http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/12845975/ambidextrous-nashville-sounds-pitcher-pat-venditte-rarest-mlb-skills

PAT VENDITTE, IN jeans and a T-shirt, stands in an empty one-bedroom apartment with his wife, Erin, and the woman with the keys. They drove here from their temporary digs in downtown Nashville in their red Jeep, Nebraska plates, stuffed with their clothes and his golf clubs. Venditte looks around for less than a minute before he announces he's happy. Erin agrees. "We've found a home," Venditte says. He laughs, remembering his shadier accommodations over the course of his minor league career, four players wedged into a two-bedroom, his air mattress blown up under the dining room chandelier, a clutter of lawn chairs in place of couches. He recalls one desperate stretch when he and his roommates found an electronics store that would take back a TV, no questions asked, within 30 days of purchase. They bought a lot of TVs for 29 days.

The normally silent magician Teller, when asked to explain how he is able to perform his stupefying tricks and sleights of hand -- illusions that seem to defy any rational explanation -- answered: "Sometimes, magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect."

http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/12500579/giancarlo-stanton-takes-325-million-contract-play-miami-marlins Part of scouting is espionage, so Marlins scout Tim McDonnell sat in his car in the parking lot beyond left field at games, watching through binoculars, careful not to give himself away. He surveyed the stands, looking for other scouts, because another part of scouting is determining the opposition. Either he or his assistant attended every game of Stanton's senior year, and they wrote down the name of every scout they saw. The list was short. McDonnell would put his binoculars on his lap and ask himself, "Am I crazy?"