Vital analysis and news unpacking the world of Texas sports
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
Richardson’s poker pasha says, “Viva Las Vegas.”
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.
A slam dunk for San Antonio’s economy.
Red McCombs, still on the sidelines
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.
A suburban mom’s patience is tested by drug testing.
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
For Texas’ Kuehne kids, excelling at golf is par for the course—and the least their father will accept.
The ice girl cometh.
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.
Whatever happened to the 1971 Super Bowl–champion Cowboys?
The Dallas Cowboys old-timers reunion is over, but for one evening it was possible to remember when pro football was fun, players were loyal, and even a sportswriter could fall in love with his team.
I grew up playing alongside some of the best Texas golfers of my generation. Then I started to lose my grip.
Which sports did Babe Didrikson dominate, and in what Hepburn-Tracy film did she appear?
Whether playing for the luckless Houston Astros, running the world-champion New York Yankees, or confronting racism, Bob Watson has always stepped up to the plate.
A pregame analysis of the sports-stadium showdown.
Even when they’re not winning games, minor league hockey teams like Austin’s are winning fans by the thousands. Who’d have thought skaters would score in Texas?
A knockout boxing program in West Texas.
Jimmy King Five years after he last shot hoops for Plano East Senior High School, Jimmy King is coming home. The 23-year-old, who spent his rookie year in the NBA with the Toronto Raptors, was traded this summer to the Dallas Mavericks, and he couldn’t be happier. Of course, the
Around the State subheading: A selective guide to amusements and events. Edited by Quita McMath, Josh Daniel, Erin Gromen, and Cheri Ballew summary: Members of Bob Wills’s Texas Playboys and Playgirls stage a swinging comeback (Austin and Bandera). Plus: The Day of the Dead lives (Austin, El Paso, Houston, and
Serious athlete. Devoted father and husband. Savvy businessman. On game day he may be Prime Time, but out of the spotlight, Deion Sanders is the squarest player on the Dallas Cowboys.
What is Darrell Royal’s code name, and what does his middle initial stand for?
The running man.
When he took up fencing as a seventh-grader at St. Mark’s School of Texas in Dallas to satisfy his physical education requirement, Ryan Shams informed his mother that he intended to master the sport—and he would not be foiled. At sixteen, after dueling for several hours a day at Dallas’
A Dallas soccer team burns up the competition.
A Spielberg-backed cyberguide comes to Texas.
The surf in Texas may not be the biggest, but it was an early training ground for 43-year-old surfing legend Ken Bradshaw, who has spent his life riding waves as tall as buildings. Bradshaw, a native of Houston, first paddled out at age twelve on a family trip to Surfside,
At the twenty-fifth annual Texas Folklife Festival in San Antonio, you can nibble on Lebanese kibbeh, sample Nigerian suya, gnaw on a Filipino inihaw—or stick to watermelon from Luling. Plus: A Fantastick show in Fort Worth from the boys of Tuna; powerful photos from Richard Avedon in Austin; a hellish
It doesn’t matter that his most famous pupil was shark- bitten at the Masters. Butch Harmon is still Texas’ hottest golf pro since Harvey Penick.
The world’s top riders take the bull by the horns in Del Rio.
MAKING A SPLASH—so to speak—is what Cheril Santini does best. As a member of Southern Methodist University’s diving team in the early nineties, the Dallas native made All-American ten times, was a finalist for NCAA woman of the year, and was named one of the nation’s top ten college women
Houston’s new team player.
When he left the University of Texas at Austin in 1993 with a broken ankle, a backpack, and a one-way ticket to Los Angeles, Arlo Eisenberg had no intention of becoming a big wheel—he just wanted to skate. Yet within three months, the Dallas native was performing with Team Rollerblade,
The art of throwing punches, the science of skipping rope, and other reasons why boxing is a hit with me.
Growing up in Austin in the fifties and sixties, I couldn’t play baseball in certain places. In Clarksville, a mostly black area where there were no paved streets, I could usually find a pickup game. In West Lynn, which was whiter, I kind of had to push myself into one.
With high school basketball playoffs just around the bend, our thoughts turned to the mechanics of the game—and so we called head boys coach Robert Hughes of Dunbar High School in Fort Worth, whose lifetime record of 1,082-192 makes him the fourth-winningest coach in the country. A two-time All-American at
You know the real reason Texas Stadium has no roof? So Jerry Jones can get his head inside. (Or, how the Cowboys owner’s ego makes it hard to root for America’s Team.)
Feasting our eyes on a blind team roper.
You might say Tarek Souryal is the most important Dallas Maverick: He doesn’t score or rebound, but he reconstructs million-dollar ankles and knees, and that makes him a real team player.
Oilers owner Bud Adams is hightailing it to Nashville; Drayton McLane may move the Astros too—or sell. In Houston and across the country, rooting for the home team is quickly becoming a thing of the past.
I played a few sports at Snyder High School, but my big thing was football. I played quarterback and defensive back until my senior year, when I quit to start acting in plays. You know what a big deal high school football is: When I quit, some of the coaches
My firsthand experience with the hard times that humbled my hero, former Dallas Cowboys star Golden Richards.
