Look, I get it. First, it's not 1965 anymore. Second, it's hockey, which has a niche audience no matter how much fans of it like myself are loathe to admit otherwise.
And third?
Third ... well, yes, what I'm about to say does make me that archetypal geezer of myth and legend.
In other words: Damn kids.
And also: Don't you see me over here shaking my fist as you track dirt through my pristine green lawn?
Get off my lawn, and, NBC, get this schlock crap off my TV screen. It's the Stanley Cup Final, dammit. Why are we watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Warriors or whatever this cheap-o garbage is called?
Nobody cares. What we care about, those of us who don't have cable or DirectTV or live streaming or your fancy apps -- whose televisions operate like, yes, it really is 1965 -- is Carl Gunnarsson scoring in overtime for the St. Louis Blues last night, evening the Stanley Cup Final with the Boston Bruins at one game apiece.
We geezers didn't see it, because NBC chose not to run Game 2 on its main feed. Apparently Teenage Mutant Ninja Warriors was too big a deal to pre-empt for only the oldest major championship series on the North American continent.
Yeesh. Can Congress not pass a law dictating that major championships in American sport be required to air on network TV? I mean, since Congress isn't doing anything else these days besides ducking and running from the raving ninny in the White House?
I mean, it's one thing to pre-empt the Stanley Cup Final for something good, like "Law & Order: SVU" reruns. But for trash programming like Teenage Mutant Ninja Warriors? What, they've run out of America Sings Good contests to put on the air?
I know. I know. Shaking my fist, screaming at the damn kids.
But ... come on. It's the Stanley Cup Final.
Where's the love, NBC?
Thursday, May 30, 2019
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
Mount Lunacy
Take a good long look at the photo accompanying this story, and then tell me the human species is long for this world. That's a queue of people lined up to get to the top of Mt. Everest. That's a queue of people lined up as if Everest were, I don't know, a ride at Cedar Point or a hit Broadway show.
Which it might be now that Nepal is doling out permits to climb Everest to just about anyone with a pulse and the ability to pass the old chewing gum/walking test.
The result is this sort of logjam at the top, as climbers patiently wait their turn to stand on the highest point on Earth. Mind you, this is not a sidewalk they're standing on. This is a knife's-edge ridge 29,000 feet in the sky, where oxygen is as rare as common sense and the trail is littered with human popsicles, corpses left there after falling or running out of air or being caught out in storms that come howling out of nowhere in an eyeblink.
There are so many corpses up there now, the climbers Everest hasn't killed yet are literally stepping over them. Eleven of them are fresh corpses who have died in this season alone.
It's a damn cemetery up there, in other words. Think about that for a second.
"Are these people crazy?" you're asking now, having thought about it.
An excellent question. Here's the easy answer: Why, yes. Yes, they are.
This would include Nepalese officials, who see no problem with people queuing up in long lines to become Everest's next victims. Desperate for the money, they've issued north of 300 permits so far this year, at $11,000 a pop.
Some of them have gone to people who've actually climbed a real mountain before. The rest have gone to thrill-seekers and bucket-listers who belong on a knife's-edge ridge 29,000 feet in the sky the way an El Camino belongs in the Indianapolis 500.
I don't know how Nepal justifies this. I do know how it should sell it, however.
Wanna Die On Everest? Here's Your Chance!
That.
And Don't Forget The T-Shirt: I Kicked The Bucket (List) On Everest!
Also that.
The hell of it is, when you're lining up to reach the summit of Everest the way you'd line up at Starbucks, how much of an I Kicked The Bucket (List) deal is it? Thousands of just folks have reached the summit now, decades after Hillary and Tenzing did it. Climbers who've survived this season say it's a literal traffic jam up there now. Which suggests it's about as much an accomplishment these days as making a successful trip to Lowe's.
Yet every Tom, Dick and Harry is still doing it. And Nepal is still blithely issuing permits to them. And the human popsicles above Camp Four keep blooming like flowers in an English garden.
Oh, yes. These people are crazy. Crazy as bedbugs.
Which it might be now that Nepal is doling out permits to climb Everest to just about anyone with a pulse and the ability to pass the old chewing gum/walking test.
The result is this sort of logjam at the top, as climbers patiently wait their turn to stand on the highest point on Earth. Mind you, this is not a sidewalk they're standing on. This is a knife's-edge ridge 29,000 feet in the sky, where oxygen is as rare as common sense and the trail is littered with human popsicles, corpses left there after falling or running out of air or being caught out in storms that come howling out of nowhere in an eyeblink.
There are so many corpses up there now, the climbers Everest hasn't killed yet are literally stepping over them. Eleven of them are fresh corpses who have died in this season alone.
It's a damn cemetery up there, in other words. Think about that for a second.
"Are these people crazy?" you're asking now, having thought about it.
An excellent question. Here's the easy answer: Why, yes. Yes, they are.
This would include Nepalese officials, who see no problem with people queuing up in long lines to become Everest's next victims. Desperate for the money, they've issued north of 300 permits so far this year, at $11,000 a pop.
Some of them have gone to people who've actually climbed a real mountain before. The rest have gone to thrill-seekers and bucket-listers who belong on a knife's-edge ridge 29,000 feet in the sky the way an El Camino belongs in the Indianapolis 500.
I don't know how Nepal justifies this. I do know how it should sell it, however.
Wanna Die On Everest? Here's Your Chance!
That.
And Don't Forget The T-Shirt: I Kicked The Bucket (List) On Everest!
Also that.
The hell of it is, when you're lining up to reach the summit of Everest the way you'd line up at Starbucks, how much of an I Kicked The Bucket (List) deal is it? Thousands of just folks have reached the summit now, decades after Hillary and Tenzing did it. Climbers who've survived this season say it's a literal traffic jam up there now. Which suggests it's about as much an accomplishment these days as making a successful trip to Lowe's.
Yet every Tom, Dick and Harry is still doing it. And Nepal is still blithely issuing permits to them. And the human popsicles above Camp Four keep blooming like flowers in an English garden.
Oh, yes. These people are crazy. Crazy as bedbugs.
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Things of remembrance lost
I have seen the hour of endless twilight, and it is no pretty thing. It is all grayness, and mumbling. It is a haze of hallucination, and words without context. It is a slow, ruinous retreat from the world and all that humans love of it, until finally the mind is a vacant room with a vacant stare looking out from it.
I have seen dementia. My father had it. It was nasty and pitiless and stole everything he had ever been -- and when his death came, it felt like mercy.
And so when I read about Bart Starr's death, I felt an extra twinge. And when Bill Buckner died the next day, I felt an even stronger twinge.
Buckner, see, died at 69 of Lewy-Body dementia, which is what my father had. And Starr, in his last years, suffered a series of strokes and seizures that so diminished his mind that, four years ago, a reporter visited him and found he could no longer remember he'd been the quarterback of one of the most iconic football teams of all time, the Vince Lombardi Packers.
Couldn't remember Lombardi. Couldn't remember any of the five championships they'd won. Couldn't remember Jerry Kramer, or Fuzzy Thurston, or Jim Taylor, or Paul Hornung.
Couldn't remember the Ice Bowl, when the wind chill was 48 below and an industrial haze hung over Lambeau Field from the frozen breath of all those hardy Cheesehead fans. Couldn't remember how, aching and weary from being slammed to the concrete turf eight times by the Dallas pass rush, he finally ended it by burrowing into the end zone behind a road-grader block from Kramer and Kenny Bowman.
And Buckner?
At the end, could he remember how great a baseball player he'd been as a young man for the Dodgers and Cubs? Could he remember how he stoically soldiered on into baseball senior citizenry with his legs mostly gone? Or did Lewy-Body show an especially cruel streak and, over and over, take him in his mind to that moment when he couldn't get down on Mookie Wilson's slow roller, opening the door to yet more ballyhooed heartache for the Boston Red Sox?
He'll always be remembered for that play, unfairly, because it plays over and over in any video from the 1986 World Series. Yet time has done its work, softening hearts while sharpening perspective. The blame for this particular Red Sox choke now rests mostly where it should have all along, with manager John McNamara.
Buckner never should have been on the field at that juncture, not with his lack of mobility. It was a late-inning defensive switch that cried out to be made, and McNamara failed to make it. So what happened is on him, not on Buckner.
I hope that moment wasn't where he was in his mind, at the end. Or if it was, that the dementia scrambled it with some other memory, some other Lewy-Body hallucination.
I hope Bart Starr regained some sense of who he was, too, before the end.
Because he played for such a legend, and on such a legendary team, he didn't always get his due. But he was the perfect quarterback for those '60s Packers, an afterthought in college and the pros until Lombardi found him and saw something in him no one else did. And in time he became as iconic as the team for which he played.
I don't know how it was elsewhere in those days, but every time my uncle, cousin and I played football in the barnyard down in Wells County, we were always the Packers. My uncle, playing the seniority card, always got to be Bart Starr. My cousin was always Paul Hornung. I was always either Boyd Dowler or Carroll Dale, I can't exactly remember.
But I do remember enough. And I hope Buckner and Starr did, too, at the end.
One last small victory, it would have been. And surely not too much to ask.
I have seen dementia. My father had it. It was nasty and pitiless and stole everything he had ever been -- and when his death came, it felt like mercy.
And so when I read about Bart Starr's death, I felt an extra twinge. And when Bill Buckner died the next day, I felt an even stronger twinge.
Buckner, see, died at 69 of Lewy-Body dementia, which is what my father had. And Starr, in his last years, suffered a series of strokes and seizures that so diminished his mind that, four years ago, a reporter visited him and found he could no longer remember he'd been the quarterback of one of the most iconic football teams of all time, the Vince Lombardi Packers.
Couldn't remember Lombardi. Couldn't remember any of the five championships they'd won. Couldn't remember Jerry Kramer, or Fuzzy Thurston, or Jim Taylor, or Paul Hornung.
Couldn't remember the Ice Bowl, when the wind chill was 48 below and an industrial haze hung over Lambeau Field from the frozen breath of all those hardy Cheesehead fans. Couldn't remember how, aching and weary from being slammed to the concrete turf eight times by the Dallas pass rush, he finally ended it by burrowing into the end zone behind a road-grader block from Kramer and Kenny Bowman.
And Buckner?
At the end, could he remember how great a baseball player he'd been as a young man for the Dodgers and Cubs? Could he remember how he stoically soldiered on into baseball senior citizenry with his legs mostly gone? Or did Lewy-Body show an especially cruel streak and, over and over, take him in his mind to that moment when he couldn't get down on Mookie Wilson's slow roller, opening the door to yet more ballyhooed heartache for the Boston Red Sox?
He'll always be remembered for that play, unfairly, because it plays over and over in any video from the 1986 World Series. Yet time has done its work, softening hearts while sharpening perspective. The blame for this particular Red Sox choke now rests mostly where it should have all along, with manager John McNamara.
Buckner never should have been on the field at that juncture, not with his lack of mobility. It was a late-inning defensive switch that cried out to be made, and McNamara failed to make it. So what happened is on him, not on Buckner.
I hope that moment wasn't where he was in his mind, at the end. Or if it was, that the dementia scrambled it with some other memory, some other Lewy-Body hallucination.
I hope Bart Starr regained some sense of who he was, too, before the end.
Because he played for such a legend, and on such a legendary team, he didn't always get his due. But he was the perfect quarterback for those '60s Packers, an afterthought in college and the pros until Lombardi found him and saw something in him no one else did. And in time he became as iconic as the team for which he played.
I don't know how it was elsewhere in those days, but every time my uncle, cousin and I played football in the barnyard down in Wells County, we were always the Packers. My uncle, playing the seniority card, always got to be Bart Starr. My cousin was always Paul Hornung. I was always either Boyd Dowler or Carroll Dale, I can't exactly remember.
But I do remember enough. And I hope Buckner and Starr did, too, at the end.
One last small victory, it would have been. And surely not too much to ask.
Monday, May 27, 2019
The vanished, and the cost
Always I remember the cemeteries, on this day when we pause to honor the ones who never came back. They are in France, the cemeteries, and too much forgotten as their war is too much forgotten, in this time without history.
They are the American cemetery at Belleau Wood. They are the American cemetery at Meuse-Argonne. They are the American cemetery at St. Mihiel.
Rows of white crosses stretch away from you in these green gardens, arrayed in perfect and awful symmetry. American boys who sang "Over There" as they marched off to the Western Front slumber eternally there, killed by German machine guns or artillery or a horrifying flu pandemic in the last great push of World War I.
They were kids, most of them, from small towns and big cities and bucolic farms. Most of them had no clue what they were in for when they went marching off singing. Some of them never would know, killed before they'd barely seen anything.
One second they were filing into a trench complex built and then abandoned by the French or British; the next, oblivion. And then a name on a white cross in a green place far from home.
Or, not a cross. Because that happened, too.
I'm reminded of this because the other day, in honor of Memorial Day weekend, the Fort Wayne TinCaps unveiled a chair and a plaque at Parkview Field. Unlike the other chairs in the 'View, this one is not green, but black. And no one will ever sit in it.
The accompanying plaque explains: The black chair is symbolic of all the Americans who were either POWs or MIAs, and who not only never came home but simply vanished. According to the plaque, there have been 92,000 of those since the Great War.
And suddenly I'm right back in France, at a country crossroads on a sun-washed summer day, standing in the cool dimness of the marble memorial at the St. Mihiel American Cemetery. The cemetery, comprising more than 4,000 of those white crosses, lies in lush farmland just outside the village of Thiaucourt, in the middle of the old St. Mihiel salient. In 1918, in their first large-scale action of the war, American military forces reduced the salient, at great cost.
Here inside the marble chamber, the cost hits home. On one wall is an immense plaque of polished black stone, stretching almost from floor to ceiling. On it, name upon name is etched in gold. They are the names of the American soldiers who simply disappeared from the earth during the St. Mihiel campaign.
The names go on forever, every one of them once a living soul with a family and a life and dreams of a future. Every one of them simply gone, from one battlefield of one war, so that other living souls could make their own families and lives and futures.
Something to think about this day. And all days.
They are the American cemetery at Belleau Wood. They are the American cemetery at Meuse-Argonne. They are the American cemetery at St. Mihiel.
Rows of white crosses stretch away from you in these green gardens, arrayed in perfect and awful symmetry. American boys who sang "Over There" as they marched off to the Western Front slumber eternally there, killed by German machine guns or artillery or a horrifying flu pandemic in the last great push of World War I.
They were kids, most of them, from small towns and big cities and bucolic farms. Most of them had no clue what they were in for when they went marching off singing. Some of them never would know, killed before they'd barely seen anything.
One second they were filing into a trench complex built and then abandoned by the French or British; the next, oblivion. And then a name on a white cross in a green place far from home.
Or, not a cross. Because that happened, too.
I'm reminded of this because the other day, in honor of Memorial Day weekend, the Fort Wayne TinCaps unveiled a chair and a plaque at Parkview Field. Unlike the other chairs in the 'View, this one is not green, but black. And no one will ever sit in it.
The accompanying plaque explains: The black chair is symbolic of all the Americans who were either POWs or MIAs, and who not only never came home but simply vanished. According to the plaque, there have been 92,000 of those since the Great War.
And suddenly I'm right back in France, at a country crossroads on a sun-washed summer day, standing in the cool dimness of the marble memorial at the St. Mihiel American Cemetery. The cemetery, comprising more than 4,000 of those white crosses, lies in lush farmland just outside the village of Thiaucourt, in the middle of the old St. Mihiel salient. In 1918, in their first large-scale action of the war, American military forces reduced the salient, at great cost.
Here inside the marble chamber, the cost hits home. On one wall is an immense plaque of polished black stone, stretching almost from floor to ceiling. On it, name upon name is etched in gold. They are the names of the American soldiers who simply disappeared from the earth during the St. Mihiel campaign.
The names go on forever, every one of them once a living soul with a family and a life and dreams of a future. Every one of them simply gone, from one battlefield of one war, so that other living souls could make their own families and lives and futures.
Something to think about this day. And all days.
Peerless
This is how you put on a Greatest Spectacle, in case the NASCAR posers and Indy-Ain't-The-Same deniers are wondering. You give 'em a duel for the ages at America's loudest, fastest historic landmark.
You flood this ancient place with the population of a mid-size city, and you put in a heavenly call to Tony Hulman and put him in charge of the weather ("Outta the way, Mr. Accuweather Forecast. Lemme show you how it's done"). Then you bring it down two determined men and two rocket ships: Simon Pagenaud, who owned May like few have in recent memory, and Alexander Rossi, who ran the wheels off it in as breathtaking a charge as Indy has seen in ... well, 103 years.
Then you let 'em settle it in a 15-lap dash to the finish, after the one big crash of a mostly clean day shut things down for awhile.
In the end, Rossi caught Pagenaud with three laps to run, and Pagenaud blew back past him on the outside in turn three on lap 199. Then Pagenaud, who had been masterful all day (and all month), masterfully kept the flat-footing Rossi in his wake by weaving back and forth on lap 200, breaking Rossi's draft and keeping him from getting one final run.
You wanna talk defensive driving? That, boys and girls, was defensive driving on steroids.
Like all great Indy duels, this one stirred echoes of other duels on other days. It was Rodger Ward and Jim Rathmann swapping the lead time and again in 1960. It was Rick Mears almost-but-not-quite chasing down Gordon Johncock in 1982. It was Ryan Hunter-Reay and Helio Castroneves going into the grass to pass as the laps ran down in 2014; Emmo punting Al Jr. into the wall in turn three in 1989; Junior and Scott Goodyear drag-racing to the yard of brick three years later.
Now you can add Pagenaud and Rossi to the collection. Celebrate them both, because as with all great duels it took both to make the moment -- and because both put on peerless drives that made this day.
Pagenaud broke the pole jinx -- it had been a full decade since the polesitter wound up in victory lane -- by putting everyone in his mirrors and keeping them there, leading more laps (116) than any driver in nine years. Rossi, meanwhile, drove like a man possessed by either demons or road rage, passing people high and low and in places no earthly soul would have thought to pass people.
The dominant images of his day?
Pounding his hands on the steering column in frustration tration when his fuel hose malfunctioned on a pit stop. Taking one hand off the wheel -- at 220 mph -- and shaking his fist at back marker Oriol Servia, who for reasons known only to him kept blocking Rossi during Rossi's mad dash to the front, even though Servia was a lap down.
Riveting stuff. And, yes, even the predicted storms stayed away, the Speedway doused instead by a downpour of sunshine as an overcome Pagenaud took the checkers, stopped on the yard of brick to salute the fans, and then dumped an entire bottle of milk in his own face.
Bathed in white, it looked briefly as if his face had been etched in marble. Which seemed fitting, somehow.
After all, not too many days from now, his face will be etched on the Borg-Warner Trophy.
You flood this ancient place with the population of a mid-size city, and you put in a heavenly call to Tony Hulman and put him in charge of the weather ("Outta the way, Mr. Accuweather Forecast. Lemme show you how it's done"). Then you bring it down two determined men and two rocket ships: Simon Pagenaud, who owned May like few have in recent memory, and Alexander Rossi, who ran the wheels off it in as breathtaking a charge as Indy has seen in ... well, 103 years.
Then you let 'em settle it in a 15-lap dash to the finish, after the one big crash of a mostly clean day shut things down for awhile.
In the end, Rossi caught Pagenaud with three laps to run, and Pagenaud blew back past him on the outside in turn three on lap 199. Then Pagenaud, who had been masterful all day (and all month), masterfully kept the flat-footing Rossi in his wake by weaving back and forth on lap 200, breaking Rossi's draft and keeping him from getting one final run.
You wanna talk defensive driving? That, boys and girls, was defensive driving on steroids.
Like all great Indy duels, this one stirred echoes of other duels on other days. It was Rodger Ward and Jim Rathmann swapping the lead time and again in 1960. It was Rick Mears almost-but-not-quite chasing down Gordon Johncock in 1982. It was Ryan Hunter-Reay and Helio Castroneves going into the grass to pass as the laps ran down in 2014; Emmo punting Al Jr. into the wall in turn three in 1989; Junior and Scott Goodyear drag-racing to the yard of brick three years later.
Now you can add Pagenaud and Rossi to the collection. Celebrate them both, because as with all great duels it took both to make the moment -- and because both put on peerless drives that made this day.
Pagenaud broke the pole jinx -- it had been a full decade since the polesitter wound up in victory lane -- by putting everyone in his mirrors and keeping them there, leading more laps (116) than any driver in nine years. Rossi, meanwhile, drove like a man possessed by either demons or road rage, passing people high and low and in places no earthly soul would have thought to pass people.
The dominant images of his day?
Pounding his hands on the steering column in frustration tration when his fuel hose malfunctioned on a pit stop. Taking one hand off the wheel -- at 220 mph -- and shaking his fist at back marker Oriol Servia, who for reasons known only to him kept blocking Rossi during Rossi's mad dash to the front, even though Servia was a lap down.
Riveting stuff. And, yes, even the predicted storms stayed away, the Speedway doused instead by a downpour of sunshine as an overcome Pagenaud took the checkers, stopped on the yard of brick to salute the fans, and then dumped an entire bottle of milk in his own face.
Bathed in white, it looked briefly as if his face had been etched in marble. Which seemed fitting, somehow.
After all, not too many days from now, his face will be etched on the Borg-Warner Trophy.
Da prediction
In which the Blob once again embarrasses itself by, I don't know, picking Marco Andretti again, or Scott Dixon again, or Helio Castroneves because he's gotta win No. 4 sometime, right?
The Blob is supposed to know this stuff, on account of it's been hanging around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in May for most of its life, and therefore knows all of its quirks and odd currents of luck, hard and otherwise. And yet I got nothin', here on the morning of the 103rd running of the Indianapolis 500.
Wait. I do have something.
The Blob predicts rain. In mass quantities or otherwise.
("Oh, bold pick there!" you're saying. "Everyone who can look at a radar screen knows folks are gonna get wet today!")
OK, fine. I will predict. I correctly predicted the winner exactly three times in 40 years of covering the 500 as an Allegedly Knowledgeable Observer, but my willingness to look the fool has rarely been fazed by epic ineptitude. So ...
So, I predict the winner will not be Sage Karam, James Hinchcliffe or Kyle Kaiser. I also predict it will not be Dixon, which might come as a shock to some considering how many times I've picked the guy since he won in 2008.
This is because Karam, Hinchcliffe and Kaiser start in Row 11 today, and no one, in 102 tries, has ever won the 500 from Row 11. In fact, no one has ever won the 500 from deeper in the field than 28th, and the last time that happened was 1936.
So. No soup for Sage, Hinch or Kyle.
And Dixon?
He starts 18th. No driver has ever won the 500 from the 18 hole. In fact, only one driver has won from farther back than 18th starting position in 21 years.
This does not mean it couldn't happen, of course. In a place that is its traditions, no tradition is more ironclad than Indy's stubborn unpredictability. Weirdness tends to happen at this ancient, haunted sprawl, and whether that is the work of all the impish ghosts that walk the grounds or simply history throwing its weight around, it is as much a part of the fabric here as all those bricks that lie beneath decades of asphalt.
A $6 part fails, and one of the most iconic racecars in Indy history -- Andy Granatelli's STP turbine -- dies six laps from a dominating victory.
Young JR Hildebrand successfully negotiates 799 left turns, then can't make the last one, hits the wall and an astonished Dan Wheldon winds up chugging the milk in victory lane.
Sam Hornish Jr. comes out of nowhere to catch Marco. A rookie of whom no one had heard a lot -- Alexander Rossi -- stretches his last tank of fuel to its final vapors and wins the 100th running. Scott Goodyear gets docked for passing the pace car, and a youngster with a shining name, Jacques Villeneuve, winds up taking the checkers despite at one time being two laps down.
On and on. As the late, great Hunter S. Thompson was fond of saying, bad craziness.
So what happens today, if it happens today?
Symmetry tempts the Blob to, yes, once again pick Marco, on account of it's the 50th anniversary of Grandpa Mario's lone 500 victory. He's had a brutal season so far, but he always seems to run well at Indy -- he's finished in the top ten eight times in 13 starts -- and he rolls away from the inside of Row 4 today. So, it could happen.
Of course, it won't. Indy is notoriously allergic to symmetry, for one thing. And Marco is, well, an Andretti. So, no.
Maybe this is the Year of the Kids, because half the first two rows are 25 or younger. You've got Spencer Pigot (25), Ed Jones (24) and Colton Herta (19) up there, a sign that a new generation is ready to emerge. But the Blob doesn't get a strong vibe from any of them. Maybe next year.
Helio?
It's been a full decade since he won his third 500, and history says he's due. A.J. Foyt went a full decade before finally winning his fourth in 1977, after all. Symmetry again.
But ... see above.
Will Power? Josef Newgarden? Rossi?
You couldn't go wrong picking any of them, and Newgarden in particular feels like a guy whose time is eventually going to come around here. He comes to Indy leading the points, he starts in the middle of Row 3, and he has one win and three podium finishes in five starts this year. So you figure he'll be there at the end.
Dixon, too, voodoo starting position and all. He has four podium finishes himself so far this season, and, after 11 dry years, he's due, too. And what would be more Indy than defying convention?
Which is why, after much deliberation and with much trepidation, I'm picking ... Simon Pagenaud.
As the polesitter, his is a voodoo starting spot, too, given that no one has won the 500 from the pole since Castroneves did it a decade ago. Yet the polesitter has won 43 times in 102 races, and, if Pagenaud came to Indy in danger of losing his ride after an extended dry spell, this has demonstrably been his May.
At the front of the month, he won the IndyCar Grand Prix of Indianapolis with a masterful drive in the rain. A week ago, he won the pole for the 500. And, like Newgarden, he's another Penske driver who feels like a 500 winner in waiting.
The Blob says the wait ends today -- or tomorrow, if the rains come as predicted. And you know what that means.
It means James Hinchcliffe is going to win, probably.
It is, after all, Indy. Let the bad craziness begin.
The Blob is supposed to know this stuff, on account of it's been hanging around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in May for most of its life, and therefore knows all of its quirks and odd currents of luck, hard and otherwise. And yet I got nothin', here on the morning of the 103rd running of the Indianapolis 500.
Wait. I do have something.
The Blob predicts rain. In mass quantities or otherwise.
("Oh, bold pick there!" you're saying. "Everyone who can look at a radar screen knows folks are gonna get wet today!")
OK, fine. I will predict. I correctly predicted the winner exactly three times in 40 years of covering the 500 as an Allegedly Knowledgeable Observer, but my willingness to look the fool has rarely been fazed by epic ineptitude. So ...
So, I predict the winner will not be Sage Karam, James Hinchcliffe or Kyle Kaiser. I also predict it will not be Dixon, which might come as a shock to some considering how many times I've picked the guy since he won in 2008.
This is because Karam, Hinchcliffe and Kaiser start in Row 11 today, and no one, in 102 tries, has ever won the 500 from Row 11. In fact, no one has ever won the 500 from deeper in the field than 28th, and the last time that happened was 1936.
So. No soup for Sage, Hinch or Kyle.
And Dixon?
He starts 18th. No driver has ever won the 500 from the 18 hole. In fact, only one driver has won from farther back than 18th starting position in 21 years.
This does not mean it couldn't happen, of course. In a place that is its traditions, no tradition is more ironclad than Indy's stubborn unpredictability. Weirdness tends to happen at this ancient, haunted sprawl, and whether that is the work of all the impish ghosts that walk the grounds or simply history throwing its weight around, it is as much a part of the fabric here as all those bricks that lie beneath decades of asphalt.
A $6 part fails, and one of the most iconic racecars in Indy history -- Andy Granatelli's STP turbine -- dies six laps from a dominating victory.
Young JR Hildebrand successfully negotiates 799 left turns, then can't make the last one, hits the wall and an astonished Dan Wheldon winds up chugging the milk in victory lane.
Sam Hornish Jr. comes out of nowhere to catch Marco. A rookie of whom no one had heard a lot -- Alexander Rossi -- stretches his last tank of fuel to its final vapors and wins the 100th running. Scott Goodyear gets docked for passing the pace car, and a youngster with a shining name, Jacques Villeneuve, winds up taking the checkers despite at one time being two laps down.
On and on. As the late, great Hunter S. Thompson was fond of saying, bad craziness.
So what happens today, if it happens today?
Symmetry tempts the Blob to, yes, once again pick Marco, on account of it's the 50th anniversary of Grandpa Mario's lone 500 victory. He's had a brutal season so far, but he always seems to run well at Indy -- he's finished in the top ten eight times in 13 starts -- and he rolls away from the inside of Row 4 today. So, it could happen.
Of course, it won't. Indy is notoriously allergic to symmetry, for one thing. And Marco is, well, an Andretti. So, no.
Maybe this is the Year of the Kids, because half the first two rows are 25 or younger. You've got Spencer Pigot (25), Ed Jones (24) and Colton Herta (19) up there, a sign that a new generation is ready to emerge. But the Blob doesn't get a strong vibe from any of them. Maybe next year.
Helio?
It's been a full decade since he won his third 500, and history says he's due. A.J. Foyt went a full decade before finally winning his fourth in 1977, after all. Symmetry again.
But ... see above.
Will Power? Josef Newgarden? Rossi?
You couldn't go wrong picking any of them, and Newgarden in particular feels like a guy whose time is eventually going to come around here. He comes to Indy leading the points, he starts in the middle of Row 3, and he has one win and three podium finishes in five starts this year. So you figure he'll be there at the end.
Dixon, too, voodoo starting position and all. He has four podium finishes himself so far this season, and, after 11 dry years, he's due, too. And what would be more Indy than defying convention?
Which is why, after much deliberation and with much trepidation, I'm picking ... Simon Pagenaud.
As the polesitter, his is a voodoo starting spot, too, given that no one has won the 500 from the pole since Castroneves did it a decade ago. Yet the polesitter has won 43 times in 102 races, and, if Pagenaud came to Indy in danger of losing his ride after an extended dry spell, this has demonstrably been his May.
At the front of the month, he won the IndyCar Grand Prix of Indianapolis with a masterful drive in the rain. A week ago, he won the pole for the 500. And, like Newgarden, he's another Penske driver who feels like a 500 winner in waiting.
The Blob says the wait ends today -- or tomorrow, if the rains come as predicted. And you know what that means.
It means James Hinchcliffe is going to win, probably.
It is, after all, Indy. Let the bad craziness begin.
Friday, May 24, 2019
A tale of George and Mario
Two days now until they line 'em up in rows of three and come screaming down that long ribbon of asphalt to the green, and a medium-sized city rises to its feet with its heart in its throat.
The Greatest Spectacle In Racing, y'all. Also, 50 years since the Greatest Spectacle In Inappropriate Behavior At An Historic Landmark, wherein hangs a tale.
It's a tale worth telling now because 1) my dear Moms has passed, and can't dispute my version of events; and 2) it's also the 50th anniversary of Mario Andretti's only 500 victory, which has been celebrated all month at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. This has been Mario's month to be feted as one of the greatest race drivers who ever turned a wheel, and no one deserves it more -- unless, that is, you can name someone else who won the Indianapolis 500, the Daytona 500, the 24 Hours of LeMans and the Formula One World Driving Championship in four peerless decades.
It is probably not as notable to point out that he also played a pivotal role in the aformentioned Greatest Spectacle In Inappropriate Behavior, etc., etc.
In 1969 I was a 14-year-old boy already hopelessly in love with all things Indy, and when Memorial Day arrived that year the air was sweet with honeysuckle. But it wasn't Indiana air I was breathing. It was Virginia air.
Virginia: Where I was standing in line with the fam waiting to tour Mount Vernon, ancestral home of the Father of Our Country, George Washington.
I couldn't have cared less. It was Race Day, after all.
Back in Indiana, the Purdue band was playing "On The Banks of the Wabash." "Taps" was filling the morning air. The National Anthem was being sung and the drivers were strapping in and Tony Hulman was telling 'em to start their engines, gearhead invocation rolling out over the flags and the multitudes and those 33 rocket ships sitting in rows of three on a strip of asphalt that looked entirely too narrow for its purpose.
Meanwhile, there I was.
Standing in line to get into Mount Vernon.
Clutching a portable radio the size of a Stephen King novel.
Turning it up juuuust a tad, because you didn't want to miss the radio boys running down the starting lineup.
And on the outside of Row 2, from Tucson, Arizona, Roger McCluskey ...
I turned up the radio a bit more. And that's when Mom got involved.
"Turn that off," she hissed.
And now she was glaring at me, and I knew that meant Dad was about to get called in on a consult. And so, to the bemusement of a couple of nuns standing behind us in line, I reluctantly turned off the radio.
It was just a ruse, of course. No sooner were we inside than I slipped away to the gardens (which are, yes, as spectacular as you've heard) and turned on the radio again.
Mario was leading, on his way to the win that would be so celebrated 50 years later. McCluskey was hanging around. Jim McElreath was already gone, the back of his car suddenly bursting into flame as he thundered down the front stretch in Lap 24.
I wandered on. Hey, look, here's a hedge animal. Here's some more honeysuckle. Here are George and Martha Washington's grav--
Distressing news now from the radio.
A tinny voice was saying Lloyd Ruby -- a huge fan favorite in those days -- had pulled away too fast on a pit stop. His fuel hose, still attached, ripped out the side of his car like a cork being popped from a wine bottle. The hardest of Indy's hard luck guys was done again.
"(Bleep)!" I blurted out.
Heads cranked around. Eyebrows were hoisted. And suddenly I realized I was still standing in front of George and Martha's graves.
Oops.
For the rest of the day I slinked around, radio pressed to my ear as Mario sailed toward the finish of his big day. And trying not to hear what I was sure people around me were whispering.
Look, Floyd. There's that weird little kid with the radio who cussed at George Washington's grave. I wonder who his parents are.
I bet they're drug fiends, Lurlene.
Or bank robbers, Floyd. You can always tell a bank robber.
Well. Floyd ... Lurlene ... it's 50 years later now, and time to set the record straight. At least for my mom's sake.
My parents were not drug fiends. They weren't bank robber, either.
They did, however, raise a sportswriter who grew up to cover the Indy 500, and who hasn't cursed at the grave of a founding father in quite some time. And who actually wound up interviewing Mario Andretti a couple of times.
Though not at Mount Vernon.
See, Mom. Everything you told me didn't go in one ear and out the other.
The Greatest Spectacle In Racing, y'all. Also, 50 years since the Greatest Spectacle In Inappropriate Behavior At An Historic Landmark, wherein hangs a tale.
It's a tale worth telling now because 1) my dear Moms has passed, and can't dispute my version of events; and 2) it's also the 50th anniversary of Mario Andretti's only 500 victory, which has been celebrated all month at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. This has been Mario's month to be feted as one of the greatest race drivers who ever turned a wheel, and no one deserves it more -- unless, that is, you can name someone else who won the Indianapolis 500, the Daytona 500, the 24 Hours of LeMans and the Formula One World Driving Championship in four peerless decades.
It is probably not as notable to point out that he also played a pivotal role in the aformentioned Greatest Spectacle In Inappropriate Behavior, etc., etc.
In 1969 I was a 14-year-old boy already hopelessly in love with all things Indy, and when Memorial Day arrived that year the air was sweet with honeysuckle. But it wasn't Indiana air I was breathing. It was Virginia air.
Virginia: Where I was standing in line with the fam waiting to tour Mount Vernon, ancestral home of the Father of Our Country, George Washington.
I couldn't have cared less. It was Race Day, after all.
Back in Indiana, the Purdue band was playing "On The Banks of the Wabash." "Taps" was filling the morning air. The National Anthem was being sung and the drivers were strapping in and Tony Hulman was telling 'em to start their engines, gearhead invocation rolling out over the flags and the multitudes and those 33 rocket ships sitting in rows of three on a strip of asphalt that looked entirely too narrow for its purpose.
Meanwhile, there I was.
Standing in line to get into Mount Vernon.
Clutching a portable radio the size of a Stephen King novel.
Turning it up juuuust a tad, because you didn't want to miss the radio boys running down the starting lineup.
And on the outside of Row 2, from Tucson, Arizona, Roger McCluskey ...
I turned up the radio a bit more. And that's when Mom got involved.
"Turn that off," she hissed.
And now she was glaring at me, and I knew that meant Dad was about to get called in on a consult. And so, to the bemusement of a couple of nuns standing behind us in line, I reluctantly turned off the radio.
It was just a ruse, of course. No sooner were we inside than I slipped away to the gardens (which are, yes, as spectacular as you've heard) and turned on the radio again.
Mario was leading, on his way to the win that would be so celebrated 50 years later. McCluskey was hanging around. Jim McElreath was already gone, the back of his car suddenly bursting into flame as he thundered down the front stretch in Lap 24.
I wandered on. Hey, look, here's a hedge animal. Here's some more honeysuckle. Here are George and Martha Washington's grav--
Distressing news now from the radio.
A tinny voice was saying Lloyd Ruby -- a huge fan favorite in those days -- had pulled away too fast on a pit stop. His fuel hose, still attached, ripped out the side of his car like a cork being popped from a wine bottle. The hardest of Indy's hard luck guys was done again.
"(Bleep)!" I blurted out.
Heads cranked around. Eyebrows were hoisted. And suddenly I realized I was still standing in front of George and Martha's graves.
Oops.
For the rest of the day I slinked around, radio pressed to my ear as Mario sailed toward the finish of his big day. And trying not to hear what I was sure people around me were whispering.
Look, Floyd. There's that weird little kid with the radio who cussed at George Washington's grave. I wonder who his parents are.
I bet they're drug fiends, Lurlene.
Or bank robbers, Floyd. You can always tell a bank robber.
Well. Floyd ... Lurlene ... it's 50 years later now, and time to set the record straight. At least for my mom's sake.
My parents were not drug fiends. They weren't bank robber, either.
They did, however, raise a sportswriter who grew up to cover the Indy 500, and who hasn't cursed at the grave of a founding father in quite some time. And who actually wound up interviewing Mario Andretti a couple of times.
Though not at Mount Vernon.
See, Mom. Everything you told me didn't go in one ear and out the other.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)