Baseball’s problems have grown bigger than Babe Ruth, what with the possibility that the clubs may not step to the plate next year, either. Do you sense a little corporate fright out there? In Kansas City, the Royals have cut general-admission ticket prices by a dollar in an attempt to…
If, in the past two weeks or so, you’ve been watching the jock-sniffer segments on the TV news or plowing through the daily sports sections, you know now what deep thinkers like Copernicus and Bill McCartney and O.J. Simpson have known for ages: The earth revolves around the Heisman Trophy…
In the years that we’ve known and loved Bill McCartney, one absolute has been clearly established: Nothing the man does should come as a surprise. Yet when McCartney announced his resignation following the Buffs’ regular-season-ending victory over Iowa State, it was as if Newt Gingrich had thrown his support behind…
As Bill McCartney can tell you, if you’ve ever been to a football game in Texas–any football game–it’s like full immersion at the river bend. Texans take their football as seriously as their cattle, or their oil wells, or their ancient dislike of Oklahoma. If you don’t walk the walk…
Last week the only news trickling out of the moribund women’s tennis tour concerned the return of Jennifer Capriati, the eighteen-year-old burnout who is justifiably more famous for her adolescent misdeeds than for any real prowess on the court. Before her mug shots were plastered all over the front pages…
By the time you see this, the dogcatcher in Resume Speed, Idaho, has probably been voted out of office, and Teddy Kennedy may be driving a cab in Boston. The American electorate is clearly in a sour, surly mood for the long haul, the political pundits say. After Tuesday’s midterm…
Frankie Accardo, the philosopher, used to say that the greatest feeling in the world is when your horse wins. The second greatest feeling, he added, is when your horse doesn’t win. Frankie would know. In his customary perch just inside the eighth pole at Jamaica or Aqueduct, he experienced the…
Now that the National Basketball Association season is about to tip off, local connoisseurs are cautioning Denver Nuggets fans not to get their hopes up. That shocking upset of the powerful Seattle Supersonics in the playoffs last spring, the pundits reason, was not only a sign that the young Nuggets…
You always remember your first time. For Charles Sampson, it happened in Tishomingo, Oklahoma, in 1972, when he was fourteen. “That one should be a good ride,” the owner said to no one in particular, and Charles–they called him Pee Wee back then–clambered up on the fence for a better…
The personification of baseball this October–the game’s patron saint–might as well be William Aloysius Bergen, late of North Brookfield, Massachusetts. For he suits the present mood. Bergen, who spent eleven seasons as a catcher with the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers right after the turn of the century, played…
Certain Christian theologians tell us that the worst thing that can happen to a person is to catch a momentary vision of heaven, then watch the big gate swing shut without getting to go inside. Even if that’s not true, it could explain what’s wrong with those thugs and vigilantes…
In any other season, a gust of wind or an act of God would have steered the visitors’ last-ditch field goal try through the uprights. In any other season, the Colorado State Rams–the Rodney Dangerfields of football on the high plains–would again have found themselves reeling off to the dressing…
Just as baseball shoots itself in the head, the man who perfectly symbolizes the game these days–all-star jiveass Deion Sanders–slips away to San Francisco to play football. Before Prime Time’s plane can land on the Day of Infamy, owner Jerry McMorris decides to reward the patience, loyalty and goodwill of…
Remember the Six Blocks of Granite? How about the Purple People Eaters? And the No-Name Defense. Care to go against the Fearsome Foursome? Hey, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. This season the Denver Broncos have (take your pick): A. The Eleven Slices of Toast B. The Chenille Curtain C. The…
If major-league baseball players and owners want to know what’s good for them–they remain stubbornly in the dark about that–both sides would do well to lay down their golf clubs and set aside their disputes this month to finish school. The professor will be Ken Burns, the ground-breaking documentary filmmaker…
When they’re not preaching the Word of God or playing General MacArthur, football coaches are usually stewing in their juices. Is it seemly for grown men to worry quite so much about the efficacy of the all-out blitz or the state of mind in the Atlanta Falcons locker room? Probably…
Big-league baseball may be on strike, but Jack Rose plays on. And on. When the University of Denver baseball team opens its 127th season of play next February, its fearless leader won’t feel many butterflies. In 33 years as DU’s head coach, Rose has piled up 743 victories (fourth among…
Early in the second round, Jesse “The Boogieman” Ferguson, all 242 1/2 pounds of him, caught Larry Holmes with a monster left hook that buckled the ex-champ like a man hit in the shins with an ax handle. Deep in the fogs of Queer Street, Larry reeled, pawed the air…
At a time when baseball fans would rather be thinking about rally caps than salary caps, the Sultans of Snit and the robber barons who grudgingly pay them are taking the game from us. This will be the eighth interruption in twenty-two years. If present-day players were as good at…
That little punch-up the other night in Barcelona meant nothing, of course. Still, there were a few surprises: No one poisoned Al Davis’s paella. Denver’s defensive backs failed to plant a bomb on the Raiders’ team plane. The Raiders didn’t burn Denver deep on the second play of the game…
Amid the current outpouring of nostalgia about those American footprints in the lunar dust, the observations of former Apollo astronaut Alan Bean seem particularly apt. Bean recently told a magazine interviewer that whenever he looks at Norman Rockwell’s painting of Neil Armstrong’s small step/giant leap, it strikes him as a…
If the beach volleyball season gets wiped out, you won’t hear a peep out of me. If the monster-truck drivers decide to walk, so be it. Even if ice dancing melts down tomorrow morning, the pro bowlers pack up ball, bag and shoes at noon, and they cancel the rest…
