Andrew Kerth 
An NBA arena on a packed night is one of the loudest, most electric places in sports. But not every building holds the same crowd. The gap between the league’s largest arena and its smallest is more than 4,000 seats, which is the difference between a cavernous big-market house and a tighter, louder room. So … Read more
Walk into any sporting goods store and you will find basketballs in at least four different sizes, each meant for a different age. Hand a six-year-old a full-size men’s ball and they physically cannot shoot it with proper form, which builds bad habits that are hard to fix later. So which size does a 9-year-old … Read more
Buying a football for a young player sounds simple until you get to the store and find four or five different sizes, each labeled for a different age. Hand a six-year-old a regulation NFL ball and they physically can’t grip it, which wrecks their throwing technique before it ever develops. Get it right and they … Read more
The Ballon d’Or is the most prestigious individual award in football, the closest thing the sport has to a most valuable player trophy. Every year it crowns the best player in the world, and the list of names who have lifted it reads like a history of the game itself. But how long has it … Read more
The penalty shootout is one of the most nerve-wracking spectacles in all of sports. After 120 minutes of soccer with no winner, the entire match comes down to a series of one-on-one duels between a kicker and a goalkeeper from 12 yards out. For new fans, though, the exact rules can be a blur of … Read more
If you’ve ever watched a big soccer match end level after 90 minutes, you’ve seen the game roll on into extra time. For new fans — especially in the U.S., where we tend to call it “overtime” — the rules can be genuinely confusing. Does the first goal win it? How long does it actually … Read more
If you’re new to soccer, one of the first things that trips you up is the clock. In most American sports — football, basketball, hockey — the clock counts down and the game ends when it hits zero. Soccer does the opposite: the clock starts at zero and counts up, and it never stops. So … Read more
Baseball names its best pitcher award after a man who won 511 games — a number so far beyond anything possible in the modern era that it functions less as a benchmark and more as a monument. Cy Young pitched until he was 44 years old, threw complete games the way today’s starters throw four-inning … Read more
Professional football stadiums in the United States are massive, purpose-built venues that cost billions of dollars and seat somewhere between 60,000 and 90,000 people. They are considered among the largest sports facilities in the world. College football blows past all of them. Nine college football stadiums in the country seat more than any NFL stadium … Read more
Every July, the game stops pretending baseball is about pitching for one night. Eight of the biggest power hitters in the sport step into the cage and just swing. No defense, no strategy, no stolen bases. Pure distance and volume, counted out loud while a crowd loses its mind in a stadium that was built … Read more