TONYA SIMPSON

Selected as part of the Sunday Long Read's "Best of 2018"

In 1986, the space shuttle Challenger stunned the nation when it broke apart 73 seconds into flight. This is the story of the soccer ball that survived -- and the family that sent it into space, twice.

A personal essay for the Modern Love column about breakups, vulnerability, and how ghosts of our pasts linger in unexpected ways.

ON JUNE 3, Tyler Zombro stepped to the mound at Durham Bulls Athletic Park and threw the 2,245th pitch of his minor league career -- a 90.6 mph sinker. He faced his first batter of the night, Brett Cumberland of the Norfolk Tides, with a 1-2 count to open the top of the eighth, a little after 9 p.m. Rain had delayed the game, and morale wasn't great. The Bulls trailed by 8 runs.

The 17-day saga of a 7-foot pickle from the sunny Caribbean to the floor of a public bus in Portland, Oregon.

"The fans she spent decades entertaining are conspicuously absent from the ballparks this year. Instead, the music piped in over the sound system reverberates off of empty seats and cardboard cutouts. To celebrate her impact on the game is only to be reminded of the things we miss most this year. We all want to be taken out to the crowd.

His mom has never been able to see him play. This is football and life on the border. 

Florida voters could deal a death blow to greyhound racing this election day. What happens then?

Trapper Nelson was a Florida legend from the day he hopped off a boxcar. But did he really kill himself, or was he murdered?