Luckily for Pete Sampras, he realized early in his tennis career that his opponent wasn’t beating him. Sampras was beating himself. It wasn’t just that he’d played badly, Sampras says now. “I also played without heart, which is a greater sin.” Later in his career, Sampras, while always cool-headed, saw reality with rare objectivity. He lists five truisms as mostly fair and all realistic, starting with "You're only as good as your last win..."

You’d be forgiven for expecting Shaun White to become a shill after winning a gold medal in snowboarding at the Olympics and more gold in skateboarding at the Summer X Games. Instead, the “Flying Tomato,” with his wild red hair and southern California style, took control of his image.

Billy Beane revolutionized the way baseball players are valued and also exploited the advantages of timing. The reason his Oakland A’s played like a different team in the second half of their 2001 season is because they were a different team. Their general manager, on a shoestring budget, had scooped up undervalued players right before the trading deadline ...

After his death in 2010, at age 99, accolades poured out for John Wooden, the greatest men’s college basketball coach. Wooden had 10 national titles. Collectively, the four runners-up have 13 titles. In 27 years at UCLA, Wooden sometimes won with more talent than his opponents and sometimes with markedly less. How? Here's a glimpse.

Ken Anderson beat the odds to become one of the most prolific quarterbacks in National Football League history. Slow-footed quarterbacks with weak arms aren’t even supposed to make the NFL, much less lead the Cincinnati Bengals to the Super Bowl. How he did it: