Big hearts.(GOOD GUYS)

Some athletes have particularly big hearts and demonstrate their community commitment in a variety of inspired ways. A cross-section of these men and their work:

Motivated by his brother, who has cerebral palsy, Drew Bennett of the Titans began incorporating fans with CP into his weekly radio show at a local mall. The mall area became so crowded with disabled fans that mall owners had to build a special ramp for wheelchairs and reconfigure the food court to make it accessible.

Mike Matheny of the Giants and Jason Jennings of the Rockies enabled the building of special baseball fields in Missouri and Colorado that are wheelchair-accessible; the one in Colorado is the first of its kind in the state.

Tony Gonzalez of the Chiefs has his own Shadow Buddy, a doll in his likeness given free to hospitalized kids; more than 15,000 of his buddies have been distributed.

Robert Thomas of the Raiders took 11 kids with life-threatening illnesses, all from the St. Louis area, to San Diego for a weekend of activities. Samuel Dalembert of the 76ers, the only Haitian player in the NBA, hosted 100 kids from the Philly-area Haitian community at a Sixers game. Luol Deng of the Bulls organized a holiday party for the 30 Lost Boys of Sudan, kids driven out of Sudan by civil war.

John Smoltz of the Braves joined teammates Chipper Jones, Brian Jordan and Mike Hampton with donations of $75,000 each to help construct the Atlanta Braves Baseball Academy near Turner Field; Smoltz also conducts two annual food drives in Atlanta that have raised more than $300,000 and brought in 70,000 pounds of food.

Thanks to his $1 million donation, officials in Russellville, Ark., the hometown of the Kings' Corliss Willlamson, built and opened a new Boys & Girls Club that is named after Williamson's grandfather. Torry Holt of the Rams joined Warrick Dunn's Homes for the Holidays program by helping a single morn buy her first home and then completely furnishing it for her. Michael Redd of the Bucks purchased a church, which cost more than $1 million, for his father in East Columbus, Ohio, where Redd grew up.