It was a couple of days before Thanksgiving when a young woman with red hair named Shanna Sabet arranged for me to speak with Shane Victorino, before he signed with the Red Sox, about his charity work in Las Vegas.
Ron Kantowski
Ron Kantowski is a sports columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, covering a variety of topics and the Las Vegas sports scene.
rkantowski@reviewjournal.com … @ronkantowski on Twitter. 702-383-0352
When I heard UCLA’s Shabazz Muhammad is a year older than his old man has been telling people, it didn’t come as a surprise: The first time I saw him play for Bishop Gorman, he looked like Grady from “Sanford and Son.”
Norm Johnson likes to tell this story about the time Buddy Hackett drove Herbie the Love Bug in The Mint 400.
It was a little past 3 p.m. Sunday when Bryant Gumbel’s brother announced that seventh-seeded San Diego State would play 10th-seeded Oklahoma in the NCAA Tournament in Philadelphia on Friday.
Let’s see, we had 12 drummers drumming, 11 pipers piping, 10 lords a-leaping, nine ladies dancing, eight maids a-milking, seven …
Baseball was back at Cashman Field on Saturday, and even though it wasn’t the Dominicans vs. Team USA, or 51s vs. River Cats, it was Big League Weekend, Cubs vs. Rangers, and it was 84 degrees, and the beer was cold. And because fireworks weren’t scheduled, you didn’t have to stand in line that long.
It is closing in on 11 p.m. Wednesday at the Thomas & Mack Center and Buster Bronco, the Boise State mascot, is starting to morph into Secretariat, “The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson” mascot. I am starting to lose it.
It was a quarter of six Sunday, and the roar of the engines still was reverberating between my ears at Las Vegas Motor Speedway when I received a four-word alert that made my head spin some more.
A fellow by the name of H.A. Wheeler — people in stock car racing know him better as “Humpy” — likes to tell this story about his first race as president of Charlotte Motor Speedway, after Janet Guthrie, The First Lady of Speed — before You Know Who — entered the World 600, as the Coca-Cola 600 then was called.
When the green flag drops at today’s big NASCAR race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, most eyes will be focused, at least until the Budweiser takes effect, on the front of the field. That’s where the fast cars, the hot rods, as Rusty Wallace was fond of saying, will start.
It was just past 1:30 p.m. Friday when I was nearly broadsided by the GoNoah Racing.com Ark in the Neon Garage at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and spotted a face that was sort of familiar. It was, in fact, the face I was looking for.
And just like that, NASCAR Cup-style racing is about to turn Sweet 16 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and so it can be said that, yes, John Fogerty was right: Big wheels do keep on turnin’.
Thanks to these new Generation-6 stock cars, there is an extra day of NASCAR practice at Las Vegas Motor Speedway today, to get them dialed in here. I would arrive early not to beat traffic, but because hearing an auto racing engine at full song reverberate off cavernous and mostly empty grandstands is one of sport’s simple pleasures.
It was the wee hours of the morning when I woke, on the couch, to the sound of trumpets and a somewhat familiar voice, which sounded like Rich Waltz, the former Las Vegas Stars broadcaster. A half-empty box of Chicken in a Biskit crackers and a nozzled can totally devoid of aerosol cheese were on the coffee table. Bacon-flavored.
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