Don’t bother calling Ripley’s Believe It or Not or the supermarket tabloids, because they won’t believe it either. On Sunday afternoon, a crazed computer from Morristown, New Jersey, snuck up behind a buffalo in Boulder, Colorado, and forced nonconsensual sex on the hapless beast. That’s not all. It also proceeded…
His earthly triumphs interrupted by exhaustion and injury, home-run king Mark McGwire retired a couple of weeks ago. This came as unhappy news in baseball-savvy St. Louis, where the massive, red-headed slugger made home-run history in 1998, and in countless other precincts of the grand old game. It’s a good…
On a brilliant Indian-summer afternoon outside of Morrison, Gordon Grenfell unhoods his Barbary falcon. The bird rouses — shakes its feathers in preparation for flight — and then, suddenly, in a flurry of motion, swoops off Grenfell’s leather glove and over the field, skimming low across the brown grass. A…
Paul O’Neill, the dour, longtime New York Yankees outfielder, won a world championship with the Cincinnati Reds in 1990 and four more rings with the Yankees in the last six years. Suddenly, that’s not much of an achievement. It looks like the Arizona Diamondbacks will now get a shot at…
At 4:45 in the morning, the streets are empty. Devon Harris, captain of the original Jamaican bobsled team, and Rick Lunsford, Olympic coordinator for the city of Evanston, Wyoming, are racing down Speer Boulevard in a massive Ford SUV. The U-Haul in back holds a bobsled. Lunsford jams down the…
For as long as anyone in Golden can remember, there have been some surefire ways of knowing you are at a Colorado School of Mines football game. One: You pay six bucks and sit almost by yourself at 5,000-seat Brooks Field. Two: There are mules grazing in the corral beyond…
It was back in July 2000 when Pat Dobiash, who watched the herd for the Henrys, first noticed that one of the alpacas was missing. A full month passed before Dobiash found the animal, a young female: On August 26, he stumbled across its decomposing remains on a small island…
Have you heard? Barry Bonds is an arrogant egotist who has three lockers in the San Francisco Giants clubhouse but not three friends on the entire team. He’s a slugger who hit 73 home runs this season but wouldn’t score 23 points in a fan approval poll. He’s uncouth, ungrateful…
Albert Chopito’s grandmother died with gangrene, her feet blackened with infection, a gruesome consequence of her long fight with diabetes. Just a little over a year after starting junior college on a scholarship, Albert was forced to quit and return home to care for his parents. His father died in…
On a sunny day in 1974, I stood in the awestruck company of thousands of my fellow native New Yorkers as a tightrope walker named Philippe Petit crossed the dizzying void between the tops of the two towers of the World Trade Center. A quarter mile above our craned necks…
In the days following the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., the majority of the sporting world, a place defined by its motion, stood still. Major League Baseball suspended play for nearly a full week — 91 games in all. “Who cares about baseball right now?” Rockies…
You could say Jake Shannon’s big break — his biggest so far, anyway — came when he got the call from the people in California who told him the gig was his if he wanted it, and could he fly out right away? Jake hemmed and hawed. His work troubleshooting…
There are so many reasons to detest the French that it’s hard to choose the best ones. Their capitulation to Hitler during World War II holds up pretty well, as does their icy disdain for anyone with the nerve to be from another country. As movie director Billy Wilder once…
Remember Caine? Not the biblical guy, but Kwai Chang Caine, the half-Chinese, half-American Shaolin priest who wandered the old American West in the 1970s television series Kung Fu. Played to subtle perfection by David Carradine — he didn’t look Chinese, exactly, but you knew he was, because he spoke really…
Have you heard? Baseball players are as sensitive as ballerinas. Slip a single off-color rose into your favorite center fielder’s bouquet and he’ll weep at the beautiful incongruity of it. Should ancient Mrs. Trumpington speak crossly at Madame Beltone’s fortnightly reading circle, the average big-league shortstop will avert his eyes…
So, kid, you want to be a ballplayer, play a part in the Show? Then step out here onto the real field of dreams. Oh, not what you expected? A diamond of green velvet, sure — but next to a highway heading south out of Parker to nowhere? Probably only…
Now that the Stanley Cup’s in the trophy case and the Rockies are in the toilet, local sports junkies can return to their first love in good conscience. All eyes are fixed on Greeley, a grim backwater drenched in brutal heat and stockyards perfume, where the Denver Broncos and their…
The crooks, whores and liars who run the Olympic Games have a weakness for symbolism almost as powerful as their taste for cash. They love their flag-raising ceremonies and their five-ring logos almost as much as they love bribery, and they go ape for big pots of fire. Most of…
On May 25, Erik Weihenmayer was sitting on top of the world. Well, technically speaking, he was lying near the top of the world. With his stomach convulsing. He’d just yanked himself over the 39-foot rock face called the Hillary Step, the last technical hurdle on the way to the…
Wherefore art thou, Tony? Let us count the ways, Cal. America’s love affair with sports heroes can be a pretty sordid business, based more on flash than substance. One year, the madding crowd worships a steroid-stuffed behemoth who whacks lots of Flubber-filled cowhide into the cheap seats. The next, they…
When I hear Kenny Dubois is going to be in town, there is no question about getting with him. After all, the guy is a national champ, maybe one of the best in the world. Luckily, I am able to track him down after a couple of phone calls, and…
Who can fathom the mystery of Michael Jordan? The man has enough National Basketball Association championship rings to open a chain of pawnshops. But the gold and the diamonds and everything they stand for are not enough. Millions of awestruck kids wear Jordan’s $150 sneakers, eat his Wheaties, slurp his…
