In 1968, they were baseball's biggest names: Mickey Mantle. Hank Aaron. Willie Mays. They, and I, were at the MLB All-Star Game at the Astrodome. To a 9-year-old boy growing up in north Mississippi, ...

All this week, The Times is looking back at 1968 — a year that blurred the line between sports and the real world, with athletes swept up by Vietnam War protests, political tumult and racial tensions.

Willie Mays celebrates his 89th birthday Wednesday, but there’s no way he’ll have a cake like the one Astros owner Roy Hofheinz gave him 52 years ago. With Mays and the San Francisco Giants in Houston ...

Elvin Bethea boarded an airplane in San Antonio on a hot July afternoon with the temperature easily approaching 100 degrees. Bethea was back on the football field later that day in Houston, where the ...