This past winter, Wendy Hawthorne stopped by the city of Denver’s parks and recreation department, as she does every year. “I’d like to rent a baseball field,” she said. “How old are the boys?” the man asked her. “It’s for women,” she replied. “Then you need a softball field,” he…
About twelve minutes past one on Sunday, February 10, 2002, Mike Morrisey found himself frozen suddenly and solidly into place. His left hand was extended up above his head, where he’d been trying to push snow away. His right hand remained down. He was sitting, seemingly on a chair, with…
For the first three months of their season, the Johnson & Wales men’s basketball squad had a road schedule that made Colin Powell look like a shut-in. The Wildcats started the season on November 1, in Garden City, Kansas. The next nine games were all played in opponents’ gyms as…
A couple of weekends ago, with war in Iraq looming on the not-so-distant horizon, France, seen as a troublesome impediment to European unity, was isolated by her traditional allies and left to fend for herself. Still, in an eleventh-hour effort to gain a diplomatic foothold, she pleaded with England. Ambassadors…
Andy Pruitt first tended to the aches and pains of athletes in 1965, when he was fifteen years old. He hadn’t intended to be on the wrapping side of Ace bandages. The previous fall, Pruitt was still playing on the school’s football team; in fact, a football injury was the…
Jennifer Johnson is a born fan, and despite her California address, her love for the Broncos has been unwavering. “I wasn’t from Denver,” she says, “so I don’t know why I became such a fan. They weren’t a dirty team, so I just liked them. I’ve been a Broncos fan…
“The main thing you gotta remember,” says Mike Pizzuto, his breath condensing in the frigid air, “is that it’s just like any sport. You gotta keep hydrated. And no alcohol. You can’t be workin’ with chainsaws and ice and drinking alcohol.” You think pro ball players have it rough, with…
Call them the Pepsi Generation. Just under five years ago, Denver Public Schools gave PepsiCo the exclusive right to install up to ten vending machines in each of the district’s 134 schools in exchange for more than $1 million a year. Since then, DPS’s middle and high school students have…
If you want to watch some of the most highly compensated athletes in the world compete, don’t waste your time trying to catch the Wizards courtside, scamming a ticket to Augusta or road-tripping it to Arlington, Texas. Compared to these gilded athletes, Mike, Tiger and A-Rod are practically indigent street-corner…
With less than a month until the National Western Stock Show throws open its doors and pens, general manager Chuck Sylvester is still putting out fires. On this mid-December morning, for starters, he has had to pull the plug on the team-penning competitions due to a lack of paying contestants…
“A weekend of frightening scenes at college football games is forcing university presidents and the NCAA to try to find ways to stop violence on college campuses.” — December 6, 2002, Associated Press “New tactics are being tried this year in hopes of preventing University of Colorado students from rioting…
When I was in middle and high school, there was a kid in my class named Dave Ringo, who, thanks to an unjust genetic mutation, was a gifted athlete in spite of himself. He spent the entire weekend and most of the week drinking and smoking in bad company. Yet…
Mark Robbins is running a bit late, as usual, and he’s in a hurry to suit up. He hates to miss any of the action, even at his age. Still, there is a ritual, and it’s important he get it right. The first order of business is to dull yesterday’s…
You think you know someone. You live with him for nearly a year, eat together almost every night. The two of you run together, bike together, share bank accounts, a bed — a life. If asked, you would describe him as your best friend. You feel great when he’s happy…
If you lived in upstate New York in the late 1980s and early ’90s, as I did, there was really only one sports story worth paying attention to. No, it wasn’t the Buffalo Bills, a team on the cusp of setting a record for Super Bowl futility, dumping four straight…
One hundred seventy-five years after he should have died, Lance Grabowski is still here and looking as resplendent as ever. For this crisp fall day, he has selected a bear-claw-and-mink-fur necklace. He also sports a nineteenth-century do-rag, emblazoned with dozens of pins and medallions, as well as tanned, coffee-colored buckskin…
The only sticking point in the romance, Andi remembers, occurred last spring when KC showed up in Moab with a brand-new cherry-red Avalanche. A Chevy Avalanche. “When I saw him show up with it, I thought it was a rental,” she says. “I couldn’t believe he’d buy a Chevy.” KC…
“God made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure.”– Eric Liddell, 1924 Olympic sprinter, as quoted in Chariots of Fire, 1981 Oy. Here it is, the Days of Awe, the most important time on the Jewish calendar — a somber, introspective time when the faithful atone for…
Here’s how you go about getting an interview with the nationally respected coach of the University of Colorado’s best hope for a national title this fall: Walk into his windowless ground-floor office, sit down on the only chair and say, “Hey, coach. What’s new?” Don’t be ridiculous: This isn’t the…
On a recent morning, Bill and two of his buddies make the drive from Littleton to Evergreen to do a little game harvesting — buffalo, to be specific. The shooter, Bill, arrives last. He walks down to the pen and peers inside the chain-link fence to scope out the quarry…
Larry Butler is losing his chops. That’s bad. It was really a matter of timing more than anything else. In the summer of 2001, Fox TV called Larry at his Morrison home, practically begging him to compete in a televised tournament. “I was still ranked quite high,” he recalls. But…
Dropping down Route 9 from Hartsel into Lake George is like entering a thicket of gauze. A clear Colorado day gives way first to haze, then gray, then brown. Smoke grows thicker by the mile. Behind the smoke, the sun glows orange. To the north, a billowing cotton-candy cloud roils…
