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,”…
If it’s not one thing, it’s another. The Sharks have laid it to Abby and Foppa. Melo and the Nugs got mauled by mad dogs. The guards are swabbing electrolytes on Gary Barnett’s leg, and Rockies pitchers are falling by Walgreens again for those big bottles of Zoloft. The upstart…
Almost two decades ago, as she was recovering from yet one more painful shoulder surgery, Andrea Jaeger had a dream. “I was in a wide-open field,” she recounts. “Groups of people were gathering around, calmly conversing.” When she began to leave, she continues, “my stepping away from the crowd caused…
Walk into any local saloon or opium den this week and you’re sure to run into the guy. The guy who’s been there from the beginning. The guy who’s been there from the beginning and never lost hope. The guy who never lost hope and always kept his season tickets…
America, some critics have noted recently, is falling behind its rivals in the developing world. Our dependence on technology and a decadent ease of living have dulled this country’s once-sharp competitive edge. They are speaking, of course, of the depressing plight of the American marathon runner. Once the swift pride…
Welcome to sweet April, when anything is possible. The Colorado Rockies can still win the National League pennant this year and beat the Yankees in five hard-fought games in the World Series. Donald Trump might propose to Omarosa. Topeka could get Italian food. And, if a thousand things go perfectly…
One of the great things about sports is that you never know where a story will take you. An account of a couple of professional football running backs, one supernaturally talented, the other a plugger, can morph into the life lessons offered in Brian’s Song. More often than you would…
