Inside a conference room at Major League Baseball’s modernist Manhattan headquarters, Rob Manfred stared down Alex Rodriguez. The fate of both men — the future commissioner of baseball and the era’s greatest slugger — hung in the balance. Rodriguez was furiously fighting a record suspension for buying steroids from a…

As teenagers in neon cleats stutter-step between lines of orange cones on the sun-baked grass behind Norland Senior High, one boy fumbles a pass thrown right at his hands. Coach Daryle Heidelburg punctuates the sweltering afternoon with a booming outburst. “Damian, get on the ground, please!” he hollers to the…

It’s hard to imagine a character less suited to Alex ­Rodriguez’s luxury lifestyle of private jets and South of Fifth condos than the shackled man federal agents led into the DEA’s Weston headquarters the morning of August 5. Yuri Sucart was clad in a baggy white T-shirt, ill-fitting black pants,…

The following is an excerpt from the book Blood Sport: Alex Rodriguez, Biogenesis, and the Quest to End Baseball’s Steroid Era, published by the Penguin Group and released this week. The story began in Miami New Times. Frankie Ratcliff’s phone buzzed just before 7:30 p.m. September 10, 2010. The text…

Outside a $600,000 Coconut Grove condo, the pool glittered blue in the afternoon sunlight and tennis balls popped off a green asphalt court. Inside, a tornado hit. Sharon Cohen watched her heavily tattooed Spanish husband, Alvaro, slam his head over and over against a TV set. She’d recently filed for…

The headlines landed last Monday from Boston to Copenhagen to New York to London. Thirteen Major League Baseball players had been suspended, including the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez, who was hit with a massive 211-game beatdown. It had all started with a January Miami New Times investigation into a tiny Coral…

The first thing Porter Fischer spotted was the trunk of his silver Corolla. It was wide open. Then he noted a bashed-in passenger window and shattered glass littering the parking lot outside the Boca Tanning Club on North Federal Highway. Patrons in a nearby Starbucks peered out curiously as he…

Open the neat spreadsheet and scroll past the listing of local developers, prominent attorneys, and personal trainers. You’ll find a lengthy list of nicknames: Mostro, Al Capone, El Cacique, Samurai, Yukon, Mohamad, Felix Cat, and D.R. Then check out the main column, where their real names flash like an all-star…

Gay Athletes Go Public

Miami Marlins Keep Lying About Stadium

As he mills around his sandy front yard, Douglas Harrison, a tanned 69-year-old, worries about his neighbor, a gray-haired retiree named Glen Tucker. For more than two decades, the two have lived on one of the quietest blocks in South Florida. Tucker has always been reclusive, usually staying inside his…

Rush-hour traffic rattles down Miami’s NE Second Avenue as Eduardo pulls his Dodge Intrepid into a weedy lot next to the railroad tracks. He eyes the commuters speeding past and then pops the trunk. “There she is,” he says, opening a cardboard box. Inside is a matte-black assault rifle —…

Picture this: Dozens of drug smugglers dance and drink outside a colonial-era farmhouse in a leafy countryside near Cali, Colombia. A salsa band provides the soundtrack for a bustling wedding party. “Mama always said, ‘Mouse and cheese are friends,’ ” go the lyrics, in Spanish. “Don’t trust anybody, because when…

Nevin Shapiro reclines on a deck chair, pulls his plush bathrobe tight, chews a cigar, and grins. All around him on the wooden deck, hundreds of drunken revelers shout, dance, and ratchet up the sexual tension. They’re framed by downtown Miami’s silhouette, which glitters atop the black depths of Biscayne…

Forget Epcot. Screw the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Put down that glossy guidebook to Orlando hotel bargains before we sic our guerrillas on your pastel-pants-wearing ass. This is South Florida, muchacho, the retirement home of army strongmen, torturers, and every other unsavory character from the Southern Hemisphere. We make…

A cool breeze whispers through a leafy canopy that shades dozens of Haitian-American leaders who sit on folding chairs in a Savannah, Georgia, park. The crowd stirs as an artist unveils a handsome bronze statue of six weary soldiers. It’s a memorial to the Haitian troops who died in the…

Four days after his 39th birthday, Marco Rubio flashes a toothy grin in a sunlit conference hall. Crow’s-feet wrinkle around his eyes as 60 supporters, mostly gray-haired and clad in pastel polos, stand and clap. More than one hand reaches for a hearing aid before the GOP candidate for U.S…

Andres Torres was dozing on a couch with the blinds drawn when he heard a chorus of boots pounding the stairs. The pudgy retiree with a fringe of white hair hobbled toward the door just as quiet settled over the yellow building of one-bedroom condos. In the distance, cars hummed…

Atif Mehana came to the United States from Egypt two decades ago. The short, clean-shaven 58-year-old spent more than a decade selling seafood to tourists on Miami’s bayfront. He saved enough to open a second eatery in 2008. But now he’s broke. Who’s to blame? He says Yelp.com, the megapopular…

While patrolling Miami Beach, Officer Manuel Chorens wouldn’t stand out. He has a round, fleshy face and an ample belly stretching the front of his blue uniform. His hair is streaked with white; his jet-black eyebrows are prominent over a flat nose. Maybe he has pulled you over. Maybe you…