Columnist Ron Kantowski: Some of his special moments of the year that might not be as glamorous as those you recall

Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2005 | 9:50 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's column appears on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

This is this time of the year when people in my profession rehash the events of the past year and number them, usually 1-10 but sometimes 1-50 or even 1-100, depending on how much space we have to fill.

It is a way to give you, the reader, a look back at the year that was. And to give me, the writer, a day off during the holidays.

But who am I to tell you that the Jose Luis Castillo-Diego Corrales rematch was more significant than Centennial High's girls' basketball state championship? What if your daughter plays for Centennial? What if your son bet on Corrales?

So rather than take you to places you have already been, I thought I would take you to some of the unusual places I have been during the past year in a never ending quest to find the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat and the human drama of athletic competition.

Or something reasonably close to it.

Desert Classic pro darts tour

- The MGM Grand Garden, July 1

As entertainment, pro darts is kind of like a Formula One race. The start is spectacular before the event settles into a fairly predictable pattern.

After the initial WWE-style assault on the senses, the arena grew quiet Wednesday although, I am told, that usually isn't the case in some of the more raucous U.K. darts venues, such as Yorkshire and Blackpool. It was like watching Tiger Woods line up a putt, followed by a barely audible thwap, thwap, thwap -- the sound of tungsten meeting cork.

It can go on like that for as long as 4 1/2 hours, when players of equal talent square off, or far less time, when Phil "The Power" Taylor toes the line.

A high-school dropout from Stoke-on-Trent, a region in central England situated between the blue-collar cities of Manchester and Birmingham known for its many potteries, Taylor is the Michael Jordan of his sport. He is to British darts what David Beckham is to British football, only without the mod haircut and pop star wife. He has won the pro darts world championship an unprecedented 12 times, seven more than his closest pursuer.

If darts is the sport of the commoner, then Taylor is its poster child. He looks like a Teamster, with multiple tattoos splashed up and down his beefy forearms. Before he starting tossing darts for a living, Taylor worked in a factory that manufactured old world toilets, and his job was making the chains.

I swear I'm not yanking yours.

On the set of the new "Rocky"

- Mandalay Bay, Dec. 12

The first thing I noticed was the attention to detail. There was a bunch of extras sitting in the press section instead of the real-life boxing media, but they didn't appear to be working, either. Very realistic.

The rest of the arena looked kind of eerie. Most of the seats had dummies in them, that when viewed at a distance or through the magic of film, will achieve the effect of a capacity crowd. My first thought was that UNLV should borrow these props for home basketball games. But if authenticity was the goal, this is where the producers erred.

Upon closer inspection, the torsos of the female dummies were made of wood. Anybody who has been to a real pay-per-view fight and made it down to ringside knows these are almost always made of silicone.

As for what was happening in the ring, there was a lot of preparation time but only sporadic activity. In other words, it was just like a Chris Byrd fight. Every so often, a remarkably chiseled (especially for 59 years old) Sylvester Stallone would ask the water boy to spray him down with fake perspiration, then he and Antonio Tarver (Mason "The Line" Dixon) would launch pantomined haymakers while the crowd pantomined going crazy, like it would were Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo fighting for real.

This must have been the sequence in which Bill Conti plays dramatic soundtrack music over the boxing action. Or Frank Stallone sings.

Old Municipal Stadium

- Kansas City, Mo., Nov. 28

They should have at least erected a sign to recognize that a lot of cutoff men had been missed at the place we were standing.

Actually, there is, although we couldn't find it. Supposedly, there's a photo of Municipal Stadium and a couple of park benches near where "Harvey" the mechanical rabbit rose from underground to present the home plate umpire with a batch of new baseballs.

But all we saw was a few modest homes with brightly colored siding on them, scattered, with no apparent rhyme or reason, around what had been the infield and outfield.

There was no sign of human life, although I spotted a stray dog in the distance. I wondered if he knew he was treading on hallowed ground where the great Satchel Paige had refused to look back, for fear that something might be gaining on him. Where the 1960 All-Star Game was contested. Where Campy Campaneris became the first man to play every position in a big league game.

But then the dog stopped and sniffed at the ground.

Who knows? Maybe that was the spot where "Charlie O," the pet mule of the Athletics owner, had fertilized the infield in his own special way.

The makeshift corral

- Thomas & Mack Center, Nov. 7

UNLV has a new champion, and he hails from the most unlikely of places.

Not the basketball court. Not the golf course. Not even the women's soccer pitch, where the Rebels won their first Mountain West Conference championship Saturday afternoon.

Try the rodeo arena.

That's right, the rodeo arena. Next to the football field, it's hard to imagine a more unexpected venue from which a Rebel would emerge as champion.

Perhaps it should be noted that Justin McBride, who Sunday was crowned the Professional Bull Riders world champion following an eight-second ceremony at the Thomas & Mack Center, did not graduate from UNLV. But then neither did Larry Johnson and Stacey Augmon, and we're still proud of those guys.

Bettye Wilson soccer complex

Summerlin, Oct. 31

Based on everything I've been hearing, children's soccer is the new Little League, only without the bubble gum cards.

Well, I was wrong.

A Sunday drive out to the Bettye Wilson Soccer Complex -- the Gateway to Summerlin at West Lake Mead and Tenaya -- for the Mayor's Cup Soccer Tournament definitely confirmed that youth soccer is the new Little League.

But I also saw a boy clutching a pack of Major League Soccer trading cards that he had gotten from a vendor on the makeshift midway. Two dollars a pack, he said. No slab of pink gum. I asked if he was going to put Landon Donovan in the spokes of his bicycle, and he looked at me as if I were from another planet.

Still, at 9 a.m. the place was loud enough without an assist from the cardboard likeness of a domestic soccer star and a clothes pin.

The home owners association

- Summerlin, Sept. 9

During the 1949-50 NHL season, Summerlin resident Max McNab was a lanky 25-year-old center for the Detroit Red Wings, who defeated the New York Rangers in overtime in Game 7 of the finals to win their fourth Stanley Cup. McNab recalled taking one or two sips of an unspecified beverage from the Cup in the winning dressing room.

"Then two burly guys came in and grabbed it and took it away," he said. "I never saw it again."

Until Wednesday.

It had been 55 years since McNab had earned the right to have his name engraved on the Cup alongside those of his more famous teammates, such as the great Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay and Sid Abel, who together formed the prolific "Production Line," and goalie Terry Sawchuk, a rookie that season. But until Wednesday, when the Cup was put on display in Las Vegas in his honor, he had to take somebody else's word for it.

Not anymore. On Wednesday, McNab, now a youthful 81, was able to run his finger over the engraved silver letters that spell his name. And he wasn't the only one, as his many friends and family members who gathered for the occasion did the same. They posed for photos with the Cup, sought out the names of favorite players not named McNab and even rubbed the trophy like a genie's lamp, perhaps hoping to coax the ghost of Rocket Richard into making a surprise appearance.

Riding with Mario Andretti

Las Vegas Motor Speedway, June 6

Just about the time I was thinking I was glad I had kissed my wife goodbye and told her that I loved her, Andretti lifted his heavy right foot off the accelerator. Whew! We glided around the corner as if we were riding in a giant slot car and took the green flag. At least, Mario took the green flag. At 180 mph, all I saw as we passed under the starter's stand was a brief blur of green that looked like a bad Leroy Neiman painting.

Ripping down the straightaway, some of the "dirty air" coming off Mario's helmet got under mine and nearly tore it off my head. I'm sure if there had been an in-car camera, my features would have looked like Jim Carrey's in "The Mask."

After my heart slowed to 100-yard dash speed, I asked Andretti if he enjoyed driving guys like me around the track at what for him is pace car speed.

"Oh yeah, I love it," he said after dozens of others who paid for the thrill had taken their turn. "This is something I understand. This is my cup of tea."

Cup of tea? Did he just say cup of tea? Hey Mario, next time keep your pinkie on the wheel.

Video game championships

- ESPNZone, Aug. 29

It was football at its finest. Only instead of helmets and shoulder pads, the players at ESPNZone at New York-New York on Saturday afternoon wore baseball caps at rakish angles and baggy clothing that might have belonged to Jared the Subway sandwich guy before he lost all that weight.

As the players and their posses gathered around ubiquitous video screens that turned the second floor of the restaurant into something resembling Mission Control 15 minutes before a space shuttle launch, hip-hop music assaulted the senses and a DJ wearing a Hawaiian shirt and Harry Caray-style glasses did a reverse Johnny Rivers. He took away the registration numbers of the players and gave them a name, such as Big Gene and School Boy and One-Nine.

This was as good as it gets in the heretofore underground world of video game football -- the kickoff of the EA Sports Madden Challenge to determine the best Madden football player in the USA. Somewhere, the old coach who lent his name to the game had to be smiling.

I think.

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