There’s no radio. Mother Nature provides the air conditioning. If you’re 6′ 3″, forget it. Houdini would have trouble squirming in and out of the thing. Wind this tiny, bug-eyed British beast up to 105 miles per hour or so, and it starts ripping and crashing into the oncoming air…
Just minutes before the kickoff of Super Bowl XXXVIII, John decides to fill up his plate with Swedish meatballs and cold cuts at a game-day party in an Aurora home. “Sorry,” he murmurs as he cuts in front of the TV screen, intruding on everyone’s field of vision. John is…
For someone who has two Super Bowl rings and his own football team and who fronts seventeen car dealerships, John Elway is a pretty modest guy. All right, so maybe the activity the Colorado Crush labors at is not really football, but you get the idea. Elway is not the…
Creekside Sports has been in the horsehide-swatting business since Gerald Ford was president. Softball in Denver has been around in one form or another since bell-bottoms were hip — the first time. And Crestmoor Park Softball Association opened its doors when John Travolta was dancing in white leisure suits. Now…
In the beginning, Rashiem Jefferson couldn’t get any fights. There were no other seventy-pound fourteen-year-olds in North Philadelphia willing to put on boxing gloves and rumble, so Rashiem would fill his pocket with the fight-gym tokens they gave him at school and go down to Joe Frazier’s and hit the…
This holiday season, many of you no doubt basked in the shared warmth of the same comforting customs that people have enjoyed for centuries during this festive and peaceful time of year: Sipping a warm glass of port, wearing your fanciest clothes, spending quality time with your friends and favorite…
They aren’t hanging any championship banners over Chopper Circle just yet. But Denver Nuggets fans are taking the brown paper bags off their heads in record numbers, and their families have cut back on those worried phone calls to the shrink. Hope, hoops and hooplah have returned to lift high…
Most of us never come close to solving the great mysteries of life. You know: What’s a “Hoya”? Do Jesus and Mohammed get together for lunch? How does the washing machine know to take in four socks and give back only three? Where have the Bush twins gone? I mean…
A few years back, I was sitting with a friend in a duck blind. It was a slow day of hunting, and we were discussing the recently passed Colorado initiative outlawing the spring bear hunt. The new law also prohibited baiting while pursuing a bear — a good thing, I…
That ominous rumble gaining volume in the mean saloons and unhappy living rooms of Denver is the sound of a citizen army being mustered. Taking up their cudgels as they pull on their predominantly orange flak jackets, these aroused militia-folk are clearly plotting an advance on Dove Valley, there to…
If you want to see the difference between a boys’ and a girls’ ice hockey game, stop by the Edge Ice Arena early on a Sunday morning. The building, part of the Foothills Recreation Complex southwest of Denver, is one of several erected in the metro area in recent years…
Five or six years ago, the Montreal Canadiens got around to sending Ralph Backstrom a chunky, diamond-encrusted gold ring to commemorate the six Stanley Cup championships the Habs won when he was a quick-skating, high-scoring center on the team, from the late 1950s through the 1960s. Backstrom cherishes the memento,…
In 1995, Joe Arcese, an administrator for a large urban college, had an idea. Enrollment was flagging, and the school had such low visibility that many potential students never even applied, because they didn’t think it was a genuine academic institution. “Back in the mid-’90s, a lot of people thought…
Having seen the bright lights of Syracuse, New York, Carmelo Anthony thinks Denver is “a slow town.” But there’s nothing slow about the way long-suffering Nuggets fans are taking the smiling nineteen-year-old rookie into their hearts. “I don’t know about LeBron James,” season-ticket holder Vince Shaefer said after the Nugs’…
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Denver-based Go Fast Sports & Beverage Company is bringing to Colorado the ultimate in extreme sporting competition: The Royal Gorge Go Fast Games, slated for October 3-5, 2003, at the 1,053-foot-high Royal Gorge Bridge west of Cañon City, Colorado. The Go Fast Games will showcase the cutting-edge…
In a moment of candor, the hard-knocking jockey Sonny Werkman once said of his trade: “Two things there ain’t in this world: lady hookers and gentleman jockeys.” Old racetrackers claim that Sonny was pretty good at getting a balky filly to go seven furlongs against her will, even a mile,…
Is it going too far to say that foosball saved Shelly Langley’s life? Possibly. But it would not be out of line to say that table soccer altered its trajectory — and certainly for the better. “I’m from a tiny town out on the Colorado Plains — Kit Carson –…
From the beginning, we are instructed by our parents, teachers and clergyfolk not to take pleasure in the misfortunes of others. Never snicker at the girl who stutters, the boy who cannot catch the softball or, a little later, the poor classmate bewildered by algebra. In adulthood, do not ridicule…
On September 14, Glen House raced to the top of Pikes Peak. Starting at 5 a.m. with a headlamp to light the way, the Colorado Springs physician finally reached the summit parking lot — 7,400 vertical feet and thirteen and a half miles later — just after 10 a.m. Hundreds…
If Patrick Roy isn’t muttering into his onion soup about now up in chilly Quebec, he probably should be. After that ignominious early exit from the playoffs last spring — the Minnesota Wild? the what? — the future suddenly looked bleak for the Colorado Avalanche. Not only was Roy, the…
Did Harvey ever intend to become a purveyor of elephant humor? He did not. But sometimes life throws you a curveball. So you make the best of your lot and try to get a laugh here or there. “What,” Harvey asks, “do you do with an elephant with four balls?”…
You know it. I know it. Every figure skater in Moscow knows it. Eleven high school kids coached by their home-ec teacher could beat the lowly Cincinnati Bengals. So that 30-10 road win your Denver Broncos put on the books Sunday afternoon doesn’t mean a thing. The first real tests…
