Looking back over a year’s worth of sometimes surprising – always entertaining – questions and answers:
January 23
Arena Football League commissioner David Baker on his hefty 300-plus-pound frame: “I keep saying it’s a misprint, but I saw the scale this morning. I’ve got one of those scales that gives an audio response, and this morning it said, ‘Come back when you’re not in your car.'”
February 27
PGA Tour golfer Scott Hoch on whether he would take a mulligan on the 1989 Masters, which he lost after missing a 30-inch putt on the 71st hole: “No, it’s probably the 1972 club championship (laughs). Obviously it’s that one. I wouldn’t say it would make a career – because that by itself wouldn’t do much – but that, along with the other things I’ve done, I think the players would see me in a different light. I know the spectators would because the writers and the television people would have acted and talked about me differently. A player’s popularity is directly related to the media. The other people don’t know. Not many people can actually meet you; it’s how you’re portrayed in the media. If they like you, you’ve got it made.”
May 8
Soccer star Landon Donovan on blending MLS and U.S. national team play: “It’s different and it’s a challenge. When you first come in with the national team, it’s very strange. More than anything, the physical part, or how your opponent is going to play, doesn’t really matter. The most important thing is jelling with your teammates in two or three days. You’re getting guys you battle against every weekend, and now they’re on your team. It’s a whole different dynamic, and that’s really the key to being successful with this team – jelling right away. It’s something that I, that we all have learned to do quite well over the years.”
May 29
Boxer Ann Wolfe on her daughters’ feelings about her profession and her plans to meet a male fighter: “They know they’re not sleeping outside no more. I’m not sleeping outside another night. Both my parents died when I was 18 and nobody said, ‘You know what? We’re not going to let Ann sleep outside anymore because she’s a woman.’ People walked over me outside with two babies, sleeping on the street. They looked at me like I was garbage. So when I do something to try to feed my children … look, I’m not saying I can beat an elite male boxer, but there are thousands and thousands of boxers who won’t reach the top 100.”
June 19
Colorado golf legend Joan Birkland on a meeting with LPGA Hall of Fame player Mickey Wright: “The LPGA came to Lakewood one year, and they invited so many amateurs to play. And I was paired with Mickey Wright. We were on the first hole, which was really short, about 240 or 250 yards long. It wasn’t anything, but when I played it, I always hit the ball off to the right behind this big cottonwood tree. And the starter says, ‘This is Mickey Wright, an up-and-coming star; she drives the ball 250 yards uphill in a pouring rainstorm’ on and on and on. And then he says, ‘Joan Birkland from Denver Country Club.’ So, of course I hit behind the cottonwood tree, and Mickey hits it to about a foot in front of the green. My second shot, I hit the tree and the ball goes behind the gallery at the green, where there are all these people standing to watch her play. I hit my third shot onto the green and I make the putt for 4. She two-putts for 3, but when we walked off the green, she said, ‘Your par was a lot better than my birdie.'”
July 31
Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller on today’s hurlers: “I don’t think pitchers know how to pace themselves. I learned that, when I was in an inning after I got two outs, if I knew the hitter couldn’t hit me, I’d ease up, try to make him hit the first or second pitch, try to help him a little bit. If he got a hit, I’d just bear down on the next guy. If you did that eight or 10 times in game, you’d save a lot of energy. If you talked about pacing yourself today, guys wouldn’t know what you were talking about. They don’t do the work, the long, hard sprints. Or the work off the field, working on a farm, doing manual labor. Of course, if you put me on a farm today, I’d starve to death; I wouldn’t know what to do.”
August 14
CBS golf commentator David Feherty on how he realized he had a problem with drinking: “When you go to your doctor and he says, ‘Hey, these numbers belong in Cooperstown,’ that’s when you figure it out. Also, I quit drinking because I was like the Tiger Woods of drinking – the game was no longer a challenge. I was just so … good at it. I could drink a bottle of whiskey and not look any different or feel any different. There was a stoicism to my metabolism that was legendary in the business.”
October 16
Broadcast legend Ernie Harwell on why baseball and the radio are the perfect marriage: “I did the other sports. I did a lot of football, even before baseball. I did golf and even bowling on the radio, if you can believe that. But baseball is the best sport for the radio. The announcer makes great use of the listener’s imagination. It’s a conversational sport that lends itself to radio. The announcer goes into their homes and sort of becomes a member of the family. You take him to the beach and the mountains and the kitchen and everywhere.”
November 13
Actor Ken Howard on getting old in Hollywood: “I just do the best I can. I don’t take it personally. They know I’ll deliver, and I’ll be good for them. But it’s very much a youth-driven market, which I find interesting and kind of sexy, but not so much because I’m not so sure how fascinating a 23-year-old girl or guy can be. At some point, there’s something interesting about people who represent what it means to endure this tale of woe that we call life.”
December 18
Former Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula on his team partying when the last undefeated NFL team loses each season: “I think what happened is one of those years – I’m not sure which one – when the last undefeated team lost, Griese and Nick Buoniconti and Dick Anderson, who all lived across the street from each other in the Coral Gables area, they went out into the driveway and toasted each other. They were too cheap to invite the rest of us down.”
Anthony Cotton can be reached at 303-820-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com.
