Science is a beautiful thing, as any ballplayer with a snootful of ephedra can tell you. Combine the vigor of deep thinking with the dynamics of a free marketplace and there’s no breakthrough our researchers can’t achieve — from genetically altered Brussels sprouts to video games that simulate a nuclear…
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…
Three guys walk into a bar: a shortstop, an outfielder and a pitcher. “What’ll ya have?” the bartender asks. The shortstop is the first to reply. “I’m gonna have a great season,” he says. “I’m gonna have the kind of season where I scoop up every rocket hit within fifteen…
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…
If the president and CEO really wanted to please his 17,483 shareholders Sunday afternoon — and we know he did — he might have jumped up from his luxury box with four minutes to play. Amid a huge burst of fireworks and a brain-numbing blast of heavy metal, he might…
“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…
It’s strong stuff, especially at seven o’clock in the morning. Coach is unhappy with his players. Unhappy? Hey — to hear him rage, Coach is infuriated by his players, all-out disgusted by his players, and for 22 minutes he lets them have it with both barrels, like a drill sergeant…
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…
Hey, Bleary Eyes. How you holdin’ up? For connoisseurs of tackle football, the final two weeks of the old year and the first month of the new always provide a festival of violent collision unrivaled by the morning rush hour on I-25 or the running of the bulls in Pamplona…
Imagine a 264-pound panther with the grip of a power wrench, a chess master’s cunning and the smash-mouth instincts of a middle linebacker. Imagine him in a green U.S. Army uniform. Put it all together, and you’ve got Dremiel Byers — the best heavyweight Greco-Roman wrestler on the planet. Never…
“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…
The other day, a man with Christmas on his mind walked into a sporting goods store to buy a baseball mitt for his son. “I’d like to buy a baseball mitt for my son,” he told the clerk. “Oh, yeah?” the clerk answered, giving his customer a narrow-eyed gaze. “How…
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…
While serving what he saw as a two-year sentence with the Colorado Rockies, pitcher Mike Hampton won 21 games and lost 28, complained endlessly about his misfortunes and collected more than $20 million from a team to which he contributed almost nothing. Now the pest has gotten his way and…
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…
Twenty Things to Do at a Denver Nuggets Game: 1. Contemplate Bad Omen No. 1. Before the season even started, star forward Juwan Howard, who is the league’s fourth-highest-paid player, at $20.6 million per year, was suspended for two games after going ballistic in a pre-season contest and trying to…
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…
When I was a kid, my father had a friend named Morris Kleinman, an elegant, witty lawyer with a passion for tailor-made suits, Bombay martinis on the stem and the New York Yankees. Renowned as a tiger in the courtroom, Mr. Kleinman was an indulgent and generous man outside the…
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…
Their amazing quarterback stands 5′ 11″ and weighs 185 — which makes him three inches taller and ten pounds heavier than their top running back. They call older men “sir,” get straight A’s in calculus and would no sooner cheap-shot an opponent than fly a Mig for Iraq. In the…
