Justin Morneau of the Minnesota Twins may have won last night’s Home Run Derby, a prelude to tonight’s All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium in New York, but the star of the evening was first-time All-Star Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers. Hamilton clubbed a record 28 homers in the first round but fell short to Morneau in the finals. “It does seem kind of unfair that he didn’t get to win the whole thing,” said Morneau. “Anyone who was here won’t forget that performance.”

There’s quite a backstory to Hamilton and his powerful bat, as an article John Dawson penned for WORLD last year attests. Drafted by Tampa Bay in 1999, Hamilton was considered a top prospect, but an injury sustained in an automobile accident sidelined him and left him open to other pursuits, including drug use. In 2004 he was kicked out of baseball and shortly thereafter his wife left him and most of his $3.96 million signing bonus was down the toilet. He moved in with his grandmother in 2005 and began to turn his life around. Dawson wrote:

Hamilton credits God for flipping off the addiction switch in his body. In the months after, Hamilton began seeking to repair his relationship with his wife, other family members, and God. Buoyed by the sort of faith developed in a long and horrific trial, Hamilton has set his sights on baseball again. “If I rely on my relationship with God, anything is possible,” he told reporters at spring training with the Reds [Hamilton was traded to the Rangers in the off-season].

And there he was last night on the national stage with the power of God behind him and his bat.

Last week we asked you to share about the time you witnessed a big-time sports moment in person. Now tell us about the time when that big moment involved you and your athletic prowess. Let’s us hear about the time you caught the touchdown pass to defeat your crosstown rival, or how you sank that 25-foot putt to win the club championship, or even when you hit the game-winning home run playing Wiffle Ball in your neighbor’s backyard!

So tell us: “My biggest athletic accomplishment was when I …”

There’s nothing like attending a sporting event in person, experiencing all the sights, sounds, and smells—not even high-def TV can match it! And sometimes when you least expect it, you buy a ticket, take your seat, and end up witnessing a slice of sports history: a no-hitter or a perfect game, a record-setting scoring night, an underdog pulling a major upset. As the years go by, thousands, maybe even millions, will claim they were there when …

So tell us about the time you were there when …

I’m all for marching bands and pep bands and singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch, but do TV networks really need songs written especially for the sporting events they cover? This trend was popularized in 1989 with ABC’s “Monday Night Football” adapting Hank Williams Jr.’s “All My Rowdy Friends Are Comin’ Over Tonight” to “All My Rowdy Friends Are Here on Monday Night” (now on ESPN). But even before that was the late Dan Fogelberg’s “Run for the Roses” for the Kentucky Derby (a bit more subtle and better than most) and David Barrett’s “One Shining Moment,” which was first used by CBS to conclude its coverage of the men’s NCAA basketball tournament in 1987 (OK, that one means more when your team wins; otherwise, it’s just plain sappy). Then there’s, of course, the Super Bowl and its infamous halftime “concert” (though Tom Petty wasn’t half bad this year).

Lately it seems that most every televised sports event has some sort of song or music “event” attached to it. And the quality seems to be getting worse instead of better. Case in point: Fox’s “Let’s Go Racin’, Boys!” with Toby Lightman backed by Fox announcer Darrell Waltrip shouting “Boogity, Boogity, Boogity.” What’s next? “World Series Musical,” with Joe Buck and Tim McCarver “getting their heads in the game” while singing and dancing their way down the first-base line?

It used to be that music had a specific place in televised sports, as an intro or as “bumper music” while the network transitioned into or out of a commercial. One of the best of that genre, in my opinion, was the late Barry White and Love Unlimited Orchestra’s “Love’s Theme,” which was used years ago for ABC’s golf coverage. But that was for “atmosphere,” not hype.

Are the TV sports honchos so desperate to broaden their audiences that they feel compelled to force this music on us? Aren’t the games and their players enough to capture our attention? Does TV sports really need a soundtrack? Give us the action on the playing fields, courts, and tracks, and leave the music to the music channels. But … that’s right, the music channels don’t play music any more. Oh, well.

Tomorrow is Father’s Day, and for many of us, some of the best times we’ve had with dear ol’ Dad have had something to do with sports: baiting your first hook … taking you to your first ballgame … playing catch with you out in the front yard. Share with us your favorite sports-related memory of you and your dad.

True mythos is hard to come by these days, especially in professional sports.  Athletes used to be heroes, or at least that’s what I’m told.  Now, they’re just celebrities who wear the same clothes every time they perform.  But there’s one guy who has managed to keep heroism alive, at least on the field of play. 

He was a confluence of races with a sovereign smile and a killer name, and he arrived as if he had been born not just to win golf tournaments and out-earn everyone except Oprah on the Forbes list of highest-paid celebrities, but also to redeem the racist history of his sport and cure a thousand other ills as well. Over the top with pride, his father, Earl, was quoted calling him “the Chosen One” and prophesying that Tiger would “do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity.”

And with that unusual prediction, thus begins this great profile of Tiger Woods, whose international fame is going on 12 years, and whose mythos only gets better.

Memorial Day weekend is big for U.S. race fans, with Sunday’s running of the venerable Indianapolis 500 and NASCAR’s marathon, the Coca-Cola 600. In years past, drivers Tony Stewart, Robby Gordon, and John Andretti have all attempted to race in both events on the same day, with Stewart being the only one to log all 1,100 miles, but will you be among those who will watch all the action from the green flag falling at Indy to the checkers some nine or 10 hours later at Charlotte? And if you’re a Formula One fan, your racing day could start even earlier with the Grand Prix of Monaco. (And let’s not forget that tomorrow’s the Lord’s Day!)

No matter how much racing you watch or don’t watch tomorrow, keep in mind this advice from Fox race analyst and former NASCAR crew chief Larry McReynolds:

I just hope sometime during this weekend, whether you are at the racetrack, or in your car listening to the races on the radio or at home watching the races on TV, that you take a few moments and think about the men and women that gave their lives protecting our freedom. Also, give thanks to the men and women overseas right now fighting for our freedom. We have the freedom and ability to go to races because of the sacrifices they make for us. We just don’t need to lose sight of that.

With so much talk about all that’s wrong with the world and everything our country does wrong, it turns out there’s something we do right.  It’s called sports.  Not for adults.  That’s a whole other issue.  I’m talking about youth sports.  Summer league baseball.  Soccer.  Peewee football.  All of it.  Sure, every now and then parents get caught on tape fighting over a bad call, but that’s the exception.

A growing body of research is showing the social and economic benefits of participation in youth sports to be surprisingly large and overwhelmingly positive. Other things being equal, if a kid plays sports, he will earn more money, stay in school longer, and be more engaged in civic life. 

The cool part of all this is how America differs from Europe in this way.  Read it.  It’s fascinating.

A recent scholarly paper by economists Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser of Harvard University and Bruce Sacerdote of Dartmouth College found that countries tend to build large welfare states when citizens believe that success in life is largely determined by luck. When citizens believe that hard work determines success, they tend to build leaner and more economically efficient governments. 

Americans are remarkably different from Europeans in this regard. If you ask Americans whether the economically disadvantaged are poor because they are lazy or unlucky, 60 percent say lazy. If you ask Europeans, only 26 percent finger laziness. Alesina and his colleagues argue that these attitudes shape society by shaping governmental and social institutions. 

“But,” the article asks, “why do these attitudes exist?”  Youth sports has something to do with it.  Keep reading.

The world is full of surprises and the counterintuitive.  Take for example: the slower I eat, the fuller I seem to get.  Or, the more firm I am with my children or my students, the more they seem to respond to me.  They could be faking.  The British Psychological Society Research Digest reports some other counterintuitive information: soccer goalies do better not to jump to block penalty kicks.

Ofer Azar and colleagues in Israel watched hours of archival footage and noticed that goalkeepers save substantially more penalty kicks when they stay in the centre of goal than when they jump to the left or right. Yet paradoxically, in 93.7 per cent of penalty situations, keepers chose to jump rather than stay in the centre.

In fact, analysis of 286 penalty kicks taken in elite matches around the world showed that keepers saved 33.3 per cent of penalties when they stayed in the centre, compared with just 12.6 per cent of kicks when they jumped right and 14.2 per cent when they jumped left.

Do you have any other freakonomic and counterintuitive data like that?

Going into this weekend’s Masters Tournament, arguably the most prestigious four days in the golf world, Tiger Woods is the favorite to win. But earlier this year, Woods was put under the media microscope for more than his ferocious, world-famous golf game.

During the season’s first tournament, The Golf Channel’s Kelly Tilghman commented that the young players on the PGA Tour should “lynch [Woods] in a back alley” in order to have any chance of rising to the top. Many were infuriated. But the list of those crying foul was missing one important name: Tiger Woods.

Woods took the high road. Instead of lashing out at Tilghman, a friend of his for the past 12 years, he forgave her. Responding to the situation, Woods said, “I talked to Kelly. We discussed it for a little bit. She felt extremely bad about what happened. As I said earlier, she’s been a great friend over the years, and everyone makes mistakes, and she certainly regrets what she said and what happened.”

Woods, unlike many of his critics, understands true friendship. For example, his unique relationship with “best friend” and caddie Steve Williams has recently drawn the media’s attention. So it should come as no surprise that instead of turning on Tilghman, he gave her a mulligan. But for many, Woods’ faithfulness and propensity to forgive are unacceptable. There are those who feel he should have done more, ridiculing his tendency to keep quiet about social justice issues—especially those regarding African Americans.

The truth is, though, Woods already does a lot. His foundation, started in 1996, has helped over 10 million kids—black, white, Asian, and Latino—through numerous community development programs. “I know there are people who want me to be a champion of all causes,” Woods said. “I just can’t do that.”

Ironically, the only “lynching” Woods received was from those wishing he would have done more.