Once upon a time, in a land that no longer exists, baseball’s ultimate status symbol was a World Series ring, followed in short order by a .340 batting average, a slinky babe with a mink stole draped off her shoulder and a Cadillac. You’re not a big deal this year…
Say you’re lounging around the campfire in your animal skins, wondering if all that ice will ever melt, when a couple of underfed mammoths come charging out of the forest. What to do? Fling a stick at them? Probably not a good idea. Go fetch the thirty-aught-six? Forget it, dreamer…
Good morning, inma–, er, students. This is The Principal speaking. Now that you’ve all had your nice cups of gruel, it’s time to get down to the serious business of education. To wit: It has been brought to my attention this morning that some of you are once again up…
Except for a dozen wronged bartenders and a handful of die-hard Brooklyn Dodgers fans, the whole world’s happy this week that Mickey Mantle continues to recover from liver transplant surgery. We Americans like our heroic myths to go on forever, even in defiance of logic, and the Mick still supports…
At thirty, Barry Bonds is still the finest baseball player in the world. The San Francisco Giants’ left-fielder has a sweet swing, hits with awesome power and guns down runners with an arm the chairman of the NRA would envy. He’s won five Gold Gloves for his defensive play and…
The assembled scholars in the South Stands think Al Davis is Satan, and they may be right. But if he does what he’s making noises about doing, they’ll canonize the man in Oakland, California. His stock might even rise a few notches right here in Elway Corners. Maybe Al wouldn’t…
If Dr. Kevorkian isn’t doing anything this week, he might want to drop by CBS headquarters and apply his skills to everyone in the place. When last we looked, for instance, smug Dan Rather was still glued to his chair, dispensing the usual mixture of lame Texas aphorism and lofty…
About five minutes after Duke’s Grant Hill was selected in last year’s National Basketball Association draft, the hucksters slapped his name on a pair of $110 sneakers and sent along a check big enough to keep him in Armani suits, BMWs and swimming pools until the millennium. However, it took…
Enough is enough. The World Boxing Council, a collection of crooks that competes against two other collections of crooks to control the world’s supply of human fighting flesh, last week pronounced Mike Tyson its number-one heavyweight contender. Perfect. That puts Leg-Iron Mike just a couple of angry lurches away from…
Far be it from us to kill the joy on Blake Street. But before Colorado Rockies fans begin lining up to buy playoff tickets, they’d do well to think about what happens on Monday. The Rox’s 7-1 start was astonishing, to be sure. Those comeback wins against the Mets and…
Want the best method for picking the winner of this Saturday’s Kentucky Derby? Just follow these three easy steps: 1. Lock your doors and draw the blinds. 2. Have five or six mint juleps. 3. Call Uncle Willie down at the state hospital and ask him who he likes. As…
Last Thursday night, the wet flags on the high rim of the stadium flapped at half mast for the dead in Oklahoma. A chill wind whistled through the lower box seats, and periodic drizzle slanted down onto players, clots of fans and the guys struggling to sell cold beer. You…
Image is not everything. That’s a lesson the world’s best tennis player has learned the hard way. On the slick grass rectangle that is Wimbledon’s storied center court–a mystical place where he feared even to tread for three years–he learned in 1987 that you can smash flashy, Kevlar-powered rocket shots…
Among thousands of celebrants, the happiest man in baseball this week has to be American League president Gene Budig. Had the divisive players’ strike lasted just two more days, after all, Budig might have faced the sticky task of breaking Cal Ripken Jr.’s historic date with the Iron Horse. Unless…
The DNA tests are back from the lab, and those were not major-leaguers who christened Coors Field Friday afternoon. Before 47,563 polite witnesses, a group of strangers wearing Colorado Rockies pinstripes defeated a band of aliens in New York Yankee road grays 4-1, in the first game at Denver’s graceful…
Bring your pets inside and hide the children in the cellar. The Thing That Cannot Play is about to be set loose. You know the one. The many-footed monster that has prowled the swamps of Florida and the deserts of Arizona since mid-February. The scourge that put Sparky Anderson to…
In the original, which goes back to 1941, Robert Montgomery played a prizefighter who’s accidentally spirited off to heaven before his time, then forced to return to Earth in a different, far less efficient body. When they remade the thing in 1978, complete with a new title, Warren Beatty was…
Don’t let this get around, but any foreign power still interested in invading the United States would do well to try it, say, this Saturday. Half the nation is already catatonic from watching the O.J. Simpson trial, and by Saturday night the other half will be in college-basketball-induced shell shock…
Behold the joys of spring. Tulips in bloom. A fragrance of love on the soft breeze of evening. Arrival of the, uh, new Michael Jordan-model baseball bat. And the spectacle of the grand old game’s canny geniuses trying to replace everything they can replace without closing the place. To begin…
A lot of people think the angriest man in America is Newt Gingrich. My money’s on Mike Tyson. Poor Mike. Invite a girl up to the room for a couple of smoked-salmon canapes and a nice discussion of the Lake poets, and look what they do to you. Three years…
At the five-eighths pole, Cigar and the big gray colt, Holy Bull, were dueling for the lead when rider Mike Smith felt a thump, like a car tire going flat. Jerry Bailey, on Cigar, said he heard a loud pop. “Oh no!” Smitty cried out–and just like that, Holy Bull…
Okay, let’s hear it for Fat Billy Maharg. Whaddya mean you never heard of him? Spring training opens today, doesn’t it? Just about the time many of you see this, the boys of summer will be cantering onto emerald outfields in camps from Kissimmee to Tucson, feeling their spikes grab…
