By Bob Markus
It's just as well that Joe Buck will have to wait three months before hosting the next "Joe Buck Live" show on HBO. It may take the popular sports caster that long to recover from the sneak attack that nearly derailed his debut early Tuesday morning. I don't make a habit of watching TV after midnight unless there's a boxing match on, so I was just about to turn the set off when up popped Joe Buck on one of HBO's many channels. I don't know Joe Buck, although I knew his dad, Jack Buck, the beloved long-time voice of the St. Louis Cardinals post Harry Caray.
I probably would have hit the off button on my remote except that Buck revealed that his inaugural guest was going to be Brett Favre, making his first public statements since the start of his most recent brouhaha. I was mildly interested in what Favre had to say, although I don't know him, either. The only time I ever interviewed him was at the Green Bay Packers training camp before his first season with the Pack. I had been assigned to do a story on the Packers for The Chicago Tribune's preseason pro football guide. I first talked with Mike Holmgren, who had just gotten the Packers' head coaching job after a successful career as an assistant with the San Francisco 49ers. The big story in camp, other than Holmgren himself, as it is in many training camps, was the battle over who would be the starting quarterback.
The three candidates were Don Majkowski a.k.a. The Majik Man, who had been a starter for the Packers before suffering a serious injury two seasons earlier; Ty Detmer, a Heisman Trophy winner from BYU, who, deemed too small to play quarterback in the NFL, had been drafted in the ninth round that year; and Favre, who had thrown exactly four passes in his one year with the Atlanta Falcons, completing none, before being traded to the Packers that spring. I talked with all three quarterbacks, but frankly don't recall much of what any of them said. I did get the impression that Favre was confident of his ability despite his lack of experience. He had not been Falcons Coach Jerry Glanville's choice and the feisty coach once was quoted as saying it would take a plane crash before he'd put Favre in a game. When he did finally call Favre's number, it was more like a train wreck. The future Hall-of-Famer's first pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Nevertheless, Favre, who had played his college ball at Southern Mississippi, was regarded well enough for the Packers to give up a first round draft choice. Smart move. By the time that 1992 season was three games old, Majkowski had been injured twice and Favre became the starting quarterback. He would start 269 consecutive games, one of his many NFL records.
I had covered many Packer games in the past and was quite familiar with Bart Starr and Lynn Dickey, two of Favre's predecessors, although they usually aren't linked in the same sentence. I had even covered Dickey in college, after he led Kansas State to a stunning upset over Oklahoma and I was sent to cover his next game, at Missouri, which he nearly pulled out, too. The point is that Dickey was no Bart Starr, but he was no Bart Simpson, either. However, by 1992 I was in the twilight of my Tribune career and no longer covering even the occasional pro football game. But I was well aware of Favre's brilliant career and was watching live from my hotel room in Hongkong the day he led the Packers to a Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots.
Lately, Favre has been more roasted than toasted. His brilliant 16-year Packer career had ended sadly. The last pass he threw as a Packer was intercepted, in overtime, setting up the winning field goal for the New York Giants in the NFL championship game. Then, after a tearful retirement speech, Favre changed his mind and wanted to come back to the Pack. By that time the Packers had already decided on their new quarterback and offered Brett only the chance to compete for a backup role. The rest of the story is well-known. The trade to the Jets, the fast start, the ugly finish; another retirement, another comeback. Maybe. Despite all the reports circulating that Favre would come back once more and play for the Minnesota Vikings, there was no confirmation--or denial--from Favre. Now he was going to open himself up to questions and I was curious to hear the answers, curious, too, to see if Joe Buck would be a hardball or softball interviewer.
I thought Buck did a professional job with Favre, who confirmed that he had spoken with the Vikings, revealed he'd had surgery on his torn right biceps from noted orthopod James Andrews, and said his final decision was more or less out of his hands. It all depends on how and when his right arm heals. "If it's like it was last year," he said. "I won't play." Favre admitted he'd played the last half dozen games when he probably shouldn't have. "I could throw the ball," he said, "but instead of throwing it here," gesturing to his left, "I'd throw it there (about five yards further right)" Later, while discussing the reaction of fans to his ongoing saga, Favre postulated that there are those who will love him no matter what he does, those who will hate him no matter what he accomplishes, "and a lot of guys who don't give a shit." After a moment of silence Favre added: "This is HBO; I've wanted to do that for a long time."
The scatalogical remark was a mere prelude of things to come. After a dual interview with former Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin and current Bengals pass catcher Chad Ochocinco, during which Buck continued to ask the hard questions, the show blew up in his face when he brought in three comedians. I'd never heard of any of them, but I'll remember one of them--Artie Lange--for a long time. This may be HBO, where sex and crude language are staples, but I haven't heard so many F bombs since my golfing buddy hit three balls out of bounds on the same hole. He also insinuated that Buck might have something in common with his namesake, the boy toy character played by Jon Voight in the movie "Midnight Cowboy." Buck tried to steer the conversation back to a more civil discourse, but Lange, in essence, hijacked the remainder of the show.
In his preamble, Buck said the show would be produced only four times a year. That gives him until September to line up his next subjects--and to recover from the after shock of his debut show. Should you watch it? If you're a sports fan, definitely. But if you're a parent, please make sure that the little ones are out of earshot.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
By Bob Markus
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the prettiest one of all. First it was the Wicked Queen, then it was Snow White. But who knows which celebrated beauty came after that. Snow White, after all, must be a little long in the tooth by now. Is she still lovelier than Jean Harlow? Brigitte Bardot? Marilyn Monroe? Elizabeth Taylor? Bo Derek? We know the magic mirror was inclined to be fickle, apparently giving its blessing to every rosy-cheeked ingenue who came along.
In the immediate aftermath of Roger Federer's French Open championship Sunday, there were those who would swear they saw the young swiss star's face in the magic mirror. Roger Federer, they said, was the greatest tennis player of them all, having tied Pete Sampras' record of 14 Grand Slam titles and claiming, at long last, the career Slam.
But when I look into the magic mirror, the reflection is fuzzy. Is that the face of Rod Laver I see? The left-handed Aussie, nicknamed The Rocket, after all won all four Grand Slam events--the Australian, French, Wimbledon, and U.S. Opens--in the same year twice, once as an amateur, once as a professional. He won 11 in all and who knows how many he might have won had he not been banned for five years after turning pro in 1962 immediately after claiming his first Slam?
But wait. could it be Bjorn Borg's face I see? Borg has neither an Australian nor a U.S. Open on his resume, but he won on the clay at Roland Garros six times and on the grass at Wimbledon five times, demonstrating sufficient versatility to squeeze into the picture. Only Sampras, with his seven Wimbledon titles, has won more times there than Borg. And what about Sampras himself? He never won the French Open, but in addition to his domination at Wimbledon won the U.S. Open five times.
Looking deeper into the mirror I think I can see, just barely, the face of Bill Tilden, winner of a record seven U.S. Opens and three Wimbledon titles. He was considered the alltime greatest during his time, a time when the Australian and French Opens were not a factor and there was no Grand Slam, only the Double Whammy.
The mirror reflection gets murkier yet. Can that be who I think it is? Yes, it's clearing up now. And there seem to be two of them. Why, it's Jack Kramer and Pancho Gonzales. They don't have the multiple major tournament victories of the other claimants, but they have a good excuse. They didn't play very long as amateurs and they played in an era when professionals were barred from playing the major tournaments. Kramer won the U. S. Open back-to-back in 1946 and '47 after serving three years in the military in World War II. Then he turned professional, leaving him ineligible to play either Wimbledon or the U.S. Open (a name that lives in irony since it was open only to amateurs). Gonzales won the next two U.S. Opens before, he too, turned pro.
Professional tennis in that period was nothing like it is today. There were no tournaments per se, merely a series of matches between the top players. It should come as no surprise that Bobby Riggs promoted the first big money match long before anyone ever herd of Billie Jean King. It featured a cross-country barnstorming tour against the powerful Kramer, who easily dispatched the soft-balling Riggs, 69 matches to 20. Strengthening his claim to being the alltime best, Kramer then annihilated Gonzales, 96 to 27. Kramer retired and took over promotion of the pro tennis tour and Gonzales became the biggest star. He was the No. 1 ranked professional player for eight consecutve years in the 50s and 60s and in 1970, at 41, was still good enough to beat Laver in five sets in a heralded winner-take-all match in Madison Square Garden.
Ten years ago, Sports Illustrated magazine ranked its 20 favorite athletes of all time and Gonzales placed 15th. "If earth was on the line in a tennis match," the magazine noted, "the guy you'd want serving to save mankind is Pancho Gonzales."
Tony Trabert, who was decimated by Gonzales on one tour, once said of his tormentor: "Gonzales is the greatest natural athlete tennis has ever known. The way he can move that 6-foot 3 inch frame around the court is almost unbelievable; he's just like a big cat."
But Frank Sedgman, one of the top stars of their era, called Kramer the greatest of all time, ranking Gonzales second. But that was then and this is now. Tennis in the Kramer-Gonzales era was dominated by players from the United States and Australia, with an occasional Frenchman in the mix. The game has since gone global, with Ivan Lendl of Czechoslovakia, Ilie Nastase of Hungary, and the Swedish born Borg among those bridging the gap to the present day international array of stars that includes Federer, Spain's Rafael Nadal and Marat Safin of Russia. The United States, which had pretty much kept pace with the rest of the world when the likes of Arthur Ashe, Jimmy Connors, and John McEnroe were waving the flag, has fallen out of the picture. Why? Perhaps the few legitimate U.S. hopefuls like Andy Roddick will have to look at themselves in a mirror. But they might not like what they see.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the prettiest one of all. First it was the Wicked Queen, then it was Snow White. But who knows which celebrated beauty came after that. Snow White, after all, must be a little long in the tooth by now. Is she still lovelier than Jean Harlow? Brigitte Bardot? Marilyn Monroe? Elizabeth Taylor? Bo Derek? We know the magic mirror was inclined to be fickle, apparently giving its blessing to every rosy-cheeked ingenue who came along.
In the immediate aftermath of Roger Federer's French Open championship Sunday, there were those who would swear they saw the young swiss star's face in the magic mirror. Roger Federer, they said, was the greatest tennis player of them all, having tied Pete Sampras' record of 14 Grand Slam titles and claiming, at long last, the career Slam.
But when I look into the magic mirror, the reflection is fuzzy. Is that the face of Rod Laver I see? The left-handed Aussie, nicknamed The Rocket, after all won all four Grand Slam events--the Australian, French, Wimbledon, and U.S. Opens--in the same year twice, once as an amateur, once as a professional. He won 11 in all and who knows how many he might have won had he not been banned for five years after turning pro in 1962 immediately after claiming his first Slam?
But wait. could it be Bjorn Borg's face I see? Borg has neither an Australian nor a U.S. Open on his resume, but he won on the clay at Roland Garros six times and on the grass at Wimbledon five times, demonstrating sufficient versatility to squeeze into the picture. Only Sampras, with his seven Wimbledon titles, has won more times there than Borg. And what about Sampras himself? He never won the French Open, but in addition to his domination at Wimbledon won the U.S. Open five times.
Looking deeper into the mirror I think I can see, just barely, the face of Bill Tilden, winner of a record seven U.S. Opens and three Wimbledon titles. He was considered the alltime greatest during his time, a time when the Australian and French Opens were not a factor and there was no Grand Slam, only the Double Whammy.
The mirror reflection gets murkier yet. Can that be who I think it is? Yes, it's clearing up now. And there seem to be two of them. Why, it's Jack Kramer and Pancho Gonzales. They don't have the multiple major tournament victories of the other claimants, but they have a good excuse. They didn't play very long as amateurs and they played in an era when professionals were barred from playing the major tournaments. Kramer won the U. S. Open back-to-back in 1946 and '47 after serving three years in the military in World War II. Then he turned professional, leaving him ineligible to play either Wimbledon or the U.S. Open (a name that lives in irony since it was open only to amateurs). Gonzales won the next two U.S. Opens before, he too, turned pro.
Professional tennis in that period was nothing like it is today. There were no tournaments per se, merely a series of matches between the top players. It should come as no surprise that Bobby Riggs promoted the first big money match long before anyone ever herd of Billie Jean King. It featured a cross-country barnstorming tour against the powerful Kramer, who easily dispatched the soft-balling Riggs, 69 matches to 20. Strengthening his claim to being the alltime best, Kramer then annihilated Gonzales, 96 to 27. Kramer retired and took over promotion of the pro tennis tour and Gonzales became the biggest star. He was the No. 1 ranked professional player for eight consecutve years in the 50s and 60s and in 1970, at 41, was still good enough to beat Laver in five sets in a heralded winner-take-all match in Madison Square Garden.
Ten years ago, Sports Illustrated magazine ranked its 20 favorite athletes of all time and Gonzales placed 15th. "If earth was on the line in a tennis match," the magazine noted, "the guy you'd want serving to save mankind is Pancho Gonzales."
Tony Trabert, who was decimated by Gonzales on one tour, once said of his tormentor: "Gonzales is the greatest natural athlete tennis has ever known. The way he can move that 6-foot 3 inch frame around the court is almost unbelievable; he's just like a big cat."
But Frank Sedgman, one of the top stars of their era, called Kramer the greatest of all time, ranking Gonzales second. But that was then and this is now. Tennis in the Kramer-Gonzales era was dominated by players from the United States and Australia, with an occasional Frenchman in the mix. The game has since gone global, with Ivan Lendl of Czechoslovakia, Ilie Nastase of Hungary, and the Swedish born Borg among those bridging the gap to the present day international array of stars that includes Federer, Spain's Rafael Nadal and Marat Safin of Russia. The United States, which had pretty much kept pace with the rest of the world when the likes of Arthur Ashe, Jimmy Connors, and John McEnroe were waving the flag, has fallen out of the picture. Why? Perhaps the few legitimate U.S. hopefuls like Andy Roddick will have to look at themselves in a mirror. But they might not like what they see.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
By Bob Markus
I'm a little like the Robert Duvall character in "Apocalypse Now" who exults, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." I've never smelled napalm at any hour and I doubt that a sniff of the lethal stuff would send me into peals of ecstacy. What I love is boxing and a good many people think that's just as bad. I know it's not politically correct to enjoy watching two men trying to club each other senseless. But I can't help it. I've loved boxing since I was a small boy and I love it still. I know that boxing is brutal. I've seen two men die in the ring, one on television and one up front and personal. I've sat at ringside often enough to know it's not a good idea to wear your best clothes because there's a good chance they'll be blood-spattered before the night is over. Yes, boxing is brutal, but apparently not brutal enough for some. By all indications, the so-called sweet science is losing out to the more pungeant sport of mixed martial arts, in all its forms. Personally, I can't watch it. Whenever I inadvertently tune in a bout where the contestants are barefooted I immediately switch channels. Sharon Robb, the boxing writer for my local paper, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, does an excellent job, especially considering the fact that in addition to boxing she covers participant sports in all its permutations. There are days when her byline fills out half the sports section. But increasingly, her Sunday columns are more about kung fu style fighting than classic boxing. That may be because the martial arts shows are consistently outdrawing the local boxing cards. Perhaps that is just the natural order of things in these times when movies and television dramas assault us with ever increasing violence. On the other hand I have to admit that despite the bloody mayhem that characterizes MMA and ultimate cage fighting, there have been far more fatalities in the ring than in the cage. In fact I'm not sure if anyone has ever died as the result of an MMA fight. There is some hope for us boxing fans. Legendary promoter Don King, he of the electric hairdo, has joined forces with a local tribe of Indians to try to revive the dying sport in South Florida. His most recent effort drew a near capacity crowd to the Seminole Hardrock Hotel and Casino and was televised live on HBO.
Put a boxing match on TV, any boxing match, and I'll watch it. I'll watch the Friday night fights on ESPN2, the sporadic live boxing shows om Showtime and HBO; I'll even watch reruns of fights that were held months ago. Since I've never heard of any of the fighters involved and don't know who won the fight, I'm perfectly content. I'm not sure how this passion for boxing came about. Most likely it's because my father and I used to watch televised boxing matches together. It was one of the few things we shared at that time of my life. He even took me to some live fight shows and I can remember seeing local Chicago favorites like Johnny Bratton (who briefly was a world champion) and Bob Satterfield, a light heavyweight who had a punch like a mule and a chin like rare crystal. When you went to a Satterfield fight you knew somebody was going down. That was the golden age of boxing. There were televised bouts every Wednesday night and every Friday night, one sponsored by Gillette, the other by Ballantine's beer. And the best fighters of that era were featured. Willie Pep and Sandy Saddler squared off four or five times for the featherweight championship, nasty fights all. A welterweight championship fight between Bratton and Charlie Fusari remains one of the best fights I've ever seen. There was Sugar Ray Robinson vs. Jake LaMotta several times. Robinson vs. Bobo Olson, Robinson vs.Carmen Basilio. There were Tony Zale, Marcel Cerdan, two Rockys, Graziano and Marciano (but not Balboa). Unfortunately Joe Louis was past his prime and I never saw him at his best. Back then the most recognizable voice in boxing was that of Don Dunphy, the ringside blow-by-blow announcer. Today it's Michael Buffer, whose ubiquitous, throaty "Uh, let's get ready to r-u-u-u-m -m-m-b-l-e" is more famous than most of the fighters he introduces. There were only eight world champions back in the day and I knew who they all were, with the possible exception of the flyweight champion, who was usually from some exotic place like Thailand.
Today there are at least twice as many divisions and an infinite number of sanctioning bodies and I probably couldn't name more than three or four legitimate champions. I know that the most recognized heavyweight champion and the next four highest ranked heavyweights are all from the former Soviet Union. Since two of the heavyweight title holders are brothers who refuse to fight each other I doubt there will be a unified heavyweight champion in my life time.
I'm a little like the Robert Duvall character in "Apocalypse Now" who exults, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." I've never smelled napalm at any hour and I doubt that a sniff of the lethal stuff would send me into peals of ecstacy. What I love is boxing and a good many people think that's just as bad. I know it's not politically correct to enjoy watching two men trying to club each other senseless. But I can't help it. I've loved boxing since I was a small boy and I love it still. I know that boxing is brutal. I've seen two men die in the ring, one on television and one up front and personal. I've sat at ringside often enough to know it's not a good idea to wear your best clothes because there's a good chance they'll be blood-spattered before the night is over. Yes, boxing is brutal, but apparently not brutal enough for some. By all indications, the so-called sweet science is losing out to the more pungeant sport of mixed martial arts, in all its forms. Personally, I can't watch it. Whenever I inadvertently tune in a bout where the contestants are barefooted I immediately switch channels. Sharon Robb, the boxing writer for my local paper, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, does an excellent job, especially considering the fact that in addition to boxing she covers participant sports in all its permutations. There are days when her byline fills out half the sports section. But increasingly, her Sunday columns are more about kung fu style fighting than classic boxing. That may be because the martial arts shows are consistently outdrawing the local boxing cards. Perhaps that is just the natural order of things in these times when movies and television dramas assault us with ever increasing violence. On the other hand I have to admit that despite the bloody mayhem that characterizes MMA and ultimate cage fighting, there have been far more fatalities in the ring than in the cage. In fact I'm not sure if anyone has ever died as the result of an MMA fight. There is some hope for us boxing fans. Legendary promoter Don King, he of the electric hairdo, has joined forces with a local tribe of Indians to try to revive the dying sport in South Florida. His most recent effort drew a near capacity crowd to the Seminole Hardrock Hotel and Casino and was televised live on HBO.
Put a boxing match on TV, any boxing match, and I'll watch it. I'll watch the Friday night fights on ESPN2, the sporadic live boxing shows om Showtime and HBO; I'll even watch reruns of fights that were held months ago. Since I've never heard of any of the fighters involved and don't know who won the fight, I'm perfectly content. I'm not sure how this passion for boxing came about. Most likely it's because my father and I used to watch televised boxing matches together. It was one of the few things we shared at that time of my life. He even took me to some live fight shows and I can remember seeing local Chicago favorites like Johnny Bratton (who briefly was a world champion) and Bob Satterfield, a light heavyweight who had a punch like a mule and a chin like rare crystal. When you went to a Satterfield fight you knew somebody was going down. That was the golden age of boxing. There were televised bouts every Wednesday night and every Friday night, one sponsored by Gillette, the other by Ballantine's beer. And the best fighters of that era were featured. Willie Pep and Sandy Saddler squared off four or five times for the featherweight championship, nasty fights all. A welterweight championship fight between Bratton and Charlie Fusari remains one of the best fights I've ever seen. There was Sugar Ray Robinson vs. Jake LaMotta several times. Robinson vs. Bobo Olson, Robinson vs.Carmen Basilio. There were Tony Zale, Marcel Cerdan, two Rockys, Graziano and Marciano (but not Balboa). Unfortunately Joe Louis was past his prime and I never saw him at his best. Back then the most recognizable voice in boxing was that of Don Dunphy, the ringside blow-by-blow announcer. Today it's Michael Buffer, whose ubiquitous, throaty "Uh, let's get ready to r-u-u-u-m -m-m-b-l-e" is more famous than most of the fighters he introduces. There were only eight world champions back in the day and I knew who they all were, with the possible exception of the flyweight champion, who was usually from some exotic place like Thailand.
Today there are at least twice as many divisions and an infinite number of sanctioning bodies and I probably couldn't name more than three or four legitimate champions. I know that the most recognized heavyweight champion and the next four highest ranked heavyweights are all from the former Soviet Union. Since two of the heavyweight title holders are brothers who refuse to fight each other I doubt there will be a unified heavyweight champion in my life time.
Monday, May 25, 2009
By Bob Markus
There were tears (mine)at the beginning and tears (Helio Castroneves's) at the end and in the middle more wrecks than you'll see at the diciest intersection in your town. I cried because I always do during the ceremonies that lead up to the Indy 500. I'm not sure why, but by the time the cars are lined up in their precise rows of three abreast, 11 rows in all, and some pseudo celebrity sings the National Anthem I can feel the mist beginning to form in the corners of my eyes. When they play taps, in memory of former race drivers who are with us no more, a few drops of moisture will find their way onto a cheek. And when Jim Nabors sings "Back Home Again In Indiana" I almost lose it altogether. Of all the events I covered in 36 years of writing sports for The Chicago Tribune, the Indianapolis 500 was by far my favorite event, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway the only place I wanted to be on, originally, Memorial Day (May 30), but laterly the last Sunday in May. When I die I'd like Mario Andretti to scatter my ashes at the Speedway. I haven't told Mario yet.
Helio Castroneves had a different reason to cry. In the course of a month he had redeemed his Get Out of Jail Free card and ended up on Park Place. He went from facing a 35-year prison sentence to winning the world's most famous race quicker then Marco Andretti could be punted off the course by a 20-year-old rookie. Helio was not the one I wanted to see drink the milk in victory circle, although I have nothing against him. He seems to be an engaging young man and there is little doubt he is a talented driver and dances a mean cha cha cha.. You don't win three times at Indianapolis without talent, even if you are driving for Roger Penske. But driving for Penske does help. The victory was Roger's 15th as a car owner and nobody else comes close to that. Penske is the most organized and success-driven man I know. He is precise and analytical in everything he does. I first met him when he was still a driver. He hasn't changed much except he's a lot richer. I have seen him flustered only once in all the years I've known him. That came in 1987 after he had hired Danny Ongais to be one of his drivers It was a monumental break for Ongais, a man with a ton of talent who was his own worst enemy. He could do anything with a race car except make it talk. Danny was almost as silent as his race car. So it came as no great surprise to me that when I went into his garage hoping for an interview, he declined. I found him sitting in a corner of the garage, eating an orange and said, "Danny, can I ask you a few questions?" "I'd rather not," he politely replied. As I left the garage I serendipitously ran into Penske and told him what had happened. "Let me talk to him," Roger said. He went into the garage and ws back out in under a minute, wearing a quizzical look on his face. "He says he doesn't want to talk," said Roger. I went ahead and wrote the Ongais story anyway and was just about to hit the button sending it to The Tribune when the claxon that signals an accident on the track went off. Looking up at the TV monitor I saw that, as I had feared, it was Ongais in the wall. He was out of the race, Al Unser took his place and won his fourth Indy 500, and I managed to save my story by simply writing a one paragraph insert that said something about his pentient for self destruction biting him again.
I fell in love with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway from the day I first drove up Georgetown road past the half mile of grandstand and entered through the back gate. The Tribune had not covered the race for several years and opposed it editorially. I finally managed to convince the sports editor, George Strickler at the time, that we were going to make it the lead story on the morning after the race so why not have one of our own reporters, namely me, write it. I knew something of the history of the Indy 500 and had done a few columns by telephone; the one with Jimmy Clark after he won in 1965 comes to mind. But I really knew very little about the sport itself. I soon found out something about the Indy 500, something that makes it special. There is an "We're all in this together" attitude at Indy that I found nowhere else in the world of sports. It was to be expected that the public relations people for the teams, the track, and the tire companies would be helpful to an awestruck newcomer. In fact, the Speedway itself offered little guidance outside of the program they gave you with the names and numbers of all the drivers. But the tire company representatives more than made up for it. On my first day at the track the late Dick Ralstin of Goodyear took me around the garage area and introduced me to all the significant players, whether they drove for Goodyear or Firestone. John Fowler of Firestone was equally helpful. What surprised me, however, was how helpful the other writers were, especially the writers for the Indianapolis papers. Guys like Dick Mittman and the late Ray Marquette (pronounced Mar-kwet) were happy to point you in the right direction. As it turned out, Ralstin was the one who saved my bacon, as Roger Penske would put it, that first year. Not knowing any better at the time, I sat in the press box and the view was spectacular and so was the racing. The press box was the place to be--as long as the race was going on. But when I tried to get to the post-race interview room, I had to fight 200,00 other people who were going in the same general direction, utilizing the one narrow tunnel that leads from the main grandstand to the infield. An hour later I reached the interview room just as race winner Bobby Unser was leaving, followed by a mob of admirers. I was in a panic until I spotted Ralstin bringing up the rear of the group. I explained my plight and he said "Don't worry; come on into our office. Bobby's doing some phone interviews and then you can talk to him." So I had a one-on-one interview with the Indy 500 winner, who would go on to win it twice more.
The really great thing about covering Indy is--or at least was--the accessibility of the drivers and their ability to deliver quotes that you could put down on paper unfiltered. There was a good deal of interplay between writers and drivers. One year, I think it was somewhere in the late '70s, Dick Mittman and I were in somebody's garage when Mario Andretti came in holding a curious looking object that appeared to be a pipe with a propeller behind it. "We're using this to test your wind power," explained Mario, who proceeded to blow into the pipe, causing the propeller to spin wildly. "Now you try it," said Mario, handing me the gadget. I took a deep breath and blew as hard as I could. Nothing. "Try it again," urged Mario. Still nothing. Presently the three of us headed for the pits and when we got there, Bobby Unser and A.J. Foyt nearly keeled over from laughing so hard. I didn't get the joke until Bobby handed me a mirror. My entire face was blackened. I looked like Al Jolson. The secret of Mario's success and my humiliation it was revealed to me was that there was a hole on the bottom of the pipe that you had to cover with a finger. Otherwise you'd be blowing black carbon back into your face.
Although I tried not to show it in my writing, I had my favorites among the drivers. Mario and Johnny Rutherford for sure. Rick Mears, Scott Brayton, Tom Sneva. Teo Fabi, certainly, after I spent a month on his pit crew. But, in reality, they all were pretty good guys, even Foyt, who could be cantankerous, but also utterly engaging. It seems a little strange now watching the race and realizing there were only two drivers--John Andretti and Paul
Tracy, who I knew. So I was rooting for them and for Marco Andretti because I knew his dad and grandfather and Danica Patrick because she's Danica. I've never met Castroneves or Dan Wheldon or Tony Kanaan or Danica for that matter. I haven't been to the Indy 500 for seven or eight years now, but it still sings to me. The song is sweet and sentimental and that's why it still has the power to bring me to tears.
There were tears (mine)at the beginning and tears (Helio Castroneves's) at the end and in the middle more wrecks than you'll see at the diciest intersection in your town. I cried because I always do during the ceremonies that lead up to the Indy 500. I'm not sure why, but by the time the cars are lined up in their precise rows of three abreast, 11 rows in all, and some pseudo celebrity sings the National Anthem I can feel the mist beginning to form in the corners of my eyes. When they play taps, in memory of former race drivers who are with us no more, a few drops of moisture will find their way onto a cheek. And when Jim Nabors sings "Back Home Again In Indiana" I almost lose it altogether. Of all the events I covered in 36 years of writing sports for The Chicago Tribune, the Indianapolis 500 was by far my favorite event, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway the only place I wanted to be on, originally, Memorial Day (May 30), but laterly the last Sunday in May. When I die I'd like Mario Andretti to scatter my ashes at the Speedway. I haven't told Mario yet.
Helio Castroneves had a different reason to cry. In the course of a month he had redeemed his Get Out of Jail Free card and ended up on Park Place. He went from facing a 35-year prison sentence to winning the world's most famous race quicker then Marco Andretti could be punted off the course by a 20-year-old rookie. Helio was not the one I wanted to see drink the milk in victory circle, although I have nothing against him. He seems to be an engaging young man and there is little doubt he is a talented driver and dances a mean cha cha cha.. You don't win three times at Indianapolis without talent, even if you are driving for Roger Penske. But driving for Penske does help. The victory was Roger's 15th as a car owner and nobody else comes close to that. Penske is the most organized and success-driven man I know. He is precise and analytical in everything he does. I first met him when he was still a driver. He hasn't changed much except he's a lot richer. I have seen him flustered only once in all the years I've known him. That came in 1987 after he had hired Danny Ongais to be one of his drivers It was a monumental break for Ongais, a man with a ton of talent who was his own worst enemy. He could do anything with a race car except make it talk. Danny was almost as silent as his race car. So it came as no great surprise to me that when I went into his garage hoping for an interview, he declined. I found him sitting in a corner of the garage, eating an orange and said, "Danny, can I ask you a few questions?" "I'd rather not," he politely replied. As I left the garage I serendipitously ran into Penske and told him what had happened. "Let me talk to him," Roger said. He went into the garage and ws back out in under a minute, wearing a quizzical look on his face. "He says he doesn't want to talk," said Roger. I went ahead and wrote the Ongais story anyway and was just about to hit the button sending it to The Tribune when the claxon that signals an accident on the track went off. Looking up at the TV monitor I saw that, as I had feared, it was Ongais in the wall. He was out of the race, Al Unser took his place and won his fourth Indy 500, and I managed to save my story by simply writing a one paragraph insert that said something about his pentient for self destruction biting him again.
I fell in love with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway from the day I first drove up Georgetown road past the half mile of grandstand and entered through the back gate. The Tribune had not covered the race for several years and opposed it editorially. I finally managed to convince the sports editor, George Strickler at the time, that we were going to make it the lead story on the morning after the race so why not have one of our own reporters, namely me, write it. I knew something of the history of the Indy 500 and had done a few columns by telephone; the one with Jimmy Clark after he won in 1965 comes to mind. But I really knew very little about the sport itself. I soon found out something about the Indy 500, something that makes it special. There is an "We're all in this together" attitude at Indy that I found nowhere else in the world of sports. It was to be expected that the public relations people for the teams, the track, and the tire companies would be helpful to an awestruck newcomer. In fact, the Speedway itself offered little guidance outside of the program they gave you with the names and numbers of all the drivers. But the tire company representatives more than made up for it. On my first day at the track the late Dick Ralstin of Goodyear took me around the garage area and introduced me to all the significant players, whether they drove for Goodyear or Firestone. John Fowler of Firestone was equally helpful. What surprised me, however, was how helpful the other writers were, especially the writers for the Indianapolis papers. Guys like Dick Mittman and the late Ray Marquette (pronounced Mar-kwet) were happy to point you in the right direction. As it turned out, Ralstin was the one who saved my bacon, as Roger Penske would put it, that first year. Not knowing any better at the time, I sat in the press box and the view was spectacular and so was the racing. The press box was the place to be--as long as the race was going on. But when I tried to get to the post-race interview room, I had to fight 200,00 other people who were going in the same general direction, utilizing the one narrow tunnel that leads from the main grandstand to the infield. An hour later I reached the interview room just as race winner Bobby Unser was leaving, followed by a mob of admirers. I was in a panic until I spotted Ralstin bringing up the rear of the group. I explained my plight and he said "Don't worry; come on into our office. Bobby's doing some phone interviews and then you can talk to him." So I had a one-on-one interview with the Indy 500 winner, who would go on to win it twice more.
The really great thing about covering Indy is--or at least was--the accessibility of the drivers and their ability to deliver quotes that you could put down on paper unfiltered. There was a good deal of interplay between writers and drivers. One year, I think it was somewhere in the late '70s, Dick Mittman and I were in somebody's garage when Mario Andretti came in holding a curious looking object that appeared to be a pipe with a propeller behind it. "We're using this to test your wind power," explained Mario, who proceeded to blow into the pipe, causing the propeller to spin wildly. "Now you try it," said Mario, handing me the gadget. I took a deep breath and blew as hard as I could. Nothing. "Try it again," urged Mario. Still nothing. Presently the three of us headed for the pits and when we got there, Bobby Unser and A.J. Foyt nearly keeled over from laughing so hard. I didn't get the joke until Bobby handed me a mirror. My entire face was blackened. I looked like Al Jolson. The secret of Mario's success and my humiliation it was revealed to me was that there was a hole on the bottom of the pipe that you had to cover with a finger. Otherwise you'd be blowing black carbon back into your face.
Although I tried not to show it in my writing, I had my favorites among the drivers. Mario and Johnny Rutherford for sure. Rick Mears, Scott Brayton, Tom Sneva. Teo Fabi, certainly, after I spent a month on his pit crew. But, in reality, they all were pretty good guys, even Foyt, who could be cantankerous, but also utterly engaging. It seems a little strange now watching the race and realizing there were only two drivers--John Andretti and Paul
Tracy, who I knew. So I was rooting for them and for Marco Andretti because I knew his dad and grandfather and Danica Patrick because she's Danica. I've never met Castroneves or Dan Wheldon or Tony Kanaan or Danica for that matter. I haven't been to the Indy 500 for seven or eight years now, but it still sings to me. The song is sweet and sentimental and that's why it still has the power to bring me to tears.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
By Bob Markus
When new acquaintances find out that I used to be a sports writer, they almost inevitably ask me one of two questions: What was your favorite sport to cover; what was the single most memorable event you covered? Those were not easy questions to answer, particularly the first one. In 36 years writing sports for The Chicago Tribune I covered every major beat and found something to like in most of them. Aside from writing a daily column, which I did for 11 years, the most fun I had was in being the national college football and basketball writer. Not only did I get to cover some of the most famous games in college sports history--Villanova's upset of Georgetown in the 1985 NCAA tournament final, Texas' victory over Arkansas in the 1969 shootout in the hills, Nebraska's 35-31 win over Oklahoma in one of the many "games of the century"--but I got to see an estimated 100 college campuses, from the University of Washington in the far Northwest to the University of Miami, which is nearly as far Southeast as you can get. One of the best parts of the job was walking--and sometimes running--through the various college campuses on a Saturday morning. On a run through the LSU campus one morning I was brought up short when I came face to face with the live tiger mascot. At Mississippi there was The Grove, the most sophisticated tailgate setting in the country, where the girls wear designer dresses and the men jackets and ties and watch the football team parade by on the way to the stadium. My vote for most beautiful college campus--Pepperdine, which sits high atop a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Malibu. So I could have answered: college football and basketball--but I didn't.
Covering baseball fulltime was another beat I found enjoyable--perhaps "satisfying" would be a better word. The baseball beat is hard! It's seven days a week from the middle of February when the pitchers and catchers--and baseball beat writers--report to spring training until the end of October when the World Series ends. Even when the players have all gone home there is work to do for the beat writer, winter meetings to attend, possible trades to be discussed and, generally, in January, a goodwill tour to the hinterlands with the manager and some of the key players. But the beat has its compensations. Although there is a lot of travelling, there is not the frenetic Cleveland today Denver tomorrow ratrace of the NBA. In most cases you stay two to four days in a given town, long enough to send your laundry out and get it back. You're staying at the team hotel, which is usually a four star or better and if you manage your meal money well, you can indulge in the occasional gourmet dinner. Although some people find baseball dull, I agree with the minor league executive who once told me, "the thing I love about baseball is there's an orgasm in every ball game." Think about it. In even the most mundane of games there usually comes a point when a single at bat can change the complexion. The slow pace of the game, while perhaps irritating to some, gives the baseball writer time to plan his story well before the final out and the slow unwinding of the season lets him settle into a rhythm that no other sport permits. But baseball was not my favorite sport, either. In fact, the two sports that I loved covering the most were not fulltime beats.
They are boxing and auto racing. I loved them both for the same reason. The people. I never met an inarticulate boxer or race car driver. Both sports operate under an almost palpable canopy of dread, the danger inherent in each always lurking somewhere beneath the surface, never spoken of, but also never entirely out of mind. A race driver will answer your question if you speak of the life and death aspects of his profession, but he will not dwell on it, nor will he bring up the subject himself. Race drivers are the most honest athletes of all. They never fail to run out the grounders. A driver can be hopelessly out of a race, but he will never stop trying to get his car around the next corner as quickly as possible. Boxers share this trait. The distinction between the two sports is that the race driver knows in the back of his mind he could be hurt, while the boxer knows for an absolute certainty that he is going to get hurt at least to some extent.
Now that you know the answer to question No. 1, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out my answer to question No. 2. Whenever asked about my most memorable event I always come up with a three-part answer. In no particular order they are: The first Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden; The 1972 Munich Olympics; The 1988 Indianapolis 500 when I spent the whole month of May working on Teo Fabi's pit crew and filing a daily story about it. Since this year's Indy 500 is just around the corner I'll focus in on that one. It started with a phone call from Michael Knight, the public relations man--one of the alltime best--for the new Quaker State Porsche team that was bringing the iconic German sports car back to Indianapolis. Knight told me that as part of their p.r. effort they were going to let one writer work in the pits on every race day. He asked me if I'd like to do it for the Indianapolis 500 and I answered, "does it have to be just on race day? Could I do it for the whole month?" He, of course, was delighted at the prospect of having a daily mention of his team in the midwest's largest paper. My sports editor, Gene Quinn, was not quite so sanguine about it. "You can do it on two conditions," he said. "No. 1 you won't do anything to get yourself hurt and No.2 you won't do anything that makes the Tribune responsible for affecting the outcome of the race." I crossed my fingers behind my back and agreed. There's no way I could guarantee either of those demands. Danger is inherent to the sport. I had been in the pits when Wally Dallenbach's car burst into flames not six feet in front of me. In 1973 I had been running from my seat in the stands behind the pits toward the fourth turn where Swede Savage had just crashed--fatally, as it would turn out, when I heard a loud "thump" which I later found out was the sound of a crew member being fatally struck by a fire truck racing the wrong way up pit road. I didn't expect anything like that to happen to me, but I couldn't guarantee it.
My main job during the week before qualifying was to time driver Teo Fabi's speed on the front straightaway. My first radar gun was flawed and so the first day's effort was wasted. As the week went along it was obvious that the new Porsche--actually a March chassis with a Porsche engine--was underpowered and was in danger of failing to make the race. On the eve of the first Saturday of qualifying--pole day--there was an emergency meeting in our garage and one of our consultants mentioned that there was a way to cheat the popoff valve and gain a little extra speed. Did team general manager Al Holbert want to try it? This presented me with a serious dilemma. On one hand I was a newspaperman who had promised to tell all. On the other hand I was a member of the racing team. I solved the problem by walking out of the garage. Knowing the late Al Holbert, I doubt that there was any cheating the next day when Fabi qualified the car, albeit at a speed slow enough that we all were on pins and needles until the final second of qualifying on the following
Sunday. It meant just as much to me as it did for anybody else because if Teo didn't make the race, there went my story. Race day was the most exciting of my life. When I stood behind our car at the starting line during the prerace ceremonies, for the first time in my life I was overcome with emotion at the playing of the National Anthem. Then, after the firing up of our engine, I joined the rest of the crew in the mad dash back to our pits, probably a quarter of a mile sprint.
I had two jobs for race day. One was to hold the stop sign and lower it in front of Fabi to mark his stopping point whenever he entered the pits. The second was to man the water hose and squirt water on the fuel cell after each refueling. This was to prevent any chance of a fuel spill from igniting. I was nervous about this job, because the fuel cell was located behind the driver and with the open cockpit it was possible I could hit Fabi in the face. Teo would not have liked that. I had had no chance to practice, so the first pit stop was a source of great anxiety. Teo came in a little hot, but stopped in time. When the fueler pulled the hose from the cell I managed to wash it down with no problem; then Teo sped on his way. Seconds later I heard a roar and everyone in our pits was looking down pit road. A wheel had come off our car and Teo had crashed in the pits. I put on my writer's hat and ran down to join in the interview with Fabi, then went back to the car and helped push it all the way down pit road and into our garage in Gasoline Alley. My career as a pit crew member was over, but I'll never forget it. And Sunday, when 33 cars come thundering into turn one of the world's most famous speedway, I'll have a pretty good idea of the emotions beating in each competitor's chest, from the drivers to the lowliest crew men. Bless them all.
When new acquaintances find out that I used to be a sports writer, they almost inevitably ask me one of two questions: What was your favorite sport to cover; what was the single most memorable event you covered? Those were not easy questions to answer, particularly the first one. In 36 years writing sports for The Chicago Tribune I covered every major beat and found something to like in most of them. Aside from writing a daily column, which I did for 11 years, the most fun I had was in being the national college football and basketball writer. Not only did I get to cover some of the most famous games in college sports history--Villanova's upset of Georgetown in the 1985 NCAA tournament final, Texas' victory over Arkansas in the 1969 shootout in the hills, Nebraska's 35-31 win over Oklahoma in one of the many "games of the century"--but I got to see an estimated 100 college campuses, from the University of Washington in the far Northwest to the University of Miami, which is nearly as far Southeast as you can get. One of the best parts of the job was walking--and sometimes running--through the various college campuses on a Saturday morning. On a run through the LSU campus one morning I was brought up short when I came face to face with the live tiger mascot. At Mississippi there was The Grove, the most sophisticated tailgate setting in the country, where the girls wear designer dresses and the men jackets and ties and watch the football team parade by on the way to the stadium. My vote for most beautiful college campus--Pepperdine, which sits high atop a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Malibu. So I could have answered: college football and basketball--but I didn't.
Covering baseball fulltime was another beat I found enjoyable--perhaps "satisfying" would be a better word. The baseball beat is hard! It's seven days a week from the middle of February when the pitchers and catchers--and baseball beat writers--report to spring training until the end of October when the World Series ends. Even when the players have all gone home there is work to do for the beat writer, winter meetings to attend, possible trades to be discussed and, generally, in January, a goodwill tour to the hinterlands with the manager and some of the key players. But the beat has its compensations. Although there is a lot of travelling, there is not the frenetic Cleveland today Denver tomorrow ratrace of the NBA. In most cases you stay two to four days in a given town, long enough to send your laundry out and get it back. You're staying at the team hotel, which is usually a four star or better and if you manage your meal money well, you can indulge in the occasional gourmet dinner. Although some people find baseball dull, I agree with the minor league executive who once told me, "the thing I love about baseball is there's an orgasm in every ball game." Think about it. In even the most mundane of games there usually comes a point when a single at bat can change the complexion. The slow pace of the game, while perhaps irritating to some, gives the baseball writer time to plan his story well before the final out and the slow unwinding of the season lets him settle into a rhythm that no other sport permits. But baseball was not my favorite sport, either. In fact, the two sports that I loved covering the most were not fulltime beats.
They are boxing and auto racing. I loved them both for the same reason. The people. I never met an inarticulate boxer or race car driver. Both sports operate under an almost palpable canopy of dread, the danger inherent in each always lurking somewhere beneath the surface, never spoken of, but also never entirely out of mind. A race driver will answer your question if you speak of the life and death aspects of his profession, but he will not dwell on it, nor will he bring up the subject himself. Race drivers are the most honest athletes of all. They never fail to run out the grounders. A driver can be hopelessly out of a race, but he will never stop trying to get his car around the next corner as quickly as possible. Boxers share this trait. The distinction between the two sports is that the race driver knows in the back of his mind he could be hurt, while the boxer knows for an absolute certainty that he is going to get hurt at least to some extent.
Now that you know the answer to question No. 1, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out my answer to question No. 2. Whenever asked about my most memorable event I always come up with a three-part answer. In no particular order they are: The first Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden; The 1972 Munich Olympics; The 1988 Indianapolis 500 when I spent the whole month of May working on Teo Fabi's pit crew and filing a daily story about it. Since this year's Indy 500 is just around the corner I'll focus in on that one. It started with a phone call from Michael Knight, the public relations man--one of the alltime best--for the new Quaker State Porsche team that was bringing the iconic German sports car back to Indianapolis. Knight told me that as part of their p.r. effort they were going to let one writer work in the pits on every race day. He asked me if I'd like to do it for the Indianapolis 500 and I answered, "does it have to be just on race day? Could I do it for the whole month?" He, of course, was delighted at the prospect of having a daily mention of his team in the midwest's largest paper. My sports editor, Gene Quinn, was not quite so sanguine about it. "You can do it on two conditions," he said. "No. 1 you won't do anything to get yourself hurt and No.2 you won't do anything that makes the Tribune responsible for affecting the outcome of the race." I crossed my fingers behind my back and agreed. There's no way I could guarantee either of those demands. Danger is inherent to the sport. I had been in the pits when Wally Dallenbach's car burst into flames not six feet in front of me. In 1973 I had been running from my seat in the stands behind the pits toward the fourth turn where Swede Savage had just crashed--fatally, as it would turn out, when I heard a loud "thump" which I later found out was the sound of a crew member being fatally struck by a fire truck racing the wrong way up pit road. I didn't expect anything like that to happen to me, but I couldn't guarantee it.
My main job during the week before qualifying was to time driver Teo Fabi's speed on the front straightaway. My first radar gun was flawed and so the first day's effort was wasted. As the week went along it was obvious that the new Porsche--actually a March chassis with a Porsche engine--was underpowered and was in danger of failing to make the race. On the eve of the first Saturday of qualifying--pole day--there was an emergency meeting in our garage and one of our consultants mentioned that there was a way to cheat the popoff valve and gain a little extra speed. Did team general manager Al Holbert want to try it? This presented me with a serious dilemma. On one hand I was a newspaperman who had promised to tell all. On the other hand I was a member of the racing team. I solved the problem by walking out of the garage. Knowing the late Al Holbert, I doubt that there was any cheating the next day when Fabi qualified the car, albeit at a speed slow enough that we all were on pins and needles until the final second of qualifying on the following
Sunday. It meant just as much to me as it did for anybody else because if Teo didn't make the race, there went my story. Race day was the most exciting of my life. When I stood behind our car at the starting line during the prerace ceremonies, for the first time in my life I was overcome with emotion at the playing of the National Anthem. Then, after the firing up of our engine, I joined the rest of the crew in the mad dash back to our pits, probably a quarter of a mile sprint.
I had two jobs for race day. One was to hold the stop sign and lower it in front of Fabi to mark his stopping point whenever he entered the pits. The second was to man the water hose and squirt water on the fuel cell after each refueling. This was to prevent any chance of a fuel spill from igniting. I was nervous about this job, because the fuel cell was located behind the driver and with the open cockpit it was possible I could hit Fabi in the face. Teo would not have liked that. I had had no chance to practice, so the first pit stop was a source of great anxiety. Teo came in a little hot, but stopped in time. When the fueler pulled the hose from the cell I managed to wash it down with no problem; then Teo sped on his way. Seconds later I heard a roar and everyone in our pits was looking down pit road. A wheel had come off our car and Teo had crashed in the pits. I put on my writer's hat and ran down to join in the interview with Fabi, then went back to the car and helped push it all the way down pit road and into our garage in Gasoline Alley. My career as a pit crew member was over, but I'll never forget it. And Sunday, when 33 cars come thundering into turn one of the world's most famous speedway, I'll have a pretty good idea of the emotions beating in each competitor's chest, from the drivers to the lowliest crew men. Bless them all.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
By Bob Markus
Like trying to decide whether to select the Porterhouse steak or the grilled veal chop for the main course--or perhaps even the char-grilled salmon--this week's sports news has provided me with an embarrassment of riches. Unlike some weeks, when I struggle to come up with a timely subject, there is no end to the possibilities.
I could, for instance, comment on the Players' championship in golf, an event which was notable not only for Henrik Stenson's superb final round on a course with greens so sun-slicked they might have been mistaken for a series of giant greased griddles, but for Tiger Woods' stunning failure to mount even the slightest challenge. Even though he entered the final round five shots behind leader Alex Cjeka, those of us who have followed Tiger's career figured the world's No.1 ranked player had Cjeka right where he wanted him--as playing partner in the final group on Sunday. Had any of us known that Cjeka, whose driving had been metronomically near perfect for three days, was going to start hitting the ball to places few humans had ever visited before and wind up shooting a 79, we'd have conceded the trophy to Woods and started channel surfing for something a little less mundane. At the very least we expected Woods to come down to the final hole with a chance to win. But it became clear from the outset that this was not Tiger's day. Or Tiger's week. Or Tiger's venue. He couldn't drive the ball in the fairway. He couldn't snuggle his iron shots close enough to the diabolically placed pins. He couldn't putt. But he still finished eighth. Think of that. This man is so good that even when he plays poorly he's a miracle shot or two away from winning. There are 150 or so players who start out each week hoping to conquer a given golf course. And every week, whether he plays well or poorly, Tiger Woods is among the top 10. I don't have the data to prove it, but I suspect no golfer ever has played to that level of consistency.
Another angle I might pursue is the revelation that Los Angeles Dodgers super star Manny Ramirez has been suspended for 50 games for failing a drug test. Ramirez reportedly took a female fertility drug and since it is unlikely that the carefree slugger is trying to get pregnant, big league officials could only conclude that he took the banned substance because it is a masking agent for steroids. It no longer surprises me when a baseball player is pinched for a drug indiscretion. Not when megastars like Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Alex Rodriguez have been accused of, and in A-Rod's case confessed to, using performance enhancing drugs. I'm not completely convinced that taking steroids enhances performance all that much. For a body builder or weight lifter, yes. But no matter how juiced up a slugger is, he still has to make hard contact with a little white ball thrown by some hulking hurler who might himself be on steroids for all we know. Drugs of some sort have been around baseball almost since its infancy. I've been told, although I've never seen it, that many clubhouses had jars of "greenies" or "uppers" lying around for players to dip into. Considering the length of the season and the constant daily grind of a baseball campaign, it would be surprising if players did not look for something to get them through the dog days. What about so-called energy drinks? Should they be banned, too? Just asking.
A third intriguing story is that Kentucky Derby winning jockey Calvin Borel is giving up his ride on Mine That Bird, forfeiting an admitedly slim chance to ride a Triple Crown winner. Once it was announced that Rachel Alexandra, the filly who romped home 20 lengths ahead of the field in the Kentucky Oaks, was going to challenge the big boys in the Preakness, it would have been surprising if Borel had not decided to switch. Borel had been aboard the filly for the rocket ride in the Oaks the day before his masterly ride on Mine That Bird in the Derby and, asked which of the two horses was the better, unhesitatingly had named Rachel Alexandra. Although it was not 100 per cent guaranteed that the filly would be in the Preakness, she was the early line favorite. Fillies have won Triple Crown races before and as recently as two years ago Rags to Riches won the Preakness. The shortest of the Triple Crown events, the Preakness is probably the least likely venue to produce a calamity, although try telling that to the owners of Barbaro, who broke down at the outset of that 2007 race. Still, there is always an injury concern when a filly challenges male horses. Only last year, Eight Belles had to be destroyed after finishing second in the Kentucky Derby, but going down with two broken front ankles. But the one race that still is the elephant in the living room when it comes to boy-girl horse racing, is the fateful match race between Ruffian and Foolish Pleasure in 1975. Ruffian was the Wonder Woman of horses, undefeated and winner of the Filly Triple Crown. As beloved as any race horse before or since, Ruffian was giving a good account of herself until reaching the mile pole at Belmont Park, where she broke her leg, but attempted to keep running. Emergency surgery was performed in an attempt to save her, but in the end she had to be euthanized.
But I'm not going to write any of those stories this week. Instead I'm going to concentrate on an event that has personal meaning for me. My last fulltime beat as a sports writer for The Chicago Tribune was the Blackhawks. I had been a Hawks' fan since the late forties, a time when there was so little interest in hockey in Chicago that a 13-year-old boy could go the The Stadium by himself on a game night and, when asked if he was by himself, be given a seat in the front row of the balcony, squarely on the red line. By the time I started writing for The Tribune, things had changed. Tommy Ivan had been brought in from the Detroit Red Wings to put together the team that, in 1961, would win the Stanley Cup, ironically over Ivan's former team. Although they have not won the Cup since then, by the time I started writing a column for The Tribune, the Blackhawks were the hottest thing in town, filling the Stadium nightly with their charismatic stars like Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, and goalie Glenn Hall. I got to know Hull and Mikita fairly well. Hull in particular was a dream to cover, always willing to spend time with a writer, often to the dismay of his teammates who were waiting on the bus for the Golden Jet to join them. In the old Stadium the press box was behind one goal at mezzanine level and one night Mikita rocketed a slap shot that skipped off a stick and flew into the press box, where I reflexively tried to catch it. Afterwards in the dressing room, Stan looked at me and said, "are you crazy?" It had never occurred to me that he would follow the puck all the way to its final resting place. After I was replaced as a columnist in the winter of 1978, I lost touch with hockey until one day about 15 years later I got a call at home from our sports editor, who told me to get out to The Stadium because the beat writer had some domestic problem and would not be back for awhile. And, by the way, give us a feature story for Sunday on Wayne Gretzky. So I covered the Blackhawks for the final month of that season and found out I liked it. Hockey players seemed to be more accessible and more congenial than the other athletes I had been dealing with. Besides, at the time, I was at the mercy of an assistant sports editor who kept giving me assignments that made me want to throw up. One I recall was about the Korean-American Olympics, a story that required me to head for the Korean-American enclave on Chicago's North side and throw myself on the mercy of the event's p.r. man. I asked him to get me an interview with any athlete who spoke English. He gave me a bowler who was almost inarticulate. That is the only time in my career that I just mailed it in. Didn't give a damn. So, when the hockey beat opened up I asked for it and got it. It was a good decision. The Hawks were coached at the time by Daryl Sutter, a good guy if a little sardonic. Their best players were Jeremy Roenick, Chris Chelios,and Tony Amonte, all fairly easy to get along with. Roenick, in particular, was a "go to" guy and remains so to this day. Only goalie Ed Belfour gave me any problems and that was only sporadically. Once he stopped speaking to me for weeks after I wrote a story insinuating that he and backup goalie Jeff Hackett were near-equals. Then, out of the blue, he called me at home and asked if I needed anything from him. The Blackhawks got all the way to the conference finals that year, but lost to the Red Wings in a tough series. After one more season I left The Tribune and forgot about the Blackhawks along with most of their fandom. A building which used to be alive with 20,000 screaming fans, became almost tomblike when the fans deserted them. They had not even been in the playoffs since 2002. Then last night (Monday) I realized that the Hawks were playing in the Western Conference semi-finals and had a chance to wrap up the series on home ice. I knew none of the players, but I got wrapped up in the game. The Hawks were leading 2-1 when I tuned in in the second period. Then another Chicago goal made it 3-1 and I thought it was going to be a lock. But two quick goals by Vancouver tied the game and the Canucks went ahead twice in the third period before the Blackhawks, led by their young guns, Patrick Kane and Jonathon Toews, scored three quick goals to wrap up a 7-5 victory and advance to the conference final, where they expect to play their longtime antagonists, the Red Wings. I'll know at least one of the players in that series since Chelios, who was a graybeard when I was covering more than a dozen years ago, is still performing for Detroit. I like Chelly and wish him the best, but my heart will be with the Blackhawks this time.
Like trying to decide whether to select the Porterhouse steak or the grilled veal chop for the main course--or perhaps even the char-grilled salmon--this week's sports news has provided me with an embarrassment of riches. Unlike some weeks, when I struggle to come up with a timely subject, there is no end to the possibilities.
I could, for instance, comment on the Players' championship in golf, an event which was notable not only for Henrik Stenson's superb final round on a course with greens so sun-slicked they might have been mistaken for a series of giant greased griddles, but for Tiger Woods' stunning failure to mount even the slightest challenge. Even though he entered the final round five shots behind leader Alex Cjeka, those of us who have followed Tiger's career figured the world's No.1 ranked player had Cjeka right where he wanted him--as playing partner in the final group on Sunday. Had any of us known that Cjeka, whose driving had been metronomically near perfect for three days, was going to start hitting the ball to places few humans had ever visited before and wind up shooting a 79, we'd have conceded the trophy to Woods and started channel surfing for something a little less mundane. At the very least we expected Woods to come down to the final hole with a chance to win. But it became clear from the outset that this was not Tiger's day. Or Tiger's week. Or Tiger's venue. He couldn't drive the ball in the fairway. He couldn't snuggle his iron shots close enough to the diabolically placed pins. He couldn't putt. But he still finished eighth. Think of that. This man is so good that even when he plays poorly he's a miracle shot or two away from winning. There are 150 or so players who start out each week hoping to conquer a given golf course. And every week, whether he plays well or poorly, Tiger Woods is among the top 10. I don't have the data to prove it, but I suspect no golfer ever has played to that level of consistency.
Another angle I might pursue is the revelation that Los Angeles Dodgers super star Manny Ramirez has been suspended for 50 games for failing a drug test. Ramirez reportedly took a female fertility drug and since it is unlikely that the carefree slugger is trying to get pregnant, big league officials could only conclude that he took the banned substance because it is a masking agent for steroids. It no longer surprises me when a baseball player is pinched for a drug indiscretion. Not when megastars like Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Alex Rodriguez have been accused of, and in A-Rod's case confessed to, using performance enhancing drugs. I'm not completely convinced that taking steroids enhances performance all that much. For a body builder or weight lifter, yes. But no matter how juiced up a slugger is, he still has to make hard contact with a little white ball thrown by some hulking hurler who might himself be on steroids for all we know. Drugs of some sort have been around baseball almost since its infancy. I've been told, although I've never seen it, that many clubhouses had jars of "greenies" or "uppers" lying around for players to dip into. Considering the length of the season and the constant daily grind of a baseball campaign, it would be surprising if players did not look for something to get them through the dog days. What about so-called energy drinks? Should they be banned, too? Just asking.
A third intriguing story is that Kentucky Derby winning jockey Calvin Borel is giving up his ride on Mine That Bird, forfeiting an admitedly slim chance to ride a Triple Crown winner. Once it was announced that Rachel Alexandra, the filly who romped home 20 lengths ahead of the field in the Kentucky Oaks, was going to challenge the big boys in the Preakness, it would have been surprising if Borel had not decided to switch. Borel had been aboard the filly for the rocket ride in the Oaks the day before his masterly ride on Mine That Bird in the Derby and, asked which of the two horses was the better, unhesitatingly had named Rachel Alexandra. Although it was not 100 per cent guaranteed that the filly would be in the Preakness, she was the early line favorite. Fillies have won Triple Crown races before and as recently as two years ago Rags to Riches won the Preakness. The shortest of the Triple Crown events, the Preakness is probably the least likely venue to produce a calamity, although try telling that to the owners of Barbaro, who broke down at the outset of that 2007 race. Still, there is always an injury concern when a filly challenges male horses. Only last year, Eight Belles had to be destroyed after finishing second in the Kentucky Derby, but going down with two broken front ankles. But the one race that still is the elephant in the living room when it comes to boy-girl horse racing, is the fateful match race between Ruffian and Foolish Pleasure in 1975. Ruffian was the Wonder Woman of horses, undefeated and winner of the Filly Triple Crown. As beloved as any race horse before or since, Ruffian was giving a good account of herself until reaching the mile pole at Belmont Park, where she broke her leg, but attempted to keep running. Emergency surgery was performed in an attempt to save her, but in the end she had to be euthanized.
But I'm not going to write any of those stories this week. Instead I'm going to concentrate on an event that has personal meaning for me. My last fulltime beat as a sports writer for The Chicago Tribune was the Blackhawks. I had been a Hawks' fan since the late forties, a time when there was so little interest in hockey in Chicago that a 13-year-old boy could go the The Stadium by himself on a game night and, when asked if he was by himself, be given a seat in the front row of the balcony, squarely on the red line. By the time I started writing for The Tribune, things had changed. Tommy Ivan had been brought in from the Detroit Red Wings to put together the team that, in 1961, would win the Stanley Cup, ironically over Ivan's former team. Although they have not won the Cup since then, by the time I started writing a column for The Tribune, the Blackhawks were the hottest thing in town, filling the Stadium nightly with their charismatic stars like Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, and goalie Glenn Hall. I got to know Hull and Mikita fairly well. Hull in particular was a dream to cover, always willing to spend time with a writer, often to the dismay of his teammates who were waiting on the bus for the Golden Jet to join them. In the old Stadium the press box was behind one goal at mezzanine level and one night Mikita rocketed a slap shot that skipped off a stick and flew into the press box, where I reflexively tried to catch it. Afterwards in the dressing room, Stan looked at me and said, "are you crazy?" It had never occurred to me that he would follow the puck all the way to its final resting place. After I was replaced as a columnist in the winter of 1978, I lost touch with hockey until one day about 15 years later I got a call at home from our sports editor, who told me to get out to The Stadium because the beat writer had some domestic problem and would not be back for awhile. And, by the way, give us a feature story for Sunday on Wayne Gretzky. So I covered the Blackhawks for the final month of that season and found out I liked it. Hockey players seemed to be more accessible and more congenial than the other athletes I had been dealing with. Besides, at the time, I was at the mercy of an assistant sports editor who kept giving me assignments that made me want to throw up. One I recall was about the Korean-American Olympics, a story that required me to head for the Korean-American enclave on Chicago's North side and throw myself on the mercy of the event's p.r. man. I asked him to get me an interview with any athlete who spoke English. He gave me a bowler who was almost inarticulate. That is the only time in my career that I just mailed it in. Didn't give a damn. So, when the hockey beat opened up I asked for it and got it. It was a good decision. The Hawks were coached at the time by Daryl Sutter, a good guy if a little sardonic. Their best players were Jeremy Roenick, Chris Chelios,and Tony Amonte, all fairly easy to get along with. Roenick, in particular, was a "go to" guy and remains so to this day. Only goalie Ed Belfour gave me any problems and that was only sporadically. Once he stopped speaking to me for weeks after I wrote a story insinuating that he and backup goalie Jeff Hackett were near-equals. Then, out of the blue, he called me at home and asked if I needed anything from him. The Blackhawks got all the way to the conference finals that year, but lost to the Red Wings in a tough series. After one more season I left The Tribune and forgot about the Blackhawks along with most of their fandom. A building which used to be alive with 20,000 screaming fans, became almost tomblike when the fans deserted them. They had not even been in the playoffs since 2002. Then last night (Monday) I realized that the Hawks were playing in the Western Conference semi-finals and had a chance to wrap up the series on home ice. I knew none of the players, but I got wrapped up in the game. The Hawks were leading 2-1 when I tuned in in the second period. Then another Chicago goal made it 3-1 and I thought it was going to be a lock. But two quick goals by Vancouver tied the game and the Canucks went ahead twice in the third period before the Blackhawks, led by their young guns, Patrick Kane and Jonathon Toews, scored three quick goals to wrap up a 7-5 victory and advance to the conference final, where they expect to play their longtime antagonists, the Red Wings. I'll know at least one of the players in that series since Chelios, who was a graybeard when I was covering more than a dozen years ago, is still performing for Detroit. I like Chelly and wish him the best, but my heart will be with the Blackhawks this time.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
By Bob Markus
What's in a name? That is the question. Having, quite neatly I think, tied together two Shakesperian soliloquys by two different characters from two different plays, I have to admit I don't know the answer. I've spent the last three days wondering what in the world his owners were thinking of when they named the 2009 Kentucky Derby winner "Mine That Bird." Surely, had they known their horse was going to become world famous one day, they'd have named it something a little more fathomable. But who knew? Certainly if you or I had any inkling that Mine That Bird was going to win the Kentucky Derby we'd have at the very least put a couple of bucks on his nose.
Most race horses' names are pretty easy to figure out. You just look at the names of the sire and the dam and find a combination that makes sense. War Admiral was the son of Man 'O War, for instance. Granted that naming a foal of Birdstone-Mining My Own is a bit of a challenge, surely they could have come up with something that makes sense. Something like Birdsong. Or Stone Mountain. Or Etched in Stone. Or Bye Bye Birdie. Or even Charlie Parker. (You jazz fans will get that one, I'm sure)
But Mine That Bird? What could it possibly mean? The only thing that springs to mind is that it is a command to send a canary into a coal mine in order to detect any toxic particles in the air. When the canary stops singing, the miners had better be looking for the fastest way out.
Mine That Bird's jockey, Calvin Borel, certainly was looking for the fastest way out when he found himself trailing the entire 19-horse field at the head of the stretch. He found it where he usually does, on the rail, and he produced one of the most astonishing finishing kicks in the history of horse racing. I'm not a racing expert. During my 36 years writing sports for the Chicago Tribune I probably covered a dozen or fewer horse races. A couple of Kentucky Derbies, one Preakness, a few Florida spring races and a handful of major stakes at Arlington Park. But it doesn't take an expert to know that what we saw Saturday was something extraordinary.
I watched the race with some friends who live downstairs from us in a condominium apartment. The scratching of I Want Revenge, the prerace favorite, had made an already cloudy picture almost unreadable, not to mention that it screwed up a lot of Derby pools. So there we were watching some horse with no name leading from the start to the head of the stretch when out of the corner of my eye I saw a blur streaking through an opening no larger than a broom closet door and passing horses left and left. It was as if Jeeves the Butler had opened the door and held it ajar for a visitor. I knew immediately that the race was over and tried to yell, "look at that horse on the rail," but by that time everyone in the room knew the horse was going to win. What none of us knew was the name of the horse.
Ebullient jockey Calvin Borel, who had won two years earlier in almost identical fashion with Street Sense, said what must have been obvious to anyone who watched the second biggest upset in Kentucky Derby history. "At the end, mine was the only horse still running," he said. Mine That Bird is a small horse as race horses go and that, explained Corel, was why he was able to glide through such a narrow opening. "He's such a small horse," Corel added, "that he just skipped along the track where I thought some of the other horses were digging into it."
The unexpected victory by the little horse that could sent racing writers, who had completely ignored Mine That Bird in the week preceding the race, scrambling for information and what they found made a pretty good yarn. The horse had been purchased for $9,500 at a yearling sale. His only two races as a 3-year-old had been run in New Mexico and he hadn't won either of them. His trainer, Benny "Chip" Woolley, had driven the gelding in a pickup truck all the way from New Mexico to Louisville, a 21-hour journey. Woolley looked as if he'd inherited his wardrobe from Johnny Cash and, after answering a few questions for a TV interviewer, stomped off the way that other Man in Black, Dale Earnhardt, once did when I asked him a question he thought was stupid.
It all made for a good story, but it was not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. True, the horse was sold as a yerling for $9,500, but the man who bought him won four races and more than $300,000 racing him in Canada, where he was proclaimed 2-year-old champion. That owner then sold him for $400,000 to two men from Roswell, N. M. The new owners entered him in the Breeder's Cup Juvenile, where he rewarded them by finishing 12th in a 12-horse field. Then came the two losses at Sunland Park, N.M. So, obviously, there was nothing to do but enter him in the most famous race in the world. It will be interesting to see what the betting odds will be at The Preakness, where the Kentucky Derby winner usually is among the favorites
and often is regarded as a potential Triple Crown winner. Mine That Bird a Triple Crown winner? Not likely. The name doesn't resonate like Whirlaway or Citation. Yet Mine That Bird's 6 3/4 length was the largest margin in the Kentucky Derby since Assault in 1946. Assault later became the seventh Triple Crown winner. So go ahead. Take a chance. Put a few bucks on the Derby winner to capture the Preakness and Belmont, too. Maybe that's the way to mine that Bird.
What's in a name? That is the question. Having, quite neatly I think, tied together two Shakesperian soliloquys by two different characters from two different plays, I have to admit I don't know the answer. I've spent the last three days wondering what in the world his owners were thinking of when they named the 2009 Kentucky Derby winner "Mine That Bird." Surely, had they known their horse was going to become world famous one day, they'd have named it something a little more fathomable. But who knew? Certainly if you or I had any inkling that Mine That Bird was going to win the Kentucky Derby we'd have at the very least put a couple of bucks on his nose.
Most race horses' names are pretty easy to figure out. You just look at the names of the sire and the dam and find a combination that makes sense. War Admiral was the son of Man 'O War, for instance. Granted that naming a foal of Birdstone-Mining My Own is a bit of a challenge, surely they could have come up with something that makes sense. Something like Birdsong. Or Stone Mountain. Or Etched in Stone. Or Bye Bye Birdie. Or even Charlie Parker. (You jazz fans will get that one, I'm sure)
But Mine That Bird? What could it possibly mean? The only thing that springs to mind is that it is a command to send a canary into a coal mine in order to detect any toxic particles in the air. When the canary stops singing, the miners had better be looking for the fastest way out.
Mine That Bird's jockey, Calvin Borel, certainly was looking for the fastest way out when he found himself trailing the entire 19-horse field at the head of the stretch. He found it where he usually does, on the rail, and he produced one of the most astonishing finishing kicks in the history of horse racing. I'm not a racing expert. During my 36 years writing sports for the Chicago Tribune I probably covered a dozen or fewer horse races. A couple of Kentucky Derbies, one Preakness, a few Florida spring races and a handful of major stakes at Arlington Park. But it doesn't take an expert to know that what we saw Saturday was something extraordinary.
I watched the race with some friends who live downstairs from us in a condominium apartment. The scratching of I Want Revenge, the prerace favorite, had made an already cloudy picture almost unreadable, not to mention that it screwed up a lot of Derby pools. So there we were watching some horse with no name leading from the start to the head of the stretch when out of the corner of my eye I saw a blur streaking through an opening no larger than a broom closet door and passing horses left and left. It was as if Jeeves the Butler had opened the door and held it ajar for a visitor. I knew immediately that the race was over and tried to yell, "look at that horse on the rail," but by that time everyone in the room knew the horse was going to win. What none of us knew was the name of the horse.
Ebullient jockey Calvin Borel, who had won two years earlier in almost identical fashion with Street Sense, said what must have been obvious to anyone who watched the second biggest upset in Kentucky Derby history. "At the end, mine was the only horse still running," he said. Mine That Bird is a small horse as race horses go and that, explained Corel, was why he was able to glide through such a narrow opening. "He's such a small horse," Corel added, "that he just skipped along the track where I thought some of the other horses were digging into it."
The unexpected victory by the little horse that could sent racing writers, who had completely ignored Mine That Bird in the week preceding the race, scrambling for information and what they found made a pretty good yarn. The horse had been purchased for $9,500 at a yearling sale. His only two races as a 3-year-old had been run in New Mexico and he hadn't won either of them. His trainer, Benny "Chip" Woolley, had driven the gelding in a pickup truck all the way from New Mexico to Louisville, a 21-hour journey. Woolley looked as if he'd inherited his wardrobe from Johnny Cash and, after answering a few questions for a TV interviewer, stomped off the way that other Man in Black, Dale Earnhardt, once did when I asked him a question he thought was stupid.
It all made for a good story, but it was not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. True, the horse was sold as a yerling for $9,500, but the man who bought him won four races and more than $300,000 racing him in Canada, where he was proclaimed 2-year-old champion. That owner then sold him for $400,000 to two men from Roswell, N. M. The new owners entered him in the Breeder's Cup Juvenile, where he rewarded them by finishing 12th in a 12-horse field. Then came the two losses at Sunland Park, N.M. So, obviously, there was nothing to do but enter him in the most famous race in the world. It will be interesting to see what the betting odds will be at The Preakness, where the Kentucky Derby winner usually is among the favorites
and often is regarded as a potential Triple Crown winner. Mine That Bird a Triple Crown winner? Not likely. The name doesn't resonate like Whirlaway or Citation. Yet Mine That Bird's 6 3/4 length was the largest margin in the Kentucky Derby since Assault in 1946. Assault later became the seventh Triple Crown winner. So go ahead. Take a chance. Put a few bucks on the Derby winner to capture the Preakness and Belmont, too. Maybe that's the way to mine that Bird.
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