By Bob Markus

Watching the Indianapolis 500 on television Sunday, I couldn't help remembering another Indy 500, exactly 20 years ago, when I had a much better seat. Well, it wasn't a seat actually. I was standing behind a wall of tires in the pit of Teo Fabi, a cherub-faced Italian driver who had set the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on its ear five years previously when he won the pole as a rookie. This time he was starting smack dab in the middle of the field and the only thing remarkable about his car was its last name--Porsche.

The German auto company, whose name was synonymous with speed, had taken what seemed at the time a perfectly logical step. It had entered a car for the first time in the world's most famous race. It had hired veteran sports car driver Al Holbert as director of racing and he had hired Fabi to pilot the green (in more ways than one) race car. I was invited along for the ride. So there I was, water hose in one hand, stop sign in the other, standing just behind the pit wall, waiting to do my part in the Indianapolis 500.

I had attended 15 previous Indy 500s as a writer, which made me a quasi-participant. But this time I was a member of the pit crew for Fabi's Quaker State-Porsche, a real participant.. It was, except for my wedding day, the greatest day of my life. Here's how it happened. I was working at home one day in the winter of 1988 when I received a phone call from Michael Knight, a workaholic former sports writer who became one of the best auto racing p.r. men around. Knight had just been named public relations director for the new team and he had a proposition for me.

"We're going to let one writer in the pits for each race," he said, "and we want to give you the first chance to be in our pits on race day at Indianapolis." I thought about it for a moment and came back with "is there any chance I could work with the team for the whole month? Knight, of course, was delighted with the prospect of having the Midwest's leading newspaper print a story on his team every day for three weeks.

Tribune sports editor Gene Quinn was agreeable, but "I have two reservations," he cautioned. "I don't want you to do anything that will get you hurt and I don't want you to do anything that will affect the outcome of the race." I crossed my fingers behind my back and promised I'd be the very model of circumspection.

The reality was, of course, that auto racing is an inherently dangerous activity. I had almost always covered the race from the pits, usually standing just ahead of the first pit entering turn one. Once, Wally Dallenbach's car caught fire right in front of me on three different occasions. Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray happened to be there, too, and that might have been the inspirtion for his famous lead, "Gentlemen, start your coffins."

For three weeks I worked about 10 hours a day doing various chores for the team and then repairing to the press room to write and file my daily story. I loved every minute of it. My first job was to time the cars on the front straightaway with a speed gun that, more often than not, was as balky as our race car. The latter was, strictly speaking, not actually a Porsche, since the chassis the German company had designed turned out to be a dud. With no time to come up with a competitive chassis, the team bought a new March chassis and bolted a Porsche engine into it.

Alas, not even the March engineers could figure out why the car was as hard to handle as a rodeo bull and the German engineers were equally as puzzled about why their engine was about as frisky as a drugged lizard. Eventually, the determined Fabi managed to get the car up to 209 m.p.h. Since my speed gun had him going only 216 down the straightaway it was obvious that the little Italian was doing it all on his own.

Eventually, Teo managed to coax a four-lap average of 207.244 mph out of our reluctant dragon. That was almost identical to his pole winning speed in 1983, but "it was so easy then and it's so hard now," Fabi noted. Harder yet was the agonizing wait through three more days of qualifications to see if the speed would get us into the race. I prayed as hard as anyone, since I'd have nothing to write about for a week if we didn't make it. About 5:30 in the afternoon of the final qualifying day Johnny Parsons stuffed one of A.J. Foyt's car into the wall and we were safe.

During the week before the race, I was given my race day assignments. I had thought I might get the job of holding the pit board at the track wall for Teo to see his times as he flashed past, a job I'd become familiar with. But, since our pits were not too far from the pit entrance and out of control cars had been known to enter pit road and come down that far, that was deemed a little too dangerous. So I was assigned to hold the stop sign out for Fabi when he came in for a pit stop. The sign is attached to a long pole and the object is to get the driver to stop just behind the line marking the front end of the pit.

That didn't seem too hard, but, then, on Thursday, Crew Chief Steve Erickson came to me and said, "we need someone on the water hose when we refuel, so you can do that, too." The first reaction of a guy who has trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time, was "will I be able to pull back the stop sign and still have time to man the water hose?" Erickson assured me it would be no problem, but I wasn't convinced.

The job entailed splashing water on the fuel cell opening after the fuelers had pulled the hose out and, although it couldn't have been more than 10 feet away, I was well aware that if my aim wasn't precise enough I could hit the driver sitting in the open cockpit. Moreover I would have no chance to practice before our first pit stop in the race itself.

I was worried enough about the job that the night before the race I was like a kid on the night before Christmas, waking up every hour thinking it must be time to get up. I was supposed to meet team manager Tony Fox at 4 a.m. and ride out to the track with him. So I set my alarm for 3:35, but by 3:20 I gave up and got ready. When I arrived at the motel lobby 10 minutes early, Fox was waiting for me.

The morning passed quickly enough, but by 9 a.m. when I changed into my Nomex fire suit, the Indiana sun already was beating down mercilessly and I knew it was going to be a tough day. I have always been moved by the pre-race pageantry at Indianapolis, but to actually be a part of it, standing next to MY car as 300,000 fans sang the national anthem moved me almost to tears. I have heard the anthem sung at a thousand sporting events and have sometimes waited impatiently for some rock star to finish mauling the lyrics, but this time it really got to me.

Then came those magic words, "Gentlemen start your engines," and we sent Teo on his way. Then we all sprinted back up pit road to our pit stall and waited for the race to begin. Almost immediately after the start we heard announcer Tom Carnegie describe a two-car crash in turn 2. Nobody knew who was involved and we all stared anxiously at the track until we finally spotted Teo's green and white No. 8.

Despite all the previous problems, it appeared that the Quaker State-Porsche was handling a bit better in traffic. By the time he came in for his first stop, Fabi had moved from his 17th starting position to 10th. Teo came in much hotter than he had when we practised Thursday on carburetion day, and I might have lifted the stop sign a little prematurely, but he stopped in the right spot, anyway. I grabbed the hose and focused on fueler John Miller and when he jerked back, I squeezed the trigger. It wasn't a bullseye but it did hit the target at 2 o'clock and I was feeling pretty good about it.

I turned away to hang up my water hose and heard a shout and saw that everyone was looking in the opposite direction. It reminded me of the tennis scene in "Strangers on a Train." I swiveled my head in time to see a tire fly into the air. It was only later that I found out what happened. Erickson had waved Fabi out of the pits while Herbert Spier, the left rear tire changer, was still struggling to secure the fresh tire. The tire fell off and Fabi spun into the pit wall. After just 30 laps the Indianapolis 500 was over for our team.

There was only one thing left to do. I saw four of our crew men starting to push the car back to the garage and I ran after them. I caught up to the car and ran along behind it, pushing the left rear wheel along like a 10-year old boy rolling a hoop. For 500 yards I ran and pushed, a man in advanced middle age committing an act of lunacy in all that heat.

A few months later Al Holbert died in a crash of his private plane. With Derrick Walker in command, the team went on for another year and even won a race. Then Porsche pulled the plug and the Quaker State-Porsche became just an obscure footnote in racing car history. But it will always mean more than that to me. I still have the green and white uniform I wore that day and the team picture that was taken after Teo qualified the car. I still have my memories.

By Bob Markus

Some things you take for granted. The sun will rise in the East. It will rain on your drive home from the carwash. Jerry Sloan will not be named NBA Coach of the Year. Sloan has just finished his 20th season coaching the Utah Jazz, an unprecedented feat in a league where "What Have You Done for Me Lately" is the theme song and any coach who lasts even half that long is immediately inducted into the Hall of Fame. Not even the legendary Red Auerbach coached the Boston Celtics that long.

But Sloan, who guided the Jazz to the playoffs for the 18th time in those 20 years, has never been voted Coach of the Year. Not in1995 when he led the Jazz to a 60-22 regular season record. Del Harris won it that year for going 48-34 with the Los Angeles Lakers. Not in 1997 when his club went 64-18 and made the NBA Finals for the first of two consecutive years. Pat Riley won it in '97 with his 61-21 Miami Heat. Not in '98 when Larry Bird's 58-24 record in Indianapolis trumped Sloan's 62-20 in Utah. Certainly not in 2008 when he won a division championship for the seventh time with a team that seemed ready to implode before the season even started.

Perhaps, as one writer has suggested, Sloan has been a victim of his own success. When, in 1988, he took over the coaching reins from Frank Layden--who, by the way, was Coach of the Year with the Jazz five years earlier--Sloan inherited future Hall of Famers John Stockton and Karl Malone. Masterly blending in various lesser stars and mixing it all together with his blue collar defensive emphasis, Sloan took the Jazz to 16 straight playoffs. Many times the Coach of the Year is the one who most exceeds preseason expectations. With Sloan's Jazz, the bar was always set high, perhaps too high.

The bar was not all that high this year after one of Utah's best players, Andrei Kirilenko, openly feuded with Sloan and demanded a trade. After Stockton retired and Malone left as a free agent, the 6-9 Kirilenko became Utah's go-to guy. Refuting the notion that white men can't jump, he was one of the best shot blockers and defenders in the league and the late-game scoring option. Then came Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer, the new Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside and Kirilenko's offensive role was diminished. He didn't like it and said so.

But Sloan convinced him he would be a better player and help the team more if he focused on his defense and worked to improve his shooting. The result was that "he accepted what we were trying to do," said Sloan, and "he had a much better year than a year ago and he's still a very young player." "I kind of changed my priorities," agreed Kirilenko.

For Sloan, the number one priorities have always been defense and hustle. The first player selected by the Chciago Bulls in the expansion draft that stocked the fledgling franchise, Sloan was on the first string all-defensive team four times and on the second team twice. He teamed with Norm Van Lier to form the feistiest back court in league history. Led by the equally intense coach Dick Motta, the pair battled referees and opponents with equal abandon.

Occasionally, I thought, they went too far. After one victory over the Milwaukee Bucks in which two Bulls centers combined to brutalize Kareem Abdul Jabbar, I said as much. The next time I visited the Bulls' locker room, Sloan and Motta both were livid. "That was a horseshit article," Sloan stormed, adding that he would never speak to me again. I pointed out to him that I had previously written a half dozen or so favorable columns over the years and, after considering it for a moment, Jerry calmed down. Not so Motta.

Motta and I had enjoyed an amicable relationship. He and his wife had been in our house and we had been in theirs. But he was, more so than Sloan, more than the hot-tempered Van Lier, the most intense man I'd ever known. The average person meeting Motta for the first time would see a baby-faced, pleasant young man who would never harm a fly. Would he? Well, yes he would. A closer look would show that behind the pleasant openness of that boyish face was a diamond-hard intensity. If the face did not portray it, his hands would. Motta would constantly curl his fingers into claws, relaxing them, drawing them up again so that, combined with the glittering intensity of his stare, it often gave the appearance of an eagle getting ready to tear a rabbit to shreds. I was, therefore, prepared for a tongue lashing when I left Sloan and went to join in the Motta postgame interview.

By then the other writers had left and the two of us were alone. I don't remember exactly what Motta said, but he said it in a low voice and the implication was that he, too, would never talk to me again. He kept that vow for more than a year before approaching me one day and suggesting we start over. But it was never quite the same and the truce lasted only until the day I wrote a column suggesting that he had turned Van Lier into a referee-baiting Frankenstein's monster and then joined the posse out to destroy him.

I compared him to the Jack Lemmon character in "Days of Wine and Roses," a hard-drinking gray flannel suit type, who marries a girl who has never touched a drop. The rest of the movie is dedicated to the proposition that the couple that drinks together sinks together. He turns her on to booze and they both become alcoholics. One day Lemmon ends up in the drunk tank, decides to kick the habit and does. But his wife can't, so he leaves her.

With Motta it wasn't alcohol that was the problem, it was the paranoid conviction that the referees were out to get him. It seemed to me that Motta convinced the already high-strung Van Lier that the officials were out to get him, too. Together they led the league in technical fouls. They would scream and curse at the officials, drop kick basketballs into the balcony, dispute every foul. They could no more break their habit than an alcoholic could resist a second drink. Then came the epiphany for Motta. Perhaps he realized how costly his habit had become. Or perhaps he just grew up a little. In any event he calmed down a little. He began to recognize that look in a referee's eye that told him, "one more word and it costs you fifty."

But Van Lier couldn't stop, remained convinced that every official in the NBA had a personal grudge against Norm Van Lier in particular and the Bulls in general. And Motta turned his back on him and walked away. Van Lier, who remains a friend, loved the column. Motta didn't. We were back to square one. A few years later I was covering a White Sox series in Texas when Motta was named as the first head coach of the expansion Dallas Mavericks. I covered the press conference for The Tribune and Motta gave no evidence that he still held a grudge. The last time I saw him I was having dinner with some friends in St. Elmo's Steak House in Indianapolis, when Motta walked by and saw me through the window. He waved in what I took to be a friendly manner.

No matter my personal relationship with Motta, he was the right fit for the Bulls and particularly for Sloan. When Sloan first came to the Bulls he looked like a knobby-kneed Ichabod Crane, all skin and bone. But underneath was muscle and steel and a palpable drive to succeed. Under Motta, he learned that defense and team play wins games. Not only that, it wins fans. Michael Jordan's six NBA titles notwithstanding, those Bulls teams of the 1970s were the most entertaining I've ever seen. Motta did win a Coach of the Year award and so, later, did Phil Johnson, who was Motta's top assistant with the Bulls.

Sloan is still looking for his, but perhaps it's just as well he hasn't won one. Just two years ago, Avery Johnson of the Dallas Mavericks was Coach of the Year. This year he was fired. His replacement is Rick Carlisle, who was fired by the Detroit Pistons not long after his 2002 Coach of the Year season. And so it goes. Coaches come and coaches go. Except in Utah, where Jerry Sloan will enter his 21st season next fall with a team many feel can win the NBA title. Maybe then Sloan will get his due. But then, again, probably not.

By Bob Markus

Golf fans are a strange breed. While fans in most sports will, by and large, root for the underdog, golf fans, myself included, always cheer for the superstar. Baseball fans, except some of those living in New York, consider it a day made in heaven when the Yankees lose. Graduates of any school in the country, except Notre Dame, still get giddy whenever the Irish football team falls on its face.

But let Tiger Woods duel down the stretch with some unknown guy from Dubuque and it's likely to be only Tiger who hears the roars: "You the man." It seems to me it's always been that way, from Ben Hogan to Arnold Palmer to Jack Nicklaus to Tiger Woods the majority of applause has gone to the super hero. Sure, each of those has had a few talented foils against which to test his mettle. And those players had their coterie of fans. For Hogan it was Byron Nelson and Sam Snead. For Palmer it was Gary Player and Billy Casper. For Nicklaus it was Lee Trevino and Tom Watson early, Greg Norman, Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo late.

But mostly it was the driven Hogan, who came back from a near-fatal auto accident to win all three of the majors he entered in 1953, who earned the adulation of the multitudes. It was the charismatic Palmer, the swashbuckling commander of Arnie's Army, and the Jack of all courses, Nicklaus, who commanded center stage. Now it is the superb Tiger, still looking for someone to play the role of Roland to his Charlemagne. Phil Mickelson might have been the one except he can't putt. For awhile it looked as if Sergio Garcia would pick up the gauntlet, but putting was his downfall, too. Until Sunday, when he made putt after clutch putt down the stretch to eventually overtake and pass journeyman Paul Goydos for the Players' Championship. For nearly 3 1/2 rounds Garcia's putts had been rimming out or missing completely and he looked like Shaquille O'Neal throwing clunkers from the foul line. Then, it was as if O'Neal were to swish 10 consecutive free throws to win Game Seven of the NBA finals.

Suddenly, Garcia could not miss. His clutch seven footer for par at the 72d hole put enough pressure on Goydos, who needed to get up and down for par to win the tournament outright, to almost assure himself of at least a playoff. By then a strange shift had taken place. Many of the fans who previously had not the slightest notion who Paul Goydos was, had become taken with his gritty display of steady golf under pressure and the disarming, self-deprecatory good humor in which he had cloaked himself.

Here was a man who had won only two tournaments in 16 years on tour, ranked 169th in the world, and he was keeping his game together while playing for the richest purse on the PGA tour. He was making the same kind of putts Garcia was missing and at one point had a four shot lead with eight holes to play. That he would eventually lose all of that margin was not a case of his coughing up the lead, but of Garcia's putter finally heating up. Clearly, many, if not most, in the gallery were now rooting for the 43-year-old from California, who wore a cap extolling not the virtues of a golf ball or club manufacturer, but his alma mater, the Long Beach State Dirtbags. Some of them were in tears when Goydos' tee shot on the first playoff hole found a watery grave, burying his hopes for a perhaps life-changing victory with it.

"People were emotionally involved with what I was doing," Goydos was to say later. "and people were unbelievably encouraging." While he lost out on the five-year tour exemption that goes with winning the Players, Goydos was soothed by the second place money of $1,026,000. Garcia won a whopping $1,710,000. That's the biggest payout of any single tournament on tour, including the four majors.

It's too early to tell if Garcia will now be a permanent gnat underTiger's skin. He's still only 28 and Woods is 32. But any comparison between the two begins and ends with the fact they both were child prodigies. Both broke 50 for nine holes at the age of 3. Garcia turned pro at 19, Woods at 20. But by the time he was 28, Woods had already won 39 PGA events, including eight majors. Garcia, at the same age, has now won seven titles, no majors.

No, if there is to be any threat to Tiger's legacy it won't come from Sergio Garcia. But there was another player in the tournament, who could become a force in the years to come. He wasn't even in the mix on Sunday, shooting himself out of last week-end's tournament with a 43 on Saturday's back nine. But he's only 22, he won the previous week's tournament, and he has his eye on the Tiger. His name is Anthony Kim and he bears watching.

By Bob Markus



What's in a name? Big Brown. Sounds like something you'd want to scrape off your shoe. But it's the sweet smell of success that clings to the Kentucky Derby winner, who's on track to write his own chapter in the thorobred racing record book. He's already written the prologue, becoming just the seventh unbeaten Derby winner in the 134 year history of the event. None of the other six won it in his, or her (see Regret, 1915) fourth career start.

When, not if, he wins the Belmont he'll be only the second undefeated Triple Crown winner, the first being Seattle Slew in 1977. Not even the great Secretariat, considered by some to be the greatest four-legged racing machine of all time, could match that feat.

If I've thrown the word "great" around too liberally in these opening sentences, I apologize. I should know better. Knowledgeable people do not go around talking about "great" horses. A horseman will look at an animal that has just won his third consecutive major stakes race and say, "that looks like a pretty nice horse to me." If he's really high on the horse he might call him "good." The term "great" is reserved for the truly elite.

Common sense would seem to dictate that four races do not provide evidence enough to confer elite status on Big Brown. Certainly, Big Brown will have to complete his Triple Crown sweep in the next five weeks to earn the accolade. Barring a fluke injury, he will. His trainer, Rick Dutrow, has said, "I don't see any horse in the world who can beat him and I've watched them all." Still, since Affirmed became the last Triple crown winner in 1978, ten other horses have swept the first two legs, only to stumble at the final hurdle, the brutish 1 1/2 mile Belmont.

It happened recently in one three-year stretch from 2002 through 2004 when, first, War Emblem, then, Funny Cide, and, finally, Smarty Jones stubbed their hooves at the Belmont. Smarty Jones entered the Belmont unbeaten in 8 career starts and coming off a powerful 11 1/2 lengths victory in the Preakness. But he placed second to Birdstone in the Belmont and never raced again.

Ironically, the horse that has come closest to winning the Triple Crown in the last 30 years was Real Quiet in 1998, ridden by Kent Desormeaux, who is Big Brown's rider. Real Quiet was, literally, nosed out at the wire by Victory Gallop in the Belmont. An omen? Big Brown appears to be omen-proof. In his four races he has scarcely been challenged. He won his only 2-year-old race by 11 1/2 lengths. He prepped for the Florida Derby with a 12 3/4 length romp in an allowance race at Gulfstream Park, before punching his ticket to Churchill Downs with a five-length victory in the Florida Derby.

It's my personal view that most sports fans do not read most stories about horse racing. They may go to the races and they'll buy The Daily Racing Form, but only to check the past performance charts. When I was writing a column for The Chicago Tribune my own father told me he never read my column if it was about horse racing. That's one reason I almost never wrote about it. Another reason was that, even if I tried interviewing a horse, it never answered me. Of course there were some two-legged athletes like Alex Johnson, Steve Carlton and any UCLA or Georgetown center you care to name, who never answered me either.

I did cover two Kentucky Derbies and although I won't quibble with Churchill Downs' claim that the Derby is "the most exciting two minutes in sports," I will argue that the six hours that precede it are the most boring. And if you get out to the track at 6 in the morning as I did for my first Derby Day, the 12-hour wait is interminable. Of course, you can take the opposite approach, as I did a few years later, and wait until 4 o'clock in the afternoon to drive out to Churchill Downs. If you do that, though, you'd better be with someone like Dave Condon, who was the lead sports columnist at The Tribune and a notorious practical joker. At that time of day traffic is no problem. On the other hand, there's no place to park when you get there. Dave solved that problem quite easily by pointing to me and saying to the parking attendant, "I've got the lieutenant governor of Illinois here and he needs a good place to park." We were escorted to a V.I.P. lot right next to the track.

Big Brown has his own V.I.P. lot, his stall at any race track his trainer and owner care to run him. His itinerary for the next month is set. First to Baltimore for the Preakness, then New York for the Belmont. After that? There are decisions to be made. The Triple Crown may be all the casual sports fan knows about horse raing, but there are other races. Big money races. But, then, there also is the question of Big Brown's place in history. No Triple Crown winner has ever retired undefeated. Could Big Brown be horse racing's answer to boxing's Rocky Marciano?

Time will tell. Not to mention News Week, ESPN, and Sports Illustrated.