Featured Essays
What Do You Think of Barry Bonds Now?
When Barry Bonds shakes my hand, he squeezes my metacarpals like he’s gripping one of his old maple-wood bats. Then he looks directly at me and past me at once, like I’m some journeyman pitcher whose changeup he’s about to take deep. He’s no longer the 228-pound...
When My Father Talked About Larry Bird
The Boston Celtics legend was the north star of my youth, present in every debate and stretch of silence with my dad. This was true on the night when my world stopped, leaving me on a sidewalk seeing stars. Read Full Essay
Adam’s Song
Adam wakes from a dream he can’t remember in the only home he’s known since leaving his mother’s duplex five years ago. Was it the dream of baseball, a Carolina beach, or the one in which Katie, his junior high crush, is still alive? Today is Friday. A visit from high...
The Rise and Fall of a Mall
Herbert Ames had to pause. Standing before television cameras behind a glass podium on June 26—demolition day for North DeKalb Mall—the managing director of Edens properties needed a moment. Before the excavator clawed into the former Rich’s white brick facade, Ames...
Kirk Cousins, the new Atlanta Falcons quarterback, takes aim at a Super Bowl
Cooper Cousins, age six, keeps his eyes on his hands, and his hands are on the table. The Notre-Dame Cathedral lies in pieces before him on the distressed oak. LEGO’s newest architectural build debuted on June 1, and Kirk Cousins, your Atlanta Falcons starting...
The Miraculous Journey of Matt Ganyard, U.Va.’s 34-Year-Old Kicker
Matt Ganyard strikes another football into a vast blue sky and I’m not thinking about catching this one. Number 98? Gotta canon. The ball zings into the net and bounces fat and sweet under the goalpost and I snag and wing it to the Cavalier staffer at the 25, who...
The Immaculate Reception’s Great Truth
You won’t miss his statue at the Pittsburgh International Airport. Franco Harris scoops up the ball every single time, #32 immortalized in a line of statues, next to George Washington, Founding Father, and runner-up to beloved icons at PIT . But Harris’ gaze is off to...
My God, Herschel Walker, What Have You Become?
Is Herschel perfect?” the man in an American-flag suit and long white hair asks. We gather together this Election Night, November 8, 2022, on the ballroom floor of the Omni Hotel, in Cobb County, outside Atlanta, to await the results: Senator Raphael Warnock versus...
Why Is a Left-Handed Swing More Beautiful? The Answer Is in Freddie Freeman.
The swing is poetry; his swing is perfect. I miss the swing; but we miss Freddie more. “Give me a second,” Freddie Freeman tells reporters. “I don’t even know if I can get through this.” On June 24, Freeman, the Dodgers’ All-Star first baseman, returns to Atlanta,...
Way up There in Blue: Seven Children Dead in Kabul — Who Is to Blame?
United Flight 244 from Atlanta to Denver sits on the runway. Delayed. Sept. 16, 2021. My fellow Georgians, clad in SEC college football tribal fan wear, carry on industrial sized bags of Chick-fil-A. Soldiers fresh from basic at Fort Benning dot the cabin. Dustin,...
