With minimal scenery and imaginary props, in an homage to Our Town, Our Sporting Life takes place over 15 years, 1984-1999, in the NYC offices of that most ideal workplace, Sporting Life magazine. But as with modern corporate American life, bubbling to the surface there’s lust for power, blatant racism, love, sexual assault, jealousy, ass-kissing, hubris, life and death.

Sassy Jackson, a Brooklyn welfare mom at 15, is now head of the clerks who deliver copy and artwork to the editors and fact checkers. She gives us the particulars of the magazine and some of the characters we meet. After all she's gone through in Brooklyn--the deaths of her young husband and brother, her favorite cousin incarcerated, raising twin girls--Sporting Life is a piece of cake.

Alex Holt, who thinks he’s her boss and eventually is, wants to be good but just doesn’t know how. Like a 19th-century slaveowner, he feels entitled to Sassy and Che, a clerk who’s in and out of the action throughout the play and has fallen for Grant, who has the hardest time saying more than hello to her. Alex hears that company-wide layoffs are coming and tries to make the most of his inside information. Meanwhile, Roger, a good ole’ boy racist editor whose wife is in the hospital delivering their third child, wrangles Felix into calling All-Pro linebacker LT at 5:30 in the morning to ask what color his car is.

The Layoff Rumors flash around the office, targeting Tommy and Babs, who’s been there since the magazine started. Tommy gets beaten down, goes to the Outside World, and Babs isn't seen till the end of the play. Frank, the big boss who's performing the job he’s dreamed about doing since he was a kid in South Boston, tries to figure what’s wrong with this week’s edition. Meanwhile, the 5 AM phone call to LT is creating a firestorm of protest among black players across all sports, who refuse to speak to anyone at the magazine. Grant and Jack, the two straight-shooters, figure what's wrong with the week's issue, and the magazine is ripped apart and an unknown Olympic hopeful, Greg Louganis, is put on the cover. Grant offers himself up to the layoffs, but Frank tells him women like Che don’t come along every day and promotes him. Frank apologizes to LT but gets rid of Roger, and, with the help of Jack and Grant, hires black writers and editors.

Alex tries to squelch Che's relationship with Grant. Woody disses the black writer (Billie) and editor and behaves inappropriately to Rennie. Connie, married now and with a baby, realizes the Outside World isn’t nearly as scary as she'd thought. Che and Grant go to city hall to get secretly married, but everyone shows up to wish them well, and Frank, in an FU to corporate heads who told him to cut budget while his staff is working like crazy, takes whole staff for 3 days in Orlando. The Act ends with Woody becoming the big boss.

The second act starts in 1999, with Rennie undeservingly having been promoted to staff writer, with Woody wanting to expose lesbians in the LPGA and with star writer Nick DeSoto's return to the magazine with a great, heartwarming story. Woody is focused on finding out if Billie is a lesbian. Alex’s wife calls from the Outside World with alarming news that her headaches aren’t just headaches and that she needs an MRI, but Alex feels he's too important and busy at work to join her. We skip a couple of days and find that DeSoto’s story is not at all true, but despite the magazine’s reputation, Woody decides to run it as is. Paul and Grant go along, but Rebecca, who got the facts, quits the magazine and goes to the Outside World. Alex’s wife dies of a massive brain tumor, but he comes in to work the day after the funeral, and Paul, in a throwback to the old days, helps Alex back to the Outside World to deal with his grief. In the Outside World, Billie and Rebecca are impressed with Paul's beneficence and talk about the good old days and even though Frank and Tommy try to dissuade them, they go back to those days and see things they didn’t know about and don’t really want to see: Alex making Che blow him; Babs getting fired by Frank for personal, not business, reasons, and, having nothing else in her life, killing herself; Frank and Paul getting bonuses for hiring women and minorities; Woody rubbing himself against the seated Rennie’s back, and Rennie turning to unzip him. They talk about life, what sports means to them, and work, and realize there’s much more to life, that they must reach out and touch one another, and then a protesting Che is taken to the Outside World of death by Babs, to Grant’s cries of grief, and the play ends with all on stage, taking each other’s hands.