Crack of Dawn
There is nothing that will wake you up quicker than a European horse sale. Well, there is nothing that will wake me up quicker than a European horse sale. The texts started beeping at 5:05 Tuesday morning.
Greatness from out of the Past
Creased, scratched, faded, turned up on the corners and with a dime-sized hole in the center of the cover photo, the magazine saw plenty in its 44 years. But nobody had seen it for five years, maybe more, until Jack Clancy opened a plastic container in an unused room in my Fair Hill office last month.
One interview with Tubby Raymond
Back in the 1980s at the University of Delaware’s student-run newspaper The Review, I didn’t cover the football team. I went to field hockey games, lacrosse games, the occasional baseball game, a basketball game or two (the team was usually woeful), some wrestling matches, a few swim meets.
Jump into the Eclipse vote
Abstain, abstain, abstain.
If you’re paying attention to Eclipse Award votes this time of year, you’ll read that a lot. Voters and other interested racing fans will post their ballots for Thoroughbred racing’s annual championships and many will decline to vote in the champion steeplechaser category (instead typing Abstain in the first, second and third choice boxes). Not everyone, but many. The abstentions topped 40 individual voters in each of the past three years and will likely do so again this time around.
Sharing a Derby Sandwich
It was 2001, my first spring off the steeplechase circuit and I had gotten to the Derby. Getting to the Derby and enjoying the Derby are two different things.
My friend, Tony Reinstedler, said he had a place for me to stay. He did – in a tent in his backyard off Baxter Street. No problem, we weren’t sleeping much.
Postcard from Woodbine
It’s cold up here.
Calendar time, and calendar people
“Hi, I’m calling to order my calendars. I order them every year from you. You should know who I am and have all of my information.”
“I only need one this year. The person I bought the second one for passed away.”
“My mama drank tequila when she was pregnant with me, so I don’t hear so well. Can you speak up?”
“My friends owned some horses in California. I was their official jockey hugger. Now that was a good job.”
Death and Coffee
The three of them talk, then pause, then another burst, then another pause. They pull up ideas, memories, monuments like they’re pulling up weeds from a garden. Occasionally a flower, a fruit, a gem to keep, to hold. Eyes moisten, but only for fleeting moments, the public results of private thoughts. No one notices.
Catching up at Charleston
Been a while. I’ve started many of these with those words, usually, following them with a vow to write more, write better. Not sure it’s ever happened.
The end, again
A thin layer of frost covered the grass and the thermometer read a mere 20 degrees as a red-orange cloud hung high in the sky as the final official day of training in Saratoga started to unfold.
