Whether coaching the Chicago Bulls to six NBA titles or leading the Lakers to their best record in years, Phil Jackson has had one constant: Wellington native Tex Winter at his side.
So says Don Baylor, the Austin native now managing baseball’s lowly Chicago Cubs. His players hear him loud and clear, but history has a way of repeating itself.
Gary Cartwright on Sammy Baugh, Gregory Curtis on Jack Johnson, Jane Dure on Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Joe Nick Patoski on Sheryl Swoopes, and Jeff McCord on the pitcher of the century.
“When it comes to individual athletic superiority, few people in the world can touch long, lean, impossibly fast Carl Lewis, who came to Texas in 1979, qualified for the Olympics in 1980, and dominated his sport—the world of sports, actually—for the next sixteen years.”
OFFENSEQuarterback Blackie Sherrod sportswriter, Belton High School Tigers, class of 1937 Larry Gatlin singer, Odessa High School Bronchos, ’66Roy Spence advertising executive, Brownwood High School Lions, ’67 Rick Perry lieutenant governor, Paint Creek School Pirates, ’68 Richard Linklater filmmaker, Huntsville High School Hornets, 1976—1978 Tony Garza railroad commissioner, St.
How much do Tom Hicks and Jerry Jones pay themselves for the privilege of owning the Dallas Stars, the Texas Rangers, and the Dallas Cowboys? That and more in a revealing joint interview.
With this year’s induction of Seguin native Smokey Joe Williams, one fourth of the Negro Leaguers in baseball’s hall of fame are Texans. Unfortunately, there may not be any more.
Hockey in Texas? And the team is good? Don’t laugh. The Dallas Stars could win it all this year, and sports fans across the state could soon be drinking Shiner Bock from the Stanley Cup.
Watch out, World Wrestling Federation. The famed Roller Derby is back, and Houston native Debbie Rice may prove to be its “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. The 31-year-old holds five national in-line skating records, and clocking in at 61 miles per hour, she’s the fastest downhill female speedskater in the world.
After years of watching their fathers tear up the NBA,19-year-old Moses Malone, Jr., and 22-year-old George Gervin, Jr., have the ball in their court—at the University of Houston. Malone, who graduated from Friendswood High School in May, and Gervin, a San Antonio native who spent last year at San Jacinto
When I graduated from Notre Dame in 1983, I wanted to be a sportscaster. But at the time there were very few women doing that, so I had a difficult time finding a job. I answered some want ads in a broadcasting publication, and one of the advertisements was for
Forget about the hair (and the tattoos). Ricky Williams has his head screwed on straight, which is why he’s still playing football at the University of Texas.
When twenty-year-old Kristen Link, a junior at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, asked eighteen-year-old freshman Lindsay Long to be her synchronized diving partner in the spring of 1997, Long wasn’t sure she wanted to take the plunge. “It’s scary enough to dive by yourself, and in synchronized diving you have
For years Houston native Chuck Knoblauch took his cues from his high school baseball coach, who also happened to be his father. Then Alzheimer’s disease changed their relationship forever.
BASEBALL’S ROGERS HORNSBY was a success right off the bat. In 1916, at age twenty, he became the leading hitter for the St. Louis Cardinals. His 1924 batting average of .424 is still the best of the modern era (and his lifetime .358 is second only to Ty Cobb’s .367).
In suburban Fort Worth the frail psyche of a football prodigy collided with the crazed ambition of his dad, who himself had been a high school football star way back when. The consequences were deadly.
When Austinite Paul Carrozza says he doesn’t like a running shoe, the shoe companies listen- and so do hordes of running enthusiasts in Texas and around the country, who know him to be the sport’s newest guru.
To say he’s the strong, silent type is something of an understatement. Unlike most baseball stars, Texas Ranger Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez is all action and no talk—and that makes him one of the game’s real gems.
Can a wunderkind pitcher—the youngest player in the majors this season—lead long-suffering Chicago Cubs fans to the World Series? Maybe, but if 21-year-old Kerry Wood is flattered by the hope, he’s weary of the hype. “I wasn’t expecting to be moved up so quickly,” says the Irving native, who was
What a hall! The Houston Museum of Natural Science’s new wing has a mask of a pre-Inca lord, a re-creation of a Mayan temple, and more. Plus: An international opera star takes the stage in Fort Worth; boxer Oscar De La Hoya goes round and round in El Paso; the
He may soon compete for the super featherweight championship of the world, but for now Austin boxer Jesus Chavez is in the fight of his life—with federal immigration officials.
Evan Smith is the cofounder of the Texas Tribune, a senior adviser at Emerson Collective, and the former editor in chief and president of Texas Monthly.
At his pool hall near White Rock Lake, on bar tables across the country, and at professional tournaments around the world, Carson “CJ” Wiley earns his keep by ramming balls into pockets. It’s that simple.
HE’S BEEN A WORLD-CLASS practitioner of the martial arts and a champion of the famously brutal “ultimate fighting,” but these days Dallasite Guy Mezger gets his kicks from a sport that is somewhere in between the two. In pancration fighting, combatants can draw on any martial arts technique, and only
I played linebacker at Dunbar High School in Temple. It was an all-black school, but that only bothered me in the sense that we didn’t have a chance to play against the white schools. After my senior year, I was interested in a couple of colleges: A&I, Prairie View, Houston.
Calling Brandon DeLuca the Karate Kid would be inaccurate. Although he has won the North Texas Karate Association’s Grand Championship the past two years, and although he attended this summer’s Junior Olympic Games in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he earned medals in each of the twelve events he entered—including six
Jimmie Lee Solomon went from working a small Texas ranch to running big league baseball’s farm system. Now he may be up for one of the game’s top jobs.
