RICKAROO - The New Mexico Sports Place

Not sticking to sports ... Like Relish sandwich shop, which I blogged about recently, Ruben’s Grill Mexican restaurant is a place I’d driven past literally thousands of times and never stopped. Finally, on Saturday, I did. Muy sabroso. My normal M.O. on Saturdays, since that’s generally a 4 p.m.-midnight work shift for me, is to pick up something to go and eat it at my desk — thus fortified for the long night ahead. This past Saturday, though, my wife, Barbara, and I had a successful garage sale. We decided to spend some of our well-gotten booty on a sit-down lunch. It turns out our next-door neighbors were longtime fans of Ruben’s and highly recommended it. They were not wrong. Anyone who lives in Albuquerque knows there are hundreds of Mexican restaurants in our city. Even restaurants that don’t specialize in Mexican fare often have enchiladas, tacos, etc., on their menus. It is, thus, hard to stand out among the crowd. Without having tried all the competition, or anything...

For your consideration ... The above essay by longtime ESPN anchor Kenny Mayne is an echo, in a way, of a blog I recently posted reminiscing about my reaction to John Carlos’ and Tommie Smith’s Olympic protest of almost 50 years ago. Not many people read my blog, and that’s OK. I’m no Kenny Mayne. Whether you read that particular blog or didn’t, I hope you’ll read Mayne’s essay. The subject at hand is always timely, but especially so for me because just this morning the Albuquerque Journal published yet another Sports Speakup item from a gentleman who says he’s refusing to attend University of New Mexico football games this season. He’s still angry because, last Sept. 30, five UNM players knelt during an unscheduled playing of the national anthem at halftime of the Lobos-Air Force game. He’s angrier still because, at a subsequent news conference, UNM coach Bob Davie supported the players’ right to do so. As I wrote in my previous blog, my 20-year-old self initially was deeply o...

Not sticking to sports ... In my efforts to lose weight, or at least not gain any, my typical lunch is a frozen entree of 400 calories or less. But Saturday is my cheat day. Recently, in my part-time retirement gig at the Albuquerque Journal, Saturday is a work day (4 p.m. until we’re done).  I’ve been grabbing a late lunch to go and eating at my desk. After a lifetime of McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, Subway, etc., I’ve been looking for something different. So far, so good. A week ago Saturday, I tried Relish — a sandwich shop at 8019 Menaul, just west of Wyoming on the north side of the street. I’d driven past it literally thousands of times before stopping. I’m glad I did. I ordered the Lobo beef (and why not), a hot sandwich with two of my favorite sandwich ingredients: green Chile and avocado. The sandwich was huge, and the bread was excellent. The order came with a container of potato salad that easily could have fed two people. I’ve seen some negative reviews of Rel...

On Oct. 16, 1968 in Mexico City, American track athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos scandalized a nation and the world by bowing their heads and raising gloved fists during the playing of the U.S. national anthem on the Olympic medal podium. No doubt, as the 50th anniversary approaches, a great deal will be said and written about that momentous day. But why wait? That moment is as relevant today as it was then — or will be 66 days from now. I remember that day so well, how it shocked and angered me to see two American athletes disrespect their country in front of the world. Slowly, though, it dawned on me: as a 20-year-old white kid from Albuquerque's Northeast Heights who had never experienced racial discrimination, I wasn’t SUPPOSED  to like it. All Smith and Carlos wanted from people like me was that we’d at least think about it. Eventually, gradually,  I did. And I consider that day a seminal moment in the evolution of my thoughts and beliefs regarding race in our ...

To paraphrase our president: If Brutus Buckeye shot  https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3b/ed/5d/3bed5dbfe98ea75d5b08b93308ba9879.gif someone on Fifth Avenue, I would still be an Ohio State football fan. In my case, however, love is not blind. Not quite, anyway. As a kid, I picked out teams from each region of the country as my football favorites: USC in the Far West, UNM in the Rockies, Texas in the Southwest, Georgia Tech in the South and Navy in the East. And Ohio State in the Midwest. Over the years, my rooting interest in USC and Texas — for no particular reason — waned. My chosen line of work as a sports writer, covering the Lobos has prevented me from rooting for UNM. How much that will change in my retirement is yet to be seen. My love for the Yellow Jackets, the Midshipmen and the Buckeyes, however, has flowed unabated. Not that, in the case of Ohio State, it has been easy. There was the Woody Hayes slugging incident. The Art Schlichter gambling scandals. Jim Tressel’s...

I’m not sticking to sports in retirement, but I’m not leaving it, either. Politics? Only on the periphery. That’s a morass into which I choose not to get sucked. But even the periphery is fascinating and alarming enough. Case in point:  https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-poll-43-of-republicans-want-to-give-trump-the-power-to-shut-down-media Obviously, Donald Trump’s attacks on the news media are in play here. (And yes, in my effort to stay unsucked from the morass, I acknowledge his supporters feel the “fake” media is getting what it deserves). Many years ago, though, my former Albuquerque Journal colleague Dennis Latta related to me a conversation he’d had with a state legislator of his acquaintance — a man who believed journalists should be licensed by the state of New Mexico in the same fashion as are boxers, beauticians, undertakers, etc. etc. Write a story that doesn’t meet the state’s approval, no license. Either he hadn’t heard of the First Amendment or disagreed with it....