They’re not very tall. They’re not whippet-fast. In the eighth game of the season, their starting center crashed to the floor, shattering both wrists and putting their dreams in jeopardy. In places like Knoxville, Tennessee, Storrs, Connecticut, and the slam-dunk-crazed Carolinas, not even hardwood junkies know who they are. Just…
What the puck. When it was over, Sylvain Lefebvre could finally replace his lucky shoelaces. The TV producers up in the booth could take a break from the special chocolate-cake ritual they’ve been into for a month. Sandis Ozolinsh could get through a pre-game meditation without twelve or fourteen teammates…
The beefy fortune tellers of the National Football League have gazed into their tea leaves and come up with a prophecy: John Elway will return for another season. One last hurrah. The Final Final. The I-Really-Mean-It-This-Time Actual Blaze of Glory Farewell. Fortified by umbrella drinks and sunshine, the assembled gladiators…
Want to stage the Olympic Games in your town? There’s nothing to it, really, but there are a couple of things you need to know. First of all, you’ll have to appoint some committees. No potential site worth its five interlocking rings can hope to land the Olympics without 150…
For a good ol’ red-dirt Georgia boy, that Dan Reeves sure has got one pow’ful sense of theater. First he ups and coaxes a 44-year-old back-up quarterback out of retirement because they go back to the leather-helmet days together, and then, when things get rough for his fragile starter, Dan…
Have you heard? The Denver Nuggets are serious about winning. About winning games and winning back the hearts of the fans. Of course, Napoleon was serious about winning at Waterloo. The Germans probably liked their chances in Stalingrad. And the Miami Dolphins rolled into Mile High Stadium Saturday afternoon filled…
It is still the holiday season on the windy, treeless plain that is Dove Valley, and the man who’s overseen the Denver Broncos media machine for 21 seasons is in a mood for parables. “Say your car is stalled on the railroad track,” Jim Saccomano begins, “and the train is…
It was the year of Hurricane Mitch and Typhoon Monica, of Governor Ventura and King Viagra. It was the year they finally played college football at Mile High Stadium (Colorado 42, Colorado State 14), the year Harry Caray and his “Holy Cow!” died. It was the year that boxer Bobby…
The finest professional athlete in Colorado will earn less than $15,000 this year. He has no sneaker contract (always goes barefoot) and will never be bothered by autograph hounds (couldn’t catch him if they tried). On December 2 he celebrated his second birthday, but by this time next year, his…
Joe DiMaggio is dying. The most graceful center-fielder ever to play baseball, one of the game’s finest hitters and a fathomless mystery for six decades, is lying in a Hollywood, Florida, hospital, a couple of miles from the major-league spring training site where he first materialized in 1936. Characteristically, no…
The rules of life don’t change much. Never buy loose diamonds from a man in lizard-skin cowboy boots. Remain faithful to your beloved. At a mile and an eighth, always consider Eddie Delahoussaye’s horse. Once past the age of twelve, never, ever request an autograph–not from John Elway, not from…
Pile your bowl high with Flutie Flakes and get a load of this. Among the thirty National Football League quarterbacks who held starting jobs at the beginning of September, eighteen are, for one reason or another, out of the picture right now. In San Diego, errant Washington State rookie Ryan…
Among the grand heroics and tragic disturbances of humankind, the performance of a baseball team is a puny thing. But it looms awfully large right now for a lot of people. Why, just the other night, in a saloon that shall remain nameless, I witnessed a bar-pounding, drink-spilling, shoulder-shoving exchange…
There are no distractions. At Barry Fey’s house, the parrot keeps screeching at the dog. The phone won’t stop ringing, and Barry’s beleaguered assistant, Leslie, just can’t find the wallet-sized photos of the first time he won the big handicapping tournament in Vegas. The guy is here to fix one…
This epic poem of a baseball season is drawing to a close. But before Tino Martinez hangs up his spikes for the winter, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa settle into the history books and the game’s financial titans dare to believe that the game’s wronged fans have returned, there’s a…
This just in: The National Basketball Association has canceled its 1998 exhibition games, the players and owners remain at each other’s throats over filthy lucre, and the entire regular season remains in grave jeopardy. Hello? Let’s try this again: The National Basketball Association has canceled its exhibition games, the players…
Some wonderfully gaudy facts and feats have decorated this extraordinary baseball season. Mutual admirers Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa demolished home-run history, of course, going downtown a total of 136 times. Cal Ripken–he of the silver countenance and the iron constitution–finally decided to take a day off after seventeen years…
For Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and a stampede of horses called the New York Yankees, this has been the most glorious of baseball seasons. Not so for the 77-85 Colorado Rockies, who in the mists of April were thought to be solid contenders. But when the ax fell, as everyone…
In the fight game, the fun never stops. On Friday night, welterweight Oscar De La Hoya, boxing’s undefeated “Golden Boy,” took eight rounds to dispose of a faded ex-champ, Julio Cesar Chavez, in Las Vegas. De La Hoya had so bloodied his old enemy that Chavez could not answer the…
A vast right-wing conspiracy couldn’t get the job done. For that matter, neither could the left-handers. This summer’s hero hit five dozen dingers off 57 pitchers. And in the end, the Chicago Cubs’ Steve Trachsel–who gave up a league-high 32 long balls in 1997–yielded Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire’s historic 62nd…
After sitting in hot traffic for an hour and coughing up $40 for a parking spot, some were looking for good omens Saturday night. Maybe this filled the bill–for CU fans, anyway. Following months of big-game hype and just five minutes before the kickoff, Cam the Ram, Colorado State’s galloping,…
Once upon a time, in a game far, far away, a princess named Chris Evert started collecting U.S. Open tennis titles like charms on a bracelet. Her racquet was wooden, her dress was snow-white, and her words were measured–if she spoke at all. When the announcers at tournaments called her…
