Why we Play?

^{Basketball We Are Grown Men Playing a Child's Game by Gilbert Robin}

^{The bearded man laughing at his daughter is Bill Russell, the most remarkable basketball player of our time. Sport, however, is one of his lesser interests. Here are his trenchant, often angry observations on today's Negro-white crisis and his role in it Shoot the Moon by Susan Orleans.}^{White men in suits follow Felipe Lopez everywhere he goes. They are ubiquitous. They rarely miss one of Felipe's games or tournaments... The No-Stats All-Star by Michael Lewis,}^{His greatness is not marked in box scores or at slam-dunk contests, but on the court Shane Battier makes his team better, often much better, and his opponents worse, often much worse. Jordan's Moment by David Halberstam,}^{A great profile piece exploring a quintessential moment from the legendary career of basketball's biggest star.}

^{Baseball The Trading Desk by Michael Lewis}
^{For the past four years, working with one of the lowest payrolls in the game, the Oakland A's have won as many regular-season games as almost any other team. How on earth did they do it? Baseball for Life by Sara Corbett....}^{People have accepted that it's O.K. for a talented 7- or 8-year-old gymnast to go away and not see her family at all, but for a baseball player to do anything close to that, it's like, 'Oh, my God, that's terrible!' The Curious Case of Side Finch by George Plimpton,}^{You can hardly see the blur of it as it goes by. As for hitting the thing, frankly, I just don't think it's humanly possible.}

^{Football The Ballad of Big Mike by Michael Lewis,}^{Every other high-school football player in America was dying for Lemming to invite him to play in the U.S. Army All-American Bowl. Michael Ocher had left his invitation on the table… Friday Night Lights by Buzz Kissinger...}^{Outside, the August night was cool and serene, with just a wisp of West Texas wind. Inside, there was a sense of excitement and also relief, for the waiting was basically over... Game Brain by Jeanne Marie Laskas l}^{ets say you run a multibillion-dollar football league. And lets, concussions are making your players crazy. What would you do? G-L-O-R-Y! By Jeanne Marie Laskas...}^{The hot, peppy, underpaid world of the NFL cheerleaders There's No Crying at the Pee Wee Super Bowl by Jeanne Marie Laskas.}^{The biggest little game in the world...}

^{Tennis Federer as Religious Experience}
^{by David Foster Wallace}

^{The world of top-flight tennis, and arguably its greatest exponent The String Theory by David Foster Wallace.}^{An obsessive inquiry into the physics and metaphysics of tennis...}^{Running Usain Bolt, Mutant by Luke Dietrich.}

^{What would happen if the fastest man on earth started making an effort? Is the Fastest Human Ever Already Alive? By Chuck Klosterman,}^{allow me to spare you the hyperbole: Usain Bolt is fast... The Fast Life of Oscar histories by Michael Sokolove s}^{hould a double amputee be allowed to race against the world's best able-bodied athletes, or could his disability offer him an unfair advantage? Either/Or by Ariel Levy,}^{How world-class sprinter Caster Semenya puts the idea of binary genders into question.}

^{Yoga Why Yoga Can Be So Irritating by Sarah Miller}

^{(Although You Should Go Anyway!) How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body by William J. Broad}^{Popped ribs, brain injuries, blinding pain. Are the healing rewards worth the risks?}

^{Misc. The Istanbul Derby by Spencer Hall}^{Soccer, fire and a game at the world's crossroads The Sea of Crises by Brian Phillips}^{On sumo, ritual suicide and the death of samurai culture Triumph Of The Swoosh by Donald Katz.}^{With a keen sense of the power of sports and a genius for mythologizing athletes to help sell sneakers, Nike bestrides the world of sport like a marketing colossus Why Sports Are for Losers}

^{"There is a dirty truth that professional sports keeps hidden from fans, i.e., guys like you and me who spend winter after winter wondering What if? And that truth is: Watching sports sucks"}

^{Adventure Sports Why We Play by Eva Holland}

^{Doing what we love, despite the risks Into Thin Air by Jon}^{I understood on some dim, detached level that it was a spectacular sight, but now that I was finally here, standing on the summit of Mount Everest, I just couldn't summon the energy to care Unclimbable by Eva Holland.}^{An expedition to the Cirque of the Unclimbable -- some of the toughest, most spectacular climbing in the world The Mountain of Mountains by Kevin.}^{The afternoon I stumbled across the human leg bone at the bottom of K2, it was one of those flawless days you almost never see in the Karakorum Out in the Great Alone by Brian Phillips.}^{The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race pushes participants to the brink on an unforgiving trek to the end of the world Kashmiri Extremism by Kevin}^{It's 4:00 a.m., and outside the fog-shrouded windows of the Kashmir Alpine Ski Shop, the Indian village of Gulbarga sleeps in the shadow of a 13,576-foot ridge that looks directly into Pakistan The Fast Track to Dharma by Michael Paternity}^{60 Degrees Straight Down, Mind the Boulders and Avalanches. A postcard from La Grave, France - albinism's new lost horizon Excuse Us While We Kiss The Sky by Matthew Power}
^{By day, they work as computer programmers and stock boys and academics. But at night they are urban explorers.}