Apple Foot

Overdue

It's been a great year in Boston sports. Maybe this is the year the Boston Crusaders finish on top of DCI?

Thoroughbred racing

On Friday, Racing Hall of Fame trainer Frank Whiteley, Jr., died. Whiteley's most famous horse is probably Ruffian, so it seemed appropriate that Saturday's Derby featured a filly (the first in nine years to enter racing's premier three-year-old event) that seemed to capture the hearts and imaginations of many. Souvenir stands sold out of Eight Belles supporter buttons while they still had plenty on hand for other contenders. The filly obliged with a good race and showed placed behind a strong Big Brown.

And that's when the reminder of Whiteley's horse turned horribly specific. While Ruffian, despite her heartbreaking efforts (link includes interview with Whiteley and footage of the match) to run on three legs, never finished the great match race, Eight Belles crossed the wire and was galloping out before she broke down.

Some early commentators questioned whether it was fair to run a filly with colts. These were followed by animal cruelty questions, questions about track surface (a hot topic right now in racing), and finally questions about the industry's breeding practices.

When I was going through my adolescent "horse-y" phase, I followed thoroughbred racing more closely than I do now. A thoroughbred race is a beautiful thing--they're gorgeous animals, with great big hearts, lots of determination. Unfortunately, racing lore is full of gallant horses that tragically broke down.

It's always seemed weird to me that humans take so much credit for the work of horses--trainers and owners lifting the trophy and being honored while the horse goes back to the barn. That contrast was especially evident yesterday, when humans took a lot of credit for Big Brown's win while not taking much responsibility for Eight Belles' death. That's probably not fair of me to say, pending autopsy, but I think as much as I love thoroughbred racing, it's worth asking what place racing has in our modern world.

Baseball: Cleveland Indians

I know it's a few days late, but as you may have noticed I'm not in a "Quick! Blog it!" mode this month. I watched most of the ALCS series between the BoSox and Cleveland this last week. The grinning Chief Wahoo cartoon has always struck me as something from another era, something that should now be retired. It didn't really dawn on me how awful it is, though, until I saw some Cleveland fans wearing Chief Wahoo face paint (photo on Flickr): solid red faces with big white grins painted on and feather hats. To my horror, I realized I was looking at a variation on minstrelsy blackface.

I'm not the only one who thinks it's time for Wahoo's retirement. Joe Posnanski writes an excellent article on this subject; the comments are also interesting.

It's 2007, and I like to think the city of Cleveland is better than this.

More Red Sox

I'm catching up with the last couple weeks of the New Yorker, and read an article on Sox slugger Manny Ramirez, which has some telling anecdotes on the Boston fans (see previous post):

"The local obsession with the Red Sox is such that David Wells, the former Yankee and Red Sox pitcher, and a night owl, likes to call Boston Picturetown, rather than Beantown, because of all the fans with cell-phone cameras in restaurants and bars, ready for deployment like civilian paparazzi."

Bonus points for Shaughnessy's story about Manny ignoring him, which the New Yorker makes sound like Manny's attitude towards all media, and not about the Curly Haired Boy personally. OK, to be fair, Manny's not been talking to the press in general, but he's got special reasons for snubbing the CHB.

Baseball Season in Boston

I'm not much of a sports enthusiast, but I do keep half an eye on the Red Sox. The reason? I get a huge kick out of Red Sox fans.

In this town, when the local team won the Super Bowl, thousands of citizens gathered in public squares to chant, "Yankees suck."

In a 1995 episode of television drama Chicago Hope, Peter MacNicol's character, the hospital attorney, needs to prove that a witness is a nut. The witness is a BoSox fan, so MacNicol recreates a play-by-play call of Bill Buckner's 1986 error--by the end, the witness is foaming at the mouth and attacks the lawyer.

If you live in Boston, that was not funny.

Chicago, of course, has the Cubs--a team which has gone even longer without a title then the BoSox 1918-2004 dry stretch. I imagine Cubs fans are fanatic, too--I expect the only October celebration that could rival the most recent Red Sox championship would be a Cubs win. However, Chicago has another baseball team to console them and to divide its' citizens' attentions, while Boston has only the Red Sox.

When the Sox won in 2004, local television news showed people taking souvenirs to the cemetaries and saying things like, "If only Aunt Ruth had lived to see this day!"  Not the day the church or school was finally built, or the day someone in the family earned a doctorate, or the day world peace was declared, but the day the Red Sox won the Series. Bostonians really did wait their whole lives for this day, and the media made much of the idea that the 2004 World Series had changed the regional character.

During the 2004 Pennant race, the Sox played the Evil Empire--the Bronx bombers--the pinstripes.  The celebration that ensued after that victory may have been more jubilant than that following the Series victory the same year. Sure, we finally won our first Series in 85 years--but even better--we beat the Yankees to get there!

An erudite call-in talk show on the local NPR station did a show on baseball during that pennant race. During a lengthy introduction by the host, the opening bars of the Star Wars Imperial March played over and over in the background (BUM BUM BUM ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta BUM BUM BUM...) That was from NPR, the classy, snooty station.

Bostonians of all stripes know more about the Red Sox than the general population of any American city does about its baseball team. During the 2004 Series, before a game at Fenway, some of the old timers came out and waved to the crowd. I had my father on the phone, explaining to him, "And here's Johnny Pesky, and everybody's going to cheer for him, even though many still blame him for the loss in '46." (In various capacities, Pesky sat in the Sox dugout for more than fifty years, until this spring, when MLB put an end to it. MLB's head office does not have Red Sox Nation's long and sentimental view of history.)

Every year during the playoffs (if Boston's fortunate enough to make it), the Boston Globe runs a front page story about the nuns down in Roxbury, gathering to watch the games on their single television set. In election years, you're likely to get a story about how the nuns had a debate about whether to watch the presidential candidates debate or the opening innings of the game. The game always wins.

I also get a kick out of baseball's rituals, superstitions, and all-around voodoo. One of my favorite players is Tim Wakefield, strictly because I find the knuckleball absolutely fascinating. I'm pretty sure that pitch involves eye of toad. I found Nomar's extended dance version of pulling on his gloves every single time he went to bat mesmerizing.

Last Friday night was the opener of a three game series against the Dark Side at Fenway. The hometown team wore green jerseys in memory of Red Auerbach, Mr. Celtics, who passed away this winter. Knowing how baseball superstition works, I have to wonder--are any of the players lobbying to make the green uniform permanent? Or do they just wear the green shirt under their red and white shirts for the rest of the season? And did any of the players, considering the recent Celtics record, balk at wearing these shirts to begin with?

Talk amongst yourselves

I'm a little verklempt. A couple of things nearly always make me weepy--not necessarily weddings or graduations, but thoroughbred horse racing and drum corps.

I've been increasingly depressed for the last several weeks, so it perhaps should not come as any great surprise that I've been weepy all day. Ever since the prolonged horsey phase I went through as a child, I've been greatly moved by horse races: thoroughbreds are such big, strong animals with great hearts, and sometimes with fragile legs. I'd've gotten a bit misty watching today's Preakness no matter the outcome, but seeing Barbaro pulled up a hundred yards in had tears rolling down my cheeks. An hour later, when I'd calmed and was walking out to get some dinner, I remembered Ruffian (as I do whenever a horse breaks down), and I found myself choking on tears.

One of the area's drum corps was practicing in the parking lot at Keyspan down the street today-- it was an all day practice, the kind that really makes me admire the dedication of those kids. Mostly they were marching, not playing, and it's the big rolling brass moments that get me, so I wasn't too weepy, although I did stand on the sidewalk and watch for a bit.

And then, since I've been moping for no good reason for weeks, and since I was all choked up about a horse race, the cosmos says, "I'll give you something to really cry about." A fellow police officer and friend of my brother-in-law was killed in a Baltimore car crash, leaving a wife and two daughters, one of whom is in ill health.

One of the things I have a lot of trouble dealing with is that I don't have a 'reason' to be depressed. Nobody died, I have all my limbs, etc., etc., so I can't help but feel that my depression is a character weakness. If I were a better person, I'd get off my ass and not be depressed any more. The public service spots tell us that depression isn't a moral failing; I still don't really believe that.

Silver Girl

I just like the way her name feels on the tongue:  Lindsey Jacobellis.  Jacobellis.  JACOBELLIS.

Plus, Snowboard Cross is rilly, rilly fun to watch.

Meanwhile, Chevy the Siberian husky is credentialed to enter the ski areas.  When I was at college, a professor over in social sciences-- econ, maybe, or poli sci, all I know is her first name and that she was mostly to be found in Pendleton-- had a black Afghan hound named Blue who had a campus photo i.d. hanging from his collar.

According to this evening's commentator, with the new scoring system, the "sports aspects of ice dancing are coming to the fore."  I, on the other hand, am of the opinion that any activity requiring a trowel to apply eye makeup and an outfit from Frederick's of Hollywood's collection is not a sport.