Category Archives: General

General

I Like Sports

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There are lots of things I like about sports, though I’ve never made a list of them before. Maybe it’s time I did. Blame it on Valentine’s Day.

I like the lessons taught by sports. Competition. Cooperation. Teamwork. Individual achievement, discipline, fairness, generosity, courtesy. If the sports are good, that’s what they teach.

What bad sports teach will have to wait for another holiday. Halloween, maybe.

This is a valentine to sports.

I love the bases loaded. Or empty.

I can’t look away on first and ten, but I don’t blink on third and long. A slam dunk is overrated, but only those who can’t do it.

I love a shot at the buzzer, match point, going for the green, the 15th round, the last furlong, a walk off homer.

But nothing compares to the first run on fresh snow.

Except maybe Allen Iverson humbling giants.

I like auto racers but not their machines. I admire boxers but not their wounds. I tolerate place kickers but resent their over-importance. Cheerleaders but not mascots.

College football crowds are more fun than pro football crowds but no more sober.

I like the smell of locker rooms.

Clint Hurdle talking. Dan Hawkins, too.

Free agents who outplay draft choices. Club pros who make the cut. Punters who make a tackle.

Watching barbells bounce.

I thank Bob Knight for Mike Krzyewski. Red Holzman for Phil Jackson. Walter Alston for Tommy Lasorda and Lasorda for Bobby Valentine and on and on.

I like an open field tackle more than an open field run.

The long throw from third to first, only slightly more than the 4-6-3 double play.

I like accidental heroes.

Lance Armstrong’s example.

Danica Patrick’s cheek, meaning her nerve as well as the ones with powder.

The sound of biking.

Todd Helton at the plate.

Kobe Bryant with the ball. Or without it.

Goal line stands.

The power play more than the triple lutz. Shoulder pads more than sequins.

I love the common memory sports gives a diverse community.

I root for extra innings and overtimes but not for tiebreakers or shootouts.

I’d pay to see Manny Ramirez under a fly ball. Lou Piniella after a bad call. Barry Bonds get his.

Tiger Woods at work. John Daly at play. George Karl at odds.

Charles Barkley at table.

Carmelo Anthony with the game in his hands or Matt Holliday with the game on his bat.

I like match play golf, but will avoid doubles tennis.

Al Wilson, as good as new.

The old Jack Nicklaus.

I like fish on a plate but not on a wall.

More track than field.

I appreciate but do not understand hockey goalies, sky divers or drag racers.

Roger Clemens’ foolhardiness. Maria Sharapova’s grunts. Mike Shanahan’s eye for talent.

Evander Holyfield refusing to say good-bye. Bill Belichick bothering to say hello.

I love hanging out around the batting cage. Telling lies in the press box. Whipping deadlines.

I am amazed at the instant literature that sports inspires from the best in my business.

I can think of nothing more amazing than the baseball box score.

I like scoreboards.

 

 

General

9/11 +1

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This was the day to scold Michael Jordan, to tell him to face reality. This was the day to tell Colorado running back Marcus Houston to grow up, for Gary Barnett to get a grip. This was the day to rebuke the Avalanche for wandering off to Scandinavia, stupidly distancing themselves from Denver, the day to wonder how many Swedes were hanging off Denver lightpoles screaming to see the Stanley Cup.

This was to be a day like all days in sports, silly and crucial, full of choices for smug columnists, full of folderol and fans full of themselves, happy and angry, eager to defend Barry Bonds as well as Sonny Lubick.

It was not that day. It was the worst day. It was the day that everything changed.

Back here in sports, back behind the horrific pictures and accounts of death and destruction, of the most horrible day in America, we are safe. And we are more important than ever. We are needed because we are not needed at all.

We are the toy department, so said a crotchety old columnist named Jimmy Cannon. We are the place, so said a chief justice of the United States, the place where man’s triumphs are recorded and not his failures.

There is only some truth in any of that. This is where we call a coach an idiot and let irony carry the tone. This was the day to write the anti-idiot column and call the Colorado State coach a genius for winning a football game and see if anyone gets the joke this time.

That’s the column to write today. This was the lead, already written. “Michael Corleone allowed one question about his business and I will allow one about mine.” Mockery comes easy when the stakes are hollow.

Oh, we can be very taken with our own cleverness, we columnists. We get to stir a world that doesn’t matter, provoke opinion from vapors. None of this matters, never has, never will, and that is exactly why it does.

We are the distraction. We are the relief. Reality should always be as harmless as Michael Jordan’s ego, his boredom, his pugnacity, his desire to get out of the house, whatever it is that seems now to force Jordan to mess with our memory of him.

That’s the column to write. How dare Jordan do that to us, to ruin the perfect ending, the last shot, to win the last game, to become just another creaky schlub who can’t face tomorrow or dribble drive like he used to.

And Houston, the young man in Boulder being abused by an insensitive coach. Words sting. Try 110 stories of rubble.

Grow up, grow old, what precious and welcome commands to anyone still buried under the ruins of the World Trade Center.

In sports all of the wars are phony, all of the violence voluntary, the greatest ego no more dangerous than the length of an arm.

This was the day to look for cracks in the Broncos, now McCaffreyless, to take the temperature of poor Olandis Gary, suddenly saving his own seat behind Mike Anderson and Terrell Davis, through no fault of his own.

We ache for the innocence of just yesterday when disagreement over who starts at running back for the Broncos can consume an evening and ruin a meal.

Whine, Mark McGwire, that you are injured and should be stepping along side Bonds, homer for homer. That’s what to write. How foolish can be a man whose pride pushes the irrational? That question should only be asked in sports.

Sure, if Bonds had McGwire to pressure him, or if Bonds had to break a 37-year-old record instead of one barely three seasons young, how much harder would it be? These are the questions to fight over.

May an athlete’s arrogance always be laughable. Please. It is the arrogance of tyrants that is treacherous.

Sports will stop, as sports should. You do not cheerlead at funerals. There is time to mourn, to grieve, to applaud and cherish the real courage and great sacrifice of the human spirit. Baseball took a week after the ’89 earthquake. No less should be taken for terrorism.

Football should not be played this weekend, not college, not pro. And maybe the Avalanche blundered into something, safe off there in Sweden.

That’s the column to write. Tell sports to step back and let the emergency vehicles through, give the mourners space and the avengers encouragement. But do not go too far.

The world is too hard without you.

General, Rocky Mountain News

Clones

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Before the politicians legislate a perfectly good idea out of business, we shall need to hurry if we are to ever find the next Terrell Davis, all joints working and scandal free, of course.

I speak in defense of human cloning, scoffed at as mad science, which is the only kind of any interest.

Here is an update from the wonderful world of cloning: Not just sheep, but mice and monkeys, too. See what I mean? I’m selling shares while this thing is still on the venture side of Vince Carter.

Yes. Consider this the initial public offering for Jock Duplicates Unlimited, or as we call it around the shop, Hoops Dupes, although we don’t plan to stop merely at basketball players.

It just seems that the NBA is where the money is, so that is the best place to start. We’ll get around to Tiger Woods eventually, if Nike hasn’t beaten us there already.

As an infant industry, we’re pretty much playing this by ear, ours at the moment, but, hey, Dikeme Mutombo’s are there if we need them.

We see sports cloning as the grown up version of kids trading bubble gum cards. When offering three Antonio McDyesses for two Tim Duncans, that’s exactly what the exchange is, actual McDyesses and actual Duncans. Dan Issel can’t see himself in Raef Lafrentz? Our way, he can see himself in himself.

We do not assume that there will be only, say, Kobe Bryants in the NBA, though we think every team should have his own. How dull would basketball be with only Kobes and no Allen Iversons?

We understand budgets and know that not everyone could afford five Kobes anyhow, so our scale pretty much starts with a waiting list for a Kobe and bring your own wheel barrow for a Nick Van Exel.

Nor are we limited to contemporary players. Michael Jordan can come back and meet Michael Jordan. Wilt Chamberlain meet Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Bill Russell, stuff them both.

Oscar Robertson? Magic Johnson. Meet you at the baseline.

Our catalog is not yet complete and our price sheet is presently being Xeroxed, as a matter a fact, so is our small forward, but we can tell you this, one Dennis Rodman was enough.

We do not know how far this can go, but we do know this. Had such strange science been available back a few years ago, not only would we have not cared whether Brian Griese is or is not going to become the next John Elway, we could have just ordered up the next John Elway.

We are also unsure how great the demand will be for baseball clones, so what we are going to do is just recompose the 1976 Cincinnati Reds, including Sparky Anderson as manager, only this time we’re going to call him A-Spark.

If this team can not beat any present baseball team and have more fun doing it, we won’t bother with baseball any more. While we are hopeful, we are not taking any bets that the next Pete Rose will get into the Hall of Fame.

We deal only in franchise sports. There is no profit for us in individual games, so we will not be making any Maurice Greenes, even if Greene places the order himself. Well, maybe a Lance Armstrong or two, just for the competition.

It might be interesting to see Mike Tyson fight Muhammad Ali but another Don King is not worth it.

And no soccer. It’s my company. It’s my rule.

Maybe eventually we will tinker and put, oh, Rick Barry’s wrists onto Shaquille O’Neal or Steffi Graf’s forearm on Martina Hingis, but we are getting ahead of ourselves, and Steffi and Andre Agassi might beat us to it the natural way.

But you have to be careful depending on nature. Andre’s hair, Steffi’s nose? Never happen our way.

But, speaking of heads, we might try Kirby Puckett’s on Barry Bonds as long as somebody else pays for the tailoring.

A line of Gretzky, Hull and Richard? Possible. A backfield of Unitas, Brown and Payton? It can be done. We have the technology.

But we have a larger purpose. We can answer every sports bar bet.

Could Bill Romanowksi wear Tom Jackson’s shoes? Romo can try them on. And give them back to Jackson when they do not fit.

The ’01 Lakers and the ’96 Bulls? Jump ball.

Here’s Sandy Koufax into the wind up. The pitch to Todd Helton…

Not only is the sky the limit, if we don’t like it, we’ll just make another one.

Send check or money order. Cash is too easy to copy.

General

Opening Day

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Football does not have an Opening Day. Poor football.

Baseball’s beginning is the sweetest start of any sport.Baseball is a renewable pleasure, filled with anticipation and with hope. Opening Day is the first bite of an endless feast, delicious and fresh.

Basketball begins in winter shadows, out of sight and behind closed doors. It emerges on the other side of the calendar, in a different year than it began.

Baseball arrives from weeks of stretching awake, strolling north along with the welcome sun to shirtless days and shorter nights.

Football bursts out of sweltering, painful, summer camps, already limping. Football counts its wounded in urgent, weekly wars, with ambulances parked at an open gate.

Baseball fits its seasons. It is a witness to birth, a companion to growth, an escort to harvest.

Baseball begins with a promise, with a hint of the possible that is undefined by winning or by losing.

All Opening Days celebrate a welcomed beginning, and nothing that happens on any Opening Day can diminish nor exaggerate what is to follow.

A first-game football loss can panic a team, upset strategies, jumble game plans, terminally sour the rare optimistic coach. A football season can be held in one hand and each piece that falls is loudly obvious.

The best baseball teams are going to lose a third of the games they play. Losing is an accepted occurrence and not an artificial calamity.

A baseball season is a tapestry, each game a panel, each inning a thread. Basketball packs all of its excellence into its finish, in games as well as seasons. Just as only the last few minutes matter in a game, so do only the playoffs matter to the season.

A baseball game can be won in the first inning, but a basketball game cannot be won until the fourth quarter. A pennant can be lost in April as well as in September, wild-cards and playoffs still arrived at more in moderation than in madness.

Baseball comes without slashes, without hyphens or Roman numerals, no 2001-2002 season, no World Series Finals. Baseball is played as our lives are lived, within the same year, needing only one diary to contain a season’s memories.

Hockey requires refrigeration and a dentist on staff. No matter how marvelous and slippery may be hockey’s skills, they may as well be pantomime until thered light goes on. Most hockey fights, I am convinced, start over arguments of whether anyone can see the puck.

The baseball, which is the same diameter and lighter than a hockey puck, is the perfect size, easily followed and always beginning in the same place.

The dimensions of a baseball field are perfectly drawn, exact and yet endless, not an inch too few nor a step too many, from pitcher to catcher, from home to first, from here to infinity.The shortest hit may be as vital as the longest smash.

There are no coin flips, no faceoffs. no jump balls in baseball.The baseball is not made to take funny bounces but it can be encouragedto dip and delude.

The first pitch of the year, as will the last, leaves the pitcher’s hand before anything can happen. And nothing might, usually nothing does.

Baseball is anticipation. On Opening Day, baseball’s possibilities are their most exponential. Nothing is impossible, including the fair and fitting fact that, until the home team gets at least as many chances as the visitors, Opening Day could last forever.

Soccer is a run-on sentence without an opening, without a closing or, much too often, without a conclusion. Most wonderfully, soccer is someone else’s passion and problem.

Baseball demands all of our attention and it demands none of it. To look away from baseball is to miss something. To look up is to find it still there, baseball, still waiting, as simple and as complicated as ever.

And here it is again. Another Opening Day.

Lucky baseball.

Lucky us.

General

20th Century

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No ducking it any longer. The millenium bug is everywhere and duty demands it be noticed, as if it could be avoided.

Lists of the 100 greatest this and the 100 greatest that require not agreement, but simply attention, assuming always that 100 is not stretching the definition of greatness beyond the facts.

For example, I defy anyone to find 100 great swimmers or 100 great ski jumpers, or one great fencer, including Zorro.

Even hockey strains to fill the count, beginning confidently with Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe at 1 and 2 but finishing with Craig Ramsey at 100. No way to start an argument there. And a top 100 list without disagreement is like a bowling ball without holes, nothing to get a grip on.

Tell me this, how many garages do you have to visit to find anyone who will agree that Ayrton Senna was the greatest auto racer who ever lived? I think this about that. Only those who walked away from their final race should be considered.

Still, in my own scattered research of the topic, I found a general consensus not all that startling. Best baseball player? Babe Ruth. Best football player? Jim Brown. Best basketball player? Michael Jordan. Boxer, Muhammad Ali. Golfer, Jack Nicklaus and so on.

Best baseball team? The 1927 Yankees. Basketball, the 1997 Bulls. Football, the ’78 Steelers. Hockey? Pick a year with Montreal in it.

Best sports TV moment of the century? The gold medal celebration at Lake Placid by the U.S. Olympic hockey team.

(This is where I discovered that the biggest non-sports TV moment was the first JFK funeral. This narrowly beat out Mary Tyler Moore tossing her hat in the air, while man landing on the moon was way down at No. 8. I point this out just to show that sports people aren’t quite the idiots at this as real world folks are.

(And while I’m on the topic, how can any list of the 100 greatest composers not include Fats Domino? Or the 100 greatest books omit “The World According to Garp?” Ah, that’s somebody else’s column. I’ll get on with mine.)

I am here to take issue with the list I saw ranking the greatest years of sport. This has to be the ultimate sorting out of the century, pitting one year against the other. To my surprise I discovered that the greatest year in the 20th century in which to be a sports fan was 1998.

Just last year. If only someone had told me at the time, I would have paid closer attention.

We had Mark McGwire’s 70 home runs and the race with Sammy Sosa. Jordan’s last game and his last shot. The Yankees winning125 games and sweeping the World Series. John Elway finally getting his Super Bowl and France upsetting Brazil for the World Cup.

Impressive. But blurry, especially that Yankee business. And Jordan had done as much five times before.

How do you rate a year of sports being better than another? If your team has done well, it has been a great year, which makes the 90s in Chicago a golden age, because of the Bulls alone.

Here 1985 would very likely be at the top of any list because the Bears were more than just an exceptional football team, they were a team that reflected the image of Chicago, or how Chicago likes to think of itself, tough, defiant, winners. No other Chicago sports team has ever caught that the way those Bears did.

But I must be objective about this, and the greatest single year in a century of sports has to be 1973.

How about Billie Jean King beating Bobby Riggs and changing an entire gender’s opinion of itself? Secretariat winning the Triple Crown while threatening to lap the field in the Belmont? George Foreman winning his first heavyweight title by knocking out Joe Frazier, giving Muhammad Ali a whole new reason to reprove himself.

The only undefeated team in NFL history, the Miami Dolphins, finished 17-0, despite the single greatest blooper in Super Bowl history, Garo Yepremian’s nearly forward pass. UCLA won a seventh consecutive NCAA title behind the single greatest individual game ever played in college basketball, Bill Walton missing only one shot out of 22.

O.J. Simpson became the first running back to gain 2,000 yards. Notre Dame went undefeated to win the national football championship, beating Bear Bryant’s Alabama team by a single point in the Sugar Bowl. the Mets rallied from last place at the end of August to win the National League pennant and Henry Aaron finished the season one home run short of Babe Ruth.

A close call, but 1973 beats out the second best sports year of the century, 1963, the year Michael Jordan was born.