Bottom of the Bird Cage 6/9
This is Day No. 160 of the year.
Born on this day in 1891 was composer Cole Porter. Born on June 9, 1939 was Dickie V, basketball coach and broadcaster Dick Vitale. Also born on this day in 1961 was actor Michael J. Fox.
And on June 9, 1973 came one of the greatest sporting events in American history. A two-year old stallion named Secretariat finished horse racing’s Triple Crown with a convincing victory in the Belmont Stakes. Secretariat went off that day as a 1-10 favorite and there were just four other horses in the race, including Sham that finished second in both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness.
None were a match for Secretariat, who won by 31 lengths and ran the fastest 1.5 miles in horse history at two minutes, 24 seconds. He was the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years and the ninth in history.
Secretariat raced 21 times and won 16 races, finishing out of the money only once. After that ’73 performance, he was retired to stud. He died at the age of 19 in Kentucky. A post-mortem examination showed his heart weighed 22 pounds, the largest horse heart in history.
From the San Jose Mercury-News:Â Mike Singletary’s office is large, bright and couldn’t be anybody else’s in the NFL or the world. Really, it’s more like a proud father’s den than your normal obsessive NFL film-and-playbook bunker. In the office of the 49ers coach, you see giant family pictures on the walls next to huge inspirational posters behind comfortable furniture and a line of weight and conditioning machines.
It’s Singletary’s space — ordered, colorful, paternal, thoughtful and furiously disciplined, not necessarily in that order. Let’s start with those machines. Mike, are you starting your own gym or something? “I don’t like wasting time,” Singletary said during a break in this past weekend’s mini-camp. “I don’t like going down to the gym and talking to everybody. I don’t like talking on the phone a whole lot.
“I want to come in, get my work done, know what I have to get done, and let’s go home. Because I have a responsibility there, as well.”
Time. Responsibility. Focus. Trust.
Mike Singletary isn’t following the normal “book” for a first time NFL head coach; he’s doing things his way. Kudos to a Niners organization that has been pretty dysfunctional over the last decade for allowing Singletary to do it his way. Now, he has to win, because that’s the only way a coach can keep doing things his way. Just ask Herm Edwards.
From the Washington Post: When the chemotherapy treatments began last summer, and her coffee-brown locks began to bunch around the shower drain, Nancy Cooley drove to her eldest son’s home and walked downstairs to the utility room. Chris already had a stool, newspaper on the floor and an electric razor waiting.
“I knew she was worried sick, so I tried to make it as humorous as possible,” said Chris, the Pro Bowl tight end of the Washington Redskins. “I tried to goof around a lot. To be honest, a little comedy was the only way I could handle something that stressful.”
A week before Chris’s wedding in May 2008, Nancy Cooley was told she had a three-inch, aggressive tumor inside her right breast, medically known as an invasive ductile carcinoma. Stage 3 breast cancer.
She was no longer just the independent woman who raised her two sons alone in Logan, Utah, so she could finish college and earn her master’s degree in business education. Or merely the mother of a famous NFL player.
For the players are real people with real life problems like everybody else file. Nancy Cooley is obviously a rather amazing woman and it has nothing to do with her cancer. Raising two sons alone in Utah, finishing her college degree and going beyond. There are a lot of amazing family members involved in the stories of many professional athletes.
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Eli Broad, Michael Ovitz, Ron Burkle, Ed Roski and more. The names mean little or nothing to St. Louisans. But they were among the big money men, the movers and shakers, who came and went in Southern California — all determined to bring pro football back to the Los Angeles area. Eventually, they were toppled like so many tin soldiers.
Along the way, there have been proposed stadiums and stadium sites with glamorous pasts and glitzy names — from the Rose Bowl to the Coliseum, to Hollywood Park, to Chavez Ravine. And some not so glitzy — from the gravel pits in Irwindale to the former toxic waste dump in Carson, to the city of Industry.
Amazingly, 14 years have passed since the Rams and Raiders left Los Angeles in 1995. Amazingly, the nation’s second-largest market has gone twice as long without a National Football League franchise as St. Louis — which went seven seasons without a team from 1988 to 1995 between Bill Bidwill’s Cardinals and Georgia Frontiere’s Rams. Despite Roski’s current effort to build a stadium in tiny Industry (pop. 800), the prospect of getting an NFL team back in the LA area seems as remote as ever. The reasons remain unchanged, with lack of unified political leadership and absolutely zero appetite for any public taxpayer support heading the list.
You’ll have to excuse the folks in the ‘Loo and their growing paranoia about their football team. When you’ve lost a team before, it’s just a reminder that it can happen again. There are a lot of pundits around the country saying the Rams will never move, the NFL will never allow it and they won’t be allowed to break their lease. But that lease gives them an out in five years and that’s going to force some big juggling by the folks in St. Louis to give them a top level stadium.
We could all realize some ‘Big Red’ magic in our lives as Bob points out in his review of Secretariat. As I recall, ESPN named Big Red their 35th best athlete in the 20th century on its Top 50 of the Century series back around the time of Y2K. Anyway, a fitting review and tribute to a great athlete.
Onto the NFL not being in LA at present. I won’t bore anyone with CPP (Cost Per Point) statistics that the media uses to scale their advertising rates, but suffice to say, the LA market potentially returns boatloads of new revenue to a LA franchise owner than one operating in most any other market in the USA!
And, I’m talking about the local revenues here. Not even mentioning the national dollars from the networks to the league which also impacts the overall take for division among the 32 franchises, we have a situation for marketers and analysts to ponder in student textbooks for decades into the future.
This side of the equation has never been adequately addressed in the past. All we hear is the so-called ‘LA lifestyle’ argument where fans have too many other choices and things to do as opposed to attending a NFL game. I say, BS!
Build a stadium anywhere in the LA basin, all the way out to Ontario where room and cost of scale are more reasonable, market the franchise to the 8 digit population that will tune in the team on TV if nothing else, and start counting up the cash.
Amazing. I hate to go Oliver Stone here, but there has to be something larger, and behind the scenes, at work that’s not allowing the NFL to field a franchise in the nation’s #2 market.
Paraphrased ‘Beach Boys’ harmony:
“I wish they all would leave California
I wish they all would leave California
I wish they all would leave California ‘now’”
Translation: we didn’t need no stinking Rams and we also don’t need no stinking Chargers, Raiders or 49ers!”
Of mice & men or more so of rallying cries & not so tearful goodbyes?
Paul Revere may have exclaimed “the British are coming, the British are coming!” but NFL owners cry with as much or more fervor & gusto “the tv revenue$ are coming, the tv revenue$ are coming!”
It’s all about the Benjamin$…Philadelphia, PA Ben’s professional stomping grounds too aft ran he ‘way from ‘home’ age 17 leaving Boston wake.
Another young man named Hunt left his home town too, exchanging Dallas for Kaycee, & Texans for Chiefs (he desired KC Texans but bu$ine$$ sense as well cent$ won out; good call Mr. Steadman.)
Lamar blazed that AFL trail too but wasn’t alone: the Boston Patriots (in a move mimicked their on field prowess) went south to Foxboro changing the team’s letterhead stationary to New England…it didn’t help. Hunt’s oil peer Bud Adams took his Houston Oilers east to Tennessee (albeit not to a so Titan-esque success to date, save 1 Superbowl loss.) The Denver Broncos almost moved after the 1966 season… heck, our KC Chiefs too (tho they deny it to this day) considered late as 1966 the greater LA area/Anaheim, CA, etc.
The sound of no fans clapping, where only echoes pros abound: Coliseum LA, where once Rams played.
Sid Gillman – Norm Van Brocklin – Bob Waterfield Roman Gabriel – The Fearsome Foursome: “we don’t care.”
Meanwhile, just down the road…
The sound of one fan clapping- a San Diego Padres baseball game (place where once but Pacific Coast League minor league teams tread.) This year looks to be a record setting one – the team is actually playing mediocre baseball (an improvement 08) and the the fans are answering with a resounding: “we don’t care.”
Well the first thing you know the old teams they moved away, the pastures seemed greener anyplace but old LA – first the Angels left then the Rams they did the same – gotta cha$e a buck almighty and get ourselves new sta-di-um! Fans that is, populace, revenue$… The LA Ex(press)odus!
Here today, gone tomorrow. The locales have not been changed so as to emphasize this Beatlesque conundrum: from LA to SD to Anaheim and all the points in between “I am he as you are he as you are me and we all yawn together…”
How different it was a few short befores when the Rams, Dodgers & Lakers loaded up their trucks and they moved near Beverly – Cleveland, Brooklyn and Minneapolis the rear view mirror (even circa ’09, the Dodgers AAA farm club left that people magnet Las Vegas, Nevada for… Albuquerque, New Mexico?
That they had in fact previously left Albuquerque for…Las Vegas? Well…)
Yet – New York can support two NFL teams, has as much college & more pro competition the vicinity than LA. Meanwhile, just up the road, Buffalo is in doubt as to its future home Bills, Canada has to date been tapped – and quite unsuccessfully – new stadium beckons come hither both Jets/Giants.
Meanwhile, back on the left coast…Oakland & San Fran eek out (NFL $ being relative) existence the Bay area, annually. Oakland once took a trip LA – a new life together turned out to be an precursor to annulment.
We also note that the San Diego ‘Super Chargers! were once LAs other professional football team – MLBs Angels who had followed with their own move to Anaheim, then opted to get into the name game by exchanging LA for California then the Anaheim heading for current abomination “The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim”(their attendance has declined 3 years in a row & will drop some more in ’09.)
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Dodgers had seen their attendance spike for 7 straight years until 2008; when the Dodgers made it all the way to the NLCS, naturally their attendance last season- even with the addition of the big star draw Manny Ramirez – dropped.
Some teams never stop only slow down but to rest: Chicago’s Cardinals, St. Louis’ Cardinals and yes Phoenix Cardinals too as well Arizona’s Cardinals – and special footnote the St. Louis pro football history, formerly Cardinal now present home Rams.
Not so much ‘if’ the Rams will leave, only matter of ‘when’, my opine… too, had Chief-land voters not ponied up for those stadium improvements well …Dallas found out in the spring of ’63 how much low attendance meant when it met economic reality 101. Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it.
Yup, things are worse all over…and just as bad most everywhere.
Kalifornia sucks. The big one is overdue.