To the immutable rules of life mandating romantic fidelity, high-quality whiskey and early knowledge of the multiplication tables, it might be wise to attach the following: The moment you turn twelve, stop seeking autographs. This comes to mind in the wake of an announcement last week that Michael Lasky, founder…
How about a nice hand for Hideo Nomo? Better yet, how about skipping the usual courtesies and immediately installing Hideo Nomo in the Hall of Fame? On September 17 the Dodgers’ high-kicking, skyward-gazing right-hander waited out a two-hour pre-game rain delay, then threw the third no-hitter of the 1996 baseball…
Characters in soap operas have phony first names like Blake and Krystle and Fallon and Caress–names no one else has. Real people have real names like Sandis and Uwe and Sylvain–you know, everyday names. The characters in soap operas are always trying to screw other characters in the bedroom or…
Salt this name away, Rockies fans: Scott Randall. As the club’s fourth season winds down with an ineffectual bang (four Bombers with a hundred RBIs each–first time in the National League since 1929) and a resounding whimper (8 million bucks’ worth of Saberhagen and Swift still on the shelf), you…
Beyond the Gainesville city limits, cocky Steve Spurrier may be the least popular head coach in big-time college football. But even those who’d like to see the man vanish in the Everglades may have sympathized last January when his high-octane Florida Gators were blown out of the Fiesta Bowl, 62-24…
When Andre Dawson announced his retirement last week, a couple of astonished doctors pointed out that the great slugger had undergone twelve knee surgeries in his 21-year career–seven on the right knee, five on the left. Both ravaged knees, the Hawk allowed, are now creaking along “bone on bone.” That’s…
Now that Amy Van Dyken’s gold-medal perkiness is finally subsiding and your Colorado Rockies are on a road trip to respect, let’s turn our attention for a moment to the game with the big helmets. The National Football League pre-season is two weeks old, and on September 1–the same date…
While assorted waterbugs from Romania and Belarus and the suburbs of Cleveland bounded all over the mat and flung their tiny bodies back and forth between the uneven parallel bars, we had the whole thing explained to us on the boob tube by…John Tesh. Now it’s a good bet that…
All right, then. Stay home. Seriously. Don’t even bother with the road games. Forfeit the damn road games. That way, you guys will save the club a couple of million bucks in airplane tickets, and you’ll always be able to have your eggs cooked the way you like them. You…
Look at it this way. The average American working stiff makes $548 a week–before taxes. Michael Jordan makes $576,923 a week–before the sneaker company and the cereal maker and the burger chain and the people who provide his underwear can even line up to add their huge endorsement checks to…
Horseplayers and fight guys are carried through life by the same sweet torrent of optimism. Damn the facts. Sheer belief will get you back to the cashier’s window. Force of will can win the title. In the meantime, keep talking. Talking keeps the demons of doubt at bay. At the…
If the sign of a dysfunctional family is the inability to agree about anything, then I suppose that’s what we were. Every time we went out to a ballpark. Of course, no one in a ballpark ever used the word “dysfunctional.” But there were a lot of other, more colorful…
When they asked Ozzie Smith last week about the best plays of his career, it was a little like having Picasso pick out a couple of favorite pictures. Where do you start? Still, the slickest-fielding shortstop in the history of the game obliged his questioners. * On April 20, 1978,…
In the age of MTV and the no-attention span, most Americans demand their spectator sports stuffed with flash, crash and bang–along with the occasional three-color dye job. Graying Cadillac owners still watch golf on the boob tube, but the silent beauty of man or woman gliding swiftly over a course…
On June 24 the good people of Quebec will celebrate the feast of Saint Jean, commemorating the good works and the martyrdom of John the Baptist. Those conversant with the New Testament, or–failing that–who’ve seen a couple of Cecil B. DeMille movies, know that Jesus Christ began his public life…
Jerry Storm, the Colorado Wildcats’ No. 1 fan, has been going to games for five years now, so he’s seen it all. He’s watched women get into fights in the stands. He saw the Cats’ Thomas Stubblefield rush for 2,000 yards in 1994. He once saw an opposing player belt…
Wonder if Timothy McVeigh has one of those $240 Colorado Avalanche jerseys yet? Everyone else within fifty miles of McNichols Arena now wears one, and to hear people talk, they’ve all been dedicated hockey fans since the Eskimos made the first ice cube and Gordie Howe was in diapers. In…
Evidently, there are no limits on baseball’s current charms. Volatile Cleveland Indians outfielder Albert Belle, long a wrecker of locker rooms and teammates’ psyches, throws a baseball at a magazine photographer who has the temerity to take his picture, and American League president Gene Budig orders him to counseling. Self-absorbed…
Imagine the Colorado Springs Sky Sox and the Toledo Mud Hens in the World Series. Or a field of $15,000 claimers running for the roses at the Kentucky Derby. Or a pair of unknown club pros playing the final at Wimbledon. That’s what this year’s Indianapolis 500 is going to…
It could be worse. This could be Boston. Or Cincinnati. Or Detroit. Or Kansas City. As it is, Denver, the Rocky Mountain West and assorted cornfields in Nebraska probably now have the ballclub they expected to have long before they got it. A club whose two most talented and expensive…
To hear Ernie Paragallo tell it, he owns the fastest three-year-old on the face of the earth–maybe in the history of the universe. “I don’t think he’ll be beaten again,” Ernie boasted last week. “Ever?” a reporter asked. “Ever,” the owner said. Now, if you’d like to take that to…
It’s July. You return to the office after a little vacation. Well, not a vacation, exactly–more like another trip to the welding shop. They cemented fourteen new bones into your body and bolted an Erector Set to your right elbow. Without making a big fuss about it, they also fulfilled…
