MATT KEMP CARES. A LOT.
It just took a long time and some hard lessons for him to figure that out

This story appears in the June 25, 2012 Debate Issue of ESPN The Magazine.

HE IS OFF with the crack of the bat.

Andre Ethier smokes a line drive toward the wall in left-center, and though Matt Kemp has a small lead off first base, he thinks one thing: score. With his head down and legs pumping, Kemp is a blur in home whites as he rounds second. It’s May 30, and he is only two days removed from a 15-day stint on the DL with a bum hammy — but the duct-taped Dodgers improbably own the best record in baseball. Kemp is their leader, having mashed 12 homers in April and posting a video-game-like line that has people talking about the 27-year-old centerfielder as the player of a generation. And tonight, in the first inning of his second game back, he has drawn a walk. Now he has designs on home.

NO WOMAN IS AN ISLAND

This story appears in the June 11, 2012 Women in Sports issue of ESPN The Magazine.

MICHELLE WIE STANDS in the Pacific Ocean, barefoot and tugging on jean shorts. Her bright blue fingernails dig into deep-blue denim, and her neon-pink-streaked hair whips in the Honolulu wind. Stunning and six feet, she is impossible to miss. Earlier this morning, while waiting to cross the street to get to this photo shoot, a middle-aged man in a silver Porsche screeched to a halt and yelled that he loved her.

THE HURT TALKER
Training guru Stan Conte dreams of a day when a team has such powerful injury data, it goes all season without using the DL. Could it happen?

This story appears in the March 5, 2012 Analytics Issue of ESPN The Magazine.

AT 5’O CLOCK IN THE MORNING on Jan. 19, Stan Conte woke to an email from Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti, his familiar alarm clock of the past six years. Before Conte had a chance to breathe, Colletti hit him with the name of a free agent and a question that Conte, as the club’s senior director of medical services, has come to dread like no other:

“Yes or no?”