|
Don’t go betting a single dollar based on this premonition, but I’ll Have Another is going to win the Belmont on June 9, for this reason:
I won’t be there. Despite the infractions and suspicions that follow Doug O’Neill, the trainer of I’ll Have Another, the horse is bound to do what 11 other horses could not do since 1973 – win the third straight leg of the Triple Crown. I’ll be writing for the Times that Saturday but from an earlier event – the great soccer rivalry of the Americas, Brazil against Argentina, at the Meadowlands. Closest I have come to the Triple Crown was listening to the car radio in 1973 while we were heading home from a picnic. Nearly 16 years later, I got to pet Secretariat at the farm; you could feel the ground shake when he ambled over for the cube of sugar. A few months later, the great red beast was put down. Four times I was at the Belmont when the winner of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness came up short. The expectation has built up over the years, that some great equine hope would put life back into a fading sport, but each time the air goes out of the big barn on Long Island. I was there in person for Alysheba in 1987 and Sunday Silence in 1989 and Silver Charm in 1997 and Charismatic in 1999. The worst time was when I got totally caught up in Charismatic, chestnut great-grandson of Secretariat, as he blasted through the first two races. I even drove down to JFK airport just to catch a glimpse of Charismatic ambling off the transport plane. Late that Saturday afternoon Charismatic blew out a leg on the home stretch, and Chris Antley, the jockey, leaped down to stabilize his mount before he did fatal damage. (see the video above.) The wait for the Triple Crown went on. I was in the Alps in 2003, laughing as Lance Armstrong said he rooted for gallant little Funny Cide, who fell short in the Belmont. A year later I was back on Long Island as Smarty Jones’ stable shimmered with high expectations. For a lovely tableau of the giddiness and color surrounding a Triple Crown hopeful, read the dispatch filed that day by the sports columnist of the Baltimore Sun at that time, local girl named Laura Vecsey: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2004-06-05/sports/0406050154_1_smarty-jones-seattle-slew-colt We stood outside the barn and watched as the gracious trainer John Servis welcomed a small group of nuns from the Little Sisters of the Poor. I remember my colleague nudging me as we both had the same fear: Jinx! The next day, Birdstone won the Belmont. Watching Charismatic fall apart discouraged me from ever committing that way again. I take very seriously the concerns voiced by Bill Rhoden that this dangerous and perhaps callous sport may not deserve the glory of a Triple Crown, but I cannot help it. I still want to see a Triple Crown. However, I may have to settle for hearing it on the car radio, the way I did for Secretariat. Just remember this: I never bet on racing; don’t do anything rash based on my whimsy. Your comments are always welcome.
Laura Vecsey
6/2/2012 04:52:45 am
The nuns were so well intentioned, but it was just a bad, bad omen. Softened poor Smarty up. But, I will have another.
George Vecsey
6/2/2012 05:27:54 am
You were all over it while it was happening.
bruce picken
6/3/2012 05:34:54 am
george,
Hansen Alexander
6/3/2012 01:34:38 pm
By George, I was there in 1987 too. Which is important because generally I do not follow four-legged racing, partly because my exposure to the spectacle came from working the garbage crew at Saratoga one summer. And my Dad used to sell hay from our farm to the racetrack. That's no excuse not for you to be there since you write about these races with such grace and understanding and lovely description. However, you did give the proper excuse, you, the incomparable writer of European football. And I shall look forward to it. Actually I turned to your website tonight 1000 percent certain that you would have a post on the first Mets' no-hitter. And you fooled me! I just can't guess what you'll write next in your retirement, unless you tell me as you do in this blog.
George Vecsey
6/3/2012 04:03:39 pm
Hansen, I gave it my best shot for the NYT, getting up early Saturday and writing for our first edition (the Bulldog). Didn't want to try to cut the salami too thin by having a separate item on the NYT.
Frank Barning
6/4/2012 02:31:45 am
A baseball triple crown would be exciting if it went down to the last day of the season. George, who is dumber, baseball players or horses?
George Vecsey
6/4/2012 03:34:26 am
Frank, you know the answer, in two words: 8/20/2012 10:55:46 pm
george, 9/10/2013 06:07:15 pm
The post is absolutely fantastic! Lots of great information and inspiration both of which we all need! Also like to admire the time and effort you put into your blog 9/14/2013 02:43:37 am
That publish offers served everyone for an post that we 'm writing. Appreciate it intended for giving everyone another point of view for this subject. Currently I am able to effortlessly full our post. 4/22/2014 01:07:22 am
The particular article is perfectly excellent! A great deal of excellent details along with inspiration both of which most of us require! Likewise choose to enjoy this time and energy anyone put into your blog. Comments are closed.
|
QUOTES
More and More, I Talk to the Dead--Margaret Renkl NASHVILLE — After my mother died so suddenly — laughing at a rerun of “JAG” at 10 p.m., dying of a hemorrhagic stroke by dawn — I dreamed about her night after night. In every dream she was willfully, outrageously alive, unaware of the grief her death had caused. In every dream relief poured through me like a flash flood. Oh, thank God! Then I would wake into keening grief all over again. Years earlier, when my father learned he had advanced esophageal cancer, his doctor told him he had perhaps six months to live. He lived far longer than that, though I never thought of it as “living” once I learned how little time he really had. For six months my father was dying, and then he kept dying for two years more. I was still working and raising a family, but running beneath the thin soil of my own life was a river of death. My father’s dying governed my days. After he died, I wept and kept weeping, but I rarely dreamed about my father the way I would dream about my mother nearly a decade later. Even in the midst of calamitous grief, I understood the difference: My father’s long illness had given me time to work death into the daily patterns of my life. My mother’s sudden death had obliterated any illusion that daily patterns are trustworthy. Years have passed now, and it’s the ordinariness of grief itself that governs my days. The very air around me thrums with absence. I grieve the beloved high-school teacher I lost the summer after graduation and the beloved college professor who was my friend for more than two decades. I grieve the father I lost nearly 20 years ago and the father-in-law I lost during the pandemic. I grieve the great-grandmother who died my junior year of college and the grandmother who lived until I was deep into my 40s. Some of those I grieve are people I didn’t even know. How can John Prine be gone? I hear his haunting last song, “I Remember Everything,” and I still can’t quite believe that John Prine is gone. ----- https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/opinion/death-grief-memory.html Jan. 30, 2023 Categories
All
|
