Secretariat Comes to Arlington

Secretariat (with Ron Turcotte up) at Arlington Park,

37 years ago today. Trainer Lucien Laurin (in gray coat)
and owner Penny Chenery Tweedy (with black purse)
are visible in the background. 

     In the 1973 Triple Crown races, a colt named Sham admirably demonstrated both talent and heart. He ran the mile and a quarter of the Kentucky Derby faster than it had ever been run in the 99-year history of the race. Likewise, he covered the mile and three-sixteenths of the Preakness in record time. But he finished second in both races, beaten by two and a half lengths each time. In the Belmont Stakes, he battled gamely with the horse that had defeated him in the other two races. Finally, the strain of trying to keep up with the immortal Secretariat proved to be too much for Sham, who faded out of contention on the backstretch and eventually finished last. He never raced again.
     Having disposed of Sham, Secretariat continued to accelerate—though no other horse was in a position to challenge him. He was running now only against the limits of his own greatness. Jockey Ron Turcotte, who had been in the habit of restraining Secretariat at times to conserve his strength, let him go. “Secretariat is moving like a tremendous machine!” cried track announcer Chic Anderson.
     In the home stretch, Turcotte heard the cheering of the crowd, but he could hear no other horses. He turned around to look over his left shoulder and was astonished to discover that there were none in sight. Secretariat crossed the finish line 31 lengths ahead of his nearest pursuer. When the timer showed 2:24 flat, trainer Lucien Laurin thought it had malfunctioned. But the time was correct: Secretariat had beaten the world record for the mile and a half by two full seconds—or about 10 lengths! The people who were fortunate enough to be at Belmont Park that day saw not only what they’d come hoping to see, the coronation of the first Triple Crown champion in a quarter century, but also the greatest race ever run.

     The Triple Crown series is a grueling ordeal, and most horses are given time off afterwards for rest and relaxation. But Secretariat wasn’t like most horses. Just three weeks after his brilliant victory in the Belmont, he was on the track at Arlington Park. Realizing that the horse had won with something in reserve despite the incredible time, Laurin advised owner Penny Chenery Tweedy to run Secretariat in the hastily arranged Arlington Invitational Stakes on June 30. Mrs. Tweedy agreed. She saw it as her duty to give something back to the sport, and she felt that fans in the Midwest deserved a chance to see her famous big red colt in the flesh.
     Only three other horses showed up at Arlington to challenge him, but 41,223 humans were on hand—and they were not disappointed.
     Secretariat was sent off at odds of 1-20. Though he was left behind at the gate, he wasted little time in overpowering his three adversaries. He assumed command shortly after entering the clubhouse turn, even with Turcotte keeping a tight hold on him. Once Secretariat got to the front, the race was over. He galloped to the finish line nine lengths ahead of My Gallant, a veteran of the Kentucky Derby and Belmont who was already familiar with the view of Secretariat from behind. The time was 1:47 for the mile and an eighth, only one-fifth of a second slower than the track record by Damascus.
     “I could have broken the track record if I wanted,” said Turcotte. “The horse was not quite on his feet when the gate was sprung. Rather than rush him, I let him settle himself. I kept him 10 to 12 feet off the rail all the way.”
     Track record or not, Secretariat gave Chicago-area racing fans a shining moment and almost single-handedly salvaged a profitable season for Arlington. “It was a wonderful thrill, the reception we got here,” Laurin said. “I’m glad we brought him.”

Reprinted from Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports
(c) 2009, 2010 by Christopher Tabbert

A Tale of Two Teams in One City

    

PAUL KONERKO

     When the White Sox visited Wrigley Field two weeks ago to open this year's crosstown series against the Cubs, they were seven games under .500. Like the Cubs, who were six under, they appeared to be going nowhere.

     We didn't know it at the time, but the South Siders had already turned the corner. Their wins over the Cubs on June 11 and June 12 were their third and fourth in succession. After losing 1-0 to Ted Lilly and the Cubs on June 13, the Sox reeled off 11 victories in a row to make it 15 out of 16. They've crept to within a game and a half of the division lead, and the remainder of the season now beckons promisingly.

     All of a sudden, no one is talking about the supposed feud between Sox manager Ozzie Guillen and general manager Kenny Williams, about the inflammatory tweets of Guillen's son Oney, or about whether the Sox insulted Guillen's other son Ozney by drafting him in the 22nd round. Side issues are placed to the side when a team is focused on winning.
     The Sox have employed excellent pitching, tight defense, and just enough offense to turn their season around. "They're playing good baseball," Cubs manager Lou Piniella said. "Give them credit." The Sox are playing the way Guillen envisioned they would all along. "Whoever's surprised out there about what we do," Guillen declared, "they're crazy!"
     There is a long way to go, but if he continues at his current pace and the Sox keep winning, veteran first baseman and team captain Paul Konerko will be an MVP candidate. So far he has clouted 20 homers, knocked in 56 runs, and is batting over .300. "He gives it all he has every day," said Guillen. "A very quiet leader. When the game is on the line, he is more relaxed and more confident."

    

CARLOS ZAMBRANO

    
     As for the Cubs, what can you say? They are headed in the opposite direction as their crosstown rivals, having fallen to 10 games below .500 before (barely) salvaging yesterday's game against the Sox. Their problems include lack of any consistent offensive production (especially from erstwhile mainstays Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez), spotty defense, frequent mental lapses, and a general malaise.
     On Friday, the Cubs were coming off a 13-inning marathon the day before, and everyone knew that they needed starter Carlos Zambrano to give them some innings. Alas, Zambrano gave them just one (and a bad one at that, in which he yielded four runs) before a ridiculous tirade in the dugout earned him a suspension of indefinite length.
     It is certainly Piniella's and general manager Jim Hendry's fondest wish that Zambrano has already pitched his last game in a Cub uniform--but how eager will another club be to take him off their hands, given his exorbitant $18.75 million salary, his very unsatisfactory performance, and his increasingly intolerable behavior?
     The contrast between Zambrano and a real professional like Konerko is striking. It would be hard to imagine Zambrano's manager saying, "He gives it all he has every day." He gives what he wants when he wants. He has no shortage of talent, but he is woefully short in the categories of focus, discipline, and maturity. Unlike Konerko, who time and again has been at his best in clutch situations, Zambrano generally comes up empty when his team needs him the most. For Carlos, it is not about the team. It is always about Carlos.
     Harry Caray once pungently said of a certain pitcher (whose name unfortunately escapes me), "He has a million-dollar arm and a ten-cent brain." In Zambrano's case, the arm is valued at $18.75 million per year.

Damn Yankees

The New York Yankees won the American League pennant 14 times in 16 years between 1949 and 1964. Now that’s what you call a dynasty. Al Lopez took both of the pennants that escaped the Yankees’ grasp during this period, as manager of the 1954 Cleveland Indians and the 1959 White Sox. A four-game series that took place 51 years ago this weekend at old Comiskey Park proved that the ’59 Sox were for real.



AL LOPEZ

     The White Sox entered the 1959 season as clearly a team on the rise. After five straight third-place finishes from 1952 through 1956, they’d moved up to second in 1957 and 1958. But standing between the Sox and their first American League championship since 1919 were the mighty New York Yankees, winners of four pennants in a row and nine in the past 10 years. The Yankees were managed by the legendary Casey Stengel, and their roster included future Hall-of-Famers Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, and Mickey Mantle. It was said that rooting for them was like rooting for that other fifties powerhouse, U.S. Steel.
     The U.S. Steel analogy was apt, for the Yankees and most teams played baseball with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The White Sox were the exception that proved the rule. In an era dominated by lead-footed sluggers who launched tape-measure home runs, the Sox excelled at “small ball”—they had solid pitching, played airtight defense, and led the league in stolen bases every year. They were a throwback to teams of 40 and 50 years earlier. “In modern baseball,” Sox owner Bill Veeck wrote, “the winning equation is Power + Pitching = Pennant. Teams like the White Sox which depend upon speed and defense delight the hearts of all old-timers and generally finish in the second division.”
     But Veeck’s manager was convinced that his club could beat the Yankees, and he said so. “I should have listened to Al Lopez,” wrote Veeck. “Al told me from the beginning that we were going to win it. ‘This,’ he kept telling me, ‘is my kind of team.’” Lopez’s opinion carried some weight. In eight seasons of managing, first with Cleveland and then with the Sox, he had never finished lower than second place, and he had guided the Indians to the flag in 1954 for the lone interruption in the Yankees’ decade of dominance.

     Throughout the first half of the season, Cleveland set a rather leisurely pace with the White Sox close behind. Even the lowly Kansas City A’s and Washington Senators remained within 10 games of the front. It was a case of “man bites dog” on May 20, when the Yankees found themselves in last place. They soon climbed out of the cellar but continued to flirt with the .500 mark. Nonetheless, many fans assumed that it was just a matter of time before the Yankees took up residence at the top of the standings.
     When New York invaded Comiskey Park for a four-game series on the last weekend of June, the race was starting to take shape. The Indians clung to a one-game lead over the White Sox, with the surprising Baltimore Orioles a game and a half out, and the resurgent Yankees only two games back. On Friday night, June 26, Sox center fielder Jim Landis went four-for-four to no avail, as New York won 8-4 to draw even with Chicago at 36-32.
     On Saturday, though, the Sox bounced back in dramatic fashion. They trailed 2-1 in the bottom of the eighth when Nellie Fox walked with two outs and nobody on. First baseman Earl Torgeson followed with a single, and catcher Sherm Lollar walked to load the bases. Then Harry “Suitcase” Simpson, a seldom-used outfielder, lofted a wind-aided grand slam off the upper-deck railing in right field. New York’s Norm Siebern and Bill “Moose” Skowron clouted back-to-back homers to open the ninth, but the Sox held on for a nerve-wracking 5-4 win that moved them into a second-place tie with Baltimore.
     Sunday belonged to the White Sox, who swept a doubleheader by scores of 9-2 and 4-2. In the first game, Early Wynn bested Whitey Ford. “If I had to win one game,” Stengel remarked, “I’d have to say I’d want Wynn to go. He knows just about all there is to know about pitching.” In the second game, Dick Donovan surrendered only one hit through the first seven innings and only five altogether before he began to falter in the ninth. Turk Lown retired the last two Yankees to preserve the win.
     The White Sox’ three-out-of-four weekend left them only a game out of first place and dropped New York to four games out. More importantly, it damaged the Yankees’ aura of invincibility in the minds of the Sox players. The Sox were on their way.

Excerpted from Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports
(c) 2009, 2010 by Christopher Tabbert

Brian Piccolo

BY CHRISTOPHER TABBERT

BRIAN PICCOLO

     My Dad took me to my first Bears game on November 9, 1969, at Wrigley Field. I was eight years old. The Bears throttled the Pittsburgh Steelers 38-7 for what proved to be their only victory of the season. The Chicago defense held Pittsburgh to 31 yards rushing and also recorded eight sacks, including two in the end zone (by Ed O'Bradovich and Dick Butkus). On offense, the great Gale Sayers rushed for 112 yards and two touchdowns, while quarterback Bobby Douglass rushed for 72 yards. Running back Brian Piccolo notched the Bears' first touchdown on a 25-yard pass reception from Douglass.
     The victory turned out to be a mixed blessing for the Bears. When the Steelers also finished 1-13, they got the first pick in the next year's NFL draft by virtue of having lost to the Bears. The Steelers selected quarterback Terry Bradshaw, and they won four Super Bowls in the next ten years.
     Back to Sayers and Piccolo. Both had joined the Bears as rookies in 1965, Sayers as a first-round draft pick (fourth overall) from Kansas and Piccolo as an undrafted free agent from Wake Forest. They'd been best friends ever since. Sayers had been a superstar all along, while Piccolo was still in the process of establishing himself. His touchdown against the Steelers was just the fourth of his career, whereas Sayers had tallied six in one game as a rookie and totaled 52 for his career to this point.
     The Bears traveled to Atlanta the next Sunday, November 16, and lost to the Falcons 48-31. Sayers scored the Bears' first touchdown on a 10-yard gallop, and Piccolo scored the last on a one-yard plunge.
    
     Piccolo never played football again. He had not been feeling well for some time and was suffering frequent coughing spells. When the Bears returned to Chicago after the Atlanta game, he was sent to the doctor for tests and soon diagnosed with embryonal cell carcinoma, an aggressive form of lung cancer.
     Piccolo died at the tender age of 26 on June 16, 1970, seven months to the day after his final game for the Bears. He was survived by his wife Joy and their three young daughters.
     It has now been 40 years (last Wednesday, to be exact) since Piccolo's passing, but he has not been forgotten. Both the Bears and the Atlantic Coast Conference present annual awards named for Piccolo, honoring players judged to have been the most courageous. And, of course, his legacy has been preserved by Brian's Song, the 1971 made-for-TV film that explores the close relationship between Piccolo (played by James Caan) and Sayers (played by Billy Dee Williams).
     Brian's Song is one of the greatest sports movies of all time. Film critic Leonard Maltin called it "a milestone of excellence." If you haven't seen Brian's Song for a while, it's a good time to give it another look. Don't forget the Kleenex; Michel Legrand's music score alone is enough to set off the waterworks.

Bailey Sets Cigar Alight

CIGAR, WITH JERRY BAILEY UP, ON A SIERRA LEONE POSTAGE STAMP

Have you heard of Zenyatta? If the answer is no, you're not alone—for today’s thoroughbred champions are not nearly as famous as their predecessors of decades past. As it happens, Zenyatta is a six-year-old mare who is undefeated for her career, who last year became the first of her gender to win the Breeders’ Cup Classic, and whose victory in last Saturday’s Vanity Handicap at Hollywood Park was her 17th in succession, breaking the record set by Citation 60 years ago and equaled by Cigar in 1996 at Arlington Park. Below is a remembrance of the latter, who (fyi) was named not after a tobacco product but after an aviation checkpoint.


     Cigar’s early career gave little indication that he was destined for greatness. He never raced at age two, and he won just two of his first 13 starts—11 of these on the grass, which his breeding suggested he should prefer. With nothing to lose, trainer Bill Mott moved Cigar back to the dirt late in his four-year-old season—and the rest, as they say, is history. Cigar won his last two starts of 1994, then went 10-for-10 in 1995. That year, he became the oldest horse to have a perfect season and earned a record $4,819,800.
     Rather than retire Cigar after his sensational 1995 campaign, owner Allen Paulson decided to keep him in training for another year so as to give the racing game a much-needed shot in the arm. Cigar won his first three races in 1996 to extend his winning streak to 15, one short of the mark established by Citation between 1948 and 1950. When a minor injury prevented Cigar from making his next scheduled start, in the Hollywood Gold Cup on June 30, Arlington Park chairman Dick Duchossois stepped into the breach. Working with Paulson’s cooperation, he scheduled the Arlington Citation Challenge for July 13, rounding up a field of nine challengers to face Cigar at a mile and an eighth for a purse of $1,050,000.
     Cigar was given a police escort from O’Hare Airport to Arlington. Mott participated in a question-and-answer session with fans on the morning of the race, and jockey Jerry Bailey signed autographs for more than an hour in the afternoon. Eighty-nine-year-old Jimmy Jones, Citation’s trainer, was on hand as well. That the weather was perfect only added to the impression that the event was more a carnival than an athletic contest in which the outcome might not suit people’s expectations.
     Cigar had drawn the outermost post position, No. 10. He had also been assigned to carry 130 pounds, thus conceding between eight and 14 pounds to each of his rivals. The crowd of 34,223 gave him a standing ovation when he appeared in the paddock to be saddled, when he stepped onto the racetrack, and when he entered the starting gate. “He really seems to enjoy it,” Mott said of the hubbub surrounding his champion, “and I’m not so sure he doesn’t know this great crowd is for him.”
     Cigar broke leisurely and was five wide around the first turn, about six lengths behind the front-running Honour and Glory. With Bailey content to remain wide and stay out of traffic trouble, Cigar gradually advanced along the backstretch. On the far turn, Dramatic Gold threatened the leader while Cigar moved into striking range, only a length from the front. “And now Jerry Bailey sets Cigar alight!” track announcer Michael Wrona exclaimed as Honour and Glory, Dramatic Gold, and Cigar passed the quarter pole virtually three abreast.
     Honour and Glory soon called it a day, but Dramatic Gold stubbornly refused to give in. By the eighth pole, though, Cigar had finally managed to get in front by half a length, and from then on he continued driving to draw off by three lengths at the wire. Bailey held his cap aloft to acknowledge the tumult of cheers as he guided Cigar back to the winner’s circle for the 16th consecutive time. “I can’t put into words how proud I am of Cigar,” he said.
     It was a thrilling day for Chicago racing fans (and one that took on added significance when Cigar ran second in his next start, thus failing to break the record he had tied at Arlington). When Paulson said that it had been an honor to bring Cigar to Chicago, racing writer Sharon Smith gently took issue with him: “It was a gracious thought,” she wrote, “but inaccurate. It was the tracks and the sport itself who were honored by Mr. Paulson’s horse in 1996, not the other way around.”

Reprinted from Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports
(c) 2009, 2010 by Christopher Tabbert