Those were simpler times. It’s difficult for us to conceive what life must have been like for even the most supremely talented professional baseball players before Marvin Miller formed the major league players’ union. Currently, we are weary of the Promethean arrogance and astronomical salaries of today’s striking players. There…
TELLURIDE–John Simon, the New York magazine critic known for his spiteful reviews, is in top form. He has just finished an interview in which he said that the only thing that’s bearable for him on television these days are the O.J. Simpson hearings. “That’s because I can’t wait to see…
“You’ve got a winner in town,” Buddy Ryan told us that fine day. This was a few minutes after Ryan signed that fat contract with Bill Bidwill, the Cardinals owner. Buddy Ryan reminds me of Jackie Gleason playing Ralph Kramden. All Ryan needs on the sidelines is one of Kramden’s…
The panic is on. They see his chances slipping away. This time, Terry Goddard may not even make it through the Democratic primary. Less than a week before Democrats go to the polls to pick their candidate for governor, Goddard is limping badly. There is no excitement. He has no…
Terry Goddard is playing his same old dodge. The perennial candidate for office is attempting to slouch his way to victory in the Democratic primary for governor. Desperately, Goddard hopes voters won’t recognize him as the same candidate who ran such a miserable campaign in the last election, the one…
I must now find a new way to amuse myself. Baseball is gone, never to return–in this season, at least. What is left? There are so many experts spouting off about the ramifications of the baseball strike, they have worn me to a frazzle. They come boring in from all…
When I read Bishop Thomas O’Brien’s challenge in the Arizona Republic recently, I decided this would be a trial worth watching. The message, read from the pulpit in all Catholic parishes, announced that the church was being forced to go to trial because of the excessive demands of the suit…
I could never get the killing out of my mind. For one thing, I never could make any sense of it. Besides, I never could learn enough from contemporary newspaper accounts to put all the pieces together. On August 16, 1986, Eric Kane, 16, was found murdered in a room…
The comparisons stick in the back of your mind. The O.J. Simpson story is merely the opposite side of the coin to the now-infamous Phoenix Suns sex party. The difference is that in Los Angeles, two people died and it caused an immediate media explosion. In Phoenix, a woman may…
We go along thinking there are no surprises left. We think we have seen it all. And then a baseball coach like Jim Brock comes along. Without sermonizing, he teaches us a whole new definition of courage. Jim Brock was an uncommon man. He was not, however, a private man–and…
It’s the waiting, you keep thinking. That’s what will wear on Congressman Danny Rostenkowski, at least until the cell door finally closes. But I find it hard to understand all the frenzy. Sure, the government lawyers, all decked out in their nice, conservative suits, are bent on destroying him. But…
Dear Charles, This is the perfect time for you to retire from the National Basketball Association. Your stock both as a player and a publicly revered personality will never get any higher than it is right now. Those of us who watched you perform for two seasons with the Phoenix…
For Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the spirit of Camelot never died. But we went too far. We deified Jackie. No one understood her exalted status after the president’s funeral better than she did. It was an event she had successfully orchestrated. She knew that from that point on, no one would…
There are a few moments when the mask of the professional athlete is snatched away. One such moment is immediately after a decisive defeat. On Sunday, the Suns players trudged single file underneath the stands to the dressing room. Their heads were down. Their faces were grim. No smiles. No…
There was nothing unusual about John Gacy’s brick bungalow. I had seen thousands just like it all over the Chicago area. But Gacy’s house at 8213 Summerdale, near O’Hare International Airport, held a horrifying and sickening secret. To create the events that took place there under cover of darkness would…
And the days dwindle down to a precious few. . . . –song from the Broadway show Knickerbocker Holiday For Charles Barkley, these are the precious few final days. Barkley plans to retire from the NBA at the end of this season even if the Suns are unable to win…
There are worse things than jail. There is no telephone there. There is, instead, peace. A hard table to write on. The best political writing in this century has been done from jail . . . Lenin and Gandhi. –Richard Nixon musing with a friend several hours after resigning as…
I do not consort much with television types. For this reason, I do not know what it takes to become a female anchor in the Phoenix market. So the other day when I turned on the Pat McMahon show on KTAR-AM and heard that his guests were women anchors from…
Pro basketball is all glitter, bombast and tasteless television commercials these days. It’s as though the game has been taken over by the Madison Avenue ad men. They can’t wait until the hoops really are 20 feet high and the floor is 100 yards long. The purity, simplicity and soul…
I do not consort much with television types. For this reason, I do not know what it takes to become a female anchor in the Phoenix market. So the other day when I turned on the Pat McMahon show on KTAR-AM and heard that his guests were women anchors from…
I do not consort much with television types. For this reason, I do not know what it takes to become a female anchor in the Phoenix market. So the other day when I turned on the Pat McMahon show on KTAR-AM and heard that his guests were women anchors from…
Pro basketball is all glitter, bombast and tasteless television commercials these days. It’s as though the game has been taken over by the Madison Avenue ad men. They can’t wait until the hoops really are 20 feet high and the floor is 100 yards long. The purity, simplicity and soul…
