Hall of Famer Robin Roberts was once asked to recall his greatest thrill in an All-Star game. The Phillies’ estimable right-hander answered immediately: “When Mickey Mantle bunted with the wind blowing out in Crosley Field.” Your Colorado Rockies should be so lucky. The recent eleven-game losing streak that likely spelled…
In the spring of 1951, engineering consultants for the Atomic Energy Commission crisscrossed the West, discreetly scoping out potential locations for a new government plant. Their mission was urgent and of the utmost secrecy; not even the governors of the states where the sprawling facility might be located had been…
Two men in their mid-twenties are talking outside a Capitol Hill bar. It’s 5:17 p.m. on July 5. Dirty D: “There’s this new guy in town. He’s from Philadelphia. He’s short, stocky.” Jerry Bronze: “Put him against Butz?” Dirty D: “Nah, he’ll kill him.” Bronze: “What about Crane?” Dirty D:…
Shortly after the debut last September of the Daniel L. Ritchie Center for Sports & Wellness, an enormous, $70 million complex on the University of Denver campus best known for its gleaming copper exterior, Mark Rodgers, DU’s chief architect, got a call from the building’s namesake, chancellor Daniel Ritchie. As…
When Mary Jo Barber took a list of client names home from her job managing Hawley Printing Services, a tiny Wheat Ridge printing press, she thought she was doing the out-of-state owners a favor — balancing the books and helping Leslie and James Cowley complete the sale of their company…
United Airlines sucks. You know it. We know it. Even the people who run United know it, but they won’t admit it — at least, not to their customers. And this summer has been especially sucky. Just as Congress was realizing its mistake in dumping last year’s airline passengers’ bill…
Jim Rome, a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and star of his own nightly TV program on Fox Sports, takes pride in talking smack. That’s his shtick — to rant about all things sports in the most arrogant, contentious manner possible and to inspire his foamy-mouthed listenership to do likewise…
Olympic sports purists — i.e., those who stay up until 4 a.m. to watch the live telecasts of synchronized swimming, rhythm gymnastics, curling and badminton every four years — will be gratified to learn that plans are proceeding apace to include the game of contract bridge (and not contact bridge,…
A Few Bad Men The wrong stuff: I read Alan Prendergast’s latest account of the Columbine disaster/fiasco, his July 13 “The Lost Command,” along with his previous reports, and it appears that what happened was the lack of the “right stuff.” What we should learn from this human tragedy is…
What may have been the defining moment in the history of the Governor’s Columbine Review Commission unfolded last month. Consigned to a small meeting room in the basement of the Jefferson County Justice Center, struggling to make sense of the worst school massacre the country has ever seen and faced…
One of the most glaring deficiencies of the sheriff’s report is its cursory treatment of the circumstances that led up to the attack. “While this report establishes a record of the events of April 20,” it states, “it cannot answer the most fundamental question — WHY?…The evidence provides no definitive…
In many ways, the three-story apartment building at 1234 East Colfax Avenue in Capitol Hill is unremarkable — the majority of the tenants are artists or musicians, both young and old, who pay little rent (average price for a large one-bedroom unit: $300) in exchange for keeping mum about the…
Boston gave them Palm Pilots with the August 2000 calendars already filled in with the notation “Democratic National Convention/Boston.” Denver loaded them up with signed Denver Broncos footballs, souvenir necklaces and cuff links, ski jackets from Vail, backpacks from Winter Park, and Pepsi Center hard hats. But in the end,…
For nearly ten years, since long before there was a ballpark in the ballpark neighborhood, Paul Zentgraf has been the Redemption Center’s unofficial apostle. A vigorously healthy 65, tanned but with no visible teeth, dressed in hiking boots and rodeo belt buckle, he is notable for saying “Greetings and salutations”…
It was with high hopes and a glowing sense of community purpose that Ryan Mullaney began this past high school baseball season as head coach of the woeful Evergreen Cougars. A former standout athlete himself — he’d dabbled with a pro football career before being cut by the Minnesota Vikings…
For Brian Hansen, 1999 should have been a year to look back on with unadulterated pride. As a reporter for the Colorado Daily, a Boulder publication with a circulation of less than 30,000, Hansen did much of the heavy lifting throughout an investigation into the activities of Fran Raudenbush, a…
Call Waiting At your service: The skepticism expressed by Stuart Steers regarding Qwest’s promises to treat Colorado customers more professionally is justified. US Worst’s long history of treating its “home state” customers as servants is well-documented, and most of us have a horror story. Even as a resident of Denver,…
Whatever was going down in Lakewood on the morning of August 11, 1999, it was enough to give Jon Carter, a 54-year-old grill chef from Aspen, and his lifelong friend David Ziemer a bad case of the jitters. The two men entered and exited Carters room at the Ramada Inn…
For Sol Trujillo, these are the best of times. Granted, he’s now out of a job. But with unemployment benefits like these, losing your job is even better than winning the lottery: Two weeks ago, Trujillo filed notice of his intent to sell 354,740 shares of US West stock, which…
Milda Scalise had no idea that March 15 would be her last day with her 69-year-old husband, Frank. The two of them had eaten lunch at the Washington Park Grille and then gone to see Fantasia 2000. “We always had a lot of fun together,” she says. On the way…
A week after the University of Northern Colorado Laboratory School let out, Kristen Anderson’s mind was on the summer activities that would keep her two young kids occupied for the next three months. Other parents were planning road trips, backyard barbecues and swimming lessons. No one was thinking about the…
Up in smoke: That mushroom cloud over New Mexico last month didn’t have anything to do with an out-of-control “controlled” fire burning up radioactive material at Los Alamos. Actually, it was Department of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson’s chances of being nominated as Al Gore’s vice-presidential running mate that were going…
