Frankie Accardo, the philosopher, was continually baffled by people who diluted their whiskey with water. “That’s alcohol abuse,” he’d say. He also wondered about men wearing bright plaid sports jackets. (“What’d the guy do? Shoot a couch?”) And he had no use whatsoever for five-year-olds. “Everybody out here knows an…
St. Jude must be working overtime. First the patron of lost causes gets the Seattle Mariners into the playoff picture after nineteen seasons of rain-dampened futility and one collapsing stadium roof. Then he squeaks the M’s past the big, bad New York Yankees. As if that weren’t enough, our man…
The same day O.J. walked, John Vander Wal grounded into a double play. Then Andres Galarraga struck out. And that was the beginning of the end for the 1995 Colorado Rockies. Not even manager Don Baylor expected his overachieving club to take the dominant and confident Atlanta Braves (30-6 against…
Koy Detmer and Ki-Jana Carter probably don’t want to hear about it, but–yeah, sure, of course–there are plenty of good things to say about artificial turf: 1. It’s cheap–at least for team owners and college athletic departments. According to the manufacturer of AstroTurf, it costs about $5,000 a year to…
The rain falls cold and steady this afternoon, and the home nine are in far-off California, facing the test of their young lives. Still, it is nice to sit for half an hour or so in section 125, behind the Rockies dugout. In the flat light of the heaving storm,…
Hey, y’all. This here’s Jerry Jones, and I wanna tell you this afternoon ’bout a couple of changes to our fuhball team that’s gonna git us back in the Super Bowl faster’n a coyote goes in heat, I’m pretty sure. Now, some folks said the Dallas Cowboys were finished, that…
If you don’t watch where you walk–well, you know. Any time 400 dog lovers and their pets get together in one place, the footing can get hazardous. But that’s not the only thing. Confused Labrador retrievers sometimes leap over the rail and scamper up the backstretch in the wrong direction…
The canned crowd noise roaring through empty Folsom Field last Wednesday had a surreal ring to it. With the volume pumped way up to approximate the beer-fueled frenzy the team would face three days later in Wisconsin’s Camp Randall Stadium, it’s a wonder CU center Bryan Stoltenberg could hear the…
That was no optical illusion. And it wasn’t fear playing mind tricks on mere mortals–although there was plenty of that to go around, too. Fact is, Monica Seles has grown another inch during her 28-month absence from tennis, and she’s gained six or seven pounds of sheer muscle. Up at…
From the beginning, that big white clock outside Coors Field has had a mind of its own. So at 3:54 last Thursday afternoon, this unreliable timepiece assured the gathering throngs on Blake Street that it was 3 p.m. By evening, 54 minutes were still missing in action and, for all…
Peter McNeeley is the heavyweight champion of certain parts of Massachusetts and a couple of saloons in eastern Connecticut. He’s beaten such luminaries as Jesus Rohena, Ron Drinkwater and Howard Kelly. Two years ago he knocked out Miguel Rosa in Revere, Massachusetts, in the second round, and he won a…
1. How ’bout that mixed-doubles badminton final? Don’t let this get around, but while most of us were rotating the tires on the car last week, or repainting the parakeet’s cage, something called the U.S. Olympic Festival snuck into our fair state. This series of athletic exhibitions proved so popular…
Every time they see their therapists, Company Commander John Elway and a few other tattered vets of 1990 must surely recall that slaughterhouse offensive the San Francisco 49ers laid on them in Super Bowl XXIV. It is the kind of thing old soldiers never forget: mates gunned down in the…
Once upon a time, in a land that no longer exists, baseball’s ultimate status symbol was a World Series ring, followed in short order by a .340 batting average, a slinky babe with a mink stole draped off her shoulder and a Cadillac. You’re not a big deal this year…
Say you’re lounging around the campfire in your animal skins, wondering if all that ice will ever melt, when a couple of underfed mammoths come charging out of the forest. What to do? Fling a stick at them? Probably not a good idea. Go fetch the thirty-aught-six? Forget it, dreamer…
Good morning, inma–, er, students. This is The Principal speaking. Now that you’ve all had your nice cups of gruel, it’s time to get down to the serious business of education. To wit: It has been brought to my attention this morning that some of you are once again up…
Except for a dozen wronged bartenders and a handful of die-hard Brooklyn Dodgers fans, the whole world’s happy this week that Mickey Mantle continues to recover from liver transplant surgery. We Americans like our heroic myths to go on forever, even in defiance of logic, and the Mick still supports…
At thirty, Barry Bonds is still the finest baseball player in the world. The San Francisco Giants’ left-fielder has a sweet swing, hits with awesome power and guns down runners with an arm the chairman of the NRA would envy. He’s won five Gold Gloves for his defensive play and…
The assembled scholars in the South Stands think Al Davis is Satan, and they may be right. But if he does what he’s making noises about doing, they’ll canonize the man in Oakland, California. His stock might even rise a few notches right here in Elway Corners. Maybe Al wouldn’t…
If Dr. Kevorkian isn’t doing anything this week, he might want to drop by CBS headquarters and apply his skills to everyone in the place. When last we looked, for instance, smug Dan Rather was still glued to his chair, dispensing the usual mixture of lame Texas aphorism and lofty…
About five minutes after Duke’s Grant Hill was selected in last year’s National Basketball Association draft, the hucksters slapped his name on a pair of $110 sneakers and sent along a check big enough to keep him in Armani suits, BMWs and swimming pools until the millennium. However, it took…
Enough is enough. The World Boxing Council, a collection of crooks that competes against two other collections of crooks to control the world’s supply of human fighting flesh, last week pronounced Mike Tyson its number-one heavyweight contender. Perfect. That puts Leg-Iron Mike just a couple of angry lurches away from…
