All posts by Bernie Lincicome

General

Opening Day

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Football does not have an Opening Day. Poor football.

Baseball’s beginning is the sweetest start of any sport.Baseball is a renewable pleasure, filled with anticipation and with hope. Opening Day is the first bite of an endless feast, delicious and fresh.

Basketball begins in winter shadows, out of sight and behind closed doors. It emerges on the other side of the calendar, in a different year than it began.

Baseball arrives from weeks of stretching awake, strolling north along with the welcome sun to shirtless days and shorter nights.

Football bursts out of sweltering, painful, summer camps, already limping. Football counts its wounded in urgent, weekly wars, with ambulances parked at an open gate.

Baseball fits its seasons. It is a witness to birth, a companion to growth, an escort to harvest.

Baseball begins with a promise, with a hint of the possible that is undefined by winning or by losing.

All Opening Days celebrate a welcomed beginning, and nothing that happens on any Opening Day can diminish nor exaggerate what is to follow.

A first-game football loss can panic a team, upset strategies, jumble game plans, terminally sour the rare optimistic coach. A football season can be held in one hand and each piece that falls is loudly obvious.

The best baseball teams are going to lose a third of the games they play. Losing is an accepted occurrence and not an artificial calamity.

A baseball season is a tapestry, each game a panel, each inning a thread. Basketball packs all of its excellence into its finish, in games as well as seasons. Just as only the last few minutes matter in a game, so do only the playoffs matter to the season.

A baseball game can be won in the first inning, but a basketball game cannot be won until the fourth quarter. A pennant can be lost in April as well as in September, wild-cards and playoffs still arrived at more in moderation than in madness.

Baseball comes without slashes, without hyphens or Roman numerals, no 2001-2002 season, no World Series Finals. Baseball is played as our lives are lived, within the same year, needing only one diary to contain a season’s memories.

Hockey requires refrigeration and a dentist on staff. No matter how marvelous and slippery may be hockey’s skills, they may as well be pantomime until thered light goes on. Most hockey fights, I am convinced, start over arguments of whether anyone can see the puck.

The baseball, which is the same diameter and lighter than a hockey puck, is the perfect size, easily followed and always beginning in the same place.

The dimensions of a baseball field are perfectly drawn, exact and yet endless, not an inch too few nor a step too many, from pitcher to catcher, from home to first, from here to infinity.The shortest hit may be as vital as the longest smash.

There are no coin flips, no faceoffs. no jump balls in baseball.The baseball is not made to take funny bounces but it can be encouragedto dip and delude.

The first pitch of the year, as will the last, leaves the pitcher’s hand before anything can happen. And nothing might, usually nothing does.

Baseball is anticipation. On Opening Day, baseball’s possibilities are their most exponential. Nothing is impossible, including the fair and fitting fact that, until the home team gets at least as many chances as the visitors, Opening Day could last forever.

Soccer is a run-on sentence without an opening, without a closing or, much too often, without a conclusion. Most wonderfully, soccer is someone else’s passion and problem.

Baseball demands all of our attention and it demands none of it. To look away from baseball is to miss something. To look up is to find it still there, baseball, still waiting, as simple and as complicated as ever.

And here it is again. Another Opening Day.

Lucky baseball.

Lucky us.

Hockey

Patrick Roy

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WASHINGTON, D.C. –Roy wocks! Roy wules. Ray to go, Patrick. Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest hockey goalie in the rorld.

The puck left Ray Borque’s stick and Patrick Roy, edgy and impotent at the other end of the ice, could see it would be wide of the net. And there, like some kind of blessed punctuation mark, was Peter Forsberg’s stick.

Past Olaf Kolzig, past Olie the Goalie, the puck leapt and so did Roy, a small hop, a larger one, bouncing up into the arms of his teammates who were already on the ice before the red light came on, out to touch Roy, to share the moment, the night and the history.

“That was fun to watch the puck go in,” said Roy, all smiles and damp hair, a man who had measured himself against the best of all time and was now himself the measurement.

They are all now chasing this man from Quebec, all those padded and masked defenders of the crease, as if they have not been for 16 years, from the time he first pulled on that maternity shirt of a jersey they all wear, from when he first showed the quickest knees in hockey and changed a generation of goaltenders, now copies of the original.

“To me the thing has been playing for the Stanley Cup,” said Roy, who has drunk from the scared jug three times, “but of course this is special because it is not one year but a career to play for.”

It is the fate of goaltenders to get credit for winning hockey games when all they can do is not lose them. And this one, in front of a house filled to underflowing, Roy allowed enough goals to lose—Patrick the Hatrick—and still he won.

The Avs gave the game back with an aimless second period and then had to play like a bag full of ferrets to catch up and win in overtime.

Roy could have lost with seconds left when a shot he did not see banged off his pads harmlessly. And a penalty in overtime gave the Avs a man advantage for as long as they would need it.

“And when we had 4-3 on the power play and I am thinking maybe this is my night,” Roy said.

The event did not consume the locally curious, nor entice any significant politician, incumbent or ambitious, to drop by the MCI Center.

You would have thought that the leftovers from the Million Family March might have padded the house.

But the nation’s capital had other things to do, debates to watch or baseball to inspect, rejection again for a member in Congress to sulk about. But all the important people were here, Roy’s teammates, his family, Gary Bettman, the NHL commissioner, who handed Roy a set of golden shears to cut down the nets he had defended.

They had preprinted celebratory caps for the Avs to wear, dully functional depicting Roy’s achievement but without an ounce of poetry. The NHL had a postgame video ready, with congratulations from, of all creatures, Stone Cold Steve Austin as well as Mike Myers and Gordie Howe. Roy was already a Jeopardy trivia question, asked and answered by Alex Trebek.

If it had not been here, it would have been elsewhere, and where it should have been, of course, is Denver. Had the Avs lost, Roy would have been in the nets in Columbus, a town with a hockey tradition about as long as a lady finger.

Roy said he wanted it over as soon as possible, didn’t want to drag his family through game after game. Understandable and admirable, but this deserved a better frame, this deserved home love, which will now have to come before Friday’s game at the Pepsi Center.

Amateurish, really, the whole business. Only Roy kept his dignity and poise throughout this sort of tardy schlock. A fumbling call of congratulations came from Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien, who seemed still disturbed that Roy no longer played for Montreal.

“We are proud of you,” said Chretien. “You broke the record. Good for you.”

Good for him, indeed. Good for all of us. Good for hockey. Good for sports. Roy is as fine an ambassador of what is good in games as can be found. He is a man of pride and confidence and skill who will honor his individual achievements without forfeiting his sense of team

In less time than it took for his hair to dry, Roy was reasserting the next goal, to win a Stanley Cup for Borque.

“It is important for all of us to make that commitment,” Roy said. “To get in a better position for the playoffs, to have a Game 7 in Denver.”

When Roy is wight, he’s wight.

Golf

Tiger, tiger

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Surely, there is still more we can do for Tiger Woods. Thoughtlessly, we didn’t have him light the Olympic flame nor marry Jennifer Aniston. And it is too late to just hand over the Louisiana Purchase, not that Oregon isn’t still a possibility.

There is no excuse for our preoccupation with things other than Tiger, because, quite simply, there are no other things.

It is not enough that Woods does not put up any of his own money to play golf, as one-way a procedure as exists in sports. All professional golfers play for other people’s money. The only easier way to get money is to inherit it.

There is Sports Money and there is Tiger Money and reasonable people no longer swallow hard when it is suggested that Woods will become the first billionaire solely from his ability to hit a ball that doesn’t move until he hits it.

Nike has just given Woods a $60 million raise, so no need to hold a car wash for the Give It All to Tiger Fund. But I wonder if Tiger Woods be worth a fresh $100 million if his name were Scott Verplank or Rocco Mediate? Or if he were called Possum Putter?

While Woods may be worth every penny, I have always suspected that much of what has come to him is because of his name. Tiger Woods. How fitting. Better than Tiger Irons or Tiger Wedge if not quite with the scope of Tiger Lakes Golf and Country Club.

Woods’ real contribution to sports is as the example of what’s in a name being worth everything, not that being long off the tee hurts.

Moms and Dads, some advice. Designate your kids as what you expect them to do, like Crank Homer or Puck Handler. How much more impressive would Mark McGwire be as Advance Runner?

Basketball name changers were the pioneers, not just Lew Alcindor who redesignated himself as Kareem Abudul-Jabbar, but the more politically impressive and original Lloyd Free who became the happy sentiment, World B. Free. Dennis Rodman had to become Worm, whereas, he was, of course, always so.

These changes were not done for money, though the money came along. Which comes first, the nickname or the checkbook? In the case of Michael Jordan, the pre-Tiger pioneer in terms of having strangers throw money at him for no other reason than he allows it, he became Air Jordan simultaneously with his shoes.
Heretofore, the greatest golf name belonged to Bobby Cruickshank, slightly more sport-specific than Curtis Strange, and one of them managed to live it down.

A Pete Rose by any other name would be Charlie Hustle. I suggest Rose make it legal. Maybe he can get into the Hall of Fame that way.
The Broncos once drafted a nose tackle named Anthony Butts and he never did. So, this can be tricky. There was never a more aptly named footballer than Joe Don Looney.

Football has always been on the cutting edge of this, from Blood McNally to Ox Emerson to Tuffy Leemans to Bulldog Turner to Tank Younger to Night Train Lane to Mercury Morris to Shannon Sharpe.

The next step is for future NFL draft choices to be Ball Carrier instead of Mark Carrier. Why not Dash Fields and Star Whacker? It would save a lot of time and money on scouting. It would have helped the Broncos trying to find a place kicker to fill in for Jason Elam if there was someone out there already named Helmut Optional.

So, more is at stake for Tiger Woods than just whether he will be the wealthiest athlete ever, or if he is the next Jack Nicklaus, which is still a compliment to Nicklaus. Back when Nicklaus dropped out of college to play professional golf, he was not yet The Golden Bear, nor any animal of Tiger ferocity. He was Ohio Fats.

I do think that, before parents start naming children for their ambitions–Don King has, for example, come up a little short of actual royalty and Susan Butcher probably couldn’t clean a chicken–there should be this condition: exaggerated beginnings ought to have appropriate endings.

Someone once held a contest to nickname Joe Montana. a foolish notion. A man already with the name of a whole state doesn’t need another one.

Under my rule, this is what would have happened to Montana. As his career diminished he could have been, oh, Wayne Wyoming in his last years at San Francisco and then Vinny Vermont. He would have been Danny Delaware by the time he got to Kansas City.

Maybe by the time Tiger Woods gets to be Montana’s age, he will be Kitty Meadows.

General

20th Century

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No ducking it any longer. The millenium bug is everywhere and duty demands it be noticed, as if it could be avoided.

Lists of the 100 greatest this and the 100 greatest that require not agreement, but simply attention, assuming always that 100 is not stretching the definition of greatness beyond the facts.

For example, I defy anyone to find 100 great swimmers or 100 great ski jumpers, or one great fencer, including Zorro.

Even hockey strains to fill the count, beginning confidently with Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe at 1 and 2 but finishing with Craig Ramsey at 100. No way to start an argument there. And a top 100 list without disagreement is like a bowling ball without holes, nothing to get a grip on.

Tell me this, how many garages do you have to visit to find anyone who will agree that Ayrton Senna was the greatest auto racer who ever lived? I think this about that. Only those who walked away from their final race should be considered.

Still, in my own scattered research of the topic, I found a general consensus not all that startling. Best baseball player? Babe Ruth. Best football player? Jim Brown. Best basketball player? Michael Jordan. Boxer, Muhammad Ali. Golfer, Jack Nicklaus and so on.

Best baseball team? The 1927 Yankees. Basketball, the 1997 Bulls. Football, the ’78 Steelers. Hockey? Pick a year with Montreal in it.

Best sports TV moment of the century? The gold medal celebration at Lake Placid by the U.S. Olympic hockey team.

(This is where I discovered that the biggest non-sports TV moment was the first JFK funeral. This narrowly beat out Mary Tyler Moore tossing her hat in the air, while man landing on the moon was way down at No. 8. I point this out just to show that sports people aren’t quite the idiots at this as real world folks are.

(And while I’m on the topic, how can any list of the 100 greatest composers not include Fats Domino? Or the 100 greatest books omit “The World According to Garp?” Ah, that’s somebody else’s column. I’ll get on with mine.)

I am here to take issue with the list I saw ranking the greatest years of sport. This has to be the ultimate sorting out of the century, pitting one year against the other. To my surprise I discovered that the greatest year in the 20th century in which to be a sports fan was 1998.

Just last year. If only someone had told me at the time, I would have paid closer attention.

We had Mark McGwire’s 70 home runs and the race with Sammy Sosa. Jordan’s last game and his last shot. The Yankees winning125 games and sweeping the World Series. John Elway finally getting his Super Bowl and France upsetting Brazil for the World Cup.

Impressive. But blurry, especially that Yankee business. And Jordan had done as much five times before.

How do you rate a year of sports being better than another? If your team has done well, it has been a great year, which makes the 90s in Chicago a golden age, because of the Bulls alone.

Here 1985 would very likely be at the top of any list because the Bears were more than just an exceptional football team, they were a team that reflected the image of Chicago, or how Chicago likes to think of itself, tough, defiant, winners. No other Chicago sports team has ever caught that the way those Bears did.

But I must be objective about this, and the greatest single year in a century of sports has to be 1973.

How about Billie Jean King beating Bobby Riggs and changing an entire gender’s opinion of itself? Secretariat winning the Triple Crown while threatening to lap the field in the Belmont? George Foreman winning his first heavyweight title by knocking out Joe Frazier, giving Muhammad Ali a whole new reason to reprove himself.

The only undefeated team in NFL history, the Miami Dolphins, finished 17-0, despite the single greatest blooper in Super Bowl history, Garo Yepremian’s nearly forward pass. UCLA won a seventh consecutive NCAA title behind the single greatest individual game ever played in college basketball, Bill Walton missing only one shot out of 22.

O.J. Simpson became the first running back to gain 2,000 yards. Notre Dame went undefeated to win the national football championship, beating Bear Bryant’s Alabama team by a single point in the Sugar Bowl. the Mets rallied from last place at the end of August to win the National League pennant and Henry Aaron finished the season one home run short of Babe Ruth.

A close call, but 1973 beats out the second best sports year of the century, 1963, the year Michael Jordan was born.

Fishing

Fishing & Lying

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Okay. I can live with the designated hitter in baseball.

I need more evidence before I`m convinced that the three-point shot is poison to basketball.

I can even face the truth of football, that it has become ballroom dancing since they put in all those new rules against honest violence.

But this time, they`ve gone too far.
This breaks my heart.
They are trying to take lying out of fishing.
Would I lie?
I am distressed to report that even fishing has fallen under the heavyhand of the reformer.

Just the other day a guy in Florida admitted he had stuffed a frozen bass with lead weights and passed it off as fresh and heavy.He had to give back his prize money.

All fishing tournaments now require contestants to undergo polygraph tests.Any one who fails is not allowed to fish. Ever again. Any where.Unless he lies about lying, of course.

A couple of guys from Michigan had to have their catch verified by a polygraph. Something about too many female walleyes in their tournament creel. It doesn`t matter.

The point is they needed proof that their fish story was true.

Aren`t we talking here about the end of civilization as we know it?

Lying and fishing have been going together longer than Nancy and Sluggo.

Separating the two is as unthinkable as breaking up a pair of bronzed baby shoes.

Which came first, lying or fishing? Better you should ask which came first, the fish or the roe?

Without lying, fishing is just worm washing.

I should have seen this coming. It was inevitable when tournaments began giving away prizes for fishing, as if the fish weren`t prize enough.

Where there are rewards, there are rules. Where there are rules, there are rules keepers.  Now there must be no question that the winner is holding up his catch with clean hands.

Just recently in Texas, a tournament fisherman was disqualified for putting lead sinkers in the stomach of the winning bass.

So what`s new?

Plutarch, the Greek biographer, reported the first fixed fishing tournament. Cleopatra and Mark Antony were fishing the Nile and, according to Plutarch, each was trying to catch more fish than the other. Ignoring diplomacy, Cleopatra had loyal eunuchs under the water tying fish to her hook.  It was her barge and her river. How would it look if she lost to a Roman? She would never get away with that today. She would have to take a lie detector test.

(If you can`t convince anyone to swim underwater and help out, you can always pre-catch prized fish and freeze them until tournament time. Thawed fish are not the same as fresh, no matter what headwaiters swear, so the careful planner will keep fish in a live well until needed.)

Stopping this sort of deception is okay as far as it goes, I guess. But what I`m afraid will happen is that, in the zeal to clean up its act, fishing will eliminate lying altogether. That would be a sad day for all of us who have ever lost the big one.

And is there a fisherman alive who ever caught a fish bigger than the one that got away?

My favorite fish story, and one I defy the science of lie-detecting to diminish, is the one about the fellow who wanted to catch the world`s smallest fish.

He had to use the lightest tackle possible, of course.  For his pole, he started out with toothpicks but switched to straw.  He had to rig his line with tweezers. He went from thread to a single strand of silk and finally to a wisp from a spider`s web.

He caught minnows and gold fish and guppies and worked his way down to paramecium. He had his single-celled catch mounted on a slide and would invite friends to look at it through a microscope.

When they had adjusted the knobs and eyepieces to get the tiny little prize in focus, he would say:

“And if you think that one is small…”

Horse Racing

Hialeah

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HIALEAH, Fl–Behind the rolled and faded elegance of the old Mediterranean clubhouse, shaded in the late afternoon by the long shadows of wispy Australian pines, at the edge of Hialeah Park`s tropical paddock stands a statue of Citation.

The great horse is a sentry guarding yesterday, a bronzed memory maybe even too distant for the wrinkled citizens who sit on webbed chairs and watch the odds dance on the auxiliary tote board.

On the second day of a new calendar, on the earliest Flamingo Day ever, Citation waits to review, as he has now for nearly four decades, the next generation of thoroughbreds.

They must pass him to enter the tunnel that will take them to the same track that launched Citation in 1948.

Others, too. They’ve nearly all been by, all the great ones. Seabiscuit. Nashua. Bold Ruler. Tim Tam. Carry Back. Buckpasser. Seattle Slew. Alydar. Spectacular Bid.

That is when there was order in the world. The Flamingo was the first grand prize of spring, run in April, and the road to Kentucky passed under royal palms.

Citation won the Triple Crown from here, his jockey Eddie Arcaro getting the ride after Flamingo winner Eddie Snyder drowned off the Keys on a fishing trip.

The future rushes at Hialeah in cluttered urgency. Sunshine real estate is too valuable to indulge an age that knew not air conditioning.

Hialeah has been dumped to the bottom of Florida racetracks, with the worst racing dates, because it is better business that way. It will survive or it will die, either way with none of the grace that made it a legend.

Hialeah’s private treasures are hidden from the shabby warehouses and garages of unzoned commerce by the elegantly swaying pines.

Little has changed since the trees, the track and the patrons were young except now you can buy one ticket on all 10 races for a million dollar payoff. Dreams never go out of fashion, the gimmicks just get wilder.

The 59th Flamingo is a blind guess. It is so wide open that three horses must be excluded. There is room only for 14, and the only credential necessary seems to be age. Every horse in the race has turned three years old the day before.

This is a discount Flamingo, cheaper and sooner and less conclusive than any before it.

The best of the crop, a horse named Forty Niner, trained by the antique treasure, Woody Stephens, will not run. “It’s just too early in the season to be running your good 3-year-old,” said Stephens. “You can’t tighten a horse up on New Year’s.”

Stephens enters one not needing tightening, one with his own middle name—Cefis—that will finish third.

  1. Wayne Lukas, winner of the last two Flamingoes, supplements a horse named Couragized and finishes fifth.

John Campo, the round, loud trainer from New York, races a vaguely familiar name, Cherokee Colony, son of Campo’s 1981 Kentucky Derby winner, Pleasant Colony.

Cherokee Colony breaks 12th and wins with a rush down the stretch by a length over the aptly named Sorry About That.

“I rode his father, too,” says jockey Jorge Velasquez. “I think he’s better. He’s more willing. He’s stronger and better looking, too.”

“Who knows if he’ll stay together?” asks Campo, who knows he is still four months from what is important.

Only once in the last 20 years has the Flamingo been run in a slower time than the winner’s 1:49 4/5, which figures to be 18 lengths off the record. The time can be extended to barely two seconds faster than Forty Niner’s last controlled workout.

There is no sense of anything ending among the principals, no group picture is taken, no program saved or tucked under the saddle blanket.

This may be the last Flamingo, certainly the last as a major stakes race.   A million dollars less is bet than the year before. Attendance is more than halved. And everyone says it could have been worse.

Hialeah owner John Brunetti issues a statement that says he hopes no one is fooled into thinking Hialeah can go on like this.

The famed flamingoes, stocked a half century ago by early owner Joseph Widener, are fed shrimp to remain pink, which, at the price of appetizers today, is not a cheap indulgence.

They still fly up from their rookery on the infield lake before the feature race , circle and return, their duty done for the tourists and for dinner.

Though the birds do not insist on cocktail sauce or mesquite barbeque, their diet is only one expense that burdens the dowager queen of horse racing, still the loveliest place in the world ot go broke.

This is the place where once slim women in wide hats and long gloves walked on the arms of men in white suits. They came by train from Palm Beach to see the horses run, most of which they owned.

The train from Palm Beach does not stop here any more, but the Metrorail does and unloads trios of old men whose socks are too high.

The winning horse’s chest heaves as if he just pulled the train down from Palm Beach as he is led down shed row under the live oaks that once dappled his father and Secretariat and Swale.

That may be a tear below Citation’s eye.

Or something left by a pigeon.

Sentiment, at the race track, is a live ticket.

Analysis, compare, Horse Racing

Florida Derby Field Mighty Appealing

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Date: Friday, March 1, 1985
Source: By Bernie Lincicome, Chicago Tribune.
Section: SPORTS
Dateline: HALLANDALE, FLA.
Memo: In the wake of the news.

Headline: FLA. DERBY FIELD MIGHTY APPEALING

HALLANDALE, FLA. – When last we looked in on the wonderful world of horse racing, Devil’sBag was in disgrace and Swale was dead, though it is yet to be determined whogot the best of the deal.

Swale will, at least, always be a champion, while Devil’s Bag suffersincessant blind dates trying to prove that his heirs will be as fragile as hewas.

In addition, Swale was, as a corpse, voted the best 3-year-old on four,if stiff, legs, verifying the eternal wisdom that it is impossible to beat adead horse.

And now the world begins to search for their replacements, the firstsignificant evidence to be made available Saturday in Gulfstream’s FloridaDerby.

Unlike the enormous interest generated by Devil’s Bag last year, or maybebecause of it, there has been little early hype for this season’s TripleCrown contenders.

The only excessive boasting to be done so far has been by the owners ofan animal named Mighty Appealing, who won four of five races as a 2-year-oldand arrived in Florida behind bumper stickers and T-shirts announcing, “GetThat Mighty Appealing Feeling.”

After the horse twice finished eighth in Gulfstream preps to the rear ofthe same horses that it will again meet in the Florida Derby, a bumpersticker appeared saying, “Get That Mighty Appalling Feeling.”Confidence is a cruel flaw in horse racing.

Better to expect the worst, like Phil Simms, the crusty trainer of IrishSur, winner of this year’s Tropical Park Derby but only the most casual ofthreats Saturday.

“Listen,” said Simms. “I don’t think I can beat Woody’s horse and Idon’t think I can beat Veitch’s horse, but I need some proof.”Woody is Woody Stephens, who retired Devil’s Bag and buried Swale. Veitchis John Veitch, hairless trainer of Dr. Carter, who chased Stephens’ horseslast year and caught neither of them.

These two men are again the principal humans involved in the next TripleCrown adventure, though their new roles are reversed.

Veitch has the Florida Derby favorite, Proud Truth, and Stephens has thesecond choice, Stephan’s Odyssey. They would be ranked in the same order ifthis Derby had a different first name, like Kentucky, and the drink of theday was made with mint instead of lime juice.

The two horses raced against each other 11 days ago in the Fountain ofYouth with Veitch’s horse winning by a neck.

“You always got to beat somebody,” Stephens shrugged.

Veitch also has a spare horse, just in case something sinister shouldhappen to Proud Truth. The horse’s name is Script Ohio, and it will not runagainst its stablemate, just as Swale never ran against Devil’s Bag.

“It’s kind of like having a fullback and a halfback,” said Veitch.

“They don’t have to be in the game at the same time.”

Proud Truth and Script Ohio are owned by John Galbreath, were bred andraised at Galbreath’s Darby Dan Farm and at least one of them was named afterthe clever band formation that has long delighted followers of Ohio Statefootball, of which Galbreath is possibly the most notable.

“They’re more like his children than racehorses,” said Veitch.The animals, not the Ohio State band, though there has been the odd tubaplayer who could qualify as both.

Stephan’s Odyssey has a suspiciously similar name to that of Stephenshimself, just one vowel off, and for those who want to believe it, ownerHenryk deKwiatkowski will even agree to such romantic gibberish.How nice it would be if, at age 72, and after the ordeal of Devil’s Bagand Swale, Stephens could win the Kentucky Derby with a horse who is hisnamesake.

But around the family table, deKwiatkowski reassures a nephew that thehorse was named for him. Blood is at least as thick as business.

No matter. Proud Truth and Stephan’s Odyssey are the horses to watch inthe first important stakes of the year.

“A double-barreled shotgun,” said Danny Perlsweig, trainer of Do ItAgain Dan, another horse named for someone else.

The best 3-year-old on paper will be on the same track, but not in thesame race as the horses of Veitch and Stephens.

It is called Chief’s Crown, trained by Roger Laurin, and it won theEclipse Award as the best 2-year-old of 1984, but has yet to set hoof on turfthis season.

Chief’s Crown will run only 7 furlongs Saturday in a race manufacturedfor him and named after the late Swale, winner of last year’s Florida Derbyas a pre-cadaver.

So much is thought of Chief’s Crown that, like Devil’s Bag, he hasalready been syndicated, but with considerably more caution.

Only half of the syndication has been dispersed for $20 million. Theother half will be sold when and if the horse finally does something tojustify greater investment.

Chief’s Crown has been bothered by a cough all winter, and not even theSouthern sun has been able to eliminate it, not an uncommon complaint fromhuman tourists who fail to find Florida cures even at larcenous prices.

As far as is known, however, during his lengthy recuperaton, Chief’sCrown has resisted wearing black kneesocks with flowered shorts.

Baseball, Biography, Chicago Tribune, Professional

SUTTER’S FINGERS HIS SAVING GRACE

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WEST PALM BEACH, FLA. – Except for enough hair on his face and head to stuff a small mattress, Bruce Sutter is as ordinary as any of us who makes $1.7 million a year working roughly seven or eight minutes a week.

Sutter likes hunting and fishing, ignores exercise and avoids lifting anything heavier than a 5-ounce baseball or a 12-ounce can.

“I get my exercise on the mound,” Sutter said, swabbing off the sweat he had gathered by watching his new Atlanta pitching mates try to advance imaginary baserunners on a remote field at the Braves’ spring-training complex.

When Sutter left St. Louis to gain greater wealth as the most significant free agent of the winter (“What it boiled down to was they didn’t want me anymore,” he said), Cardinals’ manager Whitey Herzog moaned, “I am now 45 games dumber.”

What makes Sutter different from the rest of us, as well as from the 100 or so members of his own fraternity of late-inning game-savers, is the way he holds the baseball.

The first two fingers of Sutter’s right hand look long enough to scratch both ears at the same time. That is a good trick at parties but not something anyone would give him $48 million to do, which the Braves have agreed is fair over the life of Sutter’s new contract–a life that will most likely last longer than his own.

Sutter’s right wrist is long enough to keep him from buying his shirts off the rack. He wraps his fingers around each side of a baseball, snaps his wrist and tickles the underside of the ball with his thumb as he releases it. His thumb ends up between his fingers, just like yours does when you pretend to steal a baby’s nose.

And that, pretty much, is how the forkball is thrown.

“I know the mechanics of the pitch,” said Johnny Sain, the Braves’ pitching coach who has been around Sutter for less than a week, “and I surely know what it does when he throws it. But why it works so well I’m kindly hoping to learn from him myself.”

Good luck. Sutter can show it and will explain it if he’s in the mood, but he is as mystified as the next guy as to what makes the forkball–or the split-fingered fastball–the deadliest pitch since the Sirens sang to Ulysses. “All I know is that it is easy for me to throw,” Sutter said. “I don’t think a lot about it, where my head is or my shoulders are. I wouldn’t make a very good pitching coach.”

Other pitchers have tried it, or so they claim, most notably the staff of the champion Detroit Tigers. But Sutter holds the patent.

“It looks like a fastball, but it’s not,” said Braves’ center-fielder Dale Murphy, who has had as much success hitting it as anybody. “It looks like an off-speed pitch, but it’s not. Usually when you swing at it, it’s not a strike.”

Sutter learned the pitch when he was in the Cubs’ farm system, in Quincy, from the late Fred Martin. Sutter was a 20-year-old prospect who had signed for $500, in contrast to the $500,000 signing bonus the Braves gave him 12 years later.

Sutter remembers Martin showing a group of young pitchers how to throw what he called an off-speed curve. Because of his long fingers and his wrist snap, Sutter realized that he could throw the ball harder than it was meant to be.

What a batter sees when Sutter’s ball comes at him is a fastball that suddenly disappears below his knees.

“When Sutter is pitching well,” said Atlanta’s Bob Horner, “the ball jumps under your bat.”

“It’s kind of like a dry spitter,” Sutter said.

And the beauty of all of this is that Sutter only has to show off when his team is ahead, and for not very long.

“I’ve never pitched for more than five innings in one game in the major leagues,” Sutter said.

Most batters see so little of him, their knowledge of how to hit his pitch relies largely on rumor.

“I have more trouble with slap hitters,” Sutter said. “But they usually bring me in to pitch to the stars in the big situation.

“I only face a hitter maybe three-four times a season, so none of them can really get familiar with the pitch. And I throw it 95 percent of the time. “I’m not an intimidator like a Rich Gossage, where if he has one slip, he could end a guy’s career. Mine is a freak pitch. It goes spiraling in like a football, but I can’t explain it any better than that. I know that when it’s working best, I can’t see it break. And if I’m in the game for more than two innings, we’ve lost.”

Sutter’s value, as with most things in baseball, must be put into numbers. He saved 45 of St. Louis’ 84 victories last season and won 5. No Atlanta relief pitcher had more than 16 saves.

Atlanta lost nine games after leading in the ninth inning; St. Louis lost only two. Had those numbers been reversed, the Braves might or might not have caught San Diego, to whom they finished second, but Ted Turner’s money is saying that they would have.

“I can’t really help a fourth- or fifth-place team,” Sutter said. “I can’t make a team a winner by myself. The team has to be good enough to give me a lead to protect. I think the Braves are that good.”

“The worst feeling you could have,” said Murphy, “was to see Sutter get up in the bullpen. You’d tense up just knowing you had to get some runs before he got into the game.

“Now it’s somebody else’s turn to sweat.”

Biography, Chicago Tribune, Football, Professional

FLUTIE COMES UP SHORT USFL DEBUT IS LESS THAN A BIG SUCCESS

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Dateline: BIRMINGHAM, ALA. – What might have been, for Doug Flutie, could be reduced to simple mathematics.

“What did we score in the fourth quarter, 21 points?” Flutie asked. “Over a whole game, that’s 84.”

And that would have been ample to overcome the 38 points scored by the Heismanless Birmingham Stallions here Sunday. That many points, or even half as many, may have justified Flutie as an adult quarterback for the New Jersey Generals, if not the most recent savior of the United States Football League.

Alas for Flutie, they still count the actual points scored in each quarter before adding them up, even in the USFL, and he thus will forever have to live with the indelible fact that he was a loser, 38-28, the first time he had a chance to show anyone why he is worth $7 million.

“I made no promises when I came into this league,” Flutie said. “I don’t owe anything to anybody.”

Well, that is not exactly true. He owes a small debt to whoever taught him his times tables, if no one else.

Flutie might just as easily have multiplied his first-half completions by two, which would still have been zero. In fact, he could have gone all the way until two minutes were left in the third quarter and not have projected a completion for himself, unless you count the two he threw to Birmingham.

By the end of the game, Flutie was 12 of 27 for two touchdowns and three interceptions, but until his last futile flurry, he played like a baby with his thumbs on backwards.

“I just wasn’t on the money,” Flutie said, intending no pun.

Other great athletes have had ineffective starts. Someone was mentioning that Willie Mays went 0-for-50 or something when he broke in, but of course, someone was throwing the ball at Mays, not just handing it to him.

“No one said it was going to be easy,” Flutie said.

Of course they did. Everybody said so. Anyone who saw him whip Miami with his miracle pass or applauded him for taking the Heisman without blushing thought so. Certainly Donald Trump, Flutie’s new landlord, who paid him all that money and traded veteran Brian Sipe to unclutter the backfield for him, thought so.

Watching Flutie flail away at his own myth for most of his first game was like watching a shiny new Ferrari turn into just another used car.

The first four passes he threw did not touch another human being. His fifth pass bounced off Herschel Walker, who has a Heisman of his own, and his sixth pass was swatted down by 300-pound tackle Doug Smith, who is big enough to be sliced into several Fluties and frozen.

Flutie’s seventh pass finally found a companion, though it happened to be David Dumars of the other team. No. 8 was a time zone too long and No. 9 came down in the arms of Birmingham’s Chuck Clinton.

Cynics as well as realists were trying to get up a pool in the press box on when Flutie would complete his first pass. I took August.

It wasn’t until Flutie introduced the ball to teammate Clarence Collins that the game ball had anyone’s fingerprints on it but Flutie’s and his enemies’.

Once he completed his first pass, with the score 31-7, Flutie outscored Birmingham by 21-7, but it was still another interception, by Dennis Woodberry of the Stallions with seven minutes to play, that stopped whatever chance Flutie had of working his magic.

On this day, there was nothing up his sleeve, except a rather ordinary arm, shorter than most.

“It was frustrating and irritating,” Flutie said. “I was angry at myself for not getting off to a better start. I just . . . shoot, I just wish I could have done it the whole game.”

Flutie was asked, quite properly, if he possibly had any trouble seeing over the Birmingham linemen.

“No comment,” said Flutie, who was game to talk about everything but why he has never grown bigger than your average placekicker.

He did not alibi on his lack of preparation, a mere two weeks of training with the Generals.

“If I had only one day of practice, I still would have felt I should start,” Flutie said.

And yet . . .

“What I need,” Flutie said, “is more game experience. Week after week, game after game, I will get better.”

The pressure of his debut, he said, was no bother.

“I was relaxed and I was calm,” Flutie said. “I knew what I was doing.”

And yet . . .

“I know what people will say,” Flutie said. ” ‘Flutie didn’t win his first game. When’s he going to win one?’ There will be more pressure.”

But what happened against Birmingham?

“We didn’t have the ball,” Flutie said, which was true. In all, New Jersey had the ball for only 18 minutes, just two minutes in the second quarter and three in the third. “When you make a mistake, you like to get out there and fix it. I didn’t work up a sweat until the third quarter.”

And when Flutie did, a few of the things for which he became notable began to happen.

“We’re a running team,” Flutie said, “but I feel more comfortable when things are helter-skelter. When I have to think on my feet, I react better. I don’t feel like a robot, just handing the ball off.”

That is a matter for his coach, Walt Michaels, to solve. The fourth- quarter Flutie was much preferable to the first-, second- and third-quarter Flutie, and if he is to be anything close to what the USFL imagines him to be, Flutie may have to play the game on the edge, as he did in college.

“I don’t give a damn about stats,” Flutie said. “If I was 0-for-30 and we won the game 6-0, I would be happy.”

That would make one. PHOTO: AP Laserphoto. Doug Flutie, New Jersey’s $7-million man. PHOTO: AP Laserphoto. Doug Flutie passes under pressure Sunday during his first regular-season game with the New Jersey Generals. He completed 12 of 27 for 189 yards and had 3 interceptions.

Chicago Tribune, Football

SPRINGING ANOTHER USELESS IDEA ON US

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If you think of the United States Football League at all, think of it as a cucumber sandwich. It was a bad idea to start with, it was hard to digest and here it comes again.

Yes, spring football is with us once more. Not us, exactly. Not Chicago. The late and unlamented Blitz is somewhere in the ether, or the mind of Eddie Einhorn, which can be counted as twins.

The expiration of the Blitz removed the USFL from the Midwest, where folks know how to read the calendar, if not always without moving their lips.

In fact, the USFL is no longer where anybody lives, except for Los Angeles and New Jersey, if you call that living. It has essentially become a southern suburban league, following the example of soccer, a sport that at least knew what time of year it was most likely to be ignored.

The USFL has been argued out of playing in the spring next year, though the discussion is not over, so this could be the last time we are likely to have lilacs and punt formation at the same time.

It may be noticed that while nowhere in the heartland will be heard the sound of linebackers breaking something essential on themselves or others, the state of Florida has three USFL franchises, along with Lee Corso and his travel agent.

What can be made of this odd circumstance is not quite clear, except that the seasons in Florida are indistinguishable one from the other, as are the natives, and that every second person there sells real estate, which is how most of the USFL owners got their start.

The first two USFL champions are no longer in business where they started, Michigan having merged with Oakland, and Philadelphia having migrated down the road to Baltimore. It is assumed that this year’s winner will get a trophy and a bus ticket to Albuquerque, one way.

It has been reported that the USFL lost upwards of $70 million last season, which was reason enough for the players to threaten a strike recently. After deliberating the notion soberly and briefly, the players concluded that if they were to be responsible for the USFL’s committing suicide, they would wait until their bosses could afford the rope.

The league is down to 14 teams from 18, but that is still two more than when it started three years ago. Having now tried both addition and subtraction, the USFL is mostly interested in trying division. That is how it hopes to survive, by dividing up the $1.3 billion it hopes to get by suing the National Football League for being older, better and richer.

Failing that, multiplication is a possibility, the formula being 14 times yes equals four, or the number of teams it is willing to contribute to the NFL to stop being a nuisance.

As a grand plan, this scheme has as much chance of succeeding as a mule has of leaving an heir.

For collateral, the USFL can offer the last three Heisman Trophy winners, two on the same team, Herschel Walker and Doug Flutie of the New Jersey Generals. In between, Mike Rozier resides now in Jacksonville and will line up next to Archie Griffin, a more distant owner of two Heismans (Heismen?) all by himself.

In gratitude for stockpiling the most visible of college stars, the USFL may play football on Saturdays in the fall, or at the same time future Heisman winners are collecting votes. College football has yet to say thanks.

ABC-TV, the network of contract, has decided to show only one game a week, leaving assorted others to cable. And it will not regionalize the telecasts, thereby saving a few bucks on multiple crews and getting whatever it can out of the $15.5 million it pays for its burden. That’s $15.5 million to the whole league. Each of the 28 NFL teams makes as much alone.

The most notable game of the first weekend will feature young Flutie Sunday in his paid debut. Birmingham will be the opponent and the site, and ABC-TV will be in attendance, though not all of its outlets are enchanted with the prospect of watching Flutie make a small fool of himself.

Either that or they prefer to wait until Flutie learns to ride the bicycle before showing him in a race.

Flutie is this year’s only significant acquisition by the USFL, and the NFL is privately delighted to be free of him. On misguided fan appeal alone, Flutie would have cost some NFL team a high draft choice that can better be spent on a cornerback from Howard Payne.

Or for the money the USFL paid Flutie, Howard Payne himself. PHOTO: Lee Corso