The Sidewalks Of New York
(The Once and Future Song of the Belmont Stakes)
Down
in front of Casey’s
Old
brown wooden stoop,
On
a summer’s evening, We formed a merry group;
Boys
and girls together,
We
would sing and waltz,
While
the ginnie played the organ
On
the sidewalks of New York.
East
side, West side, all around the town,
The
tots sang “Ring-a-rosie,
London
Bridge is Falling Down.”
Boys
and girls together,
Me
and Mamie O’Rourke,
Tripped
the light fantastic
On
the sidewalks of New York.
The Last Hero
Affirmed
was foaled on February 21, 1975, in Ocala at breeder Louis Wolfson’s Harbor
View farm, a bright chestnut colt, flawlessly conformed, with a star and a
stripe on his face. The famous painter
of horses, Richard Stone Reeves, honored Affirmed in stating that from a
conformation standpoint he was in a class with Buckpasser and Secretariat.
Wearing
Wolfson’s famous black and pink colors, Affirmed began his career at Belmont
Park, wiring the field in his maiden start on May 24 of his two-year-old year,
a race impressive enough to cause trainer Laz Barrera to enter him in the
Youthful Stakes the next time out.
Affirmed came from behind to score by a neck.
In his
third race, the Great American Stakes, Affirmed was beaten by Alydar and the
famous rivalry began. After adding to
his victory list in the Hollywood Juvenile and the Sanford Stakes at Saratoga,
ridden in the latter for the first time by the up-and-coming young jockey Steve
Cauthen, Affirmed met Alydar again in the Hopeful, this time beating his rival
by a half-length. A few weeks later,
after a desperate battle down the Belmont stretch, Affirmed beat Alydar by a
nose in the Futurity. Alydar turned the
tables in the prestigious Champagne, sneaking up on Affirmed, who was distracted
by Darby Creek Road.
The two met
one final time in 1977 in the Laurel Futurity with the two-year-old
championship on the line. After a
tremendous battle, Affirmed prevailed by a neck. The third horse was ten lengths up the track.
In the
Kentucky Derby, Affirmed sat in third behind the speedy Sensitive Prince, then
passed Believe It at the top of the stretch to take the lead. Alydar closed quickly but was too far back to
catch Affirmed and finished second, beaten a length-and-a-half. Alydar stayed closer in the Preakness and the
two raced together down the stretch, Affirmed edging Alydar by a short neck,
with Believe It again third.
A lot of
people thought Alydar would ruin Affirmed’s triple crown bid in the Belmont with
his late-closing tactics. People have
had the notion many times, due to the length of the mile-and-a-half Belmont,
that a front-running horse would be caught in the stretch, but often it just
doesn’t happen. And it didn’t here. With a half mile to run, the two horses
engaged and, at one point, Alydar got his head in front. Affirmed bravely fought back. The Belmont crowd rose to its collective feet
and the grandstand shook as the two horses battled down the stretch. In the end, Affirmed won by a head, as worthy
a Triple Crown winner as any, considering the opposition. Nobody has repeated his feat since 1978.
When
Secretariat won his Triple Crown, it had been 25 years since any horse had done
it. But shortly after Secretariat,
Seattle Slew and then Affirmed repeated and it seemed like it might be a
frequent occurrence. Thirty four years
later, I guess not.
Will He Or Won’t He?
Now, it’s I’ll Have Another’s turn. Is he good enough? Almost certainly. Is he lucky enough? We’ll see.
He was pretty lucky the other day when he barely avoided being run into
by another horse while out for his morning gallop at Belmont. Now, with only two days before the Big Race,
the only questions seem to be how much did the last two races take out of him
and how good are Union Rags and the
closer Dullahan at a mile-and-a-half? It’s hard to imagine any of the other horses
beating I’ll Have Another. A few people
point to D. Wayne Lukas’ Optimizer,
who has been respectable, if not great, in his previous classics starts. Lukas’ horse would have to run the race of
his life to beat I’ll Have Another—or so it would appear. There is still that Great Unknown—the distance
of the race—to consider. The way I’ll
Have Another finishes leads one to believe the distance will not be a big
problem. But will it be enough of a problem to allow the
stretch-running Dullahan to catch him at the wire as he almost did in the
Derby? Who knows? I say he wins it, but I thought Bodemeister would not be caught in the
Preakness and I’ll have Another nudged him at the wire.
Just about
everybody roots for a Triple Crown winner every year. Not me.
I don’t want every Tom, Dick and Harry Horse winning the thing. It detracts from the accomplishment. A horse should have to be great to win the
Triple Crown and just about all of them who have done it were great. This horse may
be great, too. Ideally, he’ll be putting
distance between himself and the pack as the horses ramble down the stretch, a
dominating champion. So far, though, his
victories have been close, the Preakness by an eyelash when his young rider
waited almost too long. Affirmed’s kid
rider, Stevie Cauthen, pulled off the feat.
Let’s see what the new kid on the block can do in the greatest crucible
of all.
The Shaman Elka Boren
As you all
know, I have been polishing up my spiritual credentials these days, not wanting
to ignore any possible opportunities for self-improvement, for which there is
ample room. With that in mind, the other
day I came upon an interesting notice in the local newspaper. Appearing in Gainesville—for a short time
only—would be The Shaman Elka Boren. That’s right.
Now, ordinarily I might be tempted to give short shrift to such messages
but my recent experiences with massage person/healer extraordinaire Tiara Catey
put me on the lookout for additional spiritual help. You never know. Anyway, the advertisement said the Shaman
Elka Boren could look “right into your
soul!” WHOA! I can appreciate a penetrating gaze as much
as the next person but I’m not sure my soul is ready for such close inspection. It could probably use a little prep work,
first. Like when the new cleaning lady
is coming over and you tidy up the house a tad so she won’t think it’s such a
dump.
Do all you
Catholics out there remember catechism class in grade school? They would give you these great books with
pictures of Jesus and Mary and Joseph and all the saints and everybody would
have these wonderfully bright circles of light around their heads. And later on, they showed you pictures of
what your soul looked like. At first, of
course, it looked very nice—all white, with not so much as a smudge. But THEN, as you turned into a rotten sinner,
little black spots began to intrude, and that’s if you were just committing venial (small time) sins, like stealing
cookies or peeing on the cat. You don’t
even want to KNOW what the mortal
sins looked like but I can tell you it wasn’t pretty.
So this
gives me pause when I consider the laser-like vision of the Shaman Elka
Boren. She sees just everything and there are some things in
there I would just rather people not see, even indifferent shamans who are only
trying to help me. So I guess I am going
to pass on Elka for the time being, at least until I get my spiritual house in
order. And maybe even for a while after
that.
Drive-In Me Crazy
Are you one
of those people who inevitably heads for the Drive-In Lane whenever you head
out to your favorite junk food oasis?
Why do you do that? Whenever I go to Dunkin’ Donuts or McDonald’s,
there are seventeen cars in the Drive-In Lane and hardly anybody inside the
actual restaurant. I mosey in, get my
stuff and go back to the car. Meanwhile
one, maybe two cars have moved through the line. I don’t get it.
Okay, I
understand if you are one of those organ exposers—you have a better chance of
escape when you’re in your car. Or if
you’re in your jammies and bunny slippers and don’t want your peers to laugh at
you—although I doubt this happens much any more since it seems to have become
socially acceptable to go anywhere in
your jammies and bunny slippers. But
what about the rest of you? Have you no
regard for using your time for better pursuits than languishing in tacoland
listening to two million decibels of rap music?
Explain it to me. Please.
News From The Ghetto Line
Ever since
Austin’s Fontaine Maverick put me in touch with the Ghetto Line, I hardly have
to read my newspaper any more. The
people on there bring up every conceivable news article and beat it to death. And they even bring up old things you’d forgotten about and were glad you did. Like volcanoes in Yellowstone, for instance. Ghetto Liner Roger Baker contributed this:
Super eruptions from massive
volcanoes with the power to destroy humanity could take much less time to form
than scientists previously thought, it was reported yesterday. Only a handful of such volcanoes exist in the
world, but should one erupt the effect would be devastating. It is thought the sound of the super-eruption
would be heard all over the planet (even Fairfield), black rain would fall and
the sky would darken across the Earth.
These volcanoes are fuelled by
massive magma pools that build up deep beneath the ground. They were previously thought to take between
100,000 to 200,000 years to build up enough pressure for the massive eruption
to take place. However, research in the
online journal, Public
Library Science ONE, now suggests the
process could take just thousands or even hundreds of years. The new discovery could prove extremely bad
news for Yellowstone National Park in the U.S., which has a magma reservoir six
miles beneath it. The reservoir has been
rising at RECORD SPEEDS since 2004.
Well,
thanks a lot for that, Roger. This
probably means we’ll be giving up our plans for starting up that little llama
ranch in Gardner, Montana. There’s still
the penguin petting zoo in the Antarctic.
The Race Of The Week
….is not
necessarily the Belmont. For us, it’s
the third race at Calder this very day.
Cosmic Crown goes for her second win in similar company to her
competitors last out (she finished third).
The Morning Line has her at 4-1.
Anything less than second would be a little disappointing. Not that we haven’t been a little
disappointed before.
That’s all,
folks….
