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Articles by William Taaffe
WEAVERS OF BOXING DREAMS
Wayne (Kid Nitro) Williams, the guy boxing Flaming Floyd Weaver in the Copa Room of Atlantic City's Sands Hotel on July 12, might have thought he had taken one too many punches. Inside the ropes, Weaver was sticking, moving and scoring with his jab. Outside the ropes, two more Weavers, identically dressed and perfectly synchronized, mirrored their brother in the ring. They too were sticking, moving and scoring with their jabs.
Dr. Z's Rx To Revive The NFL
First of all, let me say that I think football is a great game. The best. But it can be better. With a bit of progressive thinking, the NFL can recapture those TV fans who have drifted off to The Burning Bed and Friday the 13th Part V, the dial spinners, the bored and blasé. We're not talking about the guys who have deserted televised sports in general.
TV To Sports: The Bucks Stop Here
There's a dagger aimed at the hearts of the NFL, major league baseball, the Sugar Bowl, the Kentucky Derby and other sports leagues and events we've come to know and love. The dagger isn't drugs or alcohol or under-the-table payments to college athletes. It is the financial problems besetting network television, the sugar daddy that has allowed owners, promoters and athletes to reap fortunes that 20 years ago would have seemed unfathomable. All of a sudden things are changing.
He's Still Not Home Free
"Everybody thinks, because you make a lot of money, that you have a lock on happiness. It's not true.... I most fear boredom and loneliness, life after baseball. Life after baseball equals boredom and loneliness. I don't want to be a 50-year-old guy sitting and drinking beer in some pickup bar with younger people. I've seen it. I don't want to be that." —KEITH HERNANDEZ There is only one place where Keith Hernandez feels truly safe, only one place on God's green earth where he is at home.
Soccer's Sorcerer
ASKING ABrazilian to name his country's most entertaining World Cup team is a lot likepressing a wine expert to choose the richest vintage of Bordeaux. Does he fancythe 1970 champions, the popular choice, led by the immortal Pelé?
A Specialist In Flying Objects
Darrell Evans had scarcely pulled his car into the driveway of his house in Pleasanton, Calif. on that June night in 1982 when he saw his wife, LaDonna, beckoning to him agitatedly from the deck above. LaDonna is a vital, enthusiastic woman under the mildest of circumstances, but this salutation had an urgency that, considering his mood and needs of the moment, did not sit at all well with him.
ABC'S Keith Jackson: A Hoss of a Broadcaster
During the telecast of the 1981 Gator Bowl between North Carolina and Arkansas something strange and wonderful happened. Play-by-play announcer Al Michaels pointedly referred to one player as "a hoss and a half." With those words, the School of KJ-ology was born.
A Twilight's Last Gleaming
The Bishops, Fred and Inez, of Pineville, Kentucky possess all the best American graces—faith and diligence, loyalty, sacrifice and hard work. For most of their lives the Bishops were dirt poor, but there was bounty in what they bred, seven magnificent children, all of whom earned honors, scholarships and college degrees. The Bishop children were bright and popular and so healthy that, in the aggregate, they didn't miss so much as a month of school days. This was a family blessed.
Show, Sex And Suburbs
Big-time sport has expanded—exploded—in the last quarter century, but, oddly, in many respects it's more tradition-bound, more Establishment, than ever. Challenges to the power structure have all been thrown back. Not a single new professional league has managed to survive since the Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League merged to form the NBA 34 years ago. RIP: All American Conference, Continental Baseball League, AFL, ABA, WFL, WHA.
Larry Brown showed signs that he'd found a home at Kansas
Six mornings a week, at 8:45, the silver bells jingle. The door to the Carol Lee doughnut shop is opening, and the 44-year-old grandson of the baker for the czar of Russia walks in. He knows as well as anyone in Lawrence, Kans. that the strawberry butterflies and the blueberry fritters at Muncher's Bakery are better than anything behind the glass counter at Carol Lee.
Trail of the Yankee/Clipper
In the ninth inning of a game at Yankee Stadium last Friday night, with two outs and two strikes on large Lamar Johnson, Dave LaRoche unloosed his patented LaLob. The Texas pinch hitter took a mighty cut, whiffed and screwed himself into a heap on the ground. As Johnson lay there giggling, Umpire Ken Kaiser counted him out as he would a boxer, then helped him up, and the Yankee and Ranger benches erupted into scenes of great hilarity.
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