Here’s to you, Mark McGwire. Thank you very much for thrilling us from the tips of our toes to the tops of our heads last summer with your home-run prowess. Thanks also for shining much-needed light on a game that’s threatened in recent seasons to wither in the darkness. That…
In a rare moment of privacy last Wednesday afternoon, Gary Barnett stood before a picture window in the dining room of the Dal Ward Athletic Center, gazing out at his world. Two stories below, the sunlit expanse of the Folsom Field gridiron stretched before him: an acre and a half…
Who’s the hip pick to win the American Football Conference title this year? Why, the Jacksonville Jaguars–who else? Led by quarterback Mark Brunell, the Jags are rich in veteran talent, and barring major injuries, their time is now. On the other hand, if you live in hype-saturated New York, the…
Pity poor Montreal. In that northern outpost, you can hear the vendors pouring Molsons up in the third deck while everyone waits for hockey season to begin. And Baltimore. On the shores of Chesapeake Bay, another expensive chemistry experiment has blown up in manager Ray Miller’s face. While Will Clark…
For the twentieth century, it’s suddenly the bottom of the ninth with two outs, and that fact has unleashed a wave of nostalgia in the nation’s baseball fans unmatched since, well, since Big Mac hit number 70. For instance. Prior to last week’s All-Star Game in Boston, current players from…
In the summer of 1991, the best-kept state secret in China had to be the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team’s 2-1 World Cup win over Norway. The tournament’s high scorer, Michelle Akers, booted the winning goal with just two minutes left in the final game at Guanzhou, and when time ran…
When a major bargain becomes available, it doesn’t take long for the sharpies to gather like vultures around carrion. Case in point: Now that disgruntled stockholders of the Ascent Entertainment Group have rejected a piddling $400 million offer for the Colorado Avalanche, the Denver Nuggets and the Can, their brand-new…
Growing older, you find yourself searching for the deeper meanings in things, for their essence, with an intensity that would have been unlikely, or impossible, earlier in life. Why, you may find yourself asking, did your strikingly beautiful, once-married aunt, a mysterious woman by any account, stay so long in…
Once upon a time there was a game called baseball. This game was played, at the highest professional level, by young men of normal height, weight and ambition, in large American cities situated next to significant bodies of water. The object of the game was to hit a white ball…
When it was over, the big, blue-eyed man wearing the beautifully tailored charcoal suit and the pale-gold necktie left a box of Kleenex untouched on the podium and followed his blocker, wife Janet, through one last Sunday-afternoon sea of photographers. They vanished through a side door of a hotel ballroom…
The day may dawn clear, but Saturday’s 125th Kentucky Derby will be run under a cloud–or rather, three or four clouds–that help explain the unhappy state of American horse racing. First, as twenty unpredictable three-year-olds go to the post at Churchill Downs, the memory of Charlie Whittingham is sure to…
In the sun-splashed fanfare of opening day at Coors Field, the impeccably tailored promotions manager from Louisville Slugger committed an unthinkable gaffe. Amid much ceremony and clicking of camera shutters, Chuck Schupp handed a gleaming silver bat symbolizing the 1998 National League batting title to some guy named Larry Walker…
By acclamation, April is the coolest month. Confident that last year’s ignominy will be transfigured into this year’s triumph, baseball players and full-grown fans enter this month with the wide-eyed wonder of children, fond dreams intact and energies aloft. In Pittsburgh’s April dawn, the Pirates win the pennant going away…
If Darryl Kile is conversant with the Navier-Stokes Equation or the Magnus Effect, he’s not letting on. The man who was supposed to reinvigorate the Colorado Rockies’ demoralized pitching staff last season and lead the club out of the doldrums wound up with a 13-17 record. At Coors Field, which…
They’re not very tall. They’re not whippet-fast. In the eighth game of the season, their starting center crashed to the floor, shattering both wrists and putting their dreams in jeopardy. In places like Knoxville, Tennessee, Storrs, Connecticut, and the slam-dunk-crazed Carolinas, not even hardwood junkies know who they are. Just…
What the puck. When it was over, Sylvain Lefebvre could finally replace his lucky shoelaces. The TV producers up in the booth could take a break from the special chocolate-cake ritual they’ve been into for a month. Sandis Ozolinsh could get through a pre-game meditation without twelve or fourteen teammates…
The beefy fortune tellers of the National Football League have gazed into their tea leaves and come up with a prophecy: John Elway will return for another season. One last hurrah. The Final Final. The I-Really-Mean-It-This-Time Actual Blaze of Glory Farewell. Fortified by umbrella drinks and sunshine, the assembled gladiators…
Want to stage the Olympic Games in your town? There’s nothing to it, really, but there are a couple of things you need to know. First of all, you’ll have to appoint some committees. No potential site worth its five interlocking rings can hope to land the Olympics without 150…
For a good ol’ red-dirt Georgia boy, that Dan Reeves sure has got one pow’ful sense of theater. First he ups and coaxes a 44-year-old back-up quarterback out of retirement because they go back to the leather-helmet days together, and then, when things get rough for his fragile starter, Dan…
Have you heard? The Denver Nuggets are serious about winning. About winning games and winning back the hearts of the fans. Of course, Napoleon was serious about winning at Waterloo. The Germans probably liked their chances in Stalingrad. And the Miami Dolphins rolled into Mile High Stadium Saturday afternoon filled…
It is still the holiday season on the windy, treeless plain that is Dove Valley, and the man who’s overseen the Denver Broncos media machine for 21 seasons is in a mood for parables. “Say your car is stalled on the railroad track,” Jim Saccomano begins, “and the train is…
It was the year of Hurricane Mitch and Typhoon Monica, of Governor Ventura and King Viagra. It was the year they finally played college football at Mile High Stadium (Colorado 42, Colorado State 14), the year Harry Caray and his “Holy Cow!” died. It was the year that boxer Bobby…
