Voters have had plenty of opportunities to gather information and pass judgment on President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry. Most, however, are unsatisfying — staged debates, advertising swill, convention hoo-ha, editorial folderol. It makes you wonder: Is there really a way to measure the cut of a man’s…
Where is everybody, baseball fans? Well, let’s have a look: Larry Walker is in St. Louis, suddenly in the pink and belting playoff home runs. The Montreal Expos are in oblivion, waiting to be revived next spring as — what? Let’s say, the Washington Lobbyists. Most of the Cubs faithful…
October 5 marked the one-year anniversary of the death of Dwain Weston. Weston was known in extreme-sports circles as a star BASE jumper; the abbreviation stands for building, antenna, span and earth — which participants leap from with parachutes. Last year at this time, Weston was a featured performer in…
Before it’s over, maybe they could match him up against a ’58 Edsel. Or the Hindenburg. Or Michael Dukakis. Something. Because Zippy Chippy, whose papers say he is a thoroughbred racehorse, has never won versus his own kind. In eleven long years of trying (and sometimes not trying), the thirteen-year-old…
Next time you’re in the market for a pair of guinea pigs, a Ford pickup or a bag of jalapeño peppers, tune in to radio station KFKA in Greeley for Saturday morning’s Swap Shop show. You might even wind up buying something on a whim — like the black faux-fur…
Dreamers live in a fantasy world. So what do you call a person who dreams of impossible things and then does them? Tom “Chico” Chicovsky. When Chico and his twin brother were nineteen, they and a friend decided to sail across the ocean after their freshman year of college –…
Since going dark-blue-with-white-horse from the neck up, the Denver Broncos no longer sport that big orange “D” on their helmets. But if Mike Shanahan wins big in the biggest gamble of his coaching career, it is “D” that will be inside his players’ heads this year. It will be “D”…
On a recent afternoon that threatens rain, Thomas and Anthony are already waiting when the black and yellow Compass truck rolls up to Argo Park. The two boys race their BMX-style bikes along 47th Street parallel to the truck, skidding to an impressive, rubber-laying halt as the big vehicle noses…
Tony Dispense grew up small, which is how he gained the lifelong habit of trying harder than just about anyone else. This was especially true in sports. When he played tennis, he’d stay out late practicing his strokes. While mountain biking, he seemed to push just a little more than…
The slightly crooked basketball hoop in his family’s Congress Park back yard holds many memories and meanings for Kevin Fletcher. Dribbling a ball under that basket one hot afternoon last week, Kevin thought about the times his driveway suddenly turned into the gleaming floor of the L.A. Forum. About the…
Only a handful of newsworthy memories survive from my early teens. But out of the momentous headlines of that time — Vietnam, Watergate — one of the clearest is of a child’s contest: The Soap Box Derby scandal from the summer of 1973, 31 years ago this week. Jimmy Gronen,…
Once upon a time, not long ago, the Denver Nuggets were the sorriest franchise in the National Basketball Association. The laughingstock of the league. A garbage can for discontented, used-up and incompetent players. They were objects of scorn in their own city — like Brian Griese and the Denver boot…
Fifty years ago, the athletic director of Gunnison’s Western State College, a 950-student school in south-central Colorado, made history when he convinced the National Collegiate Athletic Association to add skiing as an official intercollegiate sport. The idea stuck, and a few months ago, skiers from more than three dozen colleges…
Only a devoted masochist — a guy with a thing for hairshirts and moonlight strolls in Fallujah — would envy Bob Apodaca. As pitching coach for the Colorado Rockies, Apodaca is asked to piece together some kind of credibility in a ballpark where earned runs, home runs and pitcher anxiety…
In 1973, high school athlete Julian Nabozny was playing goalkeeper for his Winnetka, Illinois, soccer team when he collided with a boy on the opposing side. As Nabozny knelt down to receive a pass, David Barnhill came hurtling toward him, kicking him in the head. Many agreed that Barnhill could…
Rulon Gardner, the playful Wyoming giant who pulled off the biggest upset of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, will be leaving the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs for Athens next month, hoping to win a second gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling. The Greeks might do better to station Rulon…
If you’re lucky in this life, you’ll experience that magical moment when you fall in with a group of people whose core beliefs are so compatible with your own that you immediately know you have arrived home. “Well well…fellow chipmonk gruge holders,” wrote Sassy Rebel42, an Oklahoma gardener, on my…
When Jerry Robertson was twelve, thirteen years old, he used to climb into his Uncle Bob’s stock car at the old Englewood Speedway, hoping to get his future in gear but quick. “Lemme hot-lap the car,” the towheaded kid would plead. Every time, Uncle Bob just grinned and shot a…
John Servis couldn’t believe it. At 5 a.m., he says, a couple hundred bleary-eyed fans were already lined up along the rail at Philadelphia Park, awaiting their hero. By mid-morning, the crowd had swelled to more than 8,500 — hard-core gamblers with unlit cigar stubs in their teeth, students wearing…
The biggest news in men’s professional tennis recently occurred over a two-week span and involved a single player. Andre Agassi, whose bald head, startled expression and thick brows make him the world’s most recognizable American men’s player, lost in the first round of the Grand Prix Hassan II, a minor…
George Washington played a couple of seasons with the Chicago White Sox. He hit a respectable .268, with nine homers, 24 doubles and 52 runs batted in. The braided waistcoat and buckle shoes must have slowed him down, though. In his 128-game big-league career, George stole just one base. None…
When parents and potential players gathered earlier this spring for the inaugural meet-and-greet with the coaches and founders of the Colorado Impact girls’ basketball club, the main message was all about…losing. And not just letting a few squeakers slip away, either. “We will get thrashed,” coach Gary Anderson promised. “And,”…
