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…
The finest professional athlete in Colorado will earn less than $15,000 this year. He has no sneaker contract (always goes barefoot) and will never be bothered by autograph hounds (couldn’t catch him if they tried). On December 2 he celebrated his second birthday, but by this time next year, his…
Joe DiMaggio is dying. The most graceful center-fielder ever to play baseball, one of the game’s finest hitters and a fathomless mystery for six decades, is lying in a Hollywood, Florida, hospital, a couple of miles from the major-league spring training site where he first materialized in 1936. Characteristically, no…
The rules of life don’t change much. Never buy loose diamonds from a man in lizard-skin cowboy boots. Remain faithful to your beloved. At a mile and an eighth, always consider Eddie Delahoussaye’s horse. Once past the age of twelve, never, ever request an autograph–not from John Elway, not from…
Pile your bowl high with Flutie Flakes and get a load of this. Among the thirty National Football League quarterbacks who held starting jobs at the beginning of September, eighteen are, for one reason or another, out of the picture right now. In San Diego, errant Washington State rookie Ryan…
Among the grand heroics and tragic disturbances of humankind, the performance of a baseball team is a puny thing. But it looms awfully large right now for a lot of people. Why, just the other night, in a saloon that shall remain nameless, I witnessed a bar-pounding, drink-spilling, shoulder-shoving exchange…
There are no distractions. At Barry Fey’s house, the parrot keeps screeching at the dog. The phone won’t stop ringing, and Barry’s beleaguered assistant, Leslie, just can’t find the wallet-sized photos of the first time he won the big handicapping tournament in Vegas. The guy is here to fix one…
This epic poem of a baseball season is drawing to a close. But before Tino Martinez hangs up his spikes for the winter, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa settle into the history books and the game’s financial titans dare to believe that the game’s wronged fans have returned, there’s a…
This just in: The National Basketball Association has canceled its 1998 exhibition games, the players and owners remain at each other’s throats over filthy lucre, and the entire regular season remains in grave jeopardy. Hello? Let’s try this again: The National Basketball Association has canceled its exhibition games, the players…
