First and last, 1997 marked the golden anniversary of Jackie Robinson, hero. Otherwise, the sublime and the ridiculous kept bumping into each other. Tiger Woods, age 21, chewed up the Masters field by a record twelve strokes, while Mike Tyson chewed on Evander Holyfield’s ear. Jeff Gordon dominated the Winston…
The millions of working stiffs who fork over their hard-earned dollars for tickets to football, baseball, hockey and (in some cities) real, live NBA basketball games are justifiably fed up with the sour culture of American sports–in which spoiled athletes and high-handed owners pretend they’re rulers of some tinpot dictatorship…
To get a feel for this thing–for the magnitude–imagine that your Denver Broncos were to win consecutive playoff games against Pittsburgh, New England and Kansas City, all of them on the road. Then try to imagine Elway and company facing heavily favored Green Bay in the Super Bowl–on their fourth…
If we can believe Lawrence Funderburke, the Sacramento Kings’ resident apocalyptician, the world is coming to an end in the next five or six years. Funderburke bases his prediction on biblical prophecy and says his primary regret is that his career will be cut short. Meanwhile, NBA commish David Stern…
Heard the one about the rich car dealer who goes out and blows 89 million bucks on high-priced hookers? Well, needless to say, he has a pretty good time. So do the hookers. There are lots of them, and they all have talent, so nobody has to work very hard…
Andy MacKenzie, lean, blond and 23, goes back a long way. At 17 he was a fearless Vermonter ripping down the double-black-diamond steeps of Mount Snow with Nirvana blasting through his headphones. At 21 he was a streak of blue and white Gore-Tex bombing the scariest precipices of Vail and…
Let’s hear it for Don Baylor. The Rockies skipper has signed up for another two years’ worth of 15-13 games at Coors Field. He’s ready to endure another two years’ worth of ulcers whenever he looks down at the bullpen and sees the reluctant warriors huddled there, praying they won’t…
Don’t worry about a thing, Oklahoma. That 69-7 thumping Dr. Tom’s hard-running Cornhuskers laid on you Saturday afternoon was child’s play. Don’t sweat it, Central Michigan. Steve Spurrier’s Florida Gators may have chomped on you 82-6 earlier this year, but that ain’t nothing. Don’t get too upset, East Carolina, Rutgers,…
To hear the assorted hairdos on the boob tube tell it, you would have thought getting the Broncos onto that snowbound plane to balmy Buffalo Saturday night was a social imperative akin to feeding malnourished babies or keeping nuclear terrorists out of the Pentagon lunchroom. Forget about the sleepless expectant…
Denver baseball fans find themselves nailed to the couch again this October, watching a pair of teams from distant cities contest the World Series. This is the way it’s been for five seasons, and likely the way it will remain for five or ten or who knows how many more…
When I first knew Grissom–it seems like a century ago now–he was like a lot of other well-heeled jock wannabes. He wanted sporting goods. All kinds of sporting goods, and nothing but the best. When Wilson came out with its top-of-the-line A-2000 outfielder’s glove, Grissom (a pseudonym) was the first…
Baseball’s ghost of honor this season was Jackie Robinson, and the hundreds of uplifting things the scores of speechmakers said in ballparks from coast to coast about his courage were long overdue. But they told only part of the story. Half a century after Robinson broke baseball’s color line, he…
Does the next Dawn Staley go to kindergarten in Brooklyn? Is the Rebecca Lobo of 2008 shooting jumpers right now on her driveway in Des Moines? Is a whole gym-load of pint-sized Cynthia Coopers and Debbie Blacks playing zone defense somewhere in Texas? Could be. In their rookie seasons, the…
Since the bombastic and curious 1997 baseball season got under way last April Fool’s Day, Mark McGwire has hit 54 home runs for two different teams in two different leagues. Larry Walker has put indisputable (but hypo-oxygenated) MVP numbers into the book that will probably fail to win him anything…
Every horse on the grounds comes equipped with four legs. It doesn’t really take Magellan’s navigational skills and two tanks of gas to get out there. The jockeys don’t lift your wallet in the parking lot, and anyone who brings three kids along is pretty likely to go home with…
Now that the Padres and Rockies, newcomers to these proceedings, are peering up from the darkness, it cannot hurt to examine what they see high above. They see the Giants and the Dodgers, a couple of storied teams that would just as soon slash each other’s throats as exchange pre-game…
This is football country. Oh, sure, Coloradans have embraced their late-arriving, lovable Rockies, which makes everyone feel very big-league and connected to the ghosts of Ty Cobb and Jackie Robinson. Scratching their heads, fans also learned that Peter Forsberg isn’t allowed to make a two-line pass, and when the Stanley…
Let’s be clear. We’re not saying we want Andres Galarraga to drive that big green Mercedes of his off a cliff or come down with a case of Rocky Mountain spotted fever that lasts until precisely the 28th of September. Not at all. We’re not hoping the Big Cat gets…
Okay, dyed-in-the-wool sports fans. Here’s one for you. Bohdan Ulihrach. Tell us about Bohdan Ulihrach. Never heard of him? Fine. How about Filip DeWulf? Put together, if you will, a couple of cogent facts concerning his life and career. No? All right, then. Jan Siemerink. That’s S-I-E-M…Still coming up empty?…
Mack Marsh is one good-looking prospect. He’s a big kid with good hands, decent speed and plenty of power. He rarely loses his concentration up there at the plate. He plays with lots of desire and only occasionally swings at pitches three feet over his head. A real gamer. If…
That rumble of discontentment down in the Rockies clubhouse can now be heard in the cheap (and not so cheap) seats up above. Last Tuesday, for instance, midway through the club’s disheartening and premature fiftieth loss of the year (to the Dodgers, 6-5), you could, for the first time, hear…
The hardened baseball fan’s devotion to statistics–most home runs hit, most hot dogs eaten–has long since taken on the unearthly glow of religion. A thirsty man can no longer enter his corner saloon without being accosted by some bright-eyed wonder stuffed full of minutiae from The Baseball Encyclopedia–a glut of…
