In a decade at Baseball Weekly, I read a lot of stories, and two of the most touching were of how Torii Hunter and Latroy Hawkins each escaped their own home lives through pro baseball. Hunter, especially, had to deal with his own father’s legal issues, to the point of shunning him.

He’s not the only athlete with that kind of problem to deal with. For Dustin Johnson, playing indoor football half a country away keeps him away from a potential source of trouble: his father, who was “shot in the stomach in a drug deal gone bad,” he said.

More on Johnson’s story and his pro career in a story from the Shreveport Times.