by ShagOnSports
I remember going to my first Derby in 1987… For several weeks leading up to the Derby several of my friends and I had discussed attending that year… We finally decided to go a couple of weeks before the event and could not wait to get to the rowdy infield… The plan was we were going to stay with a friend of mine who was going to Law School at U of L and also meet several other friends who were also coming in from out of town… We loaded up on Friday night and off we went to the Ville…
I had not spent allot of time in Louisville so I really did not know my way around and was relying on the directions a friend of mine provided to his house (it is ironic that I now live in Louisville and often travel by this house)…
We made it up I64 hit Louisville to I65 and then found our exit onto Eastern Parkway… I had studied the directions for a couple of days (this was 1987 so there was no Google Maps) so I knew the names of the streets and had the directions down pretty well… If I got lost I could always call the number I had written on the directions so I was not too concerned about any miss-steps… We crossed over the street we were looking for and then made our turn on the next left which I though meant we had gone to far… At that point I needed to reference the directions so the five of us in my two door Cutlass Supreme started looking for them … There was a car behind us so I had to make a left to get out of the way…
At this point I realized we had lost the directions… We reached a point on the street where I could pull over and park and continued to search in vain… Unbelievable!!! We cannot find the directions which means we have no phone number (no one has cell phones in 1987)… It is 10:30 at night and I am thinking man we are screwed… As the debate continued in the car over who lost the directions went on for a couple of minutes I gazed up at a house to my left that was setting up elevated about twenty feet higher then the road… It was at that point I realized that there standing on the front porch wondering what the hell we were doing still in the car and waving his arms was our friend Biddy… We had stumbled to a stop right in front of his house… We laughed for an hour!!!
We did not get much rest that night and our plan was for the six of us to meet another group of our friends in turn three in the infield the next day… If you have ever been to the infield for Derby then you know how next to impossible it would be just to randomly find someone in that space (remember no cell phones in 1987)…
The next morning we went to the Liquor store, bought some bags of ice and two half gallons of vodka… We then went to the grocery store for some bread, sandwich meat, orange juice and large zip lock bags to pour the vodka into so we could seal up the bags and then strategically place them in the bottom of the cooler under a layer of ice and food… The plan was for two people to carry the cooler in after I had carried the two half gallons of orange juice ahead of them to avoid suspicion that we had any liquor…
We drove to the area of Churchill downs and parked a pretty good ways away from the track so we had quite a walk to the infield… On the way we alternated carrying the large cooler and had to stop on occasion as my friend Billy blew his referee whistle and in tandem we would scream out and made the referee signal for a pushing foul and said, “No, No, No, No!!! 52, 52, you’re pushing, we are going the other way!!!” How or why we started doing this I have no idea but it continued the entire weekend and everyone seemed to find this very amusing…
When we got to the gate we enacted our plan… My buddies went through one gate with the cooler and I moved down to another gate with my OJ… On our way in to the infield two people in front of me had there umbrellas confiscated and when they asked why they could not bring them in they were told they could be used as weapons and I thought how ridiculous is that… The security people really checked me well, made sure the OJ had never been opened and then away I went… As I made my way through the crowd there was my two buddies with the cooler and I thought they had made it through also but then I could see the look in their eyes… Dammit!!! Security took all the food out of the cooler and then dumped the ice and the bags of Vodka into the dumpster… So much for that plan!!!
We now made our way inside the tunnel to the infield with the cooler in tow now full of OJ and food… When we got inside the infield was a muddy mess and my buddy Bid D had worn his brand spanking new white tennis shoes… Bid D did not want to get them muddy so at that point someone had to put him on their back and carry him through the muddy mess… We needed a spot to have a home base so we wondered into an area between turn three and four, put down the cooler and Big D and marked our spot using the flag flying on top of the grandstand to the south, a flag on top of a food booth to the to the east and then another flag to our west… We decided we would split up into two groups and come back the spot once we found the other group of people we were looking for…
My group included Bid D so the first move is I have to pack Bid D on my back through the mud so he does not get his brand new white tennis shoes dirty until we reach the concrete… As we are walking around laughing about how we are going to find our other friends we decide that it would be a good idea every minute or two just to scream out one of the guys nicknames, Zorro! thinking he may by chance here us yelling…
We got over by the betting windows and we wanted to get some bets down on the Derby (we did not care about any of the other races) so we sent one guy to place the bets while we looked around for our friends… As we were waiting for Chill Will to place the bets I was looking over at two middle-aged women who had put a blanket down on the grass and were sitting by a row of bushes… Their husbands were standing behind them and I watched as two young drunk shirtless guys walked up behind the bushes and started pissing… It was at that point I realized the two middle-aged men were holding umbrellas and proceeded to beat the living shit out of the two guys who were pissing… I now understood the call of umbrellas as weapons…
After the bets were down we continued around turns three and four… When Bid D could he would walk on the ground but most of the time I was packing him around on my back to keep his damn white shoes from getting muddy… During the walk around we saw many shirtless people, including girls, a couple of more fights and ran into a guy we knew who had a whole wagon full of ice cold beer… He had gotten the beer with the old Trojan horse scheme of constructing a cooler inside of the wagon and then closing it all in so it just looked like a wagon… Once inside he busted it open and had let the soldiers out… During one of the fight scenes the Police actually arrested both guys and one of the guys dropped his tennis shoes and someone picked them up and they auctioned them off… I tried to buy them for Bid D but was outbid…
By this time I am thinking it is going to be a miracle to find the people we were looking for let alone the other group of people we had came with to the infield with… We were still yelling “Zorro” at the top of our lungs on occasion but this method was not working… We decided to venture on so I got Bid D on my back and off we go… We take about two steps and Zorro is standing right in front of us… Our other groups of friends had already found them so there we were united in the infield… It would be and EXcellent day from there…
We drank, watched fights, laughed at people, hollered at girls and when the Derby race went by we saw about three seconds of the horses through the chain-link fence… By the Derby Race the light rain we had experienced all day was gone the sun was shining and believe it or not Big D’s shoes were still not muddy…
The infield pretty much starts to clear out once the Derby Race had been completed even though there are two more races… We stayed for one more race and the decided it was time to head out of the infield for our next adventure… As we got our stuff and were ready to head out there was one person that was not accounted for… Where was Bid D??? By this time the main walkway through the infield was just a sloppy and muddy mess so I knew I would be packing him out but he was not where to be found… Finally we saw him… Bid D who had the winning ticket on the race that day (it paid a hefty sum) so he was a happy man, marching and high stepping like a German soldier right through the middle of the mud!!! So much for the damn tennis shoes…
As we made our way to the tunnel to exit the infield there was one last thing we were missing, our cooler… No one gave me a chance to find it since we had put it down and never gone back to the spot… I disappeared into the mass of people still in between turns three and four got my bearings on the flags I had marked our spot with identified the cooler, told the guy who was sitting on it that it was mine, opened it up and gave the contents away (I could have probably sold the food and orange juice)… I then made my way out of the crowd with the cooler in tow… When my friends saw me emerge from the crowd they begin cheering as if I had found the Holy Grail, an empty cooler… It was quite an afternoon…
I made it to every Derby after that until the last one I attended in 2001… I will save that story for next year…
MLB Baseball
At the end of the first month the Yankees and Red Sox are tied for first (My pick was the Yankees) in the AL East… The Sox are up on the Tigers (Tom C is happy about that and I am hoping for a Tigers vs Cardinals Series so the Redbirds can get revenge for 1968) and I think the Tigers have the pitching in place to sustain this start (I predicted the Indians and they are in Third… Oakland and Texas are tied for first with the Angels only a half game out (My prediction was Oakland)… Oakland and Texas are both 12 and 12…
The Mets may just run off with the NL East (I picked the Braves)… St Louis, Cincy and Houston are all at the top of the Central (You know my pick) and it looks like the early line is the Wildcard will come from this division… The Rockies are on top of the West but I still like the Dodgers whether Gagne comes back or not…
I read today that Curt Schilling would have tied Pedro Martinez and Babe Ruth for most wins by a Red Sox Pitcher in the month of April… Many people forget how solid a pitcher Ruth was before becoming the Sultan of Swat… The NY Times had a great article on Ruth today… Ruth hit homers number 712, 713 and 714 in one of his final games and final hurrahs of his career…
Jason Giambi had a nice April after finishing strong last year… His .557 On Base Percentage leads the AL as does his .828 slugging percentage, as does his 1.384 OPS… He is hitting .345 and has 25 walks so far…
Puljos has a .495 On Base Percentage to lead the NL as does his .925 slugging percentage and his 1.42 OPS… Puljos has 24 walks and has only struck out seven times… Puljos also lead the league in Home Runs and RBI’s… By the way at this stage of his career has there been a better hitter??? The numbers say no… Barring injury he could be the greatest of all time…
Greg Maddux is having a nice year for the Cubs… He is second in ERA, second in WHIP, first in wins and in the top five in batting average against… If the Cubs fold by All Star break he could be some serious trade bait if he will accept a trade (Yankees will be asking for him you can bet)…
Fantasy Update
The MudCats have moved up to sixth place… This week I get Griffey, Small, Renteria and Rolen back from injuries… AJ Burnett looks to be out a month or so which is not good for the pitching categories… Someone offered me four players for Puljos this week including A Rod as one of the four and I promptly rejected… I would like to have another closer and I may bait the hook a little this week to see what I can get…
At the top of my watch list is Edward Encarcian for Cincy, Luis Castillo, Craig Counsell, Mike Lowell, Shea Hillenbrand, Brandon Phillips, Craig Monroe, Rich Aurilia, Ben Broussard, Corey Patterson and Jason Smith… Five of these are multi position players, which are great to have in Fantasy Baseball…
ShagOnSports Random Thoughts
- This week there were a couple baseball happenings that I appreciated… One involved Jose Mesa throwing at Omar Vizquel during a game not once but twice… This stems from Vizquel blaming Mesa for their World Series loss in 1997 while with the Indians… Baseball is about the inside pitch… I remember as a Little Leaguer when a friend of mine had hit a home run off of me I nailed him right in the thigh the next time up… That is baseball…
- The other involved Albert Puljos and Pirates pitcher… The pitcher had shown Puljos up when he struck him out in his previous at bat… The next at bat Albert ripped a home run and flipped the bat about half way to the mound in retaliation…
- My friend Johnny J called me from Harry Carry’s place in the middle of the day on Friday to solve a mystery for him… They were watching the Cubs play on TV and before the game they had brought an older woman and man onto the field and presented them with a New York Yankees Babe Ruth number three jersey and a bat… They could not here the TV so they could not understand what was going on with Babe Ruth and the Yankees at a Cubs vs Brewers game… It took me a minute but I realized that they were celebrating Ruth’s famous called shot from the 1932 World Series at Wrigley Field… This was of course a celebrated legend until a few years ago a man cleaning out his attic in Chicago found a home movie his father had made of the event that was shown for the first time on ESPN back in 1999… I pulled that one out of nowhere…
I remember going to my first Derby in 1987… For several weeks leading up to the Derby several of my friends and I had discussed attending that year… We finally decided to go a couple of weeks before the event and could not wait to get to the rowdy infield… The plan was we were going to stay with a friend of mine who was going to Law School at U of L and also meet several other friends who were also coming in from out of town… We loaded up on Friday night and off we went to the Ville…
I had not spent allot of time in Louisville so I really did not know my way around and was relying on the directions a friend of mine provided to his house (it is ironic that I now live in Louisville and often travel by this house)…
We made it up I64 hit Louisville to I65 and then found our exit onto Eastern Parkway… I had studied the directions for a couple of days (this was 1987 so there was no Google Maps) so I knew the names of the streets and had the directions down pretty well… If I got lost I could always call the number I had written on the directions so I was not too concerned about any miss-steps… We crossed over the street we were looking for and then made our turn on the next left which I though meant we had gone to far… At that point I needed to reference the directions so the five of us in my two door Cutlass Supreme started looking for them … There was a car behind us so I had to make a left to get out of the way…
At this point I realized we had lost the directions… We reached a point on the street where I could pull over and park and continued to search in vain… Unbelievable!!! We cannot find the directions which means we have no phone number (no one has cell phones in 1987)… It is 10:30 at night and I am thinking man we are screwed… As the debate continued in the car over who lost the directions went on for a couple of minutes I gazed up at a house to my left that was setting up elevated about twenty feet higher then the road… It was at that point I realized that there standing on the front porch wondering what the hell we were doing still in the car and waving his arms was our friend Biddy… We had stumbled to a stop right in front of his house… We laughed for an hour!!!
We did not get much rest that night and our plan was for the six of us to meet another group of our friends in turn three in the infield the next day… If you have ever been to the infield for Derby then you know how next to impossible it would be just to randomly find someone in that space (remember no cell phones in 1987)…
The next morning we went to the Liquor store, bought some bags of ice and two half gallons of vodka… We then went to the grocery store for some bread, sandwich meat, orange juice and large zip lock bags to pour the vodka into so we could seal up the bags and then strategically place them in the bottom of the cooler under a layer of ice and food… The plan was for two people to carry the cooler in after I had carried the two half gallons of orange juice ahead of them to avoid suspicion that we had any liquor…
We drove to the area of Churchill downs and parked a pretty good ways away from the track so we had quite a walk to the infield… On the way we alternated carrying the large cooler and had to stop on occasion as my friend Billy blew his referee whistle and in tandem we would scream out and made the referee signal for a pushing foul and said, “No, No, No, No!!! 52, 52, you’re pushing, we are going the other way!!!” How or why we started doing this I have no idea but it continued the entire weekend and everyone seemed to find this very amusing…
When we got to the gate we enacted our plan… My buddies went through one gate with the cooler and I moved down to another gate with my OJ… On our way in to the infield two people in front of me had there umbrellas confiscated and when they asked why they could not bring them in they were told they could be used as weapons and I thought how ridiculous is that… The security people really checked me well, made sure the OJ had never been opened and then away I went… As I made my way through the crowd there was my two buddies with the cooler and I thought they had made it through also but then I could see the look in their eyes… Dammit!!! Security took all the food out of the cooler and then dumped the ice and the bags of Vodka into the dumpster… So much for that plan!!!
We now made our way inside the tunnel to the infield with the cooler in tow now full of OJ and food… When we got inside the infield was a muddy mess and my buddy Bid D had worn his brand spanking new white tennis shoes… Bid D did not want to get them muddy so at that point someone had to put him on their back and carry him through the muddy mess… We needed a spot to have a home base so we wondered into an area between turn three and four, put down the cooler and Big D and marked our spot using the flag flying on top of the grandstand to the south, a flag on top of a food booth to the to the east and then another flag to our west… We decided we would split up into two groups and come back the spot once we found the other group of people we were looking for…
My group included Bid D so the first move is I have to pack Bid D on my back through the mud so he does not get his brand new white tennis shoes dirty until we reach the concrete… As we are walking around laughing about how we are going to find our other friends we decide that it would be a good idea every minute or two just to scream out one of the guys nicknames, Zorro! thinking he may by chance here us yelling…
We got over by the betting windows and we wanted to get some bets down on the Derby (we did not care about any of the other races) so we sent one guy to place the bets while we looked around for our friends… As we were waiting for Chill Will to place the bets I was looking over at two middle-aged women who had put a blanket down on the grass and were sitting by a row of bushes… Their husbands were standing behind them and I watched as two young drunk shirtless guys walked up behind the bushes and started pissing… It was at that point I realized the two middle-aged men were holding umbrellas and proceeded to beat the living shit out of the two guys who were pissing… I now understood the call of umbrellas as weapons…
After the bets were down we continued around turns three and four… When Bid D could he would walk on the ground but most of the time I was packing him around on my back to keep his damn white shoes from getting muddy… During the walk around we saw many shirtless people, including girls, a couple of more fights and ran into a guy we knew who had a whole wagon full of ice cold beer… He had gotten the beer with the old Trojan horse scheme of constructing a cooler inside of the wagon and then closing it all in so it just looked like a wagon… Once inside he busted it open and had let the soldiers out… During one of the fight scenes the Police actually arrested both guys and one of the guys dropped his tennis shoes and someone picked them up and they auctioned them off… I tried to buy them for Bid D but was outbid…
By this time I am thinking it is going to be a miracle to find the people we were looking for let alone the other group of people we had came with to the infield with… We were still yelling “Zorro” at the top of our lungs on occasion but this method was not working… We decided to venture on so I got Bid D on my back and off we go… We take about two steps and Zorro is standing right in front of us… Our other groups of friends had already found them so there we were united in the infield… It would be and EXcellent day from there…
We drank, watched fights, laughed at people, hollered at girls and when the Derby race went by we saw about three seconds of the horses through the chain-link fence… By the Derby Race the light rain we had experienced all day was gone the sun was shining and believe it or not Big D’s shoes were still not muddy…
The infield pretty much starts to clear out once the Derby Race had been completed even though there are two more races… We stayed for one more race and the decided it was time to head out of the infield for our next adventure… As we got our stuff and were ready to head out there was one person that was not accounted for… Where was Bid D??? By this time the main walkway through the infield was just a sloppy and muddy mess so I knew I would be packing him out but he was not where to be found… Finally we saw him… Bid D who had the winning ticket on the race that day (it paid a hefty sum) so he was a happy man, marching and high stepping like a German soldier right through the middle of the mud!!! So much for the damn tennis shoes…
As we made our way to the tunnel to exit the infield there was one last thing we were missing, our cooler… No one gave me a chance to find it since we had put it down and never gone back to the spot… I disappeared into the mass of people still in between turns three and four got my bearings on the flags I had marked our spot with identified the cooler, told the guy who was sitting on it that it was mine, opened it up and gave the contents away (I could have probably sold the food and orange juice)… I then made my way out of the crowd with the cooler in tow… When my friends saw me emerge from the crowd they begin cheering as if I had found the Holy Grail, an empty cooler… It was quite an afternoon…
I made it to every Derby after that until the last one I attended in 2001… I will save that story for next year…
MLB Baseball
At the end of the first month the Yankees and Red Sox are tied for first (My pick was the Yankees) in the AL East… The Sox are up on the Tigers (Tom C is happy about that and I am hoping for a Tigers vs Cardinals Series so the Redbirds can get revenge for 1968) and I think the Tigers have the pitching in place to sustain this start (I predicted the Indians and they are in Third… Oakland and Texas are tied for first with the Angels only a half game out (My prediction was Oakland)… Oakland and Texas are both 12 and 12…
The Mets may just run off with the NL East (I picked the Braves)… St Louis, Cincy and Houston are all at the top of the Central (You know my pick) and it looks like the early line is the Wildcard will come from this division… The Rockies are on top of the West but I still like the Dodgers whether Gagne comes back or not…
I read today that Curt Schilling would have tied Pedro Martinez and Babe Ruth for most wins by a Red Sox Pitcher in the month of April… Many people forget how solid a pitcher Ruth was before becoming the Sultan of Swat… The NY Times had a great article on Ruth today… Ruth hit homers number 712, 713 and 714 in one of his final games and final hurrahs of his career…
Jason Giambi had a nice April after finishing strong last year… His .557 On Base Percentage leads the AL as does his .828 slugging percentage, as does his 1.384 OPS… He is hitting .345 and has 25 walks so far…
Puljos has a .495 On Base Percentage to lead the NL as does his .925 slugging percentage and his 1.42 OPS… Puljos has 24 walks and has only struck out seven times… Puljos also lead the league in Home Runs and RBI’s… By the way at this stage of his career has there been a better hitter??? The numbers say no… Barring injury he could be the greatest of all time…
Greg Maddux is having a nice year for the Cubs… He is second in ERA, second in WHIP, first in wins and in the top five in batting average against… If the Cubs fold by All Star break he could be some serious trade bait if he will accept a trade (Yankees will be asking for him you can bet)…
Fantasy Update
The MudCats have moved up to sixth place… This week I get Griffey, Small, Renteria and Rolen back from injuries… AJ Burnett looks to be out a month or so which is not good for the pitching categories… Someone offered me four players for Puljos this week including A Rod as one of the four and I promptly rejected… I would like to have another closer and I may bait the hook a little this week to see what I can get…
At the top of my watch list is Edward Encarcian for Cincy, Luis Castillo, Craig Counsell, Mike Lowell, Shea Hillenbrand, Brandon Phillips, Craig Monroe, Rich Aurilia, Ben Broussard, Corey Patterson and Jason Smith… Five of these are multi position players, which are great to have in Fantasy Baseball…
ShagOnSports Random Thoughts
- This week there were a couple baseball happenings that I appreciated… One involved Jose Mesa throwing at Omar Vizquel during a game not once but twice… This stems from Vizquel blaming Mesa for their World Series loss in 1997 while with the Indians… Baseball is about the inside pitch… I remember as a Little Leaguer when a friend of mine had hit a home run off of me I nailed him right in the thigh the next time up… That is baseball…
- The other involved Albert Puljos and Pirates pitcher… The pitcher had shown Puljos up when he struck him out in his previous at bat… The next at bat Albert ripped a home run and flipped the bat about half way to the mound in retaliation…
- My friend Johnny J called me from Harry Carry’s place in the middle of the day on Friday to solve a mystery for him… They were watching the Cubs play on TV and before the game they had brought an older woman and man onto the field and presented them with a New York Yankees Babe Ruth number three jersey and a bat… They could not here the TV so they could not understand what was going on with Babe Ruth and the Yankees at a Cubs vs Brewers game… It took me a minute but I realized that they were celebrating Ruth’s famous called shot from the 1932 World Series at Wrigley Field… This was of course a celebrated legend until a few years ago a man cleaning out his attic in Chicago found a home movie his father had made of the event that was shown for the first time on ESPN back in 1999… I pulled that one out of nowhere…
- I missed the golf on Sunday but it must have been an exciting finish... Chris Couch chippped in to win his first tournament... Forty nine year old Fred Funk was on the practice tee gettting ready just in case there was a playoff... Proves that if you hit it straight and can putt you can still cash a big check on tour...
- I am not a Pro Football guy but I think that Matt Leinert is better then the eleventh pick in the draft… I think that the Titans, the Jets and the Raiders all should have took him…
- I am still not watching but the NBA Playoff seems to have had some exciting games… Most surprising score was yesterdays 124 to 104 whipping of the Pistons by the Bucks… Spurs and Heat look to be in a pinch but both are at home for the final game of the series… When they reach the Semis I will tune in…
- A good derby quote I heard this week was, “Lord let me breakeven!!!” “I sure need the money… “
- The three horses I like today to be in the money are AP Warrior, Stepponwolfer and Point Determined… This field is wide open to me… I think the speed that is in the race will not allow Brother Derek or Lawyer Ron to win… Both of the horses were not challenged down the stretch of their last races and horses like people have a tendency to tense up when someone is running with them… I will publish my final picks on Friday after consulting with my experts…
- My wife has not picked her horse yet… She has picked the last three winners…
- Reality Spin called this week and told me that after last years Derby they had hauled 11,000 tons of trash out of Churchill Downs… I asked him if they also listed how much white trash they had removed…
In the CD Player This Week
Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation
