Some people wearing business attire and hardhats (and winter coats) put shovels in the ground the other day in Nashville, Tenn. This is a telltale sign the Nashville Sounds are getting a new triple-A ballpark.
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
It has been a good week, sort of, for Anthony Bennett, the former UNLV basketball whiz and much-maligned top overall pick in the most recent NBA draft. For starters, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey called Royce White the worst NBA first-round draft pick ever. Not Bennett.
You know how radio DJs always are doing something crazy to attract attention? Well, the hosts of the Morning Show at KOMP 92.3-FM did something a little more philanthropic before the Super Bowl to call attention to themselves. They made four proposition bets on the big game for homeless Las Vegans. Two of the bets paid off.
Las Vegas’ entry in the obscure but longstanding World Team Tennis league became official today. It was announced the Las Vegas Neon would replace the Sacramento Double Faults, or whatever the team that sometimes played matches in a mall parking lot was called.
I wonder how Art Howe feels about this. That was one of the first things that popped into mind on Sunday when I read that Philip Seymour Hoffman was dead.
It is 90 minutes before kickoff of one of the worst Super Bowl games ever played. Three XLVIII-sized boxes are sitting with their lids open on a stainless steel countertop next to the hulking pizza oven at Rosati’s Authentic Chicago Pizza.
It was a little more than 35 years ago when Miss November — Miss Linda November, a Jewish kid from Brooklyn with a lilting soprano singing voice — walked into a drab sixth-floor office at the famous Mayfair Studios at 47th Street and 7th Avenue on a sweaty day in Manhattan.
Auto racing has the shortest off-season in sports. After NASCAR Champion’s Week here in December, the gentlemen shut down their engines for about six weeks, ostensibly so Las Vegas native Kurt Busch can find a new job, and so NASCAR can fiddle with the rules some more. Then I get a text from my pal Charlie, saying he’s on his way to Daytona for the Rolex 24, or that he’s already there.
You might have missed it amid all the Super Bowl weather reports, but Bushwacker the bull — the baddest bucking bull on the planet — announced his retirement in Oklahoma City the other day.
These were my thoughts a couple of years ago upon witnessing USA Sevens Rugby at Sam Boyd Stadium for the first time:
He is from Wisconsin, and if truth be known, his sports uniform of choice probably would be a wrestling singlet, given he once was an All-America grappler at the university in Madison. But come the first week of every December, Las Vegas Events president Pat Christenson dons a cowboy hat to celebrate the National Finals Rodeo coming to town. He has been donning that cowboy hat for so long that he almost looks good in it.
Crystal Riley and Bobby Dezarov moved up their wedding plans on the chance that Kyle Busch might attend their Las Vegas wedding. That’s how the NASCAR driver ended up as a groomsman, standing before the pastor at the Chapel of the Bells.
Before he was a stand-up comic — and before he was the voice of Muddy Mudskipper and Albert the Foul-Mouthed Bass on the “Ren & Stimpy Show” — Harris Peet was employed by the Los Angeles Kings. As a practice/emergency goalie. During the Gretzky years.
I saw Dick Fosbury’s Mazda commercial on TV on Friday night. On Saturday, I met the man in person, outside the big curling competition at Orleans Arena. This is what some people would call serendipity.
Before the last Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, the only curling match I ever had witnessed featured John, Paul, George and Ringo in the Beatles’ movie “Help.” After one of the curling stones was rigged with a bomb — George called it a “fiendish thingy” — and Beatles-movie type hilarity ensued, I don’t recall who won, only that the Beatles sang “Ticket to Ride” or one of those songs from the soundtrack.
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