Let’s hope Daffy Duck buys the Los Angeles Dodgers. Or Boris Yeltsin. If the Bosnian government puts together an ownership group, writes a check for 300 million bucks and moves the team to burned-out Sarajevo, that will be fine. Maybe Madonna is interested. For all that it matters, she can…
Whooooops! Afterward, Lionel Washington couldn’t hold back the tears. A devastated Shannon Sharpe wondered aloud if he’d be able to look at himself in the mirror come Sunday morning. Or face John Elway. Sharpe predicted it would be “years until the Broncos get over this loss. Probably the next century.”…
Above all, 1996 was the year Denver wore the Scarlet Letter–that big red “A” at once symbolizing the city’s first professional sports championship and its shameless dalliance with the new kid in town. All hail immediate gratification: Marc Crawford’s beautifully coached, deeply talented Colorado Avalanche had scarcely forgotten the taste…
Here’s to you, Mister Robinson. Down in Ruston, Louisiana, the administration of Grambling State University and the same contingent of sour, win-crazy alumni you find at any losing school want to get rid of the head football coach. The coach wants one more year. One more chance to put an…
Just like that, Bill Musgrave is crushed in the backfield by a blitzing linebacker and the fans erupt in joy. Tom Rouen scuffs a punt toward the near sideline and the guy with the little Brett Favre doll on a string around his neck happily yells for another round of…
If you haven’t been to a Denver Nuggets game this season–and there’s no reason to go unless the warden’s offering a choice between that and lethal injection–here’s a report from the front. Let’s begin at the beginning. This year everybody on the team stands up for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Even…
Shopping for a used car? Don’t want to put up with the usual hassles? Curtis Mannisto is your man. Curtis doesn’t bend the truth, and he never high-pressures the customer. You can bargain with him–up to a point–and you can rest assured that every vehicle on his lot has been…
Is it too soon to speculate that Evander Holyfield’s eleventh-round TKO of Mike Tyson on November 9 was an outright fix? Nah. Probably not. In the dank sewer of professional boxing, you hardly ever go wrong supposing that chicanery is afoot–especially when the greedy, bellowing figure of promoter Don King…
If you can come up with one good reason why Bud Selig shouldn’t be publicly drawn and quartered and his parts scattered from Fond du Lac to Madison, let’s hear it. Want to bestow mercy on Chisox owner Jerry Reinsdorf? Fine. Give him a nice schooner of Old Style before…
It ain’t no bandwagon. Ralph and Jimmy Garcia remember the day the Broncos got rid of their vertical striped socks in a public burning at training camp. They recall Lionel Taylor’s 100 pass receptions in 1961 and the moment when Jeremiah Castille fell on The Fumble at the three-yard line…
Ex-altar boys built like beer trucks still go to Notre Dame. The future Nobel laureates are at Stanford, absorbing Plato. Those who crave ice cream and river rafting are bonding with Kid Rick up in Boulder–and calling home on the free telephones. Condominium-sized sprinters who live for the scent of…
Think Ross Perot is a long shot to win the White House a week from Tuesday? How about the Green Party candidate for president? Or the Libertarian? How about Mrs. Grundy of the Civic Purity League? Well, to tell the truth, they’ve all got a lot better chance in their…
In the Acme Oyster House on Iberville Street, three big fellows wearing muddy aprons and yellow rubber gloves were shucking as fast as they could. The Sunday afternoon hangover crowd was packed cheek-to-jowl inside the Acme, harbored now from a steady, gulf-blown rain, but not from the whips and jangles…
That sound you hear deep in the night is the Titanic hitting an iceberg. The passengers don’t know it yet, and the crew isn’t talking, but she’s going to the bottom. The worst-case scenario for major-league baseball is that the fans are finally so fed up with the loudmouthed martinets…
To the immutable rules of life mandating romantic fidelity, high-quality whiskey and early knowledge of the multiplication tables, it might be wise to attach the following: The moment you turn twelve, stop seeking autographs. This comes to mind in the wake of an announcement last week that Michael Lasky, founder…
How about a nice hand for Hideo Nomo? Better yet, how about skipping the usual courtesies and immediately installing Hideo Nomo in the Hall of Fame? On September 17 the Dodgers’ high-kicking, skyward-gazing right-hander waited out a two-hour pre-game rain delay, then threw the third no-hitter of the 1996 baseball…
Characters in soap operas have phony first names like Blake and Krystle and Fallon and Caress–names no one else has. Real people have real names like Sandis and Uwe and Sylvain–you know, everyday names. The characters in soap operas are always trying to screw other characters in the bedroom or…
Salt this name away, Rockies fans: Scott Randall. As the club’s fourth season winds down with an ineffectual bang (four Bombers with a hundred RBIs each–first time in the National League since 1929) and a resounding whimper (8 million bucks’ worth of Saberhagen and Swift still on the shelf), you…
Beyond the Gainesville city limits, cocky Steve Spurrier may be the least popular head coach in big-time college football. But even those who’d like to see the man vanish in the Everglades may have sympathized last January when his high-octane Florida Gators were blown out of the Fiesta Bowl, 62-24…
When Andre Dawson announced his retirement last week, a couple of astonished doctors pointed out that the great slugger had undergone twelve knee surgeries in his 21-year career–seven on the right knee, five on the left. Both ravaged knees, the Hawk allowed, are now creaking along “bone on bone.” That’s…
Now that Amy Van Dyken’s gold-medal perkiness is finally subsiding and your Colorado Rockies are on a road trip to respect, let’s turn our attention for a moment to the game with the big helmets. The National Football League pre-season is two weeks old, and on September 1–the same date…
While assorted waterbugs from Romania and Belarus and the suburbs of Cleveland bounded all over the mat and flung their tiny bodies back and forth between the uneven parallel bars, we had the whole thing explained to us on the boob tube by…John Tesh. Now it’s a good bet that…
