A mountain rises above sandy red dirt not far from Jim McMahon’s home in Arizona. There are saguaros, jagged rocks, maybe some rattlers. But no trail.

As he drives by, McMahon tells his friend, “I can’t wait to climb that.”

The idea would be ambitious for any 64-year-old, let alone for one who recently came close to losing his right leg.

At some point during a 15-year NFL playing career — he’s not sure when — McMahon broke his right ankle. Doctors kept telling him he didn’t. By 2021, the ankle bone had grown — the size of two golf balls, he says — and McMahon could barely walk. About two and a half years ago, the bone was shaved and spurs removed. The doctors said the surgery was a success.

They always say that.

Four days later, McMahon felt a burning sensation. Blood seeped from an area on his leg far from his incision. His ankle was badly infected. Emergency surgery followed. And another emergency surgery.

“My foot literally exploded,” he says.

It looked like a chunk of flesh and muscle had been scooped from the front of his ankle. The open wound was about the size of a baseball and the colors of pizza.

McMahon was told if the infection reached his knee, his leg would be lost. As it crept up his leg — closer, closer, closer — he was as brash and irreverent as always.

“I’d be a sexy son of a bitch with one of those new prosthetics,” he told Kevin Tennant, a close friend of 46 years. “The women would love me.”

Over two and a half years, he had six skin grafts, the last in November. All the while, amputation remained a possibility.

He couldn’t move his ankle for seven months. The joint calcified. His Achilles tendon shrunk. He couldn’t point his toes up or down.

McMahon recently started seeing Chicago chiropractor Pete Petrovas, who has used electronic stimulation, ultrasound, acupuncture and manipulation to restore function in the joint.

Finally, there is movement. Finally, mercy.

He wears a brace on his ankle and walks with a cane. But somehow, Jim McMahon has made another improbable comeback.

McMahon’s first comeback happened early in the game of life.

At 6, he tried to untie a knotted shoelace with a fork. It slipped, puncturing his retina. Frightened, he waited six hours before telling his parents. After surgery, he was strapped down in his bed for a week so he wouldn’t scratch his eye.

Not long after he was untethered, McMahon played Wiffle ball in the hospital hallway and blasted a ball out of a window. Then he climbed out the window and down a few stories to retrieve it.

At 12, he was kicked off a baseball team when his coach, who also happened to be his father, caught him smoking cigarettes. He came back, though. In high school, McMahon played every position except catcher. At Brigham Young, he played outfield as a freshman.

But McMahon was a quarterback. Though his eye was light-sensitive and his vision was impaired, he could see the field better than almost anyone. At BYU, he set 75 NCAA records and led a comeback that was the football version of the Battle of Midway.

With less than three minutes remaining in the 1980 Holiday Bowl, the Cougars trailed Southern Methodist 45-25. When fans headed for the parking lots at San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium, McMahon yelled at them, warning them the game was not over. Then he led two touchdown drives to get BYU within six. With the ball on the SMU 41, the Cougars had one more play. McMahon dropped back to the BYU 45 and put up a Hail Mary that landed in the hands of Clay Brown in the end zone. The extra point with no time remaining gave the Cougars a victory in a game now known as “The Miracle Bowl.”

On this day in 1980, Jim McMahon led BYU to 3 TDs in the final 2:33 to beat SMU’s ‘Pony Express’ in the Holiday Bowl. pic.twitter.com/l7nSkdrkxM

— Yahoo Sports (@YahooSports) December 19, 2016

The Bears chose him with the fifth pick of the 1982 draft and two years later, McMahon made a comeback that left doctors astounded.

McMahon, who played as if he were wearing a medieval suit of armor, ran for a first down against the Raiders, then kept running instead of sliding as two defenders approached. Then defensive tackle Bill Pickel put his helmet into McMahon’s lower back. McMahon stayed in the game but didn’t have the breath to keep calling plays. He was taken to the locker room, where his urine was the color of Concord grape juice.

At the hospital, he learned his kidney was torn in two places, with one part completely detached. He bled for three days and was hospitalized for 10. After a transfusion, he was told he needed surgery to remove the kidney. Knowing he couldn’t play football with one kidney, McMahon objected. He says he could feel it healing and asked doctors for one more night. By the morning, he says, it was reattached.

“The big man upstairs knew the Bears couldn’t ever win s— if I wasn’t there, so he gave me another chance,” McMahon says. “He’s the only one who could have done what happened to my kidney. They just don’t grow back that fast.”

The following season, McMahon was not expected to play in a Thursday night game against the Vikings because of a back injury and leg infection that had him in traction earlier in the week. But the Bears trailed by eight in the third quarter and McMahon badgered coach Mike Ditka until Ditka relented.

On McMahon’s first play, Ditka called a screen pass, but the Vikings blitzed, so McMahon heaved one deep — a 70-yard touchdown to Willie Gault. His next pass was a 25-yard score to Dennis McKinnon. And his seventh was a 43-yard touchdown to McKinnon.

“All I remember is I almost fell on my face because I had so many muscle relaxants and painkillers in me,” McMahon says of the 33-24 victory. “I was barely able to stand up.”

At the end of that season, McMahon led the Bears to their only Super Bowl victory — after coming back from a rear-end bruise that was so sore he could barely sit.

Through 11 weeks of football in 1986, the Bears appeared well-positioned to repeat as champions. Then Packers defensive tackle Charles Martin changed the trajectory of their season — and McMahon’s life.

McMahon was walking away from the play after throwing a second-quarter interception when Martin grabbed him from behind and slammed him to AstroTurf, which might as well have been concrete. Martin, whom they called “Too Mean,” left McMahon there like roadkill.

A concussion and neck and shoulder injuries meant the end of his season, but not the end of his football comebacks.

The Bears gave up on him. He came back with the Chargers. The Chargers cut him. He came back with the Eagles. He was supposed to sit out a 1991 game against the Browns because of a broken elbow and torn tendon. McMahon could barely move his arm, but 45 minutes before the game, it was decided he would play. His second pass was a pick-six, and the Eagles trailed 23-0 by the second quarter. Then McMahon threw three touchdown passes, including one with 5:19 left that gave the Eagles a 32-30 win.

McMahon played for four more teams. His final game, as a 37-year-old with the Packers, came as Brett Favre’s backup in a Super Bowl XXXI victory. He retired with a .691 winning percentage, eighth highest of the modern era. Of the players who rank ahead of him, three are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame (Roger Staubach, Joe Montana and Peyton Manning), one will be soon (Tom Brady) and two are active (Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson). The other is Daryle Lamonica.

He didn’t throw passes as pretty as Dan Marino’s or John Elway’s, he had a better winning percentage than either. McMahon didn’t play in the high-flying offense Dan Fouts did, but he has two more Super Bowl rings.

He didn’t have the athleticism of Steve Young, but Young credited McMahon with teaching him how to pass when they were teammates at BYU.

He didn’t benefit from the genius coach and GOAT wide receiver that Joe Montana did, but he had a 4-1 record against him in head-to-head starts. McMahon’s only loss was in the NFC Championship Game in 1989, when his injured knee never gave him a chance.

A 14-year-old McMahon was hanging out with his baseball teammates when one of his friend’s older brothers “tossed us a bone.” That was the first time he smoked a joint. He kept smoking as a teen and throughout his playing career.

These days, indica and OG strains are his favorites, but he likes trying different ones. Every few hours, McMahon lights up either with a bowl or a dogwalker.

“It makes me not think about the pain,” he says.

He has had 25 surgeries: seven right knee, six ankle, five left knee, four right shoulder, two left shoulder and one eye. When he reaches to shake a hand, he winces. If he remembers, he pulls golf clubs from his bag with his left hand.

McMahon doesn’t work out much because he can’t lift his arm sideways. His right shoulder has been a problem since the first game of the 1986 season. After shoulder surgery that year, he says he was supposed to sit out two seasons, but he came back in 10 months. Now McMahon probably needs a replacement.

And then there is his head.

McMahon was a teammate of Andre Waters in Philadelphia and Dave Duerson in Chicago. When each killed himself, McMahon was stunned. He wondered what could make them feel so despondent. In 2012, he was enlightened.

“I started feeling the same things about a month or two after Duerson (died),” he says. “Then I understood.”

McMahon experienced debilitating headaches — it was like an ice pick in his skull. For months, he mostly stayed in bed with the shades down.

“If I had a gun, I would have blown my f—— head off,” he says. “It hurt that bad. I spent weeks at a time thinking, ‘What are you going to do?’ But I didn’t want to do that to my kids, my folks and my family.”

McMahon found relief through Scott Rosa, a New York chiropractor who traced some of the problems to old neck injuries. He sees Rosa a few times a year, whenever headaches worsen.

McMahon’s wit remains sharp, but his memory has dulled. He can relay 30-year-old reminiscences and nail every detail, but ask him what he did this morning and he might struggle to answer. He forgets appointments even though he enters them in his calendar. He occasionally loses his train of thought in mid-conversation.

He was one of the plaintiffs in the concussion lawsuit against the NFL. A settlement was agreed upon in 2015 and the NFL has paid nearly $1.2 billion to former players and their families, but McMahon has not collected.

“They said I wasn’t impaired enough, that I don’t have full-blown dementia,” he says. “They want you to die before they admit there was something wrong with you.”

He was one of several players who sued the league for illegally dispensing narcotics and other drugs without regard for long-term health. At one point he says he was taking 100 Percocet pills monthly, but the medication made it difficult to sleep.

At least he has marijuana.

Along with former NFL players Kyle Turley, Eben Britton and Ricky Williams, McMahon owns Revenant, a cannabis business. He and Williams recently visited Capitol Hill to lobby for more lenient federal marijuana regulations.

A look at McMahon’s busy travel itinerary is enough to make him want to take a toke. Much of his travel involves golf, where he somehow manages to crush his drives despite playing one-legged, spreading his legs as far as possible and putting all his weight on his left foot.

“I told him he plays as good with one foot as he did two,” his son Sean says.

An excellent golfer, Sean tries to give his father pointers but says Jim doesn’t take to coaching very well. Ditka could have told him that.

When he’s on a course, McMahon almost always has a Coors Light in his hand. Time has diminished neither his thirst nor his legendary capacity.

“Me and Horne (former teammate Keith Van Horne) did a good job at a bar the other night,” he says, pausing to spit tobacco in a cup. “It was probably funny watching him and me trying to walk out of this place.”

Drinks in the Chicago area are almost always on the house — or on the guy at the end of the bar wanting to take a selfie. A fan paid his lunch tab at a Greek restaurant the other day. They love him not just because he helped win a Lombardi Trophy but because of how he did it — with rebelliousness and recklessness. An icon in the lineage of Broadway Joe Namath and Kenny “The Snake” Stabler, McMahon was who football fans wanted to be.

He still is. Kind of.

These days, “Papa Jim” enjoys his time with his six grandchildren. (Photos courtesy of Sean McMahon)

Sean says when his father is with his friends, he acts no differently than he did 30 years ago. When Tennant is around, they golf and play cards, backgammon and dominoes for hours on end, insulting one another and laughing like they have for 46 years.

“I kick his a– every time, or almost every time,” Tennant says.

“He’s full of s— most of the time,” McMahon says.

Where gel-spiked hair once was, there is now a shaved scalp. The sturdy chin wears a white goatee. With his still-light-sensitive eyes obscured by blue-lens sunglasses, he looks more like a villain from a Marvel movie than a stereotypical grandfather. But to Maverick, 7, Macy, 6, Gibson, 5, Ryder, 5, Walker, 3 and Brooks, 1, he is “Papa Jim.”

McMahon downplays the significance of being a grandfather. Then he shows off videos of the kids.

Papa Jim gets on the floor to play cars with Walker. He takes Macy to her tennis lesson. Maverick and Ryder bruise him up with their toy nunchucks and swords. He plays catch with the kids but throws left-handed or underhanded because the arm that launched 2,573 NFL passes can no longer make a gentle overhand toss without stabbing pain.

Divorced for 15 years and unattached, McMahon appreciates time with his grandkids, four children and 88-year-old parents, Jim Sr. and Roberta. He didn’t always get along with his mother and father during his NFL days, but time heals the wounds it can.

Some of his injuries during football made him feel like crying, but he always held back tears. He didn’t want to show weakness. That has changed.

“My physical therapy makes me cry every time,” he says. “I even catch myself tearing up while watching TV commercials. I asked my doc, ‘Am I going f—— crazy?’ He told me it’s part of maturing.”

So, McMahon has matured?

“It’s awfully bold of you to assume I have,” he says with that familiar grin. Then he pauses.

“I mean, you’re getting closer to death, so you’re trying to put your life in perspective,” he says. “You’re trying to finish out the last few years and make them good so you don’t have to wait too long in line when you get up there, if that’s the way I’m headed.”

McMahon is headed somewhere else now, hobbling away to meet a former teammate. He will drink too many beers, stay out too late and tell stories his grandchildren probably should not hear. And when tomorrow dawns, Jim McMahon, deep in the game of life, will reach for his cane, light a bowl and make another comeback.

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos courtesy of Sean McMahon; Peter Read Miller, Focus on Sport / Getty Images; Paul Spinelli / Associated Press)

They’re three words, tattooed in capital letters across Luis Gil’s throat, and they’re as loud as the screams he unleashes after a big strikeout.

“GOD BLESS ME.”

For Gil, the New York Yankees’ rookie wunderkind, it’s a public message in a peculiar place and with a personal (and blunt) meaning.

For opposing hitters, it’s the last thing they see before he delivers the ferocious fastballs that have put him on a short list of possible starters for the American League at this year’s All-Star Game.

Gil, who takes the mound against the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium on Thursday afternoon, is 9-1 in 14 starts this season.

The 26-year-old also leads the AL with a 2.03 ERA and a .142 batting average against. His 96 strikeouts are the sixth-most.

He does it with a heater that averages 96.8 mph — tied for the sixth-fastest in MLB, according to MLB’s Statcast — a low-90s changeup and a slider. It’s come after he was the surprise pick to replace injured ace Gerrit Cole in the rotation out of spring training.

“It starts with the fastball,” manager Aaron Boone said. “It’s elite. It’s special. He can lean on it. … To see him hunger to get better and learn from everything that he’s gone through, build a really solid routine — that’s what’s been really satisfying about Luis.”

And while keeping the Yankees in first place in the AL East has been his chief concern, his Christian faith will remain his main motivator.

Luis Gil neck tattoo pic.twitter.com/J8auyC6cuL

— Eddie Garcia (@Eddieonfox) May 30, 2024

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The point of the tat is simple.

“It’s just a message for God to protect me,” he said via a translator in Kansas City last week.

He wanted it in a place it would be seen.

“It’s a reminder in asking to be protected,” he said.

How he got there wasn’t so simple.

Growing up in the Dominican Republic, Gil said he always felt a greater power in his life.

“I’ve been put in really good situations. … Ever since I could remember, I could see things shaping around me,” he said.

It wasn’t until he was about 15 or 16 years old that he became deeply religious. It was after he signed with the Minnesota Twins. The $90,000 signing bonus he received wasn’t life-changing money, especially relative to the seven-figure deals other teens out of the D.R. were signing at the time.

But the chance to possibly one day pitch in the major leagues? It felt like a blessing.

“From that moment on,” he said, “I developed my strong faith.”

He called religion a “good way to anchor myself into something that could help me through my career and understanding the opportunity I was going to have, something to help me through the journey.” He added that he prays right after he wakes up and just before he goes to sleep.

The tattoo wasn’t Gil’s first, though. His arms and the side of his neck are covered in colored ink. Some of it is religious imagery. He had many of them when he made his MLB debut on Aug. 3, 2021.

But Gil added the neck art in the winter. Yes, it was painful.

“But it was quick,” he said.

He was overcoming shoulder surgery when he was traded at age 19 to the Yankees in exchange for outfielder Jake Cave. In 2022, Gil needed Tommy John surgery that sidelined him for the rest of the year and nearly all of 2023. He knew that in 2024 he might get a chance to establish himself in the Bronx.

With the tattoo, he wanted to double down on how he felt in his heart.

“It’s a way to be thankful,” he said.

His teammates love it.

Starting pitcher Marcus Stroman has more tattoos than Gil. He’s covered from his legs all the way to his neck and to the back of his head.

“I love someone who has the confidence to get a neck tat,” Stroman said. “I think a lot of people in society are like, ‘Oh, a neck tat, you can’t get a neck tat.’ But I just feel like that speaks to the confidence in someone because it’s always so frowned upon, I guess, in American society.

“I had those conceptions, too. But once you feel settled and confident with who you are as a person — I’ll tat my whole body. It doesn’t change anything besides outside opinions.”

Left fielder Alex Verdugo is tatted up, too, but he has a limit. He won’t get them on his hands, neck or his face.

“My mom doesn’t like tattoos much,” he said. “She’s already mad enough at the little tattoos that I have. … It takes a lot of confidence to get it on your neck. It’s a spot that I’ve avoided, but it works for him, right? I love it. Maybe I’ll get one on my neck.”

Rookie catcher Austin Wells remembered what he thought the first time he saw Gil’s neck tattoo.

“Probably a little shocked,” he said. “But I think it works for him.”

Wells said he did something similar to Gil. When Wells suffered a cracked rib in spring training 2022, he wasn’t allowed to work out for weeks. He used the downtime to bolster his tattoo collection, putting a Chi Rho — a Catholic marking symbolizing the Holy Trinity — on the inside of his forearm.

On Wednesday, the buzz around Gil’s tattoo had reached a new level. Several Yankees players were wearing the same navy-colored shirt while walking around the clubhouse and during pregame workouts.

The wording on their chests?

“GOD BLESS ME.”

(Photo: Adam Hunger / Getty Images)

It started like any other pickup basketball game at an open gym — players sweating on the court, others waiting on the sidelines and spectators casually observing. Jessica Brogan, who had attended similar practice-like sessions with her two hoops-hungry sons, said it began as a “normal open run.”

However, on this particular Saturday, there was unusual electricity in the air at the Life Time gym in Folsom, Calif., as rumors circulated in the greater Sacramento community that a global basketball star was in town and might swing by. Still, there was reason to doubt it.

“I didn’t even tell my kids about it because I hear that kind of stuff all the time and it doesn’t pan out,” Brogan said.

Others, like Berry Roseborough IV, a basketball trainer in the area who works with college and pro players, were more sure. Roseborough received a call from Marcus Kirkland, who was organizing the session, asking him to recruit his best players because of the expected attendance of this special guest.

On the morning of June 8, Roseborough called his pupils in town without revealing too much, just enough.

“You’ll probably be mad if you miss it,” Damarion Vann-Kelly said Berry told him.

Vann-Kelly had a hunch, one that grew after Kent Bazemore — a G League player who spent 10 seasons in the NBA — walked in. About 10 minutes after Bazemore arrived and with a game underway, the screams began: It’s Curry. It’s Curry.

“All the little kids are screaming,” Vann-Kelly said. “Even the adults were screaming.”

Sure enough, Stephen Curry, wearing a light gray hoodie pulled over his head, walked in.

“I look up while we’re playing and I’m like — excuse my language — but, ‘Oh s—, Steph just walked through the doors,’ ” Roseborough said. “And you could feel it. … You feel all the energy in the gym radiating. Everybody’s almost in shock.”

Brogan looked at her sons’ faces. Braxton, 13, turned red when he noticed the four-time NBA champion, and Easton, 10, grew wide-eyed and broke into an ear-to-ear smile when he realized it was Curry stretching nearby, she said.

It’s not unheard of for NBA players to join amateur pickup games as a way for them to stay tuned up, especially during the league’s offseason. Players with college and pro experience, including Bazemore, regularly attend the runs Kirkland organizes in the Sacramento area. The two met at a gym in 2022 and stayed in touch, according to Kirkland, bonding over a shared love of basketball and a desire to pass that love on to others in their community.

Bazemore encouraged Curry, who was in the area for his daughter’s youth volleyball tournament, to drop by the gym, Kirkland said. Curry, whose NBA season ended in April with the Warriors’ Play-In Tournament loss to the Sacramento Kings, will make his Olympic debut at the Paris Games next month as the United States men go for their fifth straight gold medal.

“We’ve had a lot of (NBA players) come to our runs but never anyone of the caliber of Stephen Curry,” Roseborough said. “That was like ‘Wow.’ ”

Brogan called it a “once-in-a-lifetime experience” for her family.

During a roughly two-hour session, Curry put on a masterclass. He and Bazemore teamed up, playing five-on-five against Kirkland, Vann-Kelly, Roseborough and others. Brogan and her sons watched in awe along with a growing crowd that became so large that security asked people to leave, she said.

Naturally, Curry delivered. Roseborough said he noticed Curry’s pace and how simple his game is.

“He didn’t do anything more than he needed to do in that moment,” Roseborough said. “His pickups — basically how you pick up the ball before you get into your shot — they were just so fast like you couldn’t even see them.

“Then his release. He’s getting his shot off in, had to have been, .3 seconds or less. It doesn’t matter if it’s contested. It looks the same every time. It’s coming off the same finger every time.”

Added Vann-Kelly, 17, a 6-foot-5 guard with Division I and pro aspirations and a recent graduate of Monterey Trail High: “He was making all of them. It was nothing but net. How (Curry) attacks, you can just tell why he’s at the pro level. All his moves are perfected. He has great patience, great skill overall.”

During one game, after Curry crossed up Kirkland for a step-back 3-pointer that rimmed out, Curry got the ball back off a pass and then made the game-winning 3 on his next attempt. He reflexively celebrated with his iconic “night night” gesture. A clip of the moment, shot by Brogan and posted to her Instagram, went viral.

Steph Curry hits the Night Night at an open run in Sacramento 😴😂🔥

(via jessicabrogan/ig) pic.twitter.com/kIPOodso1P

— TheWarriorsTalk (@TheWarriorsTalk) June 9, 2024

“He’s a generational player, his IQ,” Kirkland said. “He’s just different.”

But it wasn’t only Curry’s viral shots and elite ballhandling that left the gym buzzing. He impressed in another sense, according to those who were there. They noted how Curry introduced himself to each player and shook their hands. He asked for their names and told them not to be nervous.

“Guys were trying to give him the ball so he could do all the scoring and he was telling them, like, ‘No, we play team basketball. We’re not gonna play like that,’ ” Roseborough said. “He was actually setting up other guys to score. He was giving confidence to the players and other people that were there.”

After a series of eight or nine games — largely dominated by Curry and Bazemore, Kirkland said — the two took photos with the other players and the kids Kirkland invited to watch, including Brogan’s sons.

“He just made everybody around the building feel good,” Roseborough said. “He made everybody that was in there feel comfortable. And that was crazy to me, just how his energy really affected everybody in the building that much.”

(Top photo of Steph Curry and Kent Bazemore with other players: Courtesy of Marcus Kirkland)