reds and the whites together. But the boys wanted to get into the wine business, and A.J. supported their dream on one condition. “Ours has to be better than Mario Andretti’s damn wine, or I’m gonna kick your butt.” They’ve won some awards in California. A.J. likes it when they win.

When Sato arrives, A.J. calls him over to the bar. They talk about what happened the day before. A.J. wants Sato to know it’s not his fault. A lot of the boys coming up here don’t have the experience, he says. The boy saw him coming up fast and just moved over.

“They’re used to runnin’ them little cars and blockin’.”

Sato shakes his head.

“A lot of these guys when they drop the green flag, they leave their brains in their helmet bag.”

A.J. hangs out at the wine bar for a while and later goes back to the motor home to rest. The Indianapolis 500 was over. He had made it his goal, and it felt good to win that, at least.

In a few days he’ll drive up to the race in Detroit, and after that he’ll fly back to Houston. When he gets home, it will be 362 days until the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500. A milestone. He can’t miss that. And he’ll be calling Housby every day, to make sure he’ll be there, too.

Until then, he’ll be busy clearing properties. After all, getting back to his old life means doing the things he has always done, the way he’s always done them.

He’s thinking about buying another piece of land. It’s 25 acres right next to a 200-acre farm he already owns. That way, he’ll have the whole place. Currently, there’s a doublewide trailer on the property.

He thinks he’ll probably set it on fire.

Stepping from a baseball dugout after his pre-adolescent players had cleared it of their bats, mitts and empty Gatorade bottles, coach Chris Janes reached for a Marlboro. He lit it and cupped it in his left hand, concealing the adult addiction from the few straggling youth ballplayers heading for their parents’ cars.

It was mid-May, and the past six months had been chaotic, unsettling and somewhat mystifying for the suburban Chicago father of four sons. But to anyone who knows Chris Janes — although, in all honesty, very few people know him well — his next words would be unsurprising, for Janes is not a man who backs off his core beliefs, or backs down from a fight.

“Yes, I’d do it all over again,” he said, taking a drag on the cigarette. “I thought it was the right thing to do then. I still think it was the right thing. Even after everything that’s happened, the death threats and all that, I believe it was the right thing.”

Janes has played many different roles in life: eldest sibling of six, high school and college quarterback, first in his family to attend college (at a small school in suburban Chicago then called the College of St. Francis), husband, father, youth sports coach. But to the general public of Chicago, he’ll forever be regarded as the rival youth baseball coach who blew the whistle on Jackie Robinson West. His formal complaint to Little League International in Williamsport, Pa., eventually caused the vaunted South Side team to be stripped of its much-heralded 2014 Little League national title. Little League officials in Williamsport ruled that JRW directors fielded ineligible players and later falsified league boundary maps to conceal their actions. Mountain Ridge from Las Vegas, which lost to JRW in the national finals, became the U.S. champions.

As one might imagine, leveling allegations of cheating against the beloved hometown champs — no less, a squad of African-American youngsters presumably from some of the poorest neighborhoods of this Midwestern metropolis — did not endear him to fellow Chicagoans. After all, the boys were feted with a major downtown celebration that drew tens of thousands of adoring fans. Chicago magazine named them “Chicagoans of the Year” and Mayor Rahm Emanuel dubbed them “the pride of Chicago.” For weeks last summer, JRW was a national feel-good story, and President Obama invited the team to the White House. So among the cascade of epithets hurled Janes’ direction on social media: “lowest of the low,” “super hater” and “racist devil.” “Shame on you #ChrisJanes you really are a loser!” And that was only the beginning of the largely anonymous hate spewed his way.

Indeed, when Janes decided to file the complaint last fall, he had little idea that he was walking himself into something far larger than a dispute over baseball played among 12-year-old boys. In a country still riven by racial turmoil, he was stepping into a virtual minefield of social and cultural discontent. His life hasn’t been the same since.

The undoing of Jackie Robinson West’s triumphal journey to fabled Williamsport began last fall when Janes connected with Mark Konkol, a reporter for a local Chicago news website, DNAinfo.com. Konkol, a beefy native Chicagoan who had shared a Pulitzer Prize as a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times by investigating the impact of gun violence in the city, lives on the city’s South Side, and he had been hearing rumors that JRW loaded its World Series team with ineligible players from suburbs outside JRW league boundary lines. Smelling a story, Konkol began to ask around, and a relative pointed him toward Janes, who coached the relative’s son in the neighboring Evergreen Park Little League.

Meanwhile, Janes, a vice president for the Evergreen Park league, had been receiving excessive grief from parents of EP players. As part of Jackie Robinson West’s march through the national tournament last summer, in the sectionals, the ultra-talented JRW squad had beaten Evergreen Park by an outrageous score of 43-2 in a game cut to four innings by the mercy rule. Upset parents questioned Janes just how their All-Star team suffered such an embarrassing thumping, especially since their boys had beaten JRW as 10-year-olds in 2012. Janes replied that he believed JRW recruited ringers from the suburbs, although, at the time, he had no specific proof. In fact, Janes and other local coaches long had suspected that JRW was recruiting outside players. Year by year, JRW player faces would change, especially among the most gifted of the All-Star athletes, according to Jim Walsh, an EP coach for more than a decade. “Each year, they reload with new kids, and we have to be ready for them,” Walsh said.

But, after the South Side team became a national news story with its exciting Little League victory over favored Las Vegas, the evidence against JRW was not hard to amass. A handful of JRW players had received public congratulations from a congresswoman, a suburban mayor and others who hailed from outside JRW’s boundaries, with each specifically noting that players lived or went to school in their locales, outside the area served by JRW. So Janes scoured the Internet, documented such information and submitted his findings to Little League. Konkol, in turn, detailed the alleged infractions in a lengthy account for DNAinfo. Konkol’s first story, which ran in mid-December, was rooted in the fact that Janes had filed a formal complaint alleging the cheating.

This is when I first met Janes. A youth baseball coach myself, I had been researching and reporting on radical changes to the sport at the youth level. Last spring, I wrote a piece for the Washington Post on the dramatic proliferation of travel club baseball and the accompanying siphoning of talent from community baseball leagues. In so doing, I had followed the JRW team to Williamsport to watch their run in the Little League tournament, which was nothing short of miraculous.

It’s not hyperbolic to say that this South Side team was one of the most talented and most exciting youth baseball teams ever assembled. The Little League tournament is broadcast nationally on ESPN, and this all-black squad of sluggers, rubber arms and, especially, warp-speed sprinters quickly drew fans nationwide — especially among black Americans. These boys hit the ball hard, stole every base they could, took each extra base remotely available, and generally distracted and confused their opposition throughout the tournament. It was as if the spirit of their namesake, speedster Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers, lived inside these kids.

Nuccio DiNuzzo/Chicago Tribune/TNS via Getty Images

At Howard J. Lamade Stadium in Williamsport, their blue-gold Great Lakes merchandise sold out within days of their arrival. They became a cause celebre among black Major Leaguers, with stars like Carl Crawford and Andrew McCutchen expressing support. Coupled with the appearance of star female pitcher Mo’ne Davis of Philadelphia, ESPN drew monster ratings for the youth tourney. And with Major League Baseball focusing on bringing the game back to urban areas, the rise of JRW could not have come at a more opportune moment for baseball as an institution in America, the first sport to desegregate its ranks by admitting the great Number 42, Jackie Robinson, in 1947.

So when the cheating allegations surfaced in the media in mid-December, several months after Janes had filed his complaint, I quickly contacted him. The next morning, he and I met at a suburban diner on a typically dreary, cold December day in Chicago. Dressed in a casual tan overcoat and faded blue jeans, Janes looked much like any suburban dad on a day off work. He arrived late and harried, which is not his typical state. But 15 minutes earlier, Janes had found himself on the phone with a Chicago newspaper columnist suggesting that his motivation for filing the complaint against JRW was racially tinged. Janes explained that he viewed the issue in a moral sense, not racial. “I just wanted to expose the cheating,” he said. “It had nothing to do with the JRW kids being black.”

As it turns out, Janes himself is married to an African-American woman and has four biracial sons. So defending himself against charges of racism is not something that Janes had ever prepared for, or had ever remotely considered might occur to him. “Should I have told her my wife is black?” he asked me plaintively.

After ordering a Denver omelet, Janes tossed his menu onto the table and shrugged. He remained agitated, still trying to mentally process the uneasy encounter with Mary Mitchell, an African-American writer for the Chicago Sun-Times who is known for taking up black causes around the city. For several years, Mitchell had been an ardent media supporter of the players, coaches and parents of Jackie Robinson West, well before the Little League on the city’s predominantly black South Side burst into the national zeitgeist.

In 2014, Mitchell’s long crusade finally paid major dividends. She got to follow the Little League team to Williamsport, was provided insider access as she chronicled its magnificent tournament journey, and then celebrated its hard-fought U.S. Championship. Along the way, her boosterish writing made her sound almost as if she were a team parent. She did as much as any single journalist to set a media agenda lifting the JRW boys, their coaches and their loved ones onto a pedestal above their peers.

At the time, Mitchell’s mission seemed noble. After all, the JRW Little League is rooted in the midst of several challenging Chicago neighborhoods, where crime, poverty, underperforming schools, drug dealing and other societal ills can make everyday living nothing short of a treacherous human struggle.

The JRW Little League was founded in 1971 by Joseph Haley, a teacher who, troubled by negative influences creeping into his South Side community, wanted to provide inner-city youths with a positive outlet. Over the years, even as black youths turned away from baseball and toward football and basketball, JRW blossomed into one of the most successful and heralded youth baseball leagues in Illinois. “Every black kid on the South Side wants to play for Jackie Robinson,” explained Carlton Hondras, whose son, Trey, was a star player on JRW’s World Series team.

JRW’s home field, Jackie Robinson Park, is a long rectangular patch of deep green among gray city streets and uneven sidewalks at the corner of 106th and Aberdeen. It doesn’t look all that different from any other grouping of youth ball fields, but, true to Haley’s original vision, the park serves as an urban oasis for young athletes.  It is an unwritten law on the South Side that Jackie Robinson Park is sacred ground, that the neighborhood’s corner drug dealers and pistol-toting gang bangers take their business elsewhere. And they heed this law, out of respect for the children at play, out of fealty to the dedicated parents and volunteers who run the highly-touted JRW Little League. “Those fools running the streets, they leave us alone,” said Jason Little, a JRW coach and a former corrections officer.

And now along comes Janes, a white guy from mostly white Evergreen Park, a suburb just a few miles to the west, trying to tear down these inspirational Little League victors in their moment of national glory. Was this allegation born of racism? To a longtime black newspaper columnist like Mary Mitchell, who has spent decades chronicling racial injustices toward African-Americans, it had to be.

“Mary just kept asking why I was doing this to Jackie Robinson,” Janes said. “She kept asking if it was because I was white. I kept telling her that I’m not a racist. I just know she’s going to slaughter me tomorrow in her column.”

Janes was a rookie dealing with the media, but he was clear-eyed enough to see this freight train roaring down the tracks, headed straight for him. The headline on Mitchell’s column the next morning: Jackie Robinson West team’s rival says he’s not a racist.

The implication from that headline, of course, is this: While Janes says he’s not a racist, dear Reader, the jury’s still out.

There’s no specific look or résumé for a whistleblower, that freethinking individual who publicly exposes misconduct or dishonesty within a cohesive group, often at a steep cost to his or her own reputation. But if there were such a human template, Janes would not fit the profile you’d draw up. Little about him on the outside says natural-born crusader.

Then again, many whistleblowers insist they are not a special breed, just regular folks caught in an untenable and unjust situation that needs to be rectified, and only they can do it. Jeffrey Wigand, the chemist portrayed in the movie “The Insider” who exposed tobacco companies for dishonestly marketing its cancer-causing products, said, “We were just ordinary people placed in some extraordinary situations and did the right thing … as all should do.” But those ordinary people often see their lives altered in negative ways. For example, college recruiting whistleblowers are regularly ostracized by fans. Wigand’s marriage fell apart and he left his lucrative profession.

But ordinary person Chris Janes rather fits that description.

Now in his late-30s, Janes has slightly sad, droopy eyes and a close-cropped haircut. In several of our meetings, he typically dressed in middle-class suburban dad wear — khaki pants, crew-neck sweaters. He doesn’t particularly stand out physically in a crowd. In his Everyman face, Janes could pass for a modern day Richie Cunningham, now matured into parenthood.

His childhood, however, was not something out of “Happy Days.” His mother and father split when Janes was less than a year old, and Janes never saw his father again. He grew up in Justice, Ill., a working-class suburb on the fringe of Chicago, in a household headed by his stepfather, an ironworker, and his mother, a traditional homemaker. The couple had five more children. As an adult, Janes has grown estranged from those half-siblings and his mother. He doesn’t care to talk about his family life, but his closest friend noted that at least one of Janes’ half-siblings has had drug and legal issues. “Chris was sort of the redheaded stepchild,” said Matt Martus, whom Janes has known since their college football days in the mid-1990s, when Janes was the quarterback and Martus the running back. “I just know it was kind of a rough life for him.”

Today, Janes looks every bit the part of a suburban father of four boys all under 15. Traditional men’s haircut. Less-than-flashy earth-toned clothes. Clean-shaven. All-American athlete look, only all grown up and on the verge of middle age. He coaches his boys in baseball and basketball and spends much of his precious little spare time hitting the gym to keep in shape. It shows. He’s not a large man, but his shoulders and chest are broad for his size, and there’s no trace of a spare tire around his mid-section. To earn a living, he manages a retail store that sells low-cost brand name clothing, in downtown Chicago.

He has the typical twin worries of modern American parents: How to limit and monitor his kids on social media. How to afford college for his quartet of boys. “Looking at the math — for about a whole decade, I’m gonna have two off at college at one time,” he said, wincing. “Not cheap.”

He’s slightly old school. He doesn’t use social media, and, in fact, has little use for its existence. He’s quite bright, although he occasionally misuses a college-level word.

But his personable demeanor and Everyman appearance belie a certain revolutionary character trait: He has a crystal clear sense of right and wrong, and he’s not afraid to fight for someone he believes has been wronged. Martus recalled an incident from college in which a woman in their group was being mistreated by a drunken student amid a football trip to Creighton University in Nebraska. “I told Chris he needed to back away, that I had a conversation with this ignorant guy,” Martus said. “But Chris just went up and started pummeling the guy. Chris wasn’t afraid to fight for what he felt was right.”

Despite this somewhat pugnacious nature, Janes devoutly believes in fair play, especially in children’s sports. In our several interviews, Janes was outspoken against the rapid advancement of travel club sports. He argued that travel sports creates an uneven playing field for families who can afford thousands of dollars per year to put their kids onto professionally coached teams, leaving behind kids of more modest means. “He doesn’t believe in that for the little guys,” Martus said. “He believes everyone should have equal opportunity. I guess that does make him kind of a rebel, huh?”

With Janes guided by this philosophy, it becomes more understandable why he would take on a crusade against a Little League team stacked with expertly-trained travel players.

But perhaps even more, Janes thinks that, with its high-caliber players, JRW showed poor sportsmanship when its All-Star team demolished the Evergreen Park All Stars by 41 runs in that Little League sectional game last summer.

“It’s an eye-popping score, isn’t it?” Janes asked me. “No one ever sees that score [in Little League], because no coach lets it get to that point. They stop runners at third. They bat a right-handed kid left-handed to get an out, or they do something, anything, to stop from scoring, if they can. But sending home a runner from first on a single, when you’re already up by 31 runs? Stealing second and third base when you are up by 31 runs? What is going on? Jackie Robinson just poured it on us.”

At the center of this issue is the extraordinary expansion of travel club baseball in recent years. All of the 2014 JRW players — and most of the players on other teams that made it to Williamsport — also played for elite travel teams outside their community leagues. But Evergreen Park has held firm that no travel players are permitted in its Little League. This places the community at a severe disadvantage at tournament time. “For Chris, he’s not about turning his kids into college athletes. That’s not what motivates him in youth sports,” Martus said. “He wants kids to turn out to be the best adults that we can make them. That’s what Chris strives for with his own kids and with the kids he coaches.”

Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images

Above: LLWS star Trey Hondras helped Jackie Robinson West crush Evergreen Park

There’s a price in holding firm to this ethical standard. Evergreen Park has lost dedicated, athletic players to full-time travel squads. Meanwhile, JRW has fielded talented players like Pierce Jones, a tall slender outfielder with a sweet swing, and Trey Hondras, a power-hitting, long-limbed first baseman whose handsome looks drew the attention of pre-teen girls nationwide. Both are elite-level travel ballplayers, with Jones so talented and precocious that he “played up” on travel team for 13-year-olds in 2014.

Last summer, JRW’s Little League tournament play in the southwest Chicago-area district opened with a game against Evergreen Park. These two communities had long been local baseball rivals, but such rivalries grow most intense in the 12-year-old year, that final magical season of Little League for boys, when they are young enough to be considered children yet old enough to play the sport at a highly athletic level. The tournament teams consist of All-Star squads selected from players throughout each community’s Little League. Two years earlier, as 10-year-olds, this group of Evergreen Park All-Stars beat JRW’s All-Stars. However, in 2012, that JRW team did not boast the same players as in 2014.

For Evergreen Park, it was inauspicious start. Jones, who would smash three homers in one game in Williamsport, cracked a home run in the very first inning.  But in that game, and through much of JRW run through Illinois and regional tourney games, the showstopper was Hondras, who launched two round-trippers in the first inning alone against Evergreen Park. One was a tape-measure shot, soaring high over the center field fence.

“We were playing in Hegewisch, and it was a short fence, about 210 feet,” EP coach Walsh recalled. “But one of those Hondras homers, I swear, it must’ve gone 400. I’ve been coaching 15 years and I’ve never seen a 12-year-old hit one farther.”

Months later, Carlton Hondras vividly recalled his son’s Ruthian shot. “That ball traveled over the fence, over a house, and into the street in the next subdivision over. I think it even hit a parked car. You shoulda seen it. Damn!” Carlton told me with a big smile on his face. Before even one inning was recorded, JRW was winning 13-0 and JRW was on a road toward Williamsport.

But on the Evergreen Park side, there was no joy. A couple of player parents squabbled with each other amid the baseball beating. Other parents silently watched their unknowing kids get walloped on the field, a sense of inner horror filling them, a certain horror that only a sports parent can truly understand. A couple of innings into the game, one Evergreen Park mother sat alone, apart from the other parents, breaking down in tears as she watched her son’s team decimated in such embarrassing fashion. “I guess my son learned a lesson,” the mother, Cheri McKeown, told me, reflecting back on that inglorious day for Evergreen Park baseball. “If you play by the rules, you get pounded.”

It’s uncertain whether either Hondras or Jones, as well as several others, were eligible to play for JRW. Carlton Hondras lives in suburban South Holland, and Trey attended a middle school in suburban Homewood. Carlton Hondras said his son had various residences. Other players attended school, and their parents lived in suburbs, south of the city limits.

Janes was not a coach specifically for the 2014 Evergreen Park All-Star team of 12-year-olds. In fact, he was busy coaching his younger son’s team in tournament action that day. But as league vice-president, he felt the pain of parents like Cheri McKeown, and he felt the wrath of their disenchantment. “My parents,” as Janes called them, “they were not a happy bunch, and that’s putting it mildly. I felt like I needed to do something to prove that we didn’t deserve to lose like that.”

Janes has paid dearly for that decision. When Little League International revoked JRW’s title on Feb. 11, it found that JRW and the Illinois District 4 Administrator falsified a boundary map to place players on their team “who did not qualify to play because they lived outside the team’s boundaries.” Afterwards, much of the backlash in Chicago was directed not at the JRW coaches and league officials who broke the rules, but specifically at Janes and Konkol, the reporter — the men who blew the whistle.

The two immediately were blasted on social media. “Fucking snitch!” one tweeter called Konkol. “Dude better stay out of Lawndale,” another West Sider warned Konkol. To this day, there are several videos posted on YouTube excoriating Janes and making veiled threats.

The JRW drama has been filled with finger-pointing in all directions. In Chicago, it broke down, as it does so much in America, along racial lines, with most blacks backing JRW and wondering aloud if race played a factor.

At one point in the controversy, in February, a South Side woman accused Evergreen Park of recruiting players from outside that community’s boundaries, as well. The woman, who lives on the city’s South Side, told a Chicago television station that her son played in the Evergreen Park league in 2011, even though he did not live in there. She said an Evergreen Park coach fudged residency documentation to allow her son in the league.

Janes maintained that his league does not actively recruit players. He said if a player wants to play in the league and doesn’t live inside Evergreen Park, the league usually won’t turn away the player. But, he added, such players are not permitted to play on the league’s All Star teams. “We want to help as many kids play baseball as possible,” he said. “But it’s another thing to put players with questionable residency on your tournament team.”

Some others also blamed Little League for penalizing the children who won the title. Nationally, some news organizations weighed in. The Washington Post published an editorial saying Little League was using JRW as “scapegoats” for its own lack of proper policing of the game. Chicago Mayor Emanuel, then locked in a mayoral contest with black and Latino opponents, called on Little League to keep the title with the kids.

Within hours of JRW being stripped of its national title and its second-place finish to South Korea in the world championship, longtime civil rights leader Jesse Jackson Sr. assembled a press conference to denounce the decision as racially motivated. “It is not about boundaries, it is about race,” Jackson told a throng of reporters at his Rainbow Coalition/Operation PUSH headquarters on Chicago’s South Side. “This is persecution. This is not right. This is not necessary. It is not fair. This is another layer of our struggle for a more perfect union.” Mitchell, the black columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote that “the punishment doesn’t seem to fit the crime, and is a reminder that throughout history — no matter what the offense — African-Americans seem to endure the harshest penalties.”

An activist South Side priest, Father Michael Pfleger, took aim squarely at Janes, suggesting that Janes was part of a societal conspiracy to destroy black youth.

“This is America. And I know racism runs deep in the DNA of America,” Pfleger said. “And what this individual from Evergreen Park has continued to pursue has been both mean-spirited and it’s been personal. When you look at birth certificates and voter registration and spend all this time hunting, with this witch hunt that’s been going on for the last number of months, I can’t help but question whether the same thing would have been done from another team from another place, another race.”

At the end of this wild day, I met Janes for coffee in a Dunkin’ Donuts a few blocks from his Evergreen Park house. He seemed overwhelmed, and emotionally intoxicated, by the day’s massive media attention toward him and toward the JRW story. He had granted interviews to all the Chicago television stations, the Associated Press, ESPN and many other outlets. “I gotta admit, being on ‘Outside the Lines’ was pretty cool. I love that show.”

But mostly, he seemed spooked by the magnitude the story had taken in the daily news cycle, and he was visibly upset by the public accusations of racism. He asked why Rev. Jackson and Father Pfleger would level such charges when he stridently believed that race played no role in the matter? Janes also conceded that he was worried for his family’s safety. His wife Andrea initially had been supportive of his cause, but now she had grown concerned about threats the family was receiving by phone and social media. One caller to their home ominously told them, “I hope you burn in hell.” Andrea called police and authorities dispatched a cruiser to park in front of their modest two-story brick house for a couple of days. “Why would these men of the cloth incite that sort of anger?” Janes asked. “Nothing good is going to come from that. You are putting people in harm’s way.”

After about 10 minutes, Janes cut our meeting short at the Dunkin’ Donuts and headed to the Evergreen Park Police Station to file a report about the harassing phone messages. “Happy wife, happy life,” he said, before stepping into his car.

“My wife’s not so happy today.”

While Janes has been extremely accessible to the media, Janes’ wife Andrea has declined to become involved. When I asked if I could interview her, Janes said, “She wants no part of it, to be honest.”

As the JRW saga continued to receive media attention, Matt Martus began to grow concerned about his old college pal. Janes had always been a close friend, but he could be distant, preferring to handle struggles in his life on his own. “If he’s going through a bad time, he won’t reach out,” Martus said. “If I don’t hear from him for a while, I’ll call him, because I know he can get depressed. Sometimes he unloads, sometimes he won’t. It takes a lot to get inside Chris. He won’t let you go there. He doesn’t trust easily. I guess that comes from his stepchild stuff.”

Martus was right to worry. Janes turned down no media interviews, and he had been ardently defending his role in JRW’s downfall to anyone who would ask. Clearly, Janes felt that if people only heard his side, and saw that JRW had broken rules, he would be vindicated. This did not happen. “If I learned anything, it’s that people easily can be misled by their preconceived notions and by misinformation,” Janes said.

Not only was Janes not vindicated, but JRW had hired attorneys to explore their legal options in the matter, and those attorneys were not shy about flipping media attention away from the cheating allegations and onto Janes. In an interview on WTTW television, JRW attorney Victor Henderson was asked if he thought race had played a role in Janes’ decision to file the complaint. His response: “People make mistakes all the time.”

Henderson bizarrely then went on to equate Janes with an abusive spouse. Asked if it was relevant that Janes is married to an African-American woman, the lawyer said, “Relevant, maybe on some level. But I mean, there are men who are married to women and are engaged in domestic violence. So I don’t think that because you are involved in an interracial marriage, I don’t think that it follows that you can’t be a racist any more or that race can’t be a consideration, any more than if you’re a husband married to a wife that you can’t get involved in domestic violence. I don’t think that one necessarily follows the other.”

Henderson added that the real issue is whether JRW was unfairly singled out for scrutiny and whether other teams complied with all the rules. He questioned why JRW’s player roster was scrutinized so heavily and other team rosters were not.

Henderson’s legal team did not stop there in trying to flip blame onto Janes. In early March, Henderson sent a letter to the offices of the Cook County state’s attorney and the Illinois attorney general asking for a criminal investigation into Janes. Henderson wanted to know if laws had been broken because, along with his complaint, Janes had sent Little League officials residency information gleaned from drivers’ licenses and other government-held records about the JRW parents, records that are not available to the public.

So now, not only did Janes have to worry for his family’s safety, but there was a possibility that legal authorities would investigate him. (Neither office has opened an investigation, according to spokespeople.)

With all this brewing, that very night, a bewildered Janes — faced with a possible criminal investigation and a disrupted family life — walked to a neighborhood tavern to watch a Chicago Blackhawks’ game with buddies from his baseball organization. One beer led to another, and then another, and before long, Janes was deeply drunk. He was so intoxicated that, on his walk home, he turned down the wrong street. Then, believing he was outside his own house, he accosted a woman he seemed to think was his wife, followed her up her front steps, beat on her front door, hurled obscenities at the house, and argued heatedly when the woman’s husband greeted him at the door. The couple called police, and Janes was charged with several misdemeanors. The case is still wending its way through the Cook County courts, but Janes apologized and readily expressed contrition for his behavior.

“I got obliterated and acted like an idiot,” said Janes, who added that he can recall nothing of the incident.

His mug shot appeared all over local Chicago media and was posted repeatedly on social media by his detractors. With sad bloodshot eyes and a scruffy unshaven face, Janes looked like a man whose life had veered well off course.

“Chris internalizes stress, and I know that he can start to put ‘em down when he gets depressed or stressed,” Martus explained.

“It really bothers him that he could put his wife and kids possibly in harm’s way, that his actions have hurt his family. I know he feels what he did was right with Jackie Robinson, but to me, it just shows that it really doesn’t pay to be the whistleblower.”

As Little League Tournament action opens around the nation on June 29 this year with district play, culminating in the World Series in late-August, for the first time in 44 years, JRW will not take part in the competition. In March, JRW broke ties with Little League International and joined Babe Ruth/Cal Ripken Baseball, a governing body that has more liberal residency policies.

Janes, however, will be coaching Evergreen Park’s team of Little League All-Stars at the 12-year-old level, which includes one of his sons. He said this episode in his life continues to baffle him, although he conceded he has a better appreciation for the fragile state of America’s race relations. “Even with Obama, I think things have gotten worse,” he said.

Janes acknowledged that the JRW debacle probably has not helped to instill racial harmony in his home community. Evergreen Park, once an enclave of whites, has slowly integrated over the years, and it is now roughly 20-percent minority. Most EP Little League teams have a few black kids. But to some blacks around Chicago, the suburb’s history of black exclusion remains a lingering frame of reference, and some still view Evergreen Park as unfriendly to minorities. Just last year, Evergreen Park’s police force was accused of racially profiling minority drivers who pass through the suburb. Janes defended his community, saying that he and his interracial family feel comfortable there. So it bothered him that several black families did not return to the league this year. “I imagine that’s because of the mess with Jackie Robinson,” he said with a frown.

While we talked outside the dugout in mid-May, I mentioned to Janes that my wife also is African-American and I have two biracial children. And in my experience, I said, marrying outside one’s race does two things to your psychology. As a white person, suddenly, race becomes present in your everyday life, where before it was more remote and intangible. But you also can feel shielded against a personal charge of racism. You’re now smack in the middle of America’s oldest and most complicated struggle, and you feel as if you have license to talk more candidly about the subject because you’re guarded by an invisible cloak.

Janes nodded in agreement, but then shifted the subject back to baseball.

“This whole thing was never about race,” he said adamantly. “It was about those guys cheating. So when you ask me to look back and ask myself, ‘Would I do it again?’ Hell yeah.”

Nuccio DiNuzzo/Chicago Tribune/MCT via Getty Images

Update: At a press conference held on June 24, 2015, at the Ray & Joan Kroc Sports Center in Chicago, Jackie Robinson West officials and their attorney Victor Henderson released a 100-page report of their own investigation. The report documents the teams’ correspondence with officials at Little League International, including emails, letters, maps and other documents that show the team was given support and approval by Little League International to play several times before it won the championship. “We are willing to stand by the mistakes that were made, but we want to be treated fairly,” Henderson said. “Little League has to be held accountable and Chris Janes has to be held accountable.”

Henderson said any protest of player ineligibility should have been made before games were played, according to the Little League rule book, not afterward. He is asking for additional meetings with Little League officials and attorneys to talk about the revocation of the national title. The group has also filed a petition in Cook County Circuit Court, alleging Little League International failed to provide information to JRW explaining why they stripped the team of its championship. The petition also alleges the league failed to cite any specific violation of its rules. The legal petition does not seek monetary damages or the reinstatement of the national title, but simply asks for additional information from, and communication with, Little League officials.

Little League International officials have not responded at this time. Mark Konkol, the DNAinfo reporter who first broke the story, was refused entry to the press conference and escorted from the building.

On a Saturday morning in May, 2015, a group of law enforcement agents, the FBI among them, knocked on the front door of the Montgomery Homestead Inn in Damascus, Virginia. The proprietor, a retired kindergarten teacher who lives across East Laurel Ave. from the inn, happened to be there at the time. She does not know for sure how many agents were on the inn’s porch. She guesses three or four, though her husband told her later another man was positioned at the back door.

“There were just a lot of men out there,” Susie Montgomery said.

KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images

Above: The Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia

Damascus (pop. 800) is in a valley in the Blue Ridge Mountains, along the Appalachian Trail. Downtown consists of about five blocks “but in those blocks there are five churches,” Montgomery said. A visitor crosses one bridge coming in, another heading out. Idyllic is the word. The Montgomery Homestead Inn is only an old, two-story brick home with four bedrooms travelers can rent. On the morning those FBI agents came knocking, it was the weekend of the annual Appalachian Trail Days Festival, when something like 20,000 hikers descend on the town for fellowship and revelry, and the inn’s four rooms had been booked for weeks. Montgomery did not know what business the men crowding the porch could have there.

When she opened the front door, one of the agents held up a photograph of a man and asked if she knew him. She looked at it and said, “Yes. That’s Bismarck.”

Bismarck was the trail name of an Appalachian Trail hiker who had checked in the previous day. He had been staying at Montgomery’s inn periodically since 2010. She considered him an “easy guest.” He usually stayed for three days, paid in cash (like everyone else), and each time he left, the bed would be made and the room was clean.

The agents asked if Bismarck was inside. Montgomery said she was not sure, and what was this about, anyway? The men identified themselves as law enforcement agents and said they needed to talk with Bismarck about a case of fraud. Montgomery asked for identification, which they provided, and she took them to the room where Bismarck was staying.

She knocked on the door and a man answered. She said there were some people who wanted to talk to him and the door opened from the inside. The agents stepped in.

“At that point, I got back out of the way,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery could not make out what words were spoken, but the tone, she said, was calm. No guns were drawn, no voices raised. After a brief chat, the agents put Bismarck in handcuffs, walked him out of the room and took him away.

“There was nothing mean about it,” Montgomery said recently, cooking dinner as she spoke. “But apparently he was who they were looking for.”

Two days later, on Monday, May 18, the FBI announced the search for a 53-year-old accountant accused of embezzling $8.7 million from an Ohio-based Pepsi distributor had come to an end. His name: James T. Hammes. His story had been featured on two fugitive TV shows, America’s Most Wanted and CNBC’s American Greed. Authorities say Hammes, over the course of 11 years, took the funds through a series of banking transfers while working as a controller for the distributor. Then he vanished.

The amount of money he is accused of taking could unleash a man from most things that hold him in place. The world bows to that amount of money. You could pay the toll on any of life’s roads. You could step through any of life’s doors. What would you do with that freedom?

Sip cool drinks in the shade on a beach in Mexico and feel small before the Pacific Ocean? Pay a plastic surgeon to change your appearance, plant a young and willing blonde on your elbow and drive a Bugatti across Europe? Or find a quiet spot and live an unassuming and comfortable life off the stash?

James T. Hammes, aka Bismarck, apparently did none of those things.

James T. Hammes went hiking.

On the Appalachian Trail.

For six years.

Click to expand map

Several weeks after being handcuffed beside a queen bed at the Montgomery Homestead Inn, Hammes appeared inside the Potter Stewart U.S. Courthouse in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. Federal Magistrate Karen L. Litkovitz denied bond. The order stated Hammes “poses a substantial risk of flight given he has no current residence and no identifiable place to live … and no contact with family or employment since 2009.”

Today, the man who spent six years eating gorp, sleeping beneath stars and in hostels, and swatting mosquitoes while walking through wilderness and washing his clothes in laundromats is inside a jail cell in Butler County, Ohio. He has pleaded not guilty. A September trial is scheduled. Zenaida Lockard, his attorney, did not respond to messages. Late last week, however, she filed a motion stating that “plea negotiations are ongoing and more time is needed to see if a non-trial disposition can be reached in this matter.” Hammes faces up to 1,130 years in a federal prison if convicted.

There are people who cannot believe he was in the United States all this time. But apparently, he was.

And there are people who cannot believe the man they knew as Bismarck could possibly have done any of these things.

Photo courtesy Patrick Bredlau

Appalachian Trail thru-hikers, those who walk the entire 2,100-mile trail in a single season, beginning in Georgia in spring, knew Bismarck as a smiling Catholic with a Jerry Garcia beard, baker’s belly and fondness for hammocks. They liked him. There is something hikers call “trail magic” that the Appalachian Trail Conservancy defines as “an unexpected act of kindness.” In nearly every story about Bismarck on the Appalachian Trail, or AT as it is commonly called, trail magic appears. He took to people. People took to him. Up and down the length of the trail, he was well known for his gentle, good nature. Beginning in 2010 the name Bismarck began appearing regularly on blogs written by hikers recounting their trips. His picture pops up in their snapshots.

Millions of people step somewhere onto the AT each year. That anyone stands out to the degree he did is astonishing. Yet Bismarck did. Veteran hikers, encountering newbies, sometimes asked, “Have you met Bismarck?” It was a way of gauging just how experienced a hiker was, how long they had been on the trail and how well they fit in with others. If you knew Bismarck, your boots had many worthy miles already worn on their soles. A man who hiked with him last September said the general consensus along the AT was that he was “on his way to becoming a trail legend” - someone whose story hikers share amongst themselves, one with inspirational overtones. Like that of the late Earl Shaffer, who in 1948 became the first person to hike the entire AT in a single season. Like Matt Kirk, who two years ago hiked the trail in 58 days. Such was Bismarck’s reputation that this past spring, David Miller, the author of AWOL on the Appalachian Trail, a popular book about hiking the AT, was on his phone talking with the owner of a North Carolina hostel along the state’s western edge, near Nantahala Lake. In an offhand way, the proprietor mentioned Bismarck was there, similar to the way Grateful Dead followers once mentioned an encounter with Jerry, a measure of his own familiarity of trail culture, a touchstone showing he, too, knew the ways of the wandering tribe.

When the other hikers learned that Bismarck had been taken into custody at Trail Days, shock bloomed through the AT community. Word spread along every step of the trail - hushed tones spoken at campfires from Georgia to Maine - in a matter of days.

“So many people liked him,” Susan Montgomery said. “I feel sorry for him, if he did what they say he did, because he loved the outdoors. He really did. He loved the outdoors so much.”

Karl Humbarger, who works at a hostel in Maine where Bismarck stayed the last few winters, said, “At least in my book, if he faces what he’s accused of, pays whatever debt he has coming, then he is welcomed back here always.”

What Montgomery and Humbarger and other Bismarck acquaintances likely did not know is that some believe he did more than allegedly take $8.7 million that was not his.

They believe James T. Hammes had committed a crime and walked away once before.

They believe he may have played a part in his first wife’s death.

During the summer of 2003, Joy Hammes was in her bedroom in Lexington, Kentucky, sleeping alone, when her home caught fire. She was 40 years old and had been married to James T. Hammes, her college sweetheart, for nearly two decades.

Things seemed to be going well. She had taken a job at a food pantry she had been volunteering at for years. Her daughter, Amanda, a smart, successful high school student with medical school in her future, was out on a date that night. Joy Hammes went to bed early. Her husband, James, did not.

Then the fire started.

Photo courtesy of Jane Ryan

Above: James Hammes with first wife Joy and daughter Amanda

Joy Hammes survived the flames, but never regained consciousness. Investigators would eventually rule that the fire was accidental. No criminal charges have ever been filed in connection to it.

There are those, though, who believe James T. Hammes could have orchestrated the fire.

On the night of the fire, he was not at the house on Turkey Foot Drive. He had been there earlier, but by the time the flames grew and sirens of fire trucks and ambulances began bleeding into the neighborhood air, he was nowhere to be found.

He had gone on a walk.

American Greed is a true crime series that claims to “examine the dark side of the American Dream.” The episode featuring James T. Hammes aired in 2012, and it included a narrative about the fatal fire, raising the question that he may have been involved. Recently, a relative of James Hammes described their family as “boring.” But he also said that when he watched the segment of American Greed on Hammes, called “Deceitful Dad and the Missing Millions,” the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

“We learned a lot of things,” Jeff Sadler, one of Hammes’ cousins, said.

Joy Hammes had no life insurance policy. But the life James Hammes was living at the time of his wife’s death feels like one on the verge of crumbling: Solid on the outside, rotting on the inside. He had at least one girlfriend. He also had a daughter no one knew of. And if the FBI is right, he was embezzling from the company he worked for. Joy Hammes, until getting the job at a food pantry, had mostly been a mother and a wife and a community volunteer. Her husband earned a good salary, but she had become suspicious. She had started asking her husband, who handled the finances, how he could afford to take week-long scuba diving trips to the Caribbean, alone, while she stayed at home with their teenage daughter.

“Maybe he got tired of her asking questions,” Jane Ryan, the sister of Joy Hammes, said.

Two days before Bismarck was arrested in Damascus, he ate dinner with a group of hikers he had met on the AT over the years. Thru-hikers tend to move together in a loose pack that stretches along the trail. It is not uncommon for them to encounter each other over and over again as everyone travels at their own pace, resting and moving according to whim and the weather. Friendships are made and often hikers keep up with one another after leaving the wilderness. Hiking the trail is both a physical and spiritual challenge and each day spent walking alongside another hiker links you together in personal, emotional ways to one another. Bismarck made plenty of bonds and had many friends.

One of the hikers he dined with that Thursday night was Patrick Bredlau, a retiree who lives near Chicago. They also ate lunch together Friday. They had met on the northern end of the AT in 2014, at Speck Pond Shelter in Maine, on the last stretch of the trail before it reaches its end on Mount Katahdin, and kept in contact over winter.

Bismarck had told his fellow hikers many, many times through the years that he would stay on the AT as long as he could.

“He wanted to live out his days in the woods,” Bredlau said. “He loved the simplicity of living in the woods.”

Bismarck told Bredlau his plan was to slip back out onto the AT on Saturday morning, when dew still laid across the ground.

“The FBI just barely caught him,” Bredlau said. “According to his plan, he wasn’t hanging around.”

What Bismarck did not know is that one night in March someone who had thru-hiked the AT in 2014 was at home in Mississippi, sitting in front of a TV, when a rerun of the 2012 episode of American Greed came on. As the story unfolded, and images of Hammes spread across the screen, the hiker recognized him as Bismarck, who he had spent a short amount of time hiking with the previous year. The hiker then emailed Joy Hammes’ family and the FBI. Working off that tip, agents learned Bismarck typically attended the Trail Days celebration in Damascus. They began coordinating with the Washington County, Virginia, Sheriff’s Office, the Damascus Police Department and the Virginia State Police, and circled in.

James Hammes’ last walk was about to end.

At the Ohio jail where U.S. Marshals are keeping Hammes today, inmates cannot accept phone calls. I wrote him a letter in June. I addressed him not as “Bismarck” but as “Jim,” which is what people who knew him before 2009 call him. I asked him about himself and his past; about his time on the AT; about where he stayed in deep winter, when the trail grows too cold to camp alongside; and about what he might want people to know about him.

In the package I sent I included some paper, an envelope and some Janis Joplin stamps, and I asked him to drop me a note. Or call me collect.

As of this writing, he has not responded.

I found the answers to most of my questions without his help.

But others remain unanswered. Like the one about the money’s whereabouts.

“That’s the $8.7 million question, isn’t it?” Jane Ryan said.

Authorities are not talking.

“At this point, we are not going to discuss the money that was allegedly embezzled,” Todd Lindgren, a public affairs specialist with the FBI in Cincinnati, said. “That is something that may be discussed at trial.”

Federal court documents indicate that of the millions Hammes is accused of embezzling, only $698,956 has been seized.

The other unanswered question, the one that will likely stir back-country rumors and campfire theories for decades, is of all the places James T. Hammes could go, Why the Appalachian Trail?

“That’s the biggest mystery,” said Jeff Sadler, Hammes’ cousin. “And it’s one only he can answer. We may never know.”

Photos courtesy Patrick Bredlau

The Appalachian Trail stretches nearly 2,200 miles from Springer Mountain, Georgia, to Mount Katahdin, Maine. The idea was borne less than a century ago. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy describes on its website how in 1921 a Harvard-educated conservationist named Benton MacKaye proposed “a series of work, study and farming camps along the ridges of the Appalachian Mountains.” MacKaye envisioned a refuge from industrialized urban settings. “Hiking was an incidental focus,” the Conservancy states. The AT was completed in 1937.

Its popularity has exploded since the 1970s, mainly because of magazine articles and books that suggest to readers the ways that walking the trail can help travelers find themselves. Even in the digital age, the romance of the trail continues to resonate. Author Bill Bryson’s classic memoir, A Walk in the Woods, which came out in 1998, will appear as a movie this September, starring Robert Redford. Ben Montgomery’s current best-seller, Grandma Gatewood’s Walk, tells the inspiring story of the first woman to walk the trail from top to bottom. At this moment, people are eagerly following ultra-runner Scott Jurek on social media, in the midst of his quest to run the entire length of the AT in record time.

Education Images/UIG via Getty Images

With the swell of the Internet in the past 20 years, which provides ready resources for hikers and hundreds of personal memoirs about the AT, the number of people who take to the trail has more than doubled. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy says 2 to 3 million people step foot somewhere onto the trail each year, some hiking for an afternoon or a day, others for weeks or even months at a time. Larry Luxenberg, the author of Walking the Appalachian Trail, said that is a conservative estimate. He noted a poll taken not long ago at Newfound Gap, a well-known mountain pass on the AT along the border between Tennessee and North Carolina in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, indicated 9 million people passed through the area.

When considering the high number of travelers, petty crime on the trail is rare; violent crime is more rare. There have been a handful of murders - tales of shootings, stabbings and strangulations circulate - but they are mainly isolated incidents committed by criminals who happened to be crossing trail areas, not living or hiking there, and they are conveyed like ghost stories between hikers. Tales of fugitives are exceptionally rare. Kori Feener, a filmmaker who released a documentary about the AT in 2013, said that taken as a whole, there have been fewer killings on the AT “than there were murders in my hometown of Boston last year.” Fifty-two people were murdered in Boston in 2014, but since the trail first opened, only a dozen or so people are known to have been killed while hiking the AT.

Hiking the AT is a personal experience. Its pull varies from person to person. But in a broad and figurative sense, it is fair to say a majority are on a search. Thru-hikers are usually in their early 20s, looking for adventure before settling down, or past 50 and seeking something else. “You sometimes have the middle-age crowd,” one AT veteran said, “who hike because of a change in life. They get divorced or lose a job or quit or job.” A center yet to be found is sensed, and someone finally has time to look for it and believes they will find it on that narrow pathway that runs almost the entire length of the Appalachians. One hiker called the experience an escape.

But hiking from Georgia to Maine from spring to fall is no party. It requires months of planning. Supplies must be loaded into packs with the understanding that the next town and opportunity to restock may not come for three or four days. Many hikers send supplies to themselves ahead, care of “General Delivery” at post offices along the trail.

The terrain, some of it rugged, at first tries you physically. “Over time, your body takes a beating,” AT author David Miller said. “You lose a lot of weight and accumulate aches, pains and blisters.” Then the mental aspect of facing thousands of miles looms. Couple those challenges with the natural introspection that happens while hiking, and the culture on the AT is an accepting one.

“The trail is a present endeavor,” Feener said, “with the focus often being on the pain you are in, the beauty you saw that day, where you are going to sleep that night and where your next water source is.”

Every step puts distance between a hiker and the worries of the world. Days run together. Previous lives slip away. Hikers may delve gently into each other’s pasts, but acceptance is the norm.

A hiker named Sherry Leitner said, “It’s sort of a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ mentality. If someone wants to share something with you about their ‘real life’ - meaning life off the trail - then fine, but we don’t probe.”

In keeping with the escapist culture, trail names are common.

“A rite of passage” for thru-hikers is how Feener described the naming process, which serves to further separate long-distance travelers from their real lives, or pasts, while they are on the trail. Some choose their own names; others are given names by other hikers.

“Just one of the things most of us do to embrace the sense of escapism that goes with the adventure,” said Miller, who is known on the trail as “AWOL.”

Hammes’ name was “Bismarck.” He seems to have given it to himself.

Photo courtesy Patrick Bredlau

Above: “Bismarck” (center) on the trail, with “Hopper” (left)

It is an odd name for someone wandering the AT to choose. In its adoption of the name of a remote American city in the Dakotas, it brings to mind the Coen brother’s film, Fargo, a dark tale that includes a mild-mannered protagonist who arranges for his wife to be kidnapped and eventually murdered. It also conjures up images of Otto van Bismarck, the “Iron Chancellor” of Germany who in the 19th century established the modern world’s first welfare system, or the German World War II battleship that sank killing more than 2,000 crewmen. One family member of Hammes’ thought it could be a reference to a crude sexual act. Or maybe a nod to a hamlet by that name in east West Virginia, where he could have laid low occasionally, or a small village in Illinois, near where he once lived.

Hammes, though, told some hikers he was born in Bismarck, North Dakota’s capital, a place most have heard of but few know. (“No one is ever from Bismarck,” one hiker said. “Who else on the AT is going to be from Bismarck?”) He told others he had invested in a lucrative software company based there, in that cold city of 60,000. Both of these stories - one involving a personal history, the other the roots of a livelihood - served to establish along the trail things he undoubtedly needed: a past and place that were likely foreign to people he met and that explained his presence.

Neither is true.

This is what is true: James T. Hammes was born approximately 800 miles southeast of Bismarck, North Dakota, in Milwaukee on April 30, 1962. As a young man his father, a Catholic, toyed with entering the priesthood, but married and became an accountant. Three sons followed. Only James, the oldest, would follow the father’s footsteps into accounting.

Everyone called him Jim. In the 1970s, the family moved to Springfield, Illinois. In the backyard of their home was a lake. Hammes attended Glenwood High School in Chatham, Illinois. He played football and wrestled at only 5′8″ and someone who knew him then said there was a suggestion of the “All-American boy in him.” Nothing felt amiss then. After graduating high school in 1980, he went to a mechanic’s school in Iowa on a scholarship, but did not stay. Back in Springfield again, he began studying accounting at Sangamon State University (now known as University of Illinois at Springfield). There, during the spring semester of 1984, he met another accounting student named Joy Johnson, and a friendship began. She was the smart and smitten daughter of a farmer, and on their first date wore a white dress and red belt.

Photo courtesy Jane Ryan

Above: James Hammes with first wife Joy and daughter Amanda

Joy Johnson’s sister, Jane Ryan, met Hammes shortly afterward. He had a beard, long hair and seemed nice enough, Ryan said, if a “little different.” There was a suggestion of the show off in him. Around one of his wrists, he wore a big watch. “He wanted us to like him,” Ryan said. Recently, she used the word “charming” to describe him. Her tone made it sound like a sickness.

Hammes married Joy inside a Catholic church on Dec. 22, 1984, and they moved into an apartment on Seventh St. in Springfield. He went to work for a Coca-Cola distributor and in 1986, their daughter, Amanda, was born. Then they relocated to Cincinnati, Ohio. On the surface, the move appeared to further Hammes’ career. But he was also walking away from something he preferred to keep hidden.

In Springfield, Hammes had a girlfriend - an old fling named Jill from Glenwood High - and she became pregnant. Hammes’ second daughter was born in 1989, a secret to his family. Years later, when the FBI was trying to track Hammes down, agents discovered that in December 2008 he had purchasedher a plane ticket from New York City, where she was a student at Columbia University, to Oklahoma, where her mother lived.

The girl - her first name is Carrie, and she is a woman now - could not be reached for comment.

Joy Hammes did not know of the second daughter. She told her family her union with Hammes was stronger than ever. They moved to Lexington, Kentucky, and Hammes took a job with G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers and their life entered a normal pace. There were Florida vacations. They attended Christ the King Catholic Church. Hammes, who leaned conservative, seemed to take pride that his wife was a homemaker who volunteered at God’s Pantry, a local food bank. He took care of all the money. When holidays came, they often went to Springfield to visit Jane Ryan and her husband. Hammes would usually make the drive from Lexington alone a few days after his wife and daughter, because, he said, of work obligations. Ryan also recalls that he liked to take long walks, alone. There were times when he spread his accounting books across the Ryan’s dinner table, working and working and working. Ryan doubted at the time that any job short of president of the United States of America required that level of commitment at Christmastime. She laughed recently, and said, “Maybe he was working that hard because he was keeping two books.”

That may be. What is certain is that as the years passed, the secrets kept piling up.

Federal prosecutors say Hammes began embezzling from G&J in the late 1990s. A few years earlier, he had become controller for the company’s southern division, and in that position was responsible for the company’s accounting and internal controls. Court documents reveal that in 1998, Hammes opened a bank account only he could control, which was tied in name only to a vendor doing business with G&J. He then moved G&J funds into the account before transferring the money into his personal accounts. Sometimes he moved as little as $9,200. Sometimes he moved as much as $200,000. Usually it was some amount in between.

Each time he did so, James T. Hammes took one more small step away from the life he was living toward something else.

For an accountant, who people expect to be quiet and reserved, Hammes was something of an anomaly, a man with a lot of personality. People who knew him say that about the time he allegedly began embezzling his temperament, never quiet to begin with, began to become more explosive. Everything he did and said began to have exclamation marks around it.

Sadler, the cousin who lives in Colorado, said Hammes was always gregarious but started to go over the top, and he had begun questioning how genuine it all was. They drifted apart. Jane Ryan said her brother-in-law liked to “one up” people. He developed a loud persona and could be overbearing.

“When he laughed everyone in the room knew it,” Ryan said. “There was nothing quiet or understated about his personality.”

Hammes dressed casually (khakis, tucked-in polos) and kept less than flashy cars parked in his driveway (a purple Chrysler, a black Jeep, a Sebring convertible), but he began going on expensive scuba diving trips, sometimes leaving Joy for two-week stretches home alone with Amanda. When she kept asking about where the money for the vacations was coming from, Hammes told her he had invested in a software company and cleared an easy $100,000. He swore her to secrecy, but she told her sister. Jane Ryan said if that story were true, Hammes would have talked about it. Growing up with two brothers instilled in him a competitive nature. He was not the type to keep successes quiet.

“I think it gave him a thrill,” Ryan said, “that he could steal and no one knew about it and he could live so well.”

In Lexington, the Hammes family lived in a spacious, three-bedroom brick house on Turkey Foot Rd. Joy liked it there. On the night of July 24, 2003, her daughter had gone on a date and she was home alone, in bed.

James T. Hammes had gone on one of his walks.

About 11 p.m., a friend of Amanda’s, curious about her date, drove by the home, saw smoke and dialed 911. Emergency crews pulled Hammes’ wife from the burning home, but the carbon monoxide had already left her unconscious.

There are two theories of how the fire began. The fire investigator concluded a chest of drawers sitting on an extension cord caused it. The insurance people said faulty wiring in a ceiling fan was the culprit. That there were two theories has always bothered Ryan. If there was a reason for the fire to begin, she said, you would think it would be a single cause.

At the hospital, an unconscious Joy Hammes was placed in a hyperbaric chamber. But a brain scan indicated no brain activity, and she was placed on life support. “There was nothing else to do,” Jane Ryan said. “She was brain dead and being kept alive by a ventilator with no hope of recovery.”

Ryan remembers being in the hospital room, holding one of her sister’s hands while Hammes held the other. She remembers the way Joy’s body smelled like smoke and walking out of that sad room just before doctors took her off life support. Hammes, there in the hospital hallway, hugged her tight and then said, “I’m sorry.” She thought that was odd, that his wife was dead, “and he is apologizing to me.” Today, more than two decades later, it is a cold moment in her memory.

But the image Jane Ryan cannot shake is this one: James T. Hammes, about six weeks after Joy’s death, was visiting her family. She looked out her window and stretched out on the ground beneath a tree in the yard, he was on the phone, laughing.

Hammes met a woman named Deanna, who worked for the state of Kentucky, and they married in 2006. They made a home in Lexington. By now, Hammes was telling some family members about a mysterious software business he had invested in the Carolinas, where he would sometimes drive, alone, to check on things. The company appears to be fiction. The FBI says he was continuing to embezzle from G&J. Someone eventually caught on.

Court documents show a special agent with the FBI interviewed G&J’s chief financial officer on Feb. 17, 2009. Five days later Hammes was summoned to Cincinnati, where the company was headquartered. He did not know the purpose of the meeting. There, he was confronted about the missing funds. He said he wanted to tell his wife in Kentucky, and speak to an attorney, and he was allowed to leave. Two days later, a federal magistrate in Ohio signed an arrest warrant but it was too late. Hammes had slipped out of his life. Investigators found his wallet and cellular telephone abandoned on a road in a tough part of Cincinnati, suggesting he had met a bad end … or wanted people to think he had.

Roughly three months after he disappeared, the Hammes family held a scheduled family reunion in Milwaukee. Hammes did not show up. He had always promised his mother - divorced now and living out West (she declined to comment) - that he would take care of her when age caught up. At the reunion, his mother signed over power of attorney to another family member.

Jeff Sadler believes his cousin, from the day he allegedly began transferring money illegally, had a plan to disappear with the money. He remembers Hammes telling him once, “I want to retire at 50.”

“In a way,” Sadler said, “I guess he did.”

He believes the FBI catching on panicked him, and sent him on the run prematurely, before his plan was ready.

Hammes was two months shy of 47 when he disappeared. He left his wife Deanna, who has since divorced him. And he left his daughters, Amanda and Carrie.

A little more than a year later James Hammes stopped running and Bismarck started walking the Appalachian Trail.

Photos courtesy Patrick Bredlau

The FBI, soon faced with a stagnant search and few leads, eventually put a headshot of James T. Hammes on its website beneath the word “Wanted.” The photograph was taken from Hammes’ 2008 Kentucky driver’s license, and the man in it has a professional look, clean-shaven, with short hair. It looks nothing like the man known along the AT as Bismarck.

Many thru-hikers keep online journals in public forums. They are updated sporadically, and the musings they contain typically note their progress, the most recent terrain, notes on hikers they befriend and photographs from the journey. It appears Bismarck did not keep an online journal. But dozens of other hikers’ journals contain references to him, as well as photographs of the well-known hiker. In each of them, his grin is wide and easy.

His smile, in fact, litters online journals.

“Bismarck was surprisingly engaged for a person on the run,” Miller, aka AWOL, said. “He seemed not to avoid having his picture taken.”

There is a snapshot of Hammes from early May 2010, only 15 months after he vanished. In it, he is reclining on a couch inside Braemar Castle Hostel in Hampton, Tennessee. He is in conversation with another hiker. His boots are off, and he already has a beard. Hair covers his ears. Comparing photographs from that time to his latest mugshot, he does not appear to have cut his hair or shaved again. That change in appearance certainly helped him evade authorities. Others say the immediacy of the trail, coupled with the culture, made it a good place to lay low. Most hikers on the trail are already more attuned to nature than current events. They do not watch a lot of television.

“The fact of the matter is, the culture of the trail almost welcomes people that are trying to hide a place to go,” Feener said. “Not intentionally … but most people you meet are running away from, or looking for something.”

But Bismarck appears to have thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail multiple times, and Luxenberg said that likely played a part in his capture. The thru-hiker community each year essentially amounts to a small town - a couple thousand people. Most start at the southern end of the trail in Georgia in early spring and head north, in something like a pack, until they reach the end. Along the way, histories are shared.

“A thru-hike is transformational for many,” Miller said, “and so conversations on the trail tend to be more open and personal than in ‘normal’ daily life … you’ll certainly be asked many times about your background and what inspired you to thru-hike.”

Aside from making the grandiose claim one night in 2010 around a glowing campfire at Moreland Gap Shelter in Tennessee that he briefly played professional hockey, Bismarck seems to have offered a distorted version of the truth through the years.

MyLoupe/UIG via Getty Images

The story: His wife had died and, stricken with grief, he told his two daughters goodbye and began wandering the trail, framing his journey as a search for peace. He missed his children, he would say, but they were both doing well in medical schools. He would occasionally bring up the Kentucky Wildcats basketball team. He could be opinionated but rarely obnoxious, and seemed to have damped down his personality a touch. Explaining how he appeared on the trail each spring, disappeared in winter, only to return when the weather broke the following March, he said that his work allowed him to take six months off each year.

Patrick Bredlau hiked with him through Maine for three weeks last year and said sometimes the story left him scratching his head. But, Bredlau said, he reminded himself of the nature of their endeavor.

“Yes, there were things that were strange,” he said, “but these are people who live their lives in the woods. It’s weird.”

For the most part, however, Bismarck fit right in.

Other thru-hikers say he was chipper and exceedingly friendly. When he shared a car ride he always offered to split the cost. (Once, in 2013, he left a $20 bill with a friend with instructions to give it to a woman who had given him a ride because he was sure she would not accept it from him.) At Bearfence Mountain Shelter in Virginia one night a woman, spooked by a bear, decided to stay inside a shelter and he offered her a sleeping pad. Near Jo-Mary Road in Maine he once taped a bag containing ramen noodles and power bars to a tree along with a note explaining that the food was for an older hiker that he knew was behind him and struggling to finish the trail. When a well-known thru-hiker known as Buffalo Bobby died in 2011, Bismarck offered to carry his ashes up to Mount Katahdin. He was also eager to share his knowledge of the trail. “But not overly so,” one hiker said. “Just social in the way most people on the trail tend to be.”

Miller updates his guidebook to the AT each year. “There are thousands of hikers with the book,” he said, “but only a few dozen write to me with updates.” Over the last six years, Bismarck, from different places along the AT, was one of those who did, emailing him bits of useful information.

“David, just wanted to let you know that the Quality Inn in Waynesboro, Va., is not honoring the rate published in the guide,” one reads. “In fact, the gentleman at the front desk seemed perplexed when I asked for the hiker rate.”

In March, a hiker with the trail name Bingo was staying in a lodge at Nantahala Outdoor Center, near Bryson City, North Carolina. He showered and ate a lunch at River’s End Restaurant, and as he was leaving, met Bismarck. They had a brief, pleasant conversation in which Bismarck said he was looking forward, after time on the trail, to a warm meal at a table.

“I remember him calling me ‘brother’ in that passing way male colleagues sometimes talk,” Bingo said.

Later, they met again, this time at Clingman’s Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. At 6,643 feet, the peak, which includes an observation tower and is accessible by a paved road, is something of a gathering place for hikers, a destination where the might pause and linger. Bismarck had been there at least once before: An online journal post from April 2010 makes mention that he took a three-hour nap in a hammock there. This time, it was cold out, and raining, and Bismarck complained that the Frogg Toggs brand of rain gear he wore tore too easily. Then he was off, catching a ride toward Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where he could resupply and get some rest in an inn.

“I don’t think he was a stranger to staying at hotels in town,” Bingo said.

Last year, in April, a hiker called Second B stopped for a break near Pearisburg, Virginia, and Bismarck and another hiker walked up beside him. Over the next two days they shared the trail in spots.

“I had been thinking and talking with them off and on about religion,” Second B said. “I am not a religious person but I’m spiritual.”

Over hand-rolled cigarettes that Second B supplied, they discussed faith. During the conversation, Bismarck spoke ill of churches that he felt focused on scare tactics and guilt, instead of love and kindness.

It is not surprising.

Bismarck, everyone agrees, had a religious streak. Like many who espouse their faith, he seemed to be a man searching for serenity, a simple life. People say he tended to wear a Christian cross around his neck, always tilted his head in prayer before each meal and plotted his route so that each Sunday he could be near enough to a church to attend a service.

His search for religious peace seemed to be a constant.

So was the company of a woman with the trail name Hopper.

She is one of this story’s mysteries.

She met Bismarck in 2010, and they seem to have been in a relationship by 2011. Some hikers described them as “boyfriend” and “girlfriend.” Others say they were married. Regardless, they remained a couple until Bismarck’s arrest in Damascus in May. In fact, she was there at the Montgomery Homestead Inn when he was placed in handcuffs. A law enforcement officer in the room when Hammes was apprehended claims Hopper’s reaction to the arrest suggested she knew nothing of his past. Most hikers interviewed for this story showed a genuine concern for her emotional state and whereabouts in the wake of all that has happened.

Photo courtesy Patrick Bredlau

Above: Bismarck and Hopper

In photographs of Bismarck and Hopper - behind the sign atop Mt. Katahdin or having milkshakes in some cafe along the AT - they are usually side-by-side. And smiling.

A tall, attractive woman with strawberry blond hair, Hopper’s real name is Teri Hanavan. She was hiking the AT at least as early as 2001, when she met a retired police officer from California known by the trail name Spike. They bonded on the trail and married in late 2002. Spike died of cancer in April 2009. The following year, Hanavan was on the trail spreading his ashes. Around that time, she met Bismarck for the first time.

Without knowing Bismarck’s true past, hikers thought he and Hopper were perfect for one another. They had both lost spouses and were grieving. They were both well versed in AT etiquette and culture. They were both trail lifers. And Hopper, people say, was as religious, if not more so, than Bismarck.

In 2002, when Hopper thru-hiked the AT, she posted her name on the Appalachian Trail Conservancy “2000 Milers” list. She listed her home state then as California.

In 2014, when she posted her name again, she listed her home state as Kentucky, where Hammes had come from.

I found an email address for her and sent her a note.

She did not respond.

MyLoupe/Universal Images via Getty Images

Bismarck did not hike year round.

In the winter, much of the trail is covered with snow and almost impassable, and weather conditions make long treks hard. Where he lived in the offseason varied, but he spent parts of each winter in East Andover, Maine, holed up in a hostel called The Cabin operated by a couple who hikers refer to as “Honey” and “Bear.”

Karl Humbarger, who works there, said Bismarck did this in 2012, 2013 and 2014. At The Cabin, travelers can exchange work for a discount on the $20 per night rate for room and board and Bismarck usually helped out to save money. Humbarger described him as always being in “good humor” and “very social.” He noted that Bismarck took the work seriously, which was a welcome site for Humbarger, who said most hikers do not. Bismarck helped build a garage at The Cabin. He helped install a heater, too.

When Humbarger heard about the things people say Hammes did, he had a hard time coming to terms with that person being the same person as Bismarck.

“You would have never guessed that he was accused of what they say,” Humbarger said.

Last winter, after leaving The Cabin, Bismarck lived in Apartment 234 at Parkview Studios on Harris Road in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Guests pay $158 for a week’s stay; $520 for a month. “There is never a credit check, no deposit and no lease,” the website states. This, of course, would appeal to a man on the run.

The apartment is a two-story building with approximately 61 rooms, each one heated and cooled with wall units. The Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo and Interstate 69, which runs 635 miles from Texas to the Canadian border, are both less than a mile away. There Bismarck sat, waiting on spring to return, when he would head once again to Springer, Georgia, and begin another trek north.

One day in February, he wrote from his Gmail account - his handle was wanderingcatholic0712 - to his old hiking buddy, Patrick Bredlau.

“Been working crazy hours here in Fort Wayne,” he said, “but the end is in sight. So looking forward to getting out of here as I’ve been going at it very hard. Good for the paycheck but not the best for the soul.” He described a Christmas card he had mailed Bredlau, then continued: “Hope you’ve had a good winter … springer [Georgia] fever is setting in deep here and if all goes well we’ll be in Springer two weeks from Sunday.”

In less than a month, the American Greed episode featuring Hammes would air again. When it did, a 2014 AT thru-hiker was watching in Mississippi.

Earlier this year, I sat in a coffee shop and talked across a table with Hayden Crume, the 32-year-old hiker who had met Bismarck and turned in Hammes. His trail name is Chair.

“Nicest guy ever,” was how Crume described Bismarck.

Crume, a successful businessman, found himself with some free time and financial freedom last year after his business was acquired by a larger corporation. He said he wanted to “accomplish something big” and set off on the AT, hiking from Georgia to Maine.

“Going to Disney World just seemed too cliché,” he said.

Not long after starting off, he met Bismarck at a shelter along the southern half of the AT. Hopper was there, too. Crume, who had never hiked the trail before, was cooking oatmeal near the shelter. This is frowned upon by hikers, because food aromas attract bears. Bismarck approached and politely told him it was best to not do so there.

Altogether, Crume and Bismarck spent approximately 24 hours together on the AT. After that, their paths did not cross again.

I asked Crume what it was he noticed, while watching the American Greed episode, that reminded him of Bismarck. He was not sure.

“I just happened to look up at the right moment I guess,” he said, “and subconsciously I immediately recognized I knew him, but [at first] couldn’t quite place him.”

Shocked, he later sent three emails. One went to the American Greed producers. One went to the FBI. And one went to Amanda Hammes, Bismarck’s daughter, and it contained photographs Crume had taken of Bismarck. In one, the image was zoomed in close on the eyes, and Crume asked if the eyes looked familiar.

Amanda declined to comment for this story. But after receiving the email, she contacted her aunt, Jane Ryan, wondering if someone was playing a cruel joke.

It was no joke.

Agents kept Jane Ryan in the loop, but over the next few weeks told her to keep quiet, as locating Hammes would take some work.

“The FBI had told me before,” she told an Illinois newspaper columnist earlier this summer, “that the trail is 2,000 miles long, and it may take a little while to find him. But the thing is that Jim had to be lucky every single day of his life. The FBI only had to be lucky one day.”

Patrick Bredlau goes by the trail name “RW.” It began as Road Warrior, but early in his trail journey he fell in with some hikers connected to the Wounded Warrior Foundation. He admires what they do for military veterans, and did not want to suggest that he was among them, so he shortened his name to RW. Along the trail, each time someone asked him what the initials stood for, he would ask them what they thought it stood for, and their answer stood until the next time he was asked.

Photo courtesy Patrick Bredlau

Above: Patrick Bredlau (“RW”) hikes the trail

On Sept. 3, 2014, at Speck Pond Shelter in Maine, Bredlau met Bismarck and Hopper for the first time. Bismarck asked what RW stood for, and Bredlau told him how it worked. A heavy thunderstorm had come the previous night and Bismarck told him RW stood for “Rumble Water.”

Bredlau sensed that Bismarck and Hopper - “It’s like they were meant for each other,” he said - were experienced hikers with a good rapport with the trail. “Taking one step at a time,” he said. “Enjoying life. Moved slow.” It had been a long journey for Bredlau, and he liked the couple’s approach. They hiked toward Mount Katahdin together for the next three weeks, sharing their stories.

Bismarck must have liked his companion. Though he lied about his real name - he said his name was “Brian Wafford” - he offered more truths from his past to Bredlau than he typically allowed others to know. He said he was from Wisconsin (true), was 52 years old (true at the time), and a widower with a daughter (partially true). He also mentioned that he liked scuba diving (true).

When Bredlau shared his past, it must have sent a shock down Bismarck’s spine.

Bredlau is a retired federal bank examiner, a former certified civil fraud examiner for the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

When asked about the fact that Bismarck sent him a Christmas card last year, Bredlau, at his home in a suburb Chicago, laughed.

“Was it one of those situations where you keep your friends close and your enemies closer?” he said. “Or was it a game?”

Bredlau said he never suspected Bismarck’s past.

“He had his story down,” he said. “I took it hook, line and sinker.”

Asked where he would look for the $8.7 million, Bredlau said he would begin in the Cayman Islands. Hammes, after all, enjoyed scuba diving. And traveling alone. And the FBI confirmed that Hammes traveled to the Caribbean and Curacao, which the U.S. Department of State listed as a “jurisdiction of primary concern” in a 2014 report on money laundering.

“I’ll always want to know his motivation,” Bredlau said.

So do many other people, but not Jane Ryan.

There was a time when she wanted to confront him. But not anymore. She does not want to speak to James T. Hammes ever again. Not because she has nothing to say - she still cries when talking about her sister - but because she feels it would be a waste of time.

“I have no desire to look at him,” she said. “I know he would not tell me the truth. He lied about everything for so long. It came so easy to him.”

Asked if she believes Hammes could have had it in him to kill her sister, Ryan said if he did the things the FBI said he did, “He’s capable.”

Then, of her sister’s death, she said, “I don’t think he cared.”

Despite his obvious love of the outdoors, I struggle to understand his motivation as well, why he went to the Appalachian Trail and stayed there, so public, for so long. The thru-hiking community each season is the equivalent of a small town, and Bismarck became one of its best known, most respected citizens. It is so easy to find photographs of him, smiling among others in the community.

Then I remember something a hiker told me and I have not been able to separate his words from the image of Bismarck on the AT since.

“The outside world and its problems don’t exist to you while you’re walking,” the hiker wrote in an email. “They might creep in at night if you’re alone or away from other hikers … but generally it’s a whole other life and it feels good. Very good.

“I dream of it still a year later.”

I wonder what Hammes dreams of in that Ohio jail, and if he walks much beyond the confines of his cell. But mostly, when I think of James T. Hammes, I see Bismarck glancing over his shoulder on the sun dappled trail, his eyes meeting others hiking toward him, halting a moment to offer a greeting, but also to gauge what they might know. Then, realizing they know nothing, he smiles, and begins walking, one step after the other, trying to leave behind the man he used to be.

Have you stood lately in the South Carolina sun? On the right day it does not so much sizzle and sear as it does bully, causing grown men and women to wilt and wince and rush for the nearest cover.

It’s a June morning in Spartanburg, a town of about 38,000 not far from the North Carolina border, and it’s hot, the type of day where those standing outside can’t help but notice the time. As the noon hour closes and the sun passes straight overhead, the shadows disappear. As they go, there, too, goes any chance to find shade.

But this is the South, and no soaring temperature, certainly not one only months before the real work for the year will begin on high school and college fields across the state, can stop football.

On a patch of turf sunken between a rec center and a quiet two-lane road, some 100 kids have gathered to catch and run and learn how better to play the game. The children range in age from 5 to 16, and they seem oblivious to the heat. They laugh and shriek as they go through drills, flipping tractor tires and charging around pads laid in sequence on the field.

But one voice booms above them all. It is unrelentingly positive. It starts around 8 a.m. and does not quit until the camp itself does sometime after lunch.

“Good job!” it yells. “Great work! Good! Good! Good!”

The kids at this football camp have arrived to improve their technique and conditioning, but really many have come to see the man behind these bellows, the one who is just 23 years old and has already been something like state royalty for half a decade.

Photo: Ken Osburn

Marcus Lattimore is magnetic. Children of all backgrounds draw to him at the camp that carries his name, hanging off every word, staying late for autographs and pictures. A handshake or fist bump exchanged with the former Gamecocks running back here will become news to share with the other kids at school. Adults? They want a piece, too. Away from the camp, anywhere they play SEC football, he says, but without question all across South Carolina, Marcus cannot walk two feet without being stopped. “Are you … ?” one woman began at a restaurant last month, cocking her head while Marcus ordered his meal.

Forgive her uncertainty. Marcus has recently shorn his trademark braids, the hair he wore for years as he cut up college football one breathtaking run at a time, and so it may take some a second glance for his presence to register. Though with every signature request, every baby shoved in his hands for a spontaneous photo, Marcus greets each fan, black or white, young or old, South Carolinian or not, with warmth. This is life for him now, back home after an incomplete go at the NFL. He spends his days in the community much like a politician, even though Marcus seeks no public office.

He is a natural with his people, and returned to the state that nurtured his stardom. And yet what many he meets will fail to realize is that each smile he gives away brings something back in return. Every grin is restorative for Marcus, another moment of happiness removed from the personal anguish he so recently suffered, another opportunity to serve a new role in life.

From a distance, Marcus’ story appears to be the well-worn tale of the transcendent athlete, destined for such greatness but chopped down, instead, by injury. His legacy on the field, no matter what he achieved as a college star who was once discussed as a top Heisman Trophy candidate, is most commonly recalled by potential left unfilled, by what should have been but will never be.

Yet the untold side considers an even darker time for the one-time football savior, of the emotional torment and mental toil that came with no longer being able to play the game he once believed would define his life. For Marcus, who was on the fast track to NFL glory before he was hurt in a famously stomach-churning collision on a college field in 2012, the hardest part of his gruelling rehabilitation may not have been the squats or the strength drills or any painful balance exercise he was forced to grit through.

Instead, it was the psychological torture that almost ruined him, that threatened to bury the cheerful boy only those closest to him could see was hurting. It was one thing to fight through years of agony and frustration to get back to where Marcus could resemble at least a facsimile of his former self with the football under his arm. It was quite another matter finally to relent, to conclude that he could only fake it for so long before the world learned the one secret he had not shared with a single soul. Then, and only then, could Marcus accept it was time to move on and find his value elsewhere.

“I went out there and put a smile on my face like everything was alright,” Marcus says today of his pro football career, which ended last fall short of his ever getting to play a single down in the NFL. “But it was hell. Every day.”

There was always something different about this boy, Yolanda Smith thought, something about how her son carried himself, how he was so self-sufficient, how he seemed naturally to know what was right and what was not. “He was that kid from yesteryear,” she says. “I learned how to be a better person from watching him.”

Grant Halverson/Getty Images

Raised in northwest South Carolina, Marcus was the youngest of three children. He lived first in the tiny town of Reidville before the family moved to Duncan, a relative metropolis where little more than 3,000 call home. Each day after school, Marcus would begin a routine devised by his own plan. He would arrive home, grab a snack, watch precisely 30 minutes of cartoons, spend precisely 30 minutes outside, and come back in for homework. He was the kind of child his parents could place on autopilot. In church, Yolanda presumed Marcus’ head was always in the clouds, never paying attention or caring to pick up his bible to read. But sure enough, if you turned to a verse and asked Marcus to recite, he often knew it to the letter.

Money was sometimes a problem for the family, especially so when Marcus was nine and his mother and father, former Spartanburg High football standout Archie Lattimore, were going through divorce. After school let out for the summer one June, Marcus, his sister, Eboni, and a nephew Yolanda was raising were forced by court order from the home they lived in, which belonged to Marcus’ father (in addition to her children, Yolanda also raised a niece and nephew as her own; she later remarried, adding two stepchildren to the mix.)

Yolanda had nowhere to turn. Her family was back in Atlanta, though to bring her children across state lines to live with relatives would have risked her losing custody. For a time they were homeless, eventually settling in with a woman who opened her basement so the four could have a place to sleep. It was six weeks before Yolanda could secure an apartment of her own.

Marcus was drawn to football early. He enjoyed other sports, like basketball and bowling, and took a quick interest in movies (his first viewing of Goodfellas was in the eighth grade), but football soon came to be the most prominent thing in his life. “What did I do when I wasn’t playing football?” Marcus asked himself recently when prompted with the question.

He was good right away, though never quite enough to his own mind. As a star running back in high school, even as a freshman receiving letters from a dream list of major college programs, Marcus was plagued with self-doubt. He would look at other backs from rival schools and marvel at their speed. It drove him. I’ve got to get faster, he demanded of himself at each workout, through each sprint drill. I’ll never be great until I get faster.

The first formal offer for Marcus’ service as a student-athlete came from Clemson in his sophomore year. Then the University of South Carolina sent one, too. “After that,” Marcus says, “it was everybody.” The recruiting trail was a wild ride for Marcus, who quickly became one of the nation’s most prized prospects. Auburn came after him hard. So did Georgia. Before the fall of the program after the sex abuse scandal involving former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, Joe Paterno had Marcus to his home in State College for dinner and fresh-baked cookies. The Penn State coach was sharp and funny, Marcus thought during his visit, but, boy, he sure reminded him of some of those old capos he’d seen in the gangster movies he loved.

In high school, Marcus was transcendent on the field, scoring 104 touchdowns over four years for Duncan’s Byrnes Rebels, which he led to state titles in 2007 and 2008. During his final season, in 2009, Marcus won the South Carolina Mr. Football Award. He graduated as the nation’s finest running back recruit, according to Scout.com, but through it all he kept a level head, thanks in no small part to the women he held nearby, who never bought into his growing celebrity. His mother’s knowledge of football was so slight that she would insist Marcus wear red socks during his high school games so Yolanda could identify him on the field. When Marcus was a senior, his girlfriend Miranda Bailey noticed perfectly organized boxes in his home with folders holding the offers Marcus received from colleges across the country. Miranda couldn’t quite understand; she’d never followed football all that closely. “So you don’t have to apply for school and apply for scholarships like me?” she wondered. “You get to go for free?”

Marcus chose to become a Gamecock following a visit to his home led by South Carolina’s venerable coach, Steve Spurrier. Yolanda cooked chili and cornbread as the snow fell outside, however the dinner was initially a dud. Spurrier and Yolanda did not click right away, and Yolanda decided early that evening she did not want her to son to play under the lights in Columbia. Yet as the night went on she and Spurrier began to hit it off. All of a sudden, there was music, and the old coach soon found himself sliding to the left, sliding to the right, and taking it back now, y’all. “We were all in there trying to do the Cha Cha [Slide],” Spurrier recalls, referencing DJ Casper’s novelty dance hit. His dancing was not particularly proficient, but it was successful. “After he did that,” Marcus says now, rather enjoying the recollection of his coach’s moves, “(mom) loved him to death.”

Fame arrived readily for Marcus as he began a legendary college career in 2010. As a freshman he was such a breakthrough star that he was soon unable to attend parties or even stride through campus without being mobbed. There became two sides to Marcus: the unstoppable running back, who broke 42 tackles in a 17-6 win over Georgia on Sept. 11 and later stormed for 212 yards and three touchdowns in a 36-14 blowout of Florida on Nov. 13, or the shut-in, who was so popular at school there were times he could only sit idly by as notes and autograph requests were slipped by the handful under his dorm room door.

Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images

After his first season, in which he scored an incredible 19 touchdowns on 1,609 yards from scrimmage, The Sporting News and CBS Sports named Marcus the national college football freshman of the year. Marcus’ signing and debut performance were a triumph for Spurrier, proof the flagging Gamecock program was turning a corner. The team won nine games in 2010 — the second-best finish in school history, and South Carolina’s most victories in a season since 2001, when Lou Holtz was still coach. The Gamecocks entered 2011 ranked No. 12 in the Associated Press preseason poll, the first time in nearly a decade the AP had acknowledged South Carolina as one of the country’s best 25 teams going into a season. The school was becoming a true contender in the SEC.

A tear of his left anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) during a 14-12 win over Mississippi State on Oct. 15 stopped Marcus’ sophomore year in its tracks, but he returned to begin the 2012 season with 110 rushing yards and two touchdowns in a 17-13 win over Vanderbilt on Aug. 30. Each game that followed added strength and mobility to his surgically repaired knee, and the Gamecocks rolled as Marcus did, surging to 6-0 to begin the year and rising as high as No. 3 in the national rankings. South Carolina dropped the next two games, falling to No. 9 LSU and No. 3 Florida. But by Oct. 27, when the team hosted Tennessee at Williams-Brice Stadium, Marcus felt whole again. Finally, he was 100 percent, feeling not only as strong as he had felt since having surgery but perhaps in the best shape of his entire life.

The night before kickoff, Marcus, the only junior voted a team captain, addressed the Gamecocks. “Guys,” he began, invigorated, “go out there and play this game like it’s your last. Because it may be your last.”

Gerry Melendez/The State/MCT via Getty Images

The play call came in the second quarter. South Carolina led 21-14, and Marcus had been superb to that point, rushing for more than 60 yards already, including a 28-yard touchdown. In came word for a counter to the left, a familiar play for the electric back, yet as Marcus took the ball two Volunteers defenders closed in.

Marcus had worked his way out of jams bigger than this before; that’s what made him Marcus. His coaches and teammates often marvelled at his ability to escape tacklers and make defenders whiff. Even as a freshman, Spurrier couldn’t help but compare him to Dallas Cowboys’ great Emmitt Smith, a runner with both elusive speed and power.

Tennessee linebacker Herman Lathers was the first to grab Marcus as he crossed the line of scrimmage, wrapping him high while Marcus’ legs churned to break away. What happened next changed his life. As he charged forward to free himself from the tackle, cornerback Eric Gordon dove low to cut Marcus down. His helmet struck Marcus’ right knee.

The replay of the injury is difficult to watch for two reasons. The first, of course, is the violent meeting of helmet and leg, a crunch that caused Marcus’ limb to flail unnaturally over his tumbling body, leaving his entire knee dislodged and relocated to the outside of his leg. But the images that followed are more devastating to revisit: Marcus, splayed on the field with horror in his eyes. His head darted to the left and the right, his helmet off now so there was no concealing the dread coursing through his body.

Marcus felt nothing when he was hit by Gordon’s helmet. There was no pain, in fact no real sensation at all. “It just felt like something was out of place,” he says.

Gerry Melendez/The State/MCT via Getty Images

The emotions on the field quickly drew another picture. Long before Marcus did, others realized he was badly hurt. Players from both teams seemed to grasp the severity of the injury, emptying onto the field to pay their respects to such a revered athlete. Trainers were able to pop Marcus’ knee back in place, but by then there was no easy way to say it. “Am I done?” Marcus asked South Carolina’s team doctor, Jeffrey Guy, as he lay on the turf.

He was, and all Marcus could do was cry, his presence felt on the field long after he was carted from it into a waiting ambulance. “Both teams were really hurt by the situation,” recalls Jadeveon Clowney, Marcus’ Gamecocks teammate who would later become the top pick in the 2014 NFL Draft. “A lot of guys were upset.” South Carolina won 38-35, but the team found it difficult to celebrate.

Once Marcus reached the hospital, a new reality set in. Doctors did not speak of recovery in terms of football. No one talked of getting back out there in a few weeks or even the season after. Indeed, this injury was not like his last. Marcus had torn three of the four major ligaments holding the joint together, the ACL, lateral collateral ligament (LCL) and posterior cruciate ligament (PCL). Even worse, his dislodged knee had come in contact with an artery and the nerve in his leg. Forget carrying a football; it seemed then like a best-case scenario for Marcus was to simply walk properly again, to instead be able to carry groceries from the car to the house. Had the nerve been severed, doctors could not have saved Marcus’ leg.

Suddenly a shift in perspective was needed: Marcus had been lucky. Tests showed the artery and nerve were intact, so Marcus would keep his leg. Everything else, however, was not yet clear. In his hospital room that night, teammates flooded in, more tears rolling down their cheeks at what their beloved captain had become. Marcus sat there in his bed, watching his best friends shield their gaze, some only able to peer in from the hall. The mood was such that Marcus could not help but feel he was attending his own funeral. “Everybody came in there like I was dead or something,” he says.

The famed orthopedic surgeon Dr. James Andrews operated to repair Marcus’ leg. For decades Dr. Andrews had been the authority on sports medicine in America, known for fixing the injuries that had once ended careers. His most miraculous patient might have been Adrian Peterson, the Minnesota Vikings running back who was just then, as Marcus was hurt for the second time, in the middle of his 2012 MVP season in which he rushed for 2,097 yards barely eight months after blowing out two ligaments in his knee.

Peterson set the standard for returning from harrowing injury, yet right away Dr. Andrews could see Marcus’ case was much more severe. “That was about as bad an injury as you’ll ever see in football,” he says. Once inside the knee, Dr. Andrews noticed one of Marcus’ tendons was so obliterated it had the appearance of spaghetti. “We had to figure out what went where, it was so torn up,” he says.

The surgery was successful, but what would Marcus do now? He had been cleared, at least medically, to go on, yet there was the matter of if he wanted to continue playing football, or even if he did, if he could perform at anything close to his previous level.

His mother was clear in her view. It tore her apart whenever her son was hurt; the first rehab for his shredded ACL in 2011 was so tough to be a part of that now, after her son had been hurt once more, Yolanda did not want Marcus to ever look at a football field again. “That takes a toll on a family,” she says.

Through his fame and connections in South Carolina, financially Marcus would likely have been able to hang it up then. He had taken out insurance against a catastrophic injury, and may have been able to drift into a comfortable life through any number of doors that open to a college football star in the South, particularly one as bright and charming as Marcus. But the game was his dream. He had a trio of goals in life: to get drafted into the NFL, to play in a Super Bowl, and to make the Pro Football Hall of Fame. If he quit now, he could say goodbye all three.

After some time, Marcus reached a decision that he would try once more to return. The odds were long, yet there had been enough positive news from his surgery to suggest his body might be able to handle football again, even at the next level.

He believed he had proved enough in college, but there was only one way to find if he was making the right choice. On Dec. 12, 2012, some six weeks after his right knee was destroyed and only 14 months after his left knee was hurt badly, too, Marcus decided to leave school early. He would enter the 2013 NFL Draft.

At the same time Marcus lay writhing on the field against Tennessee, a cruel consequence was also taking form. Once considered by talent evaluators as a top-flight first-round pick, after his second major injury Marcus now represented the one thing NFL teams try best to steer from: risk. Because he had declared for the draft did not mean an NFL career was still in his future.

Marcus met with several teams ahead of the 2013 draft, but as the event rolled around in April he still could not run, an ability professional general managers have historically preferred their running backs to have.

Joe Robbins/Getty Images

Above: Lattimore at the 2013 NFL combine

Trent Baalke considered Marcus from a distance. Like representatives from most teams, the 49ers GM met with him at that year’s combine, but San Francisco was not one of the clubs that flew Marcus into their facilities for a more thorough evaluation. What the 49ers had, however, were the assets to afford a gamble.

Holding 13 picks over the draft’s seven rounds, Baalke knew he had room to experiment. There was little chance each new player would make San Francisco’s roster, anyway, so the GM earmarked three or four picks for redshirting — selections to be used on players that would sit out the entire upcoming season under the promise of future payoff. A once-dynamic running back from South Carolina was worth taking a chance on.

As able-bodied backs flew off the board, Marcus watched as the millions in guaranteed money he would have earned as a top pick sailed away. Mercifully, shortly before selection No. 131 in the fourth round was announced, Marcus’s phone rang as he dined in an Atlanta restaurant.

It was the 49ers. The pick was a relief to everyone, even ESPN’s television commentators, who erupted with “There he is!” as if Marcus was the very selection many were waiting on. Baalke knew right away the road that lay ahead. “The odds were not in our favor, or at best they were 50/50,” he says now of Marcus’ chances to turn a profit in the NFL. But the GM leaned on what he had uncovered about Marcus’ character and disposition in researching the prospect, about his work ethic, about how his commitment to the game was always accompanied by a smile. “If anyone was going to get back,” he says, “it was going to be a young man like that.”

Marcus agreed to a modest contract with the 49ers, with just more than $300,000 guaranteed to him. Conversely, the top back selected in 2013, the Bengals’ Giovani Bernard, signed a deal that featured $3.25 million in guaranteed money.

No matter. Marcus was headed to the NFL. Goal number one had been achieved, and now it was time to show them all.

First, the steps were small, the slow, intensive process of rebuilding the knee familiar to Marcus from his rehabilitation following sophomore year at South Carolina. But as he worked throughout his first NFL season, watching from the isolation of the non-football injury list as the 49ers fell one score short of the Super Bowl, his time neared.

Soon, it was spring, 2014. Training camp began, and now was when Marcus could dust himself off and shine, impress his coaches and nip at the heels of backfield incumbent Frank Gore, himself a comeback case from two major knee injuries in college. If he could even come close to reclaiming the physical ability he had displayed during his last year at South Carolina, Marcus pictured a future as the top back on this team.

Michael Zagaris/San Francisco 49ers/Getty Images

But something was off. He hurt and ached as he tried to knock the rust off his repaired knee, but that did not concern him. He could deal with pain. What he found more difficult when it came time to ramp up intensity was that he no longer seemed like himself, no longer felt like himself. Outwardly, he could run the drills his coaches put him through, slicing and cutting and generally looking like an NFL running back. On film clips he still keeps on his phone, Marcus plants left, plants right and explodes on the green practice turf. On video and in person, he looked the part, but only Marcus knew that beneath it all there was another truth.

“My running backs coach was like, ‘Good job! Good job!’” Marcus says. “My offensive coordinator — I was catching balls out of the backfield — was like, ‘Man you look good!’ I was like, ‘You have no clue.’”

He had plateaued in his recovery, something only he could tell. The stress Marcus could put on his joints before he was hurt, the ability to cut at full speed and change directions on a dime, was too much for his new body. In late summer, while Marcus appeared to be performing well in drills and, he says, “trying to fake it the whole time” to convince himself he was still improving, he arrived at a crushing conclusion. My knee, he thought, is not made for football anymore.

What followed were the darkest months of Marcus’ life. He fought the truth of what his body was telling him every day, not willing to give into the crippling screams shooting up from his leg. Worse, he internalized everything, buckling under the weight of reality: that his dream of becoming an NFL star, the focus of his life, was slipping away.

Miranda noticed Marcus was changing. While Marcus was in San Francisco, she split her time between California and South Carolina, holding a job on either coast. That fall, as the 49ers believed Marcus was coming closer to a return, Miranda would see him each day after workouts. Normally, Marcus was gregarious. He loved talking about football, who did what in that day’s drills and how he’d performed. But now, nothing came out. “I would ask him, ‘How was your day?’” she says. “And he would just say ‘good’ and he would never elaborate.” If Marcus didn’t change the subject right away, Miranda would, asking him instead what the couple should do for dinner. But those closest to Marcus knew things weren’t right. “He put up a big front for everyone else, but I could see it in him,” his mother, Yolanda, says. “The light was gone.”

By late October, the thoughts inside Marcus’ head were directly at odds with news reports of his condition. On Oct. 29, an ESPN.com story by Paul Gutierrez detailed Marcus’ NFL practice debut. “Today is just a blessing,” Marcus said. “I feel good.” His return would have then been a welcome sight for the 49ers. The team was scuffling, a presumptive NFC West contender sitting at just 4-3, and Gore had led San Francisco’s backfield in rushing the previous two games with only 58 yards total. If all went well in Marcus’ return — the team suggested he could be added to the 49ers active roster in a few weeks and provide a needed boost — the comeback story would be complete.

The truth is Marcus hid his feelings so completely that it wasn’t only his family and friends who knew nothing of his pain. Marcus didn’t tell a soul on the 49ers about his doubts, either. As the time of his return neared, he struggled with what to do. He knew his body could no longer handle the demands of professional football, but he continued to try, no closer to admitting it to himself.

Marcus was desperate for something, anything, to mask the agony of his knee. On more than 30 occasions during 2014, he says, without the knowledge of San Francisco team doctors or anyone else, he used the powerful and highly addictive pain killer oxycodone, which had been prescribed to him years earlier to use as he recovered from surgery. Sometimes the pills worked. Often they did not.

It was a lonely time. Because he was unwilling to open up about the turmoil he felt, what lay inside Marcus’ head could only build without release. He began to fear that if he failed to return to football, he would disappoint everyone who had supported him along the way: his mother; his siblings; Miranda; his coaches; his agents. He was concerned, too, about the people home in South Carolina. They had hollered and cheered and supported him through it all, but would they still love him if he could no longer make them proud on the field? Football players are not raised to think about quitting. “I’m too young not to play,” he worried. “What are people gonna think?”

The decision came on Oct. 31. Miranda was back in South Carolina, working her Friday night shift serving at a restaurant near her home, when her phone buzzed. She couldn’t answer, but moments later she saw a text from Marcus. Call me when you can, it read.

Miranda excused herself to the bathroom, where she dialled Marcus. “Hey, are you busy?” he said on the other end of the line. “I just talked to the team. I retired.”

“What?” she pleaded. The words came as a shock until he spoke them again.

“I retired.”

The final sign had come for Marcus following workouts the day before. After practice, as his presumed return to the field neared, his knee throbbed. That night, he prayed. “God,” he asked, “what do you want me to do?” When he woke the next morning and could barely walk under his own power, he knew. He had turned 23 just two days earlier, but he was finished.

Marcus arrived at the 49ers facility Friday morning for his final meetings as a member of the team. Before the day’s practice could begin, he pulled aside San Francisco’s vice president of football operations and former head athletic trainer, Jeff Ferguson, and told him the news. Then, he delivered it to head coach Jim Harbaugh and later the rest of the organization. Until that moment, not a single person had any idea he was quitting.

Jason O. Watson/Getty Images

The break was clean, even clinical. Marcus made no appearances following his retirement, and held no press conference to explain his choice. He offered no comment, in fact, other than to release a short statement. “After prayer and careful consideration, I have decided it’s time to end my professional football career,” it read in part. “Unfortunately, getting my knee fully back to the level the NFL demands has proven to be insurmountable.”

And then he was gone. Without ceremony, he vanished from the NFL radar as another season came and went without him. San Francisco, after reaching the NFC Championship Game a year earlier, stumbled to a .500 record in 2014, and 49ers fans couldn’t help but wonder about their young running back. He seemed so close to a return near mid-season, but then suddenly disappeared. What happened to Marcus Lattimore?

Until now, before he agreed to an interview last month, the answer to that, the most unkind chapter in Marcus’ life, was largely a secret.

At first, when he considered how his world might look without football, Marcus became sour. Personally, he wasn’t sure what he would do in life, but also he feared he would grow jealous, watching his friends and peers excelling at the sport in which he once held nearly unmatched skill.

Then a funny thing happened. “I was relieved,” he says. The light in his eyes was returning.

He had no regrets. He found he kept no animosity in his soul, not toward teammates he wished he could be playing alongside or toward his own body, which had emerged from a nightmare of injury strong but just not strong enough to play professional football.

Marcus arrived back in South Carolina, and to the university where he plans to finish his degree in public health and try soon for his Masters, not certain of the welcome he would receive. When he had been hurt in college, after all, he noticed how things could change based on his own fortunes in football; people that once wanted to be close to him, be they fans, hangers-on or prospective agents, seemed to suddenly disappear.

The reaction in South Carolina has been the opposite of what he feared. There was a time Marcus worried that by not making it in the NFL he would have let the people in this state down. Instead, the community has embraced his decision and swarms to Marcus now as much as it ever did.

Already, Marcus has accomplished enough to coast for a lifetime as an idol to those in South Carolina. However, he has no plans to do only that. Where Marcus once saw uncertainty in his life after football, now he sees a growing opportunity. He talks today of using the degree he will earn to help local athletes, to train and strengthen their bodies and minds under the roof of one facility. In fact, he has already begun much of the work. Through his charity, the Marcus Lattimore Foundation/DREAMS, Marcus and his family run outreach programs for youths in his home state.

Perhaps there is greater need for them now than ever before. Just two nights after the June 17 shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church that left nine people dead and underscored the centuries-old tension between blacks and whites in the state, Marcus visited Charleston. By a stroke of fate, he was due in the city for a scheduled football camp that weekend, but Marcus arrived early, a visible and important face joining a group thousands strong outside the church Friday night.

He was struck by the weight of the moment, unable to grasp that he was in the same place where so much harm had so recently been done. Yet the mood at the church stirred him. This was not Ferguson or Baltimore, where tempers had flared into citywide violence. In Charleston, Marcus listened as gospel songs filled the air and the community vowed to pick itself back up again. “It was powerful to see that,” he says. The next day on the field, the spirits was so positive and uplifting that Yolanda, who acts as the smiling matriarch of her son’s camps, said it was among her favorite experiences ever in football.

“I love this state. I love the people here. They love me. I know I can make a difference here.”

Photos: Ken Osburn

Marcus is not outwardly political, but as a personality beloved by all cultures in South Carolina his views strike a chord, especially in the wake of tragedy. Much of the dialogue following the Charleston killings has focused on the Confederate flag, which has long been considered a symbol dividing the South along racial lines. Marcus believes its presence hinders social progress in his state. “It’s not a fact of the flag being for racial showing or racial power or anything like that,” he says. “I just feel like, white or black, it’s holding both of us back from moving forward.”

He feels differently about home since he left the NFL. “Before I was injured, I didn’t appreciate South Carolina,” he says. “I didn’t appreciate the beauty we had in this state. Now, I go to small towns to speak, and it’s like, Man, I love this state. I love the people here. They love me. I know I can make a difference here. I want to help this state until the day I die.”

Marcus has discovered there is currency in lending a hand, in being kind and courteous to others. Before he was drafted, NFL personnel researched each inch of his life, interviewing almost every teacher or coach he ever had. Deep down, he can reveal now, Marcus believes he was picked by the 49ers more for the person he is than for his ability to run with a football. “I mean, why would you take a running back with two horrible knee injuries?” Marcus wonders. “I did pretty good, I played good in college, but if I’m a GM I don’t think I would do it.”

Baalke isn’t quite ready to concede this point — he still hoped for the day Marcus would become a focal point of his San Francisco offense — but there can be no shading the fondness felt by those Marcus has passed alongside in life. “He’s one of those kids,” says Dr. Andrews, “I’d do anything in the world for him.”

Already, the University of South Carolina has recruited Marcus once again, this time to serve as a kind of ambassador to the school and program he helped establish on the map. Before Marcus arrived as a student in 2010, the football team had been middling, winning seven, sometimes six, games a year and failing to consistently draw the region’s finest recruits. “When you get a star player like Marcus, then that helps you get the next really big star player,” says Spurrier, whose Gamecocks won 31 games in Marcus’ three seasons with the team. “He changed the face of South Carolina football.”

Retirement is busy for Marcus. His days are packed with so much school and so many appearances and charitable events he hasn’t had time, or perhaps the inclination, to help much with the planning of his wedding to Miranda, who he asked to marry him in the spring. Not that his fiancé has let him off the hook. “He’s in charge of the honeymoon,” Miranda says.

Last month at his football camp in Spartanburg, Marcus stalked around the field, surveying the kids running about. “Good hands!” he would exclaim when a receiver made a catch. If the ball was dropped, Marcus had words for that, too: “Good route!” For the running back, working with youths has been illuminating. “I feel like I found what I’m supposed to do after football,” he says.

Over his legs, covering the dark scars of surgery, Marcus wore gray compression tights that ran down to his calves. On this day, nobody asked to see the wounds, nor did they speak of his injuries or a pro career scuttled away. On this day, no one seemed to care.

It wasn’t long ago Marcus had to fake it in San Francisco, hiding the pain in his life from even those closest to him. That time is over. At camp, as Marcus rose from a huddle of kids he had just led in a rousing cheer, he emerged with a toothy grin that seemed impossible to counterfeit. The smile was real, unable to betray the two most important words he would offer later that day: “I’m happy.”

After their wedding in December, Marcus and Miranda will get away. First, on their honeymoon, though later to all the places on their travel wish list, the destinations a busy life in football has kept them from so far.

But there is no question where they will settle. Their roots are down now, Marcus’ time in the community today a sign of what will come tomorrow. They will continue to live in South Carolina.

Home will always be South Carolina.

The United States women’s national team are World Cup champions, and they couldn’t have pulled it off in more exciting fashion, obliterating Japan in the final, 5-2. Golden Ball winner Carli Lloyd provided the exclamation point with the greatest goal the competition has ever seen.

It didn’t always look like their four-year journey would end happily. There were some dramatic twists and turns, resulting in a coach getting fired and rumors of a player revolt. The replacement coach’s competence was questioned. The players never looked like they’d come together to make a real team.

But in the end, they showed up everyone.

Watching Japan’s first goal in the 2011 World Cup final never gets less painful. Even if you know what’s coming, even if you know the result, and even if you know the United States beat Japan the next two times they faced off in major finals, you can’t help but put your head in your hands.

Christie Rampone passes the ball directly to Japan. Rachel Van Hollebeke falls over on her first clearance attempt. On her second attempt, she inexplicably plays a square ball right in front of her own net. Aya Miyama scores.

Van Hollebeke loses her mark on the second equalizer as well, with Homare Sawa — the Golden Ball winner — getting a step on her during a corner. Hope Solo is somehow beaten at her near post.

Then the penalties: a spectacular kick save, a blast over the bar, a horrible slow-roller. Only Abby Wambach scored.

The United States absolutely threw away the World Cup. They had all the good chances leading up to Alex Morgan’s opening goal and should have been up by three or four at that point. A 1-1 draw in regular time was a poor result, but they redeemed themselves, scoring in extra time. Then they blew that, too. The USWNT had never missed a penalty in the World Cup up until this match, but they blew the shootout as well.

As spectacular as their comeback against Brazil and their two final goals were, losing the World Cup final was an unmitigated disaster for the United States. They couldn’t let it happen again.

Coach Pia Sundhage came under some criticism for her rudimentary tactics, but it certainly wasn’t heavy, and she remained in her post for the 2012 Summer Olympics. But that tournament and Sundhage’s departure afterwards were still decisive, marking a transition point — would the program’s downward momentum continue, or was it time to blow everything up?

It turned out to be the former, partially thanks to Norwegian referee Christina Pederson. In Canada, she’s a criminal. But she’s one of the most important figures in the history of American soccer.

Canada was the better team in the Olympic semifinal. There’s no need to deny it. Canada outplayed the United States and might have gone on to win 3-2 if Pederson didn’t make two questionable calls. They weren’t clearly wrong, absurd or egregious errors, but they were questionable calls and Canada had every right to be upset about them.

First, the indirect kick given for holding on to the ball too long. Erin McLeod hadn’t been warned for it earlier and the application of the rule was swift and harsh. The whistle blew after she’d held the ball for six seconds, and it’s such an infrequently enforced rule that McLeod was genuinely confused about what the referee had called. On the ensuing free kick, the ball hit Adriana Leon on the upper arm or shoulder, depending on who you ask, and the USWNT was gifted an equalizer.

Morgan scored the final U.S. goal in the 123rd minute, sending the USWNT to another final with Japan, which they would go on to win.

The Americans put in a great performance in that match, but going on to win the gold medal and get revenge for the World Cup loss wasn’t the major turning point that it should’ve been. Had the U.S. lost a close-fought battle to the World Cup champions, it might have stung, but it wouldn’t have been a signal to start over. What really mattered was not losing to Canada. That would have resulted in a complete and utter blow-up and a re-considering of everything the senior national team does. Instead, in the afterglow of winning the gold, they tried a mixed approach — having a new coach blend in young, technical players while influential veterans stuck around. It took a while for problems to emerge, but this went poorly.

Tom Sermanni was supposed to be a slam-dunk hire in 2012. U.S. Soccer had a panel interview a variety of candidates and Sermanni was the one they determined the be the most qualified, and for good reason. He’d guided extremely young Australia teams through the World Cup group stage in back-to-back tournaments and had a reputation for dealing well with big egos. He’d know how to be critical of vets Wambach and Lloyd while getting the most out of Morgan and Sydney Leroux. He’d get younger players up to speed and mold the next generation of great USWNT talent.

Doug Pensinger/Getty Images

Tom Sermanni was supposed to be a slam-dunk hire in 2012

“U.S. Soccer has always been at the forefront of supporting the women’s game, and it’s exciting to coach the team in this next chapter of its history,” Sermanni said after he was hired. “After coaching against many of these players for years, I am looking forward to working with an accomplished group of veterans while integrating the numerous talented young players who are itching for a chance to prove themselves.”

Sermanni said all the right things. So did national team legends.

“I have known him for many years and think he is a great coach. And that he is a player’s manager type of coach,” former USWNT star Julie Foudy told Beau Dure. “But is a strong personality who can also ‘crack the whip’ (quote from many of current players) as many of the current players want.”

Sermanni asked his teams to play a more possession-oriented style of soccer than they had played under Sundhage, which was seen as a positive. Women’s soccer has been gradually moving away from an athlete-dominated game as smarter and more technical players come through the ranks. Japan’s two straight final appearances were evidence of that, as were the improving technical ability of the top two teams in Europe, France and Germany.

Out were Sundhage’s converted central defenders at fullback, in came the converted wingers. Out went the athletic, direct midfielders and wingers, in came the likes of Yael Averbuch, Kristie and Sam Mewis, while Tobin Heath was handed a key role. Sermanni was willing to utilize the pace and power of his young superstar strikers, but technical ability was his No. 1 requirement for midfielders. At first, it worked — the U.S. won the 2013 Algarve Cup, beating Germany in the final.

But things went south a year later at the same competition. Sermanni entered the 2014 Algarve Cup with an undefeated record, including multiple wins over Canada and others against Germany and Brazil. But a draw with Japan, a one-goal loss to Sweden and a bizarre 5-3 loss to Denmark sent the USWNT to the seventh-place game, where they defeated North Korea. It was a bad result, but featured only one truly poor performance — the first of his entire tenure as coach. That was enough to get him sacked.

Sermanni didn’t even seem too upset about getting canned. ”I’m disappointed that things didn’t work out, but I’d like to thank U.S. Soccer for the opportunity to have coached this team and also the staff and players for all their hard work,” he said in a statement he let U.S. Soccer put out. Allison McCann of FiveThirtyEight called the decision “rash,” since Sermanni’s winning percentage was better than April Heinrichs and Greg Ryan, while Foudy wrote that “it just doesn’t seem fitting treatment for a man with such class.” Wambach was forced to come out and say that the players didn’t try to get him fired after rumors of a revolt emerged as explanation. Steven Goff of the Washington Post reported that a source told him the players weren’t “learning anything, there’s no vision, no direction, nothing.”

Enter Jill Ellis.

No one has hung around the top of the U.S. Soccer coaching food chain without becoming head coach longer than Ellis. On multiple occasions, while still serving as head coach at UCLA, Ellis was U.S. U-20 and U-21 manager, as well as the senior side’s assistant manager. Since leaving UCLA to take over as USSF’s development director, she’s served as senior team assistant manager and twice as interim manager. And in 2014, she was finally named the full-time head coach of the United States women’s national team.

Kent C. Horner/Getty Images

On this short of notice, with under two years to prepare for the World Cup, no one could have possibly been more qualified for the job. And in addition to her excellent resume, she’d been the assistant manager or youth coach for almost everyone in the senior player pool. There wasn’t going to be a serious adjustment period — the players knew Ellis and what she was about.

They quickly praised Ellis as a true coach, someone who could make them better. “It took us a while to see the angles and to see how that changed everything,” Christen Press told Leander Schaerlaekens at Fox Soccer during CONCACAF’s Women’s World Cup qualifiers, “but as we’ve progressed through this tournament it’s become quite clear that we’re starting to get it. We’re really growing into the way she wants us to play. The vision is there. The progression to the type of team that we’re going to, it’s starting to click.”

This was the message. The Americans’ average performances against Canada and France, followed by a terrible performance against Trinidad and Tobago, were just growing pains. The team was getting it. Ellis had a vision that she was implementing and the team was starting to play the way she wanted them to.

Then came a 1-1 draw against China, a 3-2 loss to Brazil and a 0-0 draw in a rematch. Fans were worried, but those last two matches — from an exhibition tournament in South America — were not easily viewable, so a lot of fans weren’t sure of exactly the degree to which the squad was in disarray. Then came another France game.

The dedicated, year-round USWNT fanbase might be smaller than most teams’, but there isn’t a single fanbase with higher expectations. Even the craziest, most outlandish college football boosters aren’t calling for anyone’s head when their program loses one game, falls short of the national title but wins a New Year’s bowl. In the case of the United States women, any loss is a reason to panic — just ask Sermanni.

On Feb. 8, France bulldozed the United States in a friendly. The score was just 2-0, but it was striking how easy the game was for Les Bleus. The Americans couldn’t get the ball off them to save their lives. When they got it, they quickly turned it over. The only attacks they could generate were from passes that played Morgan or Press into space, which they produced sparingly.

Once France scored — which they did only after missing two easy chances and forcing Ashlyn Harris into two world class saves — the game was over. They controlled possession and Ellis’ side had no idea what to do about it.

The game was the perfect microcosm of what was wrong with the United States and, by extension, Ellis. They needed a defensive midfielder to win the ball back and more technical players who could keep it. France’s style was the future, the USWNT’s style was the past and the Americans were going to get embarrassed in the World Cup semifinals if they didn’t make a drastic change. Quickly.

But the USWNT got a rematch against France a month later in the Algarve Cup final, and although we didn’t know it at the time, that game was the real preview of what was to come at the World Cup. The Americans didn’t change their tactics and still had technically inferior players, but they had the better athletes. France had no answer for Julie Johnston’s set piece prowess or Press’ speed in the Americans’ 2-0 win.

The United States didn’t have to change to beat France. They just needed to be a better version of their fast, physical, direct selves.

Fransisco Leong/AFP/Getty Images

Noticeably absent in the USWNT’s Algarve Cup victory was superstar goalkeeper Hope Solo. She was serving a suspension because she reportedly let her husband Jerramy Stevens drive a vehicle owned by U.S. Soccer while he was intoxicated. He was pulled over and arrested for DUI. To most fans, this was the less egregious of her two alleged offenses during this cycle, but it’s the only one that exposed the federation to a potential lawsuit.

Her more scrutinized issue was her domestic violence legal case. On June 21, 2014, police were called to the residence of Solo’s half-sister Teresa Obert, and Solo was arrested on two counts of domestic violence. Obert claims that Solo attacked her then-17-year-old son repeatedly. Solo claims that she was the one who was a victim of domestic violence on the night of the incident.

Buda Mendes/Getty Images

On the eve of an era-defining World Cup, no one talked about soccer. They just talked about Hope Solo

Solo’s case was dismissed because witnesses failed to appear in court, and prosecutors have appealed the ruling. They’re expected to file their argument by July 13. Solo was never suspended by U.S. Soccer for this incident, but calls for her to be kicked off the national team got a lot louder when ESPN’s Outside The Lines released a new report on the incident, after the World Cup had started and one day before the USWNT’s opening match. The report paints U.S. Soccer and Solo in a negative light, and Obert repeatedly asserts that Solo is a liar.

On the eve of an era-defining World Cup, no one talked about soccer. They just talked about Solo. All of the questions Ellis got to start her press conference the night before her team’s game against Australia were about Solo’s off-field controversies. People asked if it was appropriate to compare her to Ray Rice and Greg Hardy (it isn’t) and whether it’s okay to suspend players for alleged crimes (it is). Most television coverage of the team was dedicated not just to Solo, but pundits angrily complaining that they had to discuss Solo’s legal troubles when they wanted to discuss soccer.

As expected, and to the disgust of many, Solo remained the starting goalkeeper. She didn’t talk to the media during the tournament and all her teammates had to say when asked about her was that she wasn’t a distraction. Ellis managed the situation masterfully, making sure it didn’t affect the team as a collective. But no one in the program answered the big questions that remained: should Solo have been selected for the team in the first place? Would the USWNT have won the World Cup without her? Does it matter?

The answers are no, no and no. If fans want U.S. Soccer to put what they think is right above winning, they will have to show them by refusing to support a team that Solo plays for. Almost no one is doing that.

Solo’s selection in the national team wasn’t the only controversial one. During the build-up to the World Cup, Ellis’ roster selections were criticized for the lack of new faces, playing into the theory that veterans beefed with Sermanni for dropping their old friends in favor of youngsters in earlier tournaments. An astonishing 21 of the 23 USWNT players were 25 or older (10 were 30 or older) and the roster also had 10 players with 100 or more caps.

Crystal Dunn, Kristie Mewis, Tori Huster and Keelin Winters were the squad’s most notable young omissions. Shannon Boxx — 38 and not a regular starter — was the only true defensive midfielder called into the team. At 22 years old, Morgan Brian had played a bit in the position, but it wasn’t clear that Ellis saw her as a true DM, and Brian’s first World Cup start ended up being on the right wing. Lauren Holiday, who plays as a second striker or advanced playmaker for her club side, was converted to the defensive midfield role and had struggled there during friendlies.

And then there was Wambach, who decided she wouldn’t be playing club soccer ahead of the World Cup. She felt so secure in her position on the team that she didn’t think she had to play NWSL to prove herself, which many saw as outrageous. If a similarly legendary and old male player pulled the same stunt ahead of a World Cup, it’s highly unlikely that they’d be selected for the team. Wambach knew she was in no matter what, so she decided she didn’t want to deal with NWSL. The Old Girl’s Club strikes again.

Everyone knew that an older, sentimental squad was coming, but it was still terrifying to see. The team had almost no youth and there was no indication that anyone actually had to earn their spots. In addition to Wambach not actually playing soccer, Leroux was in poor form and had been traded twice by NWSL clubs because of it, while Morgan was injured.

No DMs to control the center of the pitch. All of the famous strikers in poor (or no) form. It wasn’t clear if this team was a real contender, or if they had a plan to become one.

Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

The first four games of the World Cup seemed to confirm everyone’s worst fears. This was a decent team, one that could hang with anyone in the world, but not one good enough to win the World Cup. The two-woman center of Holiday and Lloyd was actually worse than anyone could have imagined. Wambach looked slow in her starts. Once Morgan came back, she looked like she was still working her way back to fitness. Leroux was as unimpressive as her club form suggested she’d be. No one who got a look at right wing was particularly great. The front six was a disaster.

“To be honest, I don’t think we’re playing our best football right now,” eventual World Cup hero Lloyd told Bleacher Report.“But we’ve got a lot of talent and depth on this team and we’re capable of a lot more — and we all know that.”

Megan Rapinoe and the back five were the team’s saving grace. Rapinoe was by far the team’s most creative player, setting up chances left and right from open play and dead balls while scoring twice in the 3-1 win over Australia. Meanwhile, the back line of Johnston, Meghan Klingenberg, Becky Sauerbrunn and Ali Krieger, with Solo behind them, were nearly flawless. After letting in a goal in the first half against the Matildas, they went 540 consecutive minutes without conceding, keeping Lotta Schelin and Celia Sasic — the two most lethal strikers in European soccer — completely quiet.

Things changed in the quarterfinal, when Lloyd scored the game-winning goal against China.

“How this tournament’s gone so far, I was a little bit restricted in the beginning games,” Lloyd said after the game. “I wasn’t able to express myself.”

Lloyd’s emergence from being a net-negative for her team in the first four games to being their best player in all of the final three, en route to winning the Golden Ball, was down to two major factors.

Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

The first is Brian’s arrival in the starting lineup. When Holiday picked up her second yellow card of the tournament against Colombia, it forced Ellis into a change in her midfield. That change was to bring in Brian who, in theory, should have been similar to Holiday — an out-of-position attacking midfielder. She played as a No. 10 at the University of Virginia and her lone World Cup start had been on the right wing. Instead, Brian was brilliant in the role.

“The coaches told me to hold a little more and let her do what she needs to do,” Brian said after the game. “That way Carli feels like she can attack more, and that’s good because we needed that.”

Asking her to hold is one thing, but getting the desired result is another altogether. And there was no indication that was going to happen. Earlier in the tournament, Ellis comically asserted that she had asked Lloyd and Holiday to play as “two No. 6s,” a comment that was deservedly mocked. Just because you tell an attacking midfielder to hold doesn’t mean they’re going to be successful.

But Brian was more than successful — she was outstanding. She was everything the United States had been missing up to that point. Her understanding of positioning and how to keep possession — plus her willingness to put in a hard tackle — far surpassed that of Holiday and Lloyd. She was the Boxx replacement that everyone thought didn’t exist. Out of nowhere, a 22-year-old advanced playmaker in her first World Cup became the tournament’s top defensive midfielder.

The second major factor in Lloyd’s emergence was, of course, Lloyd herself.

Because of the end result of this World Cup, no one cares about Lloyd’s years of poor play between the 2012 Olympic final and the 2014 World Cup quarterfinal, nor should they. But we have to acknowledge that it happened.

There is no world class midfielder who turns the ball more often than Lloyd. Ellis probably saw this, because she’s not stupid and she’s seen a few soccer games in her day, but she knew she had to stomach those turnovers. She could not run the risk of doing anything to damage Lloyd’s confidence. Benching Lloyd and publicly criticizing her were not under consideration, nor should they have been, even if she was scoring two own-goals a game.

It would have been more shocking if Lloyd didn’t score big goals in big moments. That’s just what she does. Four game-winning Olympic goals, three game-winning World Cup goals, three Algarve Cup final goals, two goals in the game that qualified the United States for the World Cup. When the games really, truly matter, Lloyd is there. Everything else is a warm-up.

What would have happened to the United States if France had converted one more of their huge chances in the quarterfinal against Germany? What if Germany star Dzenifer Marozsán didn’t aggravate an ankle injury in that game, and was available to start against the Americans?

Maybe it’s no different. Lloyd is captain clutch, after all, and might have made the exact same plays against a superior opponent. But there’s no denying that the Americans were incredibly fortunate to come up against Germany in the circumstances they did.

The USWNT also benefited from some favorable refereeing. Johnston should have been shown a straight red card for her foul on Alexandra Popp and Morgan was contacted outside the box on the penalty she won. But, at the same time, this was a mauling. Germany didn’t play well and got run over. The United States were clearly the better side.

What’s more incredible is that they beat the Germans at their own game. With Lloyd moved into a more advanced position — she was more of a second striker than a traditional No. 10 — and a midfield anchored by Brian and Holiday, the Americans were able to play keepaway. They passed the ball on the ground well, didn’t give it up and avoided hoofing aimlessly when they won the ball back from Germany. Not only did they beat the No. 1 ranked team in the world, but they did it by playing a style of soccer that everyone thought they were incapable of playing — especially against the technically gifted Germans.

No one saw the final coming — except Ellis, that is. She called her shot. Before the game, she said that she had focused specifically on set pieces, and the United States’ first two goals came on their first two designed set piece routines. And who were they designed to get shooting opportunities for? Lloyd, of course.

That’s not to say Ellis saw a 5-2 win coming, or Lloyd capping off a 16-minute hat trick with a goal from halfway, but she knew her team would win and that Lloyd would score. She was so calm, and almost smug before the match. “Oh, World Cup final? Yeah, whatever. No big deal.” And it wasn’t. They just bulldozed Japan. It was easy.

Pour one out for Azusa Iwashimizu, the inverse Lloyd. She’s a brilliant, world class central defender who has been absolutely horrific in all three finals against the United States. This was her worst of all — she was directly at fault for all of the first three goals and got correctly rage-subbed in the first half.

The degree to which Japan were utterly overwhelmed was astonishing, and it’s the type of game we’ll probably never see again. The USWNT were a group of players hungry for revenge and redemption — they could not lose to Japan in the World Cup final a second time. Had they come up against a soaring, spectacular Brazil side with Marta clearly leading the Golden Boot and Golden Ball races, the final might have been different. But instead, the bottom half of the bracket spat out the one team that the United States would be determined to beat down until their players re-considered whether professional soccer was really for them. They were bloodthirsty, and they attacked Japan like rabid animals.

Germany was the real test. This was just a coronation ceremony. The champs had already been as good as crowned.

So what’s next for the USWNT? It’s hard to tell. Even though Ellis was initially a stopgap, she almost certainly has the head coach job for another four years if she wants it. And even though she’s been around the coaching game forever, she’s only 48. She can do this for a long time. Maybe she aspires to be the greatest coach in the history of the sport? She has the opportunity to achieve that, if that’s the goal she wants to pursue.

A new generation of young talent will have to be bled in, even if it didn’t go so well the first time around. Wambach, Rampone and Boxx will ride off into the sunset while Holiday has surprisingly announced her retirement. Ellis will have to get more serious about finding a backup and successor for Solo, who is now 33. Other players on the wrong side of 30 (Lloyd, Sauerbrunn, Rapinoe, Krieger, Heather O’Reilly, Lori Chalupny) face difficult fights if they want to remain part of the team for the next World Cup.

There’s plenty of talent waiting behind them. NWSL is the most stable professional women’s soccer league to ever exist in the United States, while the Under-23 team won their most recent tournament. Lindsey Horan, a 21-year-old forward, dominated at Under-20 level and has been scoring at will for Paris Saint-Germain. There is just as much young talent in the USWNT pool as there ever has been.

An Olympic gold medal can be next. Winning back-to-back World Cups can be next. The United States women had an extremely bumpy ride to this title, but they have the infrastructure to stay on top. There’s every reason to believe that women’s soccer in America will keep getting better.

Do you want to watch the Home Run Derby? You do not. Here is a flow chart to confirm this:

You do not want to watch the Home Run Derby. But you might end up doing it, the same way you eat a brick of uncooked ramen because the crunching and saltiness both please you. As long as we can agree that it isn’t good for you and you’ll hate yourself the whole time.

What’s wrong with the Home Run Derby? For starters, it usually features players who wouldn’t be your first, second, or third choices. There’s a myth/belief that it can screw up swings, so players avoid it, just like they avoid touching foul lines and talking about in-progress no-hitters. It’s not rational, but it’s too late to stop now. The format in the past has been byzantine and confusing, with the players who wow the crowds on dozens of homers in the first round quickly eliminated in the second. The new format has a clock and a bracket, which … I don’t know, maybe?

One of the biggest problems is that it takes something simple — use stick, hit rock far, make crowd cheer — and adds commercial breaks and bureaucracy, commercial sponsors and golden baseballs. Then it’s stretched over three or four hours, during which you consume far more artificial dingers than the FDA recommends, and yet you haven’t seen enough real dingers.

Perhaps the biggest problem, though, is that there aren’t any real stakes. No one cares who won last year, or who won the year before that. The players who win probably don’t care by the time they wake up. There have to be more Home Run Derby trophies in garages than there are trophies displayed properly in the home. And absent some sort of horrid artificial stakes — such as determining home-field advantage for the World Series — there’s no way to make people care.

Until now.

This is a modest proposal for a Home Run Derby that we would care about. It is not something that can be repeated every year, but rather a one-time spectacle. It would make a billion dollars and we would all care. The only thing I would ask for in return for the idea is credit, the satisfaction that the event happened, and maybe half of that billion dollars.

You will see, however, exactly why this is necessary, why we would watch, and why we would care.

The basics

Four players. Two rounds.

Participants

The four biggest stars from the 1990s and 2000s who have been kept out of the Hall of Fame because of associations with performance-enhancing drugs: Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Rafael Palmeiro.

Prize for winning

One (1) immediate induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Yes, these are stakes we can care about. This is a reason that will make the participants train and grind and sweat and scream and cry. And think of what the angry sports men on the angry sports programs could yell angrily about:

• They would be angry that the event was happening
• They would be angry that one of the players would get into the Hall of Fame
• They would be angry that the baseball tradition was dishonored tradition sad day not in my America baseball tradition
• They would be angry at each other for predicting the wrong person would win
• They would be angry that this was only happening once because this kind of righteous anger is mighty fine for business

There would be anger in the news cycle. There would be chatter. There would be a 24-hour feedback loop for the first day after the announcement, and then there would be 48 hours of angry, curious discussion for the days leading up to the event. People wouldn’t just be talking about the Home Run Derby. People would be angry about it. People would be talking about it.

People would be talking about baseball.

Drug testing

Ha ha ha ha ha ha. There’s no drug testing, dummy. The participants would have six months to train and get ready, and they could smoke powdered rhinoceros horns if they thought it would make a difference. Allowing the winner into the Hall of Fame wouldn’t be clemency. It wouldn’t just be a get-out-of-jail-free card. It would be a reward, an admission that when the Steroid Era was going on, we enjoyed it. Big galoots were lumberjacking home runs into the ionosphere, and we clapped and cheered, even if we had a sneaking suspicion that human beings weren’t supposed to be that large.

No, this would also be a thank you. It would appeal to our basest dinger urges and desires. Thank you for entertaining us like that. Now do it again, regardless of the physical consequences. Dance for us when we clap, and we’ll see what happens. Dance for us, and you will get your plaque. Dance for us, and perhaps you will be absolved by repeating your sins of the past.

Money

The event would be on pay-per-view for $75. As you will see later, this would be an excellent value when it comes to the dollar-per-minute ratio. The money would be allocated thusly:

• Barry Bonds, 10%
• Rafael Palmeiro, 10%
• Mark McGwire, 10%
• Sammy Sosa, 10%
• Pitcher #1, 5%
• Pitcher #2, 5%
• Hall of Fame, 12.5%
• Some whiny charity, 12.5%
• Promotional and logistical costs, 25%

Gotta rent out a stadium and pay the people who work there, and that stuff adds up. A promotions company would take care of that part, and they would get a quarter of the money. The whiny charity is there so that we can all claim it’s for charity and that people against the idea are against charity.

Convincing the Hall of Fame

Someone should call the Hall of Fame and ask to speak to the “top guy,” and when he picks up, that person should say, “Hey, if we have this unsanctioned Mad Max kind of Steroid Home Run Derby thing and pay you $125 million or so, can the winner get into the Hall of Fame?” and when the Hall of Fame president says, “Sure, sounds great,” make sure to thank him and set a reminder on your phone to email details later to his people.

Round One format

Bonds would be matched up against Palmeiro. McGwire would be matched up against Sosa. This makes sense for logistical reasons — Bonds is a clear #1 seed, and Palmeiro is a clear #4. But it also sets up a guaranteed McGwire/Sosa head-to-head matchup, which is a must in the first round.

But there’s more to this seeding. It’s lefty vs. lefty in the first one, and righty vs. righty in the second one. This is important because of who is pitching to the participants in the first round.

Illustration by Bernard Rollins

Bonds and Palmeiro would face Randy Johnson. McGwire and Sosa would face Pedro Martinez. Both pitchers will receive specific instructions.

The first participant to hit five home runs off you advances to the second round. In the event of a tie, the next participant to homer will win, though the other participant will get one final chance to tie and start the process over.

Throwing the ball down the middle is discouraged. Throwing the ball at the players is highly encouraged. Don’t forget that they got huge and powerful at your expense, tarnishing your career numbers, forcing you to throw harder, shortening your careers, really. Think of what your numbers could have looked like without having to face ‘roided-up goons. Think about what they cost you, personally and professionally.

Think about all of this when they step into the box for that first time. Throw up. Throw in.

Also, you have to pitch until one of them hits five dingers, so maybe cut it out after a while and actually pitch to them.

Also, both pitchers would have access to performance-enhancing drugs for six months. Not the crap the hitters will be taking. No, no. Secret government stuff without side effects. We’re talking real Captain America shit, straight from CIA and NSA experiments. They would essentially reverse the aging process for both pitchers, making them throw about as hard as they did in their primes.

Convincing the CIA and NSA to share the secret drugs

Someone should call the White House and ask to speak to the “top guy,” and when he picks up, that person should say, “Hey, if we have this unsanctioned Mad Max kind of Steroid Home Run Derby thing and we promise to make sure that Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson hit Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire with baseballs, can we have some of your secret drugs to make the pitchers stronger?” and when President Obama says, “Sure, sounds great,” make sure to thank him and set a reminder on your phone to email details later to his people.

Round Two format

Two players would advance to the final round after hitting five homers against either Martinez or Johnson. The rules for the final round would be simple:

• The participants would hit off a pitching machine
• Each participant gets five swings, followed immediately by the other participant getting five swings
• First to 1000 home runs wins
• Two-minute bathroom breaks are allowed
• Sleep is not allowed
• The crowd will be encouraged to chant “SHAME. SHAME. SHAME. SHAME” for the entire round
• Admission would be free and open, allowing fresh hecklers to fill in and yell throughout the 41-hour process

In hour five, a limping, bedraggled Bonds would want to give up this foolish quest, to sign away the rights to the millions he was promised, to forget about the Hall of Fame. He would declare himself the winner after 278 home runs, begging for mercy.

The crowd would chant “SHAME. SHAME. SHAME. SHAME” behind him, impervious to his pleas, acting like the bloodthirsty rabble behind Q during Picard’s trial, shaking fists and half-eaten legs of mutton, possibly throwing the bones on the field when they’re done.

“SHAME. SHAME. SHAME. SHAME,” they would cry. And after a rest, Bonds would use his bat as support while he stood up, and then he would hit more dingers. After each home run, the crowd would roar a bloodthirsty, guttural roar and then start chanting again.

“SHAME. SHAME. SHAME. SHAME.”

Mark McGwire, hands blistered, lips cracked from the merciless sun, slowly walking up to take his five swings.

“SHAME. SHAME. SHAME. SHAME.”

Barry Bonds, eyes closed, hoping to find a reserve of strength he didn’t know existed, a secret wellspring of power, now, when he needs it most.

“SHAME. SHAME. SHAME. SHAME.”

Someone would win. Someone would have to.

Round Three format

After the participant reaches 1000 homers, he will collapse on the field, bloody, exhausted, and openly weeping. He will think he’s victorious, that his nightmare is over. That’s when they would play Jose Canseco’s music.

/K-Pop beat and vocals
“It’s Jose Canseeeeeeco Jose, can you see? Can you see Jose? I can see Jose Jose Canseeeeeeco”

Okay, Jose Canseco doesn’t have music yet, but the exact song can be figured out later. Flames would start shooting from behind the center field fence, and from the smoke and mists, Jose Canseco would emerge, bat in hand, dressed in full uniform.

The winner of Round Two, now a twitching mass of pure despair and regret, would matchup with Canseco, head-to-head, under the basic rules of the first round. First to five homers wins, but this time against a pitching machine. If the winner of Round Two needs to be wheeled or carried into the box, that would be allowed. Standing would not be required.

Canseco would win, of course. The entire thing would be a sham, rigged for this purpose. What’s the point of the Home Run Derby? It’s an abstraction of real baseball, a perversion of what the sport is all about. In this, it becomes theater, it becomes something with a meaning and a purpose, something people can enjoy. Something that makes you feel.

Award presentation

With Canseco victorious, Commissioner Manfred would carry a beautiful red rose to home plate and ask the crowd to be quiet for the award presentation. With the raucous crowd now murmuring in anticipation, Manfred would speak.

We would like to announce that Jose Canseco will now be allowed in the Hall of Fame …

The crowd would hiss, boo, and cheer, all at once.

… so long as he returns to Major League Baseball and has about three or four more excellent seasons, because these numbers aren’t quite good enough, as is.

The crowd would go crazy again, jeering Canseco, who would realized that he was used, the butt of a very elaborate joke. Manfred would laaaaaugh and laaaaaaaaugh. Canseco would look around desperately, pleading his case. The winner of Round Two would still be rolling around somewhere, moaning uncomfortably. And the chants of “SHAME. SHAME. SHAME. SHAME” would start up again.

Illustration by Bernard Rollins

A couple days later, they would let Barry Bonds in the Hall of Fame because, c’mon, you jerks, just let Barry Bonds in the Hall of Fame.

This is my modest proposal for the Home Run Derby. I do not see a reason why this cannot happen. This is all plausible, and I think there is a way, a very real way, to make this happen. This is our duty. This is our legacy. We can make a Home Run Derby that people care about.

My question is this: Who’s with me?

“Lenny didn’t let his mind screw him up. The physical gifts required to play pro ball were, in some ways, less extraordinary than the mental ones. Only a psychological freak could approach a 100-mph fastball aimed not far from his head with total confidence.”- Michael Lewis, Moneyball

The simulation only lasts five minutes. That’s what Jordan Muraskin kept saying. Five minutes and you can be back out with your teammates, taking batting practice. Five minutes and you can slip that funny-looking thing off your head, the console that looks like a luminescent swim cap. Five minutes and your athletic career could be changed forever.

The baseball player from Bradley University still stared at him with a crossways look that cried, Just what is this supposed to be about?

Photo: Roopa Bhopale

A Dell Latitude E5440 laptop sat on the table. The screen was blank white. In a few seconds, a countdown will appear, Muraskin said. It will indicate which type of pitch to expect: fastball, slider or curveball. The pitch is just a green dot that darts straight or swerves, depending on the pitch. If the pitch is what you were told to expect, you press the button, J, to swing. Simple.

There were no seams, no release point, no pitcher, stands or dappled sunshine streaming through any clouds above. The simulation, administered late last October, indeed lasted only five minutes, and the player returned to batting practice as promised. But in that time, the researchers — Muraskin and his lab partner, Jason Sherwin — got all the data, brain data, they were hoping to acquire. And soon, too, did Bradley’s baseball coaching staff.

Mental analytics may be the next frontier in sports, and any number of companies has already set out exploring new ways to conquer it. Sherwin, 32, and Muraskin, 30, are younger and joined the party later than most of them. Neither had any background in business or baseball. Sherwin, who has floppy auburn hair and a scruffy beard, is the son of a conservative Chicago rabbi. Muraskin, more boyish-looking, with dark features and prominent eyebrows, is a skilled computer programmer. When they met, in the biomedical engineering department at Columbia University, Sherwin was studying the neural composition of cellists. Muraskin stumbled into neuroscience by researching Alzheimer’s and aging, and had been analyzing the efficiency of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

But as desk mates in the lab, they discovered that their independent studies into the process of decision-making dovetailed with a far different brand of research. What role the brain plays in hitting a baseball — the act that Ted Williams deemed “the hardest single thing to do in sport” — has been riddling scientists since before Babe Ruth was born. Late advancements in neuroscience research have permitted deeper inspections into the brain and its intricate network for interpreting 95 mph pitches than ever before. Sherwin and Muraskin elected to take a crack at it. Now they believe they have built a bridge between exploratory findings in the laboratory and real results on the baseball diamond.

Photo: Roopa Bhopale

Jordan Muraskin (L) and Jason Sherwin (R)

When the two researchers hopped on a conference call with Bradley’s coaches in early November to discuss their findings, they finally got a sense of the scope of the concept they were developing, and what it could mean for baseball. The coaches immediately requested the results of one player who seemed to struggle at the plate, despite obvious athleticism and a picturesque swing. Muraskin patiently explained the metrics he had recorded, seven data points in all, categorized by names like Neural Decoding Performance, Decision Position Metrics and Neural Discrimination Strength, all of which were different ways of measuring how and why a player could hit a baseball or not. On his laptop, the readout was filled with line graphs, column graphs, data tables and heat maps.

The player’s neuronal curve was shifted backwards, Muraskin explained. In other words, he was late recognizing certain pitches and therefore late in deciding whether to swing.

The silence on the other end of the line told the scientists all they needed to know. Finally, one of the coaches said, “We never understood why he’s not the best player on the team.” Now they had a clue.

“It was like ‘Yes, yes, yes!’” Muraskin said later.

“Those things keep you paddling,” he added, “instead of stabbing the raft.”

Duane Burleson/Getty Images

As the manager of the New York Yankees, Joe Girardi lugs a large binder full of various charts and averages into the dugout with him for every game. The numbers might show that a particular left-handed batter hit fastballs to left field 26 percent of the time and might inform Girardi’s decision-making. And yet those numbers cannot offer any real insight into whether that outcome is intentional (the batter prefers going the other way) or the consequence of late decision-making or poor pitch recognition.

Regardless of what the so-called Moneyball effect has had on baseball, many of the game’s jazzy new offensive statistics available to managers like Girardi — like batting-average-on-balls-in-play (BABIP), and weighted on-base average (wOBA), swing percentages and other — still share one thing in common: they measure events that occur after the batter decides to swing (or not swing) his bat.

Muraskin and Sherwin’s model — using the simple video simulation they created and a basic electroencephalogram (EEG) they bought online — is aimed at a better understanding of why the statistics in Girardi’s binder read as they do. By measuring, assessing and, eventually, nurturing the brain activity of hittersbefore they swing, they believe those tiny fractions of seconds might differentiate a middling collegiate hacker from the next Mike Trout. Ultimately, rather than judging hitters’ physical actions and apparent abilities by subjectively watching from the stands or on video, scouts could assess prospects based on data, on the unconscious brain waves that drive those on-field movements and decisions. Armed with such cognitive information, ballclubs could decide whether a prospect was worth working with, or even drafting at all.

It might sound like science fiction, but from their earliest trials at Bradley, after just one simulated pitch, Muraskin and Sherwin could produce graphs that pinpointed precisely when the batter decided to swing versus when he decided to take, along the timeline of the pitch, down to the millisecond. After a few more pitches, they could create graphs that showed the spectrum of response times based on different pitches; graphs that assessed the batter’s concentration level (based on eye movement and the flutter of brain activity) before the pitch is even thrown; and graphs that correlate to the part of the brain that is firing when decisions are made.

This data could prompt a new way of thinking about top hitters. Their research already suggests that experts can recognize certain pitches the same way automobile enthusiasts can recognize the make and model of a car even as it disappears out of sight. It is not unlike the way bird-watchers can detect a specific bird by an instantaneous flash of color or flight pattern, or how a chess master can visualize and interpret movements on a board.

This expertise derives from the strength of signals that spring out of select regions of the brain — areas known primarily for early visual processing and motor control, located well back behind the ears. Suddenly, there are clues for what to look for, what may be detected neurologically in the players with star-power versus those without it. Sherwin and Muraskin’s expectation is that scanning prospects’ brains with an EEG will someday become as rote and orthodox as a yearly physical.

The impact on the game could be profound.

Offered such information as to what happens in the mind of a hitter before contact, swings or strides could conceivably be tailored to move quicker or slower, or pre-pitch routines altered to enhance concentration. Brain exercises might be developed to target precisely what an individual batter needs to change. Or, once a player understands what his mind is doing as a pitch approaches, feedback may allow the brain to self-correct the problem on its own, akin to the way meditation helps relieve some chronic health conditions. In theory, that sweet-swinging Bradley player could condition himself to recognize pitches faster and more accurately, enabling him to reach his potential. He might become the next Mike Trout instead of the kid who could not cut it in baseball after high school.

Similarly, scouts could suddenly target young prospects with phenomenal pitch recognition statistics, even if their on-field results or swing aesthetics had generated skepticism from scouts in the past, just as they now might do with a player with obvious but unfulfilled athleticism.

“You know the Disney movie, Million Dollar Arm,” Sherwin likes to say, referring to the film about two pitching prospects discovered during a talent contest in India. “We’re helping baseball teams find the million-dollar brain.”

In other words, find the brain, build the hitter.

*

Muraskin and Sherwin’s work arrives at an intriguing moment in baseball. After a bruising era of offense defined by sluggers and steroids beginning in the early 1990s and lasting until about a decade ago, pitching is now in vogue. Today, pitchers throw harder, with more violent movement than ever before, and as a result, teams are scrambling for ways to improve their offenses legally. The game is open to experimentation, and neuroscience just might be the next tool.

Muraskin and Sherwin are not the only scientists working in this direction. NeuroScouting LLC, a four-year old startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with two neuroscientists at the helm, has devised computer software that can purportedly train and improve hitters’ visual and motor responses toward incoming pitches. Another company, Axon, has already partnered with Easton bats to create an iPad app said to “accelerate the mental skills needed to succeed as a batter.”

Both examples feature simulations that are said to work like popular mobile apps such as Lumosity and CogniFit, and neither company appears to use electrode caps specifically to profile the brain. But a few baseball teams, such as the Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs and Tampa Bay Rays, slowly have begun to adopt these brain-gaming techniques aimed at improving their batters’ skills. Some already incorporate videogames into the daily routines of prospects in their farm systems. According to the Wall Street Journal, Red Sox outfielder Mookie Betts, a fifth-round draft pick in 2011, quickly rose through the minor league system, in part, because of how well he performed in daily gaming drills. At age 22, he is now considered one of the best young players in the game.

Evidence is more than just anecdotal. Researchers at the University of California-Riverside published a study in the February 2013 issue of Current Biology that claimed the vision of baseball players on its Division I team improved after approximately 12.5 hours playing a specially designed video game. Those results then translated onto the field — the trained players struck out 4.4 percent fewer times than their untrained counterparts. UC-Riverside coach Doug Smith heralded the research, saying his players approached the plate with more confidence. Players believed they could also read, drive and watch television with more acuity as a result of the gaming.

Muraskin was intrigued, but had some questions about that report, and the overall efficacy of brain games as shortcuts to enhanced memory or athletic improvement. He and Sherwin chose instead to build their company — named deCervo, a combination of “decision” and “cerebrum,” the Latin word for brain — around a data-mining approach: By keeping their simulation as basic and authentic to baseball as possible, they believe the data figures they generate will better correlate to genuine baseball issues. And by delivering their neuronal research in understandable terms, such information will prove more useful, and teams more likely to accept the results and act upon them.

This spring, Muraskin and Sherwin visited four spring training complexes, carrying simply a laptop and a black aluminum briefcase, which contained the EEG. For the first time, they were testing professional players. A problem quickly arose, underscoring the need to test their methods in the real world and adapt accordingly — how do we translate these results into Spanish?

“I found a quote from Paul DePodesta,” Muraskin said, referring to the Mets’ vice president and one of the principle characters in the book, Moneyball. “He was giving a talk at Citi Field maybe two years ago, and somebody was tweeting about it. I think it was a field day for a tech company. And he said, ‘The problem isn’t with scouts or scouting. The problem is that it is based on a metric that is subjective, and not data-based.’

“What we’re trying to do [with our neurological data] is go right into there and say, ‘We’re scouting purely on the stats.’”

In 1993, while drinking beer and smoking cigarettes at a restaurant during spring training, Phillies outfielder John Kruk suddenly found himself being reprimanded by a stranger who thought his habits were unbecoming of a professional athlete. “I ain’t an athlete, lady,” Kruk said. “I’m a baseball player.”

Bernstein Associates/Getty Images

“I ain’t an athlete, lady. I’m a baseball player.”-John Kruk

Kruk hit .316 in 1993, and the line later became the title of his autobiography. Although he may not have been the trimmest ballplayer, and his range at first base was limited, the Krukster could hit. In 10 major league seasons, he was a three-time National League All-Star, with a lifetime average of exactly .300.

Understanding the biomechanics required to strike a 90 mph pitch has been a decades-long pursuit. As early as 1921, psychologists tested the sensory-motor skills of Babe Ruth, hoping to discover what made Ruth such a phenomenal hitter. The researchers asked him to tap a metal plate as many times as he could in one minute, or recognize flashes of letters displayed before him. Not surprisingly, Ruth’s aptitude in the tests was said to be exceptional. It is difficult to gauge how he measured up against other ballplayers because no one else was tested. Still, the study was an early, albeit tentative and flawed step in trying to determine why some players can hit, and others cannot.

Hitting continued to pique the curiosity of scientists. Two sports psychologists, Alfred W. Hubbard and Charles N. Seng, explored the role of vision during interceptive actions in 1954 and found that batters actually could not physically track the ball all the way to the point of contact with the bat. Three decades later, however, A. Terry Bahill and Tom LaRitz discovered that major league players could track the ball farther along than college players. A year later, Patricia DeLucia and Edward Cochran demonstrated the importance of peripheral vision in tracking the flight of the ball. Steven Radlo, Christopher Janelle, Douglas Barba and Shane Frehlich found that elite players could identify a fastball versus a curveball better than novices in 2001.

All were convincing studies, but they hardly explained what distinguished Mickey Mantle from Mickey Tettleton. Arguably, the most instructive piece of baseball literature for hitters came from one of the best to ever play, Ted Williams. In his seminal book, The Science of Hitting, published in 1971, Williams described his approach at the plate, ultimately revealing that it was not quite as scientific as the title suggested. Williams had exceptional vision and a sharp memory; he wrote that he could recall everything about his first 300 home runs — the pitcher, the count, the pitch itself, and where the ball landed. But at the plate, he was a “guess” hitter, surmising what pitch would be thrown where depending on the count and the situation on the field, which he could deduce because of his knowledge of pitchers’ tendencies.

Sports Studio Photos/Getty Images

Hitters found this understanding into Williams’ mindset invaluable, but there was little practical insight as to how to reproduce the results that enabled Williams to bat .406 in 1941. Williams could not explain how Kruk (and his diet of beer and cigarettes) could bat .320 at the major league level while Michael Jordan, arguably the world’s greatest athlete, could barely crack .200 with the Double-A Birmingham Barons in 1994.

So Dr. Harold Klawans, a Chicago-based neurologist, attempted to explain it neurologically. He found that the brain’s ability to learn to hit a baseball likely needed to take place during a critical period early in one’s life when the brain is still developing. But later, after the brain development has ended and neuronal networks are in place, Klawans argues the skill will be harder if not impossible to master, the way learning a second language becomes more rigorous as we age. The synapses between nerve cells are reinforced if used early, while the brain is developing, and both Williams and Kruk spent an inordinate amount of time hitting before they became adults. But left unused, these synapses atrophy and disappear.

“The sad fact,” wrote Klawans, “was that, at age 31, Michael Jordan’s brain was just too old to acquire that skill.” At that critical, earlier time, he had been shooting jump shots, not swinging at baseballs. By the time he picked up a bat as an adult, it was too late.

This “window” of skill acquisition underscored just how difficult the act of hitting a baseball is for the brain to master and enhance. There is no such thing as a baseball-hitting muscle that some players have and others do not. Players can point to their eyesight as a mark of distinction, but that alone does not guarantee success at the plate. When Louis J. Rosenbaum examined the vision of players on the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1993, half the team had visual acuity of 20/10. That was impressive, considering the theoretical limit of human vision is 20/9. But it was not as though half the Dodgers were on the All-Star team. And neither is everyone with 20/10 vision a major leaguer.

Pure reaction time among baseball players has never been clinically proven substantially better than average either, despite what researchers said about Babe Ruth. There is, however, a strong predicative element required in hitting, illustrated nicely by David Epstein in his book, The Sports Gene. He wrote about the 2004 Pepsi All-Star Softball Game, an exhibition featuring MLB All-Stars such as Pujols and Mike Piazza attempting to hit Jennie Finch, the Team USA softball pitcher.

Attempting was the operative word. Finch struck out Pujols as part of the pregame festivities. During the live game, she entered to face Piazza and Brian Giles, an All-Star outfielder for the San Diego Padres. She downed them both without as much as a foul tip.

The reason had little to do with velocity. Finch’s pitches, delivered from a mound 43 feet away, equated to a fastball thrown at 95 mph — hard, but nothing extraordinary to a major league hitter. Rather, it was the underhand angle from which Finch released the pitch that Pujols and Piazza found discomforting. It was like nothing they had faced before. Their database of knowledge from years of practiced learning was useless. They had no special ability to determine where her underhanded pitches would travel.

In his PhD studies while at Georgia Tech, Sherwin examined another complex form of decision-making, the kind faced daily by airplane pilots, who must monitor a dashboard of gauges, monitors and instruments in order to keep their planes steady. This required situational awareness, or what is called System 2 thinking, based off the work of Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist. These are slower, more deliberate forms of logic. A few years later, at Columbia, Sherwin began post-doctoral research on System 1 thinking, or rapid decision-making — hear a sound, make a decision.

It was a natural pivot for Sherwin, a skilled pianist and classical composer whose feet and fingers seemed always to be moving to some sort of silent beat. One of Sherwin’s earliest experiments involved professional cellists. A subject sitting in a dark room would listen to a clip of music, and then the harmony would be slightly modulated, say, from a G-major to a G-flat. Even non-musicians can generally notice that and click a button when it occurs. But in real musicians, the neurological reaction was different. Instinctively, their brains activated motor responses before the subjects consciously noticed the change in tone.

“In particular, it was more lopsided to the brain that controls their left side and arm,” Sherwin said. “That’s the hand position on the chord.”

The cellists wouldn’t raise their arm physically, but mentally, they wanted to. Theirs was a far stronger impulsive reaction than that of non-musicians, and the EEG could detect where and when the signals were coming from within the brain.

The insight into experts versus non-experts in music was a revelation. When Sherwin presented it to his lab for feedback, in the fall of 2011, Muraskin  approached him afterward.

“He said to me, ‘Hey,’” Sherwin said, “‘Do you think we might see this with athletes?’”

Sherwin and Muraskin first combined their skills and interests to analyze ballplayer brains using an EEG in the spring of 2012. At the time, only a handful of other published experiments had related actual neural data to baseball. But, as they examined six random subjects, none with any advanced baseball experience, the Columbia researchers noticed something peculiar. Every time the batter incorrectly identified a pitch, there was a large neuronal current source — like water bubbling up from a spring — in a region of the brain called Brodmann area 10 (BA10), located in the prefrontal cortex, directly behind the forehead.

They wanted to probe further. Muraskin’s expertise using fMRI, which investigates neural activity by measuring changes in blood flow through the brain, allowed them to use a second tool to delve deeper than anyone else had tried. Running both pieces of equipment simultaneously was technically tricky —metallic objects do not interact well with MRIs — but they managed to do so. Participants still played the same simulation, and as pitches zipped in researchers could track stimulation in more distinct brain regions, such as the lingual gyrus, the lateral occipital cortex, and other parts of the occipital lobe and remaining cerebral cortex. And, again, when players did not recognize the incoming pitch, they detected activity in BA10.

They noted this phenomenon in a research paper, “A System for Measuring Neural Correlates of Baseball Pitch Recognition,” which they submitted in a competition at the 2013 Sloan Analytics Conference, a popular annual forum dedicated to sports analytics. The paper did not win, but Sherwin and Muraskin were exhilarated by the critical reception. They were sure they were on the right track toward determining which brain areas are important for accurate pitch recognition.

“It was totally encouraging,” Sherwin said. “I don’t think we really had any interest in winning or losing or anything. You just want to get there.”

Paul Sajda, the director of the Laboratory for Intelligent Imaging and Neural Computing at Columbia, where Sherwin and Muraskin met, told me that he and two researchers have since peeled back even more evidence of the neural science at play. Recently, using an eye-monitoring mechanism and pupilometer, they have begun tracking decision-making closer to its source: the brainstem, which produces neuromodulators like adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine, a chemical related to arousal.

When a big fat pitch comes right down the middle, the brainstem activates, or arouses. Norepinephrine, generated in the locus coeruleus, a small pocket in the brainstem located just behind the ears, comes shooting into other areas of the cortex. That is what the EEG is detecting — brain arousal. Unlike a poker player, who must suppress a response when dealt a good hand, baseball players don’t fight the response. They act on it, and their motor functions are thought to have formed neural connections with the fusiform gyrus, the part of the brain involved in such traits as automobile, bird and facial recognition. Expert hitters produce similar neural responses when they recognize certain pitches, and their responses are generally far more dramatic than novices.

Why is this important? Localizing this could potentially be one way to separate the future stars from the future busts, Reggie Jackson from Mighty Casey. Said Sajda: “This is where the excitement comes from.”

In their business, Muraskin and Sherwin use only the portable EEG to test players, rather than dragging major leaguers into an MRI scanner. Though the neural picture they can receive is not as complete as with the fMRI, the data is still useful.

Naturally, I wanted to take a crack at the simulation and see what my brain might score. Maybe I was a latent star with a simple, correctable deficiency (I doubted it). When I visited in early February, their office was simply a desk in Columbia’s “Startup Lab,” a shared working space in Soho (they have since moved to a more private office about eight blocks east).

I was quickly ushered into a glass-walled conference room Muraskin had reserved for the afternoon. Opening a black briefcase, he pulled out a device about the size of a radio scanner. This was the amplifier, held in place on the base of my neck by a black elastic bandana wrapped around my head.

Photo: Roopa Bhopale

The electrodes were not the suction-cupped things I was expecting. They came already connected to each other on a clear pliable sheet of plastic that looked a bit like a Christmas tree.

“Players don’t want to wear something that looks like a Hydra on their heads, with all these wires going everywhere,” Muraskin said. “They want small and sleek.”

Using a conductive cream to ensure that the electrodes formed a close contact with the head, Muraskin fitted the cap to my scalp. He dabbed my mastoid bones (behind my ears) with an alcohol swab and placed two of the electrodes dangling from the amplifier on each one. Then on went the other nine electrodes, all at once, right over the top of my head. The cap fit snugly, but nothing more constricting than a cold-weather running beanie.

That was it; I was connected. Muraskin flipped the on/off switch on the amplifier, which connected to the external syncing unit via Bluetooth, and loaded up a computer program called X-Series Basic. I felt no sensation whatsoever. All of this — the equipment, the program, the lightweight carrying case — was made by the company Advanced Brain Monitoring. They purchased it online for $10,000.

He flipped on the game itself, and it was surprisingly rudimentary. The idea was simply to decide whether to swing or not to swing. The ball is represented by a small green dot against a white background. The dot moves, depending on the break of the pitch, and enlarges as it approaches, according to its velocity. The mean pitch speed was only 78 mph, but some curveballs were slower and some fastballs were faster. Sliders moved side-to-side and the curveballs dived down at a 12-to-6 rate. Fastballs remained straight and actually appeared to be tailing upwards.

As the pitch is being loaded (i.e. the windup), the simulation will tell you which pitch to expect: fastball, curveball or slider. You then “swing” by pressing a designated letter only if that is the pitch that was ultimately delivered. If not, you lay off. Location is not a factor — every pitch arrives at approximately the same part of the plate (the perspective is from the catcher). The only variable from pitch to pitch is the type, the velocity, and whether it is thrown from a lefthander or righthander.

Photo: Roopa Bhopale

Seventy-eight mph is batting practice speed for college players, but for a novice, even someone who played baseball through high school, the velocity was startling at first. In my first trial of 90 pitches, I accurately decided whether to swing or not swing only 52.26 percent of the time — basically guessing. The curveballs looked like fastballs, until they dropped. The fastballs sped by. And the sliders? Forget it. I had trouble differentiating them from either pitch.

I did improve over my second trial, and finished with an accuracy rate of 75.56 percent on my final two tries. But my response time averaged 421 milliseconds —much longer than my experienced counterparts. I thought I was deciding as quickly as possible. Turns out, I was dreadfully slow. No Mike Trout here.

Muraskin and Sherwin are in the process of developing a more detailed and comprehensive simulation, and Muraskin showed me a prototype their intern, Elizabeth McNally, a Dartmouth student, had been developing. The screen flashed to a fairly realistic representation of Nationals Park, in Washington D.C., as viewed from the batter’s box. Flags waved, there were fans in the stands, and the batter’s eye in centerfield was a lush green. The ball projected at the user would be white with red seams. The hope is that these peripheral comforts will make the simulation more enticing and relatable for a player, rather than green dots and white screens.

The simulated setting, though, does not need to get more elaborate for the test to remain effective. Even from the basic 15-minute exercise I underwent, Muraskin could still show me my independent component analysis (a series of squiggly lines reminiscent of a heart monitor); my sliding window logistical progression (a line graph that broke down the precise milliseconds when my brain firmly decided to swing or not swing); a graphical breakdown of prepitch readiness (based on brain signals just before the pitch is thrown); and numerous other analyses, including how accurately I selected and reacted to each different pitch.

Neither was I Bryce Harper, who currently leads the major leagues in on-base percentage (OBP) and is among the leaders in walks. Several graphs looked like heat maps and offered a dugout’s view of how far along the pitch was on its path to the plate before I decided to swing or take. My decisions to take, it seems, came in the last 5 feet before the ball crossed the plate. That’s not going to earn me many bases-on-balls, unless I get lucky.

The most precious statistic was Swing vs. Take, the decision conflict that played out over the course of just a half-second. A graph could show me how accurate I was when I made my decision between, say, 500 milliseconds and 600 milliseconds (80 percent), and even broke it down by certain pitches. Experienced baseball players often record 80-90 percent accuracy within 400 milliseconds. A coach with access to data for a player outside that range might one day be able to address the shortcoming in a hitter’s ability to detect certain pitches. Or, in a bleaker example, a scout might immediately decide to disqualify you as a prospect, no matter what your batting average in high school or college might say. He can already tell you that you won’t hit professional pitching.

We scrolled through printouts from Brown University baseball players — another team Muraskin and Sherwin have worked with — and could instantly see the talent gradient even among teammates. Their decision-making times ranged as widely as the results of the 40-yard dash in the NFL combine. One player, a first baseman, had truly impressive reaction times (100 milliseconds faster than his teammates) as well as exceptional accuracy reading all three pitches. But his pre-pitch preparedness reading showed his mind wandered, something a coach might theoretically be able to address. Or armed with the information that his neural decisions are unusually quick, another player could go into his next at-bat knowing he can wait longer on the pitch or perhaps swing a different way - either pull the ball or go to the opposite field, depending on the situation.

“Maybe he gives himself more time to see the pitch,” Muraskin said. “Now he has information to make adjustments, see the pitch a little bit longer, and then swing.

“You can’t get that information from anywhere else.”

Major league teams are understandably skittish about revealing too much about new ideas that might help their ballclub. The recent revelation that the St. Louis Cardinals were under investigation by the F.B.I. for hacking into computers owned by the Houston Astros only underscores how deeply guarded and mistrusting the atmosphere can be in baseball today.

Of the four major league clubs that deCervo visited during spring training, only one agreed to speak about its relationship with Sherwin and Muraskin. Even then, the assistant general manager who called one evening in June asked to remain anonymous, because he was not authorized to speak about the club’s business dealings. Then, after a few minutes, he took his plea for obscurity another step further, requesting that any particularly telling quotes not even appear in print, perhaps an indication that this team liked what they had found and sought desperately to keep it private.

Although this official also quickly downplayed deCervo’s influence, calling it “fairly experimental,” he added that he found that deCervo’s method appeared to be “directionally correct.” It meant that he believed they are on to something.

Vince Gennaro, a well-known consultant to MLB teams, said during a recent interview that most organizations would almost certainly be dabbling more and more with neuroscientific analyses, if they have not done so already. If he were advising a team, he said, he would tell them to give these guys a call.

However, Gennaro raised a common concern. On the baseball diamond, in a game, millions of external factors are at play. How can they be accounted for in a controlled laboratory setting? In other words, as well as deCervo simulates pitches, it’s still not Clayton Kershaw standing 60 feet, 6 inches away on the mound, and there is no fear of getting hit by a pitch or disappointing a teammate by failing to move the runner over.

“It’s not an accusation,” said Gennaro, who is also president of the Society for American Baseball Research, which lent its acronym, SABR, to the forefathers of sabermetrics. “I just wonder how that changes everything. We’re dealing with the human mind. I just can’t help but feel a little awkward about separating that reality out from the laboratory.”

The club official that deCervo has been working with expressed similar concerns. He said he had not yet been convinced that strong results in a controlled experiment were actually the brain at work, rather than just the placebo effect (this team put about a dozen players through the test, all of them minor leaguers). Was the game actually stimulating a player’s mind or just building confidence? He needed the answer to that question.

As an evaluation tool, rather than one that promised to facilitate improvement at the plate, the official believed deCervo seemed to offer some promise. But again, the official expressed hesitancy. He wondered whether the data provided by the simulation was actually new and usable, or simply just a confirmation of suspicions they already had? If so, what is the value in that?

“The majority of the teams we worked with were more interested in the nuances here,” Sherwin said over lunch in early June. “Hitting is one of the hardest things to do in sports. There’s no monotonic score. It’s got a bunch of peaks and troughs. Some people are great bunters, some people are great opposite field hitters, some hit better late in the count, whatever. In general, we found that the mid- and small-market teams are more interested in the potential for future growth and then accessing that future growth, using this insight that you have now into the decision-making of the player.”

I asked Sherwin to respond to Gennaro’s critique about how real-world scenarios cannot be simulated by a test.

“He’s right,” Sherwin said.

He held out two hands over his plate separated by about a foot. “If this is all of the experience of hitting a baseball, standing in the box, we’re doing a part of that. Not all of it. The question is how much of it?”

Photo: Roopa Bhopale

“All those things at Yankee Stadium, bottom of the ninth, all that stuff,” Sherwin added, “those are all inbound stimuli on the nervous system. The question is whether the batter is able to take those inbound stimuli and just put them over here. Just focus on the pitch. Just like it’s any other pitch.”

Sherwin’s own mind went wandering then, as he hypothesized ways to pinpoint which stimuli can be the most distracting, then discover ways to eliminate them as factors, a step on the path, as he put it, to “orient somebody in the clutch.”

This is not something deCervo is yet capable of, but the notion is another branch on the giant sycamore of ideas that grows ever larger and denser in Sherwin’s head. Sometimes they lead to sudden insights. After the first day of working with teams in Arizona in March, Sherwin convinced Muraskin that their simulation needed a dramatic change. The pitch recognition simulation — fastball, slider or curve — was incomplete. Hitters just weren’t trying to recognize the kind of pitch to hit, but see the pitch and hit the pitch, only if it is a strike.

So the researchers wrapped up their trials at 10 p.m., returned to their hotel room and revised their game overnight, superimposing a rectangle representing the strike zone across the middle of the screen, one that faded out as the pitch approached. The batters would then be asked whether the pitch was a ball or a strike.

Their accuracy compared against an infallible, fictitious batter produced a metric they call the Perfect Eye Index. It is unlike any data they had generated previously, because it has nothing to do with neuroscience. It is simply an accuracy reading. The EEG might as well have been left unplugged.

“If it’s a slider, who cares?” Sherwin said. “If it’s a strike, that’s what matters [to hitters].” Sherwin concluded that since the batter’s objective is simply to reach base, whatever pitches he saw to get him there are tangential.

Adjusting on the fly was a good indication of deCervo’s conscientiousness toward its clients, even if it gave somewhat of a disorganized impression. They are still experimenting with proper balances, trying to marry what players want (a more realistic game) with the purpose of their company (gathering usable brain data). For the remainder of spring training, they split their exercises into two sessions: 20 minutes of pitch recognition, 20 minutes of balls vs. strikes. In reality, of course, the hitter in the batter’s box does both simultaneously.

One objection I heard from the baseball team official was that he thought neuroscience companies like deCervo would struggle unless they could effectively focus on one or two aspects of the game that could be distilled into some kind of app. Otherwise, they risked drowning teams - and players - with information and ideas, paralysis by analysis.

From his 10th floor office looking south across the rooftops of Columbia’s main campus, Sajda, who is an advisor to deCervo, said that though the founders have made fantastic strides, they are still relatively small steps, and much of their work and research cannot be validated for months and years down the road.

“The bottom line is we still don’t really know how the brain works,” Sajda said.

People have a right to be skeptical, he said. Companies are clambering to get a slice of the neuroscience market share without a complete understanding of what they are peddling and whether it really works for what they are aiming toward.

“It always comes down to defining the value,” Sajda said, adding, “If it works out, if it’s as good as people think it is, there’s a huge competitive advantage. So is it worth the risk?”

On a hot and sunny Arizona afternoon in early April, Sherwin and Muraskin settled into seats on a small set of bleachers between home plate and the home dugout, a view that offered them a good vantage point of both the pitcher and the batter in an exhibition between minor league clubs in extended spring training.

Christian Petersen/Getty Images

Already, they had spent the morning examining the players’ neural responses with simulation tests. Here they wanted to see the game in real time. After a while, the organization’s minor league hitting coordinator hopped into a seat next to them and they watched a batter. As the pitch flew in, the batter lunged out slightly over the plate.

“You see that?” the hitting coordinator said, as relayed by Sherwin. “That means he’s not seeing the ball well.”

Sherwin and Muraskin had not even noticed it. But the coordinator said it was something he had spent the last decade training his eyes to detect, among a plethora of slight mechanical quirks and flaws. The conversation turned from what the batter was doing to what he was not doing — seeing the ball all the way in, keeping his head still and his eyes focused as the pitch approached. Instead, because he was having trouble recognizing the pitch, his body induced a motor response (lunging) to better evaluate the trajectory or direction of the ball. This took up precious time and took him out of position.

Sherwin offered a quick evaluation: The batter’s perceptual side — his visual prediction capability — wasn’t accurate enough for him to know where the ball was going to go or whether he was going to hit it. So he adjusted his approach, something hitters do all the time. If they are slumping, or having difficulty seeing the ball, they might open their stance to direct both eyes at the pitcher until the pitch is coming, and then stride toward the plate. Coaches might advise them to try to increase their focus, settling on a specific target during the pitcher’s windup, as George Brett (his hat) and Steve Garvey (his face) said they would do, or they might choke up for better bat control, a tactic routinely employed by Tony Gwynn.

For most hitters, it’s trial and error, and experienced pitchers can pick up on many of these adjustments, and then attack accordingly. Brent Walker, a former college pitcher, said he could always tell when batters were struggling to read his pitches. So starting eight years ago, Walker, now president-elect of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology with a doctorate in sports psychology, devoted himself to finding ways for hitters to improve their ability to recognize pitches without tipping their hand. At first, he used a simple video simulation of a pitcher seen from the hitter’s perspective. Moments after the pitch was released, the screen would darken, and the batter would be prompted to record what pitch he expected to arrive.

“The idea was training,” Walker said.

Still, nobody knew what was happening internally, in the brain. Walker knew that some researchers were pinpointing alpha waves — otherwise known as the Berger rhythm — in the left hemisphere of the brain as clues to enhancing concentration in activities like golf putting, archery and pistol shooting. Still, Walker wondered about its application in the batter’s box. He remained skeptical that alpha waves could help you hit Kershaw.

But when he read Sherwin and Muraskin’s research for the Sloan Analytics Conference, Walker recognized a smart melding of the two brands of science. It did not hurt that they were Columbia researchers, and that in July of 2012 Walker had joined Columbia’s athletic administration staff as an associate athletics director. He emailed Muraskin and scheduled a meeting early last summer.

“There are some interesting possibilities out there based on what they’re doing,” Walker said. “They’re going to the next level of it.”

Walker, like the minor league hitting coordinator, had always had theories about hitters’ tendencies when they were not seeing pitches well. But suddenly, with some supporting neural data, he had a more concrete understanding of what was at play and how to change it. Maybe the coaches might throw a struggling batter more off-speed pitches in batting practice, or lengthen his swing. A hitter might improve through video simulation, or his brain might self-correct on its own, armed with new feedback. Instead of guessing at a solution to a problem — lunging at the ball or choking up — a hitter might know how best to fix it.

Sherwin said he saw the minor-league hitting coordinator’s eyes light up at the thought of having such a window into the hitter’s mind.

“It was kind of like how I explain to my grandmother how Tinder works,” Sherwin said. The art of dating — not unlike the art of hitting — had been boiled down into an algorithm where it was then reconstituted into something that could be done with the swipe of a finger.

“That was not recognized as a possibility before,” Sherwin said.

In baseball, there remains a sharp division between the adopters of new analytical approaches to the game — now more mainstream than ever — and those who want to keep scouting and training the way it was for Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle. Hitting coaches tend to fall on the older-school side of the spectrum, and those I spoke with were hesitant to give away all their jobs to video game companies.

“I think some vision training/pitch recognition devices that I have seen are helpful,” said Troy Silva, a Seattle-based hitting coach, author and former minor leaguer. “But most are gimmicks.”

Charley Lau Jr., a renowned hitting guru whose father, Charley Sr., honed the swings of Hall of Famers Reggie Jackson, Dave Winfield, Carlton Fisk and George Brett, said the only mental component he incorporates into his teaching currently comes as an amateur therapist, trying to free the batter’s brain of external distractions.

“I think the game is complicated enough,” Lau said. “Most people can’t pass Hitting 101. All of a sudden you’re taking hitting to a level where you need to be some kind of a genius to be a hitting coach, and there’s not many of them out there.”

Toward the end of our conversation, though, Lau recalled that as the hitting coach of the Kansas City Royals in 1971, his father introduced a novel piece of technology into the game that was seen as revolutionary. It was bulky and about the size of a portable television:  a video camera. A generation ago, its use was also seen as radical and its effectiveness doubted. Today, its value is unquestioned.

Baseball, perhaps more than any sport, is always straddling that delicate line between old school and new. The tug-of-war wages on, deCervo wades in, and the march of science and technology continues pressing ever forward.

Photo: Roopa Bhopale

Sherwin remembers back to March 2013, shortly after they had published their first baseball-related research paper. When Sherwin, Muraskin and Sajda were invited to M.I.T. to present their early findings using EEG and fMRI to the Sloan Conference. As he walked through the main hall of presentations, Sherwin encountered booths of major league scouts exhibiting their new approaches to advanced analytics.

“They were talking about regression models and that kind of stuff they were doing, in the Moneyball vein,” Sherwin said.

Sherwin asked them if they were curious about digging down even further, to the cognitive level, to extract what exactly it was that might be generating that WAR number or strikeout-to-walk ratio.

“Most guys looked at me like I was crazy. They were like, ‘Nah, we don’t need to drill down to that level,’” Sherwin said. “I’m like, OK. I’ll see you in 10 years.”