Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

RON KANTOWSKI:

Special events that weren’t

A look back at some grand experiments in Las Vegas sports that fell short

Sports

Steve Marcus, Sun File Photo

Will Power of Australia speeds by a downtown casino during the Vegas Grand Prix Champ Car World Series Race in April 2007.

If ever there was a town made for special events, Las Vegas is it — especially in sports.

If you can hit it, kick it, pass it, shoot it, ice it, dribble it, sink it, drive it, dunk it, putt it, serve it, race it, backhand it or boot it through the uprights — with or without a net — it’s probably been tried here.

But will it float? Well, the unlimited hydroplanes on Lake Mead didn’t.

Here’s a look back at Miss Budweiser and gentlemen who started engines and tennis tournaments that double-faulted and some of the other events I have covered in my 21 years here that woulda, coulda, shoulda made it in Las Vegas — but didn’t, for whatever reason.

VEGAS GRAND PRIX

The Champ Car World Series did what City Hall and Bachman Turnover Overdrive could not — attract a lot of people downtown. Too bad the Grand Prix lasted only one year.

That was partly because the high rollers complained that the 220-mph race cars that made it difficult to get in and out of the Golden Nugget were not taxis for hire. And partly because the Champ Car World Series has been absorbed by the Indy Racing League, turning the downtown streets back to the cabbies and the transients and the guys who drive beat-up pickup trucks (guys not named Sebastien Bourdais).

UNLIMITED HYDROPLANE RACING

Don’t rock the boat, don’t tip the boat over. The Hues Corporation would have loved the unlimited hydroplanes on Lake Mead, which unlike most venues on the schedule, is not tucked into a cove shielded from the wind. The wind caused waves and the waves tore holes in the hulls of Miss Budweiser and Miss Circus Circus and my favorite hydroplane, the beef jerky-powered Oh Boy! Oberto. When there are holes in the hulls, the hydroplanes can’t race. And so the spectators who had gathered on Boulder Beach got sunburned and went home.

LAS VEGAS INVITATIONAL

I suppose you could argue that our PGA stop never went away, that they just handed the keys to the golf cart to Justin Timberlake and his pals and told them to yell “Fore!” before hitting through the insurance salesman trying to get up and down in eight strokes or less during the Pro-Am. But the LVI I’m talking about was the scene of Tiger Woods’ first victory as a pro, when his fans and groupies turned the hospitality area around the 18th green into something akin to the parking lot at McAfee Coliseum before an Oakland Raiders game. And when I’d write columns complaining that Tiger wasn’t coming back, tournament director Charlie Baron would call and say, “I’ve got news for you, Ron. Ben Hogan’s not playing, either.”

SENIOR TENNIS TOUR

The senior tennis tour lasted only one year here. (And maybe everywhere else, too.) It was held at the MGM Grand and Jimmy Connors played Roscoe Tanner when they were 40-something. To the untrained eye — mine — it looked pretty much like the match they might have played as 20-somethings. Except Connors didn’t berate anybody. At least not during the match. Afterward, when he found out I was with the local press, he started blaming me (and the guy who drew the short straw at the morning paper) for the minuscule crowd. I thought that was kind of funny and smirked a little. Which made Jimbo yell louder.

FEDERATION CUP

This is the women’s version of the Davis Cup, and in 2000, it attracted stalwarts such as Monica Seles, Lindsay Davenport, Jennifer Capriati, Conchita Martinez and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario to Mandalay Bay for the final pitting the USA against Spain. At least I think they played it here, because as I recall, many of the matches were held in the afternoon in the middle of the week for some reason. I’m not sure how many tennis fans work, but those who do couldn’t go. Game, set, match ... the Fed Cup here was doomed.

SILVER DOLLAR CLASSIC

That was the name of the two college football games featuring historically black colleges and universities played at Sam Boyd Stadium. The first, featuring Grambling and Tennessee State, attracted more than 25,000 spectators after filling the Thomas & Mack for the battle of the marching bands the night before. But the next year there were new promoters and they got greedy or didn’t work as hard and the crowd wasn’t nearly as large for Southern U. vs. North Carolina A&T. And then the Silver Dollar Classic went away, leaving me to watch “Drumline” again and again and again on HBO and Cinemax.

AMERICAN LEGION WORLD SERIES

This is what happens when you let guys who wear Legion garrison caps decide where to play a boys baseball tournament. Though I am sure the big shots at American Legion headquarters enjoyed the 1998 World Series at Cashman Field, they probably didn’t take into account that a lot of people in Las Vegas don’t even watch their own kids play baseball. So it was one-and-done in Las Vegas, and the Legion World Series returned to places such as Rapid City and Yakima and small towns in Oregon where you can’t split aces and eights, but where people don’t mind watching other people’s kids hit the cutoff man.

ARENA BOWL

Like a lot of others who have come to Las Vegas to play ball only to drop it miserably, the football-in-a-can folks thought they had it all figured out. This was different. This was for a world championship. In football. Or at least a reasonable facsimile of football. That also would describe the crowds that turned out to watch the Colorado Crush beat the Georgia Force in Arena Bowl XIX and the Chicago Rush top the Orlando Predators in Arena Bowl XX. Modest turnouts of 10,822 and 13,476 were the smallest of the four Arena Bowl crowds at neutral-site games, so the AFL took its end-zone nets and men in motion and Jon Bon Jovi and moved it all to New Orleans.

BIG LEAGUE CHALLENGE

This is what the Major League Baseball Players Association called its version of home run derby held before spring training at Cashman Field. Jose Canseco and Rafael Palmeiro made it to the finals both years, where they hit long, prodigious drives over the outfield walls using Wiffle bats. Actually, they didn’t use Wiffle bats, but if you think it was just coincidence that Jose and Raffy made the finals both years, you should be asked to explain yourself at a congressional hearing.

MICKEY THOMPSON STADIUM OFF-ROAD RACING

Next to Kirk Gibson hitting a home run off Dennis Eckersley on one leg in the World Series, this just might be the craziest sports-related thing I have ever witnessed. They’d fill up Sam Boyd Stadium with dirt and make these giant sand castle jumps and invite Ivan “Ironman” Stewart and Robby Gordon and Roger Mears and Jimmie Johnson to fly right over them in these factory-supported trucks that looked like the ones you’d drive to a construction site, only they cost millions of dollars to research and develop. Like the Batmobile. They’d smash into each other and fenders would fly into the stands and, at the end of the night, a pretty girl would kiss Ivan “Ironman” Stewart on the cheek. Then it would take forever to get out of the parking lot, because every space was taken.

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