Monday, May 17, 2010

Once Again, No Triple Crown



They ran the Preakness Stakes for the 135th time on Saturday.

If you read what I wrote before the race, you know that I suggested that the death of Skip Away on Friday could be an omen. In a way, I guess, that is precisely what it turned out to be.

Skip Away was widely expected to do well in the 1996 Kentucky Derby, but ran an unexpectedly poor race. He bounced back, though, and finished second in both the Preakness and the Belmont.

Anyway, Super Saver, the winner of the Kentucky Derby on May 1, finished out of the money in the Preakness, guaranteeing that there will be no Triple Crown winner in 2010.

That's a familiar refrain. We have had no Triple Crown winner since 1978.

Initially, it didn't look that way. Super Saver never really took the lead, but he was near the lead until the far turn. And then a funny thing happened. Super Saver got boxed in, with three horses in front of him and horses on either side, and he never threatened to take the lead again.

Meanwhile, Lookin at Lucky, the second pick on Saturday, was back in the pack through most of the Kentucky Derby. He performed better in the sunshine at Pimlico than he did in the slop at Churchill Downs, running fifth or sixth until the final three furlongs, then making a move that put him in the lead for good.

Perhaps Skip Away's death was an omen.

Anyway, we will know in three weeks whether we had a near–miss for the Triple Crown or not. If Super Saver or Lookin at Lucky win the Belmont, a horse will have won two of the three races in the Triple Crown for the 19th time since Affirmed won the Triple Crown in 1978. But if some other horse wins the Belmont, it will be the 14th time that three different horses have won the Triple Crown races.

One thing we know for sure. There will be no hat trick in 2010.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

The Second Jewel of the Triple Crown


In 1996, Skip Away was second in the Preakness
and a memorable duel in the Belmont Stakes.


I guess it was ironic that Skip Away, a champion thoroughbred horse that never won a Triple Crown race but came in second in both the Preakness and the Belmont, died yesterday, apparently of a heart attack.

Ironic because today is the 135th running of the Preakness Stakes.

Skip Away was the third–highest–earning thoroughbred in North America. Back in 1996, when he was a 3–year–old, Skip Away bounced back from an unexpectedly poor showing in the Kentucky Derby, starting with his second–place finish in the Preakness. Perhaps something like that will happen today.

If something like that does happen today, though, I'm inclined to think that would make Skip Away's death more of an omen than an irony.

For that matter, I guess you could find at least as much symbolism in the problems that congressional incumbents are encountering in the 2010 midterm campaigns.

But that's only if Super Saver doesn't win this afternoon. Personally, though, I'm inclined to think he will win. I don't have any special reason for this, other than the fact that Calvin Borel, who is becoming the hottest jockey in thoroughbred racing, will be riding him today, as he did two weeks ago at Churchill Downs.

I have long believed — and often said — that each of the events in thoroughbred racing's Triple Crown has its own unique identity and agenda.
  • Of the three races, things are probably easiest — at least in terms of promotion — for the Kentucky Derby, the first jewel that was run two weeks ago. It always generates interest because, well, it's the Kentucky Derby.

    It is the big–name annual event in its sport, like the Masters is for golf, Wimbledon is for tennis and the Indy 500 is for auto racing. It doesn't need to do anything special to draw attention to itself.

    Each of those sports has other events that are equally prestigious but not as legendary. And, since those sports have no clear championship event — like a Super Bowl or a World Series — those competitions sort of fill that role (rightly or wrongly) in the public's mind.

    The race itself doesn't really matter. In recent years, it's been run in sloppy conditions, but the only thing that really seems to hurt attendance (but not necessarily ratings) is a poor economy.

    As long as the Kentucky Derby's coverage is generous with its images of mint juleps, bizarre hats and the playing of "My Old Kentucky Home," the viewers will be satisfied.

  • The final jewel of the Triple Crown is the Belmont Stakes five weeks later in Elmont, N.Y. It is a grueling distance — in comparison to the first two races — and justifiably known as the "Test of the Champion."

    I don't think the folks who run the Belmont particularly care if a horse wins the Triple Crown. They just want the Kentucky Derby winner to win the second race — which means a Triple Crown is possible.

    If a different horse wins those two races, the Belmont is rendered irrelevant. That is unfortunate, but that's the way it is. The Belmont's usually a pretty nice race — visually appealing and typically competitive (well, except for that time in 1973 when Secretariat won by 31 lengths) — but it's been more than 30 years since a horse won a Triple Crown.

    So, in early June with other activities vying for people's time and attention — and money — all that potential viewers want to know is whether it is possible for a horse to win the Triple Crown by winning the Belmont. If the answer is no, then here's a hot tip on a sure thing — TV ratings will be way down ... and attendance at places like the beach, amusement venues, ballparks and movie theaters will be way up.

  • Today, we have the second jewel of the Triple Crown, the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico in Baltimore. All eyes will be on Super Saver, the winner of the Kentucky Derby two weeks ago, as Marty McGee of The Daily Racing Form observes at ESPN.com.

    In its way, I suppose, the Preakness is often forgotten — regarded as, at best, the legitimate albeit nondescript middle child, and, at worst, the redheaded stepchild of thoroughbred racing — but, as McGee points out, the Preakness has one thing that the Derby does not — the Derby winner.

    However, the Derby winner must also win the Preakness to breathe life into the Belmont, to give a purpose to its existence.

    Before the sun goes down, we will know if the Belmont Stakes three weeks from today will have any meaning.
Gene Menez of Sports Illustrated apparently thinks it will.

The Preakness is "setting up differently from the Derby," Menez writes, but "there is one significant similarity between the two races: The top choice is still Super Saver."

Is that due to his jockey, the aforementioned Calvin Borel, who won the Derby and the Preakness aboard two different horses last year? Well, Menez hardly mentions Borel, focusing instead on the horse's attributes. For his part, Borel, a colorful Cajun, expects a "super race" from Super Saver.

Liam Durbin of the Baltimore Sun seems to think Super Saver can make it two for two as well.

But Brad Telias of The Sporting News isn't convinced. He likes Lookin at Lucky, which is where that omen I mentioned earlier may come into play. Lookin at Lucky finished sixth in the Derby two weeks ago. "This time, there will be good karma for horse and rider, and the beaten Derby favorite will finally get his due," Telias writes.

Shades of Skip Away.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Sportswriting ... Like Nothing Human

In these difficult economic times, it shouldn't surprise anyone that employers are looking for ways to save money.

These days, most employers show little or no interest in training people to do a job that needs to be done. They want someone with hands–on experience. If the new hire is a little rough around the edges, well, they figure they can soften those edges — and, in the long run, they'll be better off because they hired someone who could step in and be productive from the first day. They didn't have to devote time and money to training.

In this quest for economic efficiency, advanced technology seems to have renewed a desire in business managers to make one–time investments in machines (or software) that can do jobs people have been doing for a long time.

From a purely business, dollars–and–cents perspective, I suppose that is logical. Machines (or software) don't need to be paid. They don't have bills to pay and families to support. They don't mind working overtime or on weekends.

That can work pretty well in some endeavors — but not in others. And my conclusion, based on years of working in the newspaper business, is that it's the kind of solution that tends to appeal to bottom–liners.

For a long time, the way that publications responded to recessions was to cut back on copy editors. Reporters could do their own fact checking, they reasoned. They could check their own spelling and grammar. Well, they could do those things — but most of the time they don't.

And, the reasoning continued, they could perform multiple tasks when on assignment — like taking pictures or shooting videos. They might not have much experience at those things, but just give 'em a camera. Anyone can aim and click, right?

Heck, for that matter, anyone can write. All it amounts to is stringing some words together in sentences — and making sure those annoying little things like spelling words correctly and checking facts are done.

I presume that is the reasoning behind some new software from Narrative Science. Justin Bachman of BusinessWeek reports that Narrative Science's software can take the box score from a game and produce an article that is every bit as good as anything that was written by humans.

To prove the point, Bachman takes articles provided by the sports information departments of two schools that played each other in baseball on April 24 and compares them to an article that was "composed" by the software — and asks the readers which one was generated by a machine.

Then Bachman triumphantly identifies the article that was produced by the software and quotes the software company's CEO: "There's no human author and no human editing. But the stories sound really good."

Now, granted, taking the Joe Friday — "Just the facts, ma'am" — approach works sometimes — and, to the eyes and ears of someone who never studied journalism or worked for a newspaper or a magazine or any other kind of newsgathering organization, the stories may seem adequate. They may even "sound really good" — although Narrative Science acknowledges it is always looking for ways to make the software system "a less bad writer."

"The 1,000th story of a subject is materially better than the first," the company's CEO says. (Perhaps the software's writers should take News Reporting I.)

And, according to the Big Ten's director of new media, it's "less expensive" than hiring beat reporters. So it meets the goal of saving some money.

Nevertheless, in spite of all these benefits, I don't think machines will take the place of general assignment reporters.

Oh, sure, it has its place. I used to work on the sports copy desk of a community newspaper. Space was limited, but the paper had made a commitment, long before I started working there, to print brief articles on Little League and T–ball games. This was something that was mostly done for the parents, who would presumably boost circulation a bit on the days after games were played.

On weekends, there might be a couple of dozen such games, and someone had to go through the statistics of each game and highlight the most crucial ones in a paragraph or two — which also had to include the teams' records and when they were scheduled to play again.

If we had had such software in those days, I suppose we could have fed the information from the games to the computer. It would follow its fill–in–the–blanks article–writing procedure and generate stories on all the games in a fraction of the time a flesh–and–blood person would require.

But what would have been just fine for children's sports would not have been sufficient for the rest of the newspaper's sports coverage.

There was a large university in town, and a staff writer was assigned to cover the sports teams there. When the football team or the basketball team went on the road, the writer went along. Sometimes we had to wait for the writer to finish his story and call the office to dictate it (this was in the days before a writer could transmit a story electronically from a remote location).

But, compared to the "data–intensive" articles that Narrative Science is capable of providing, the articles that were generated by the human tended to be superior. I wouldn't say our writers were even close to perfect, but they could interview players and coaches. They could explore angles that computer software could never come up with on its own.

And their writing skills usually were good enough to give each story a unique flavor — whereas, I suspect, Narrative Science's articles tend to seem formulaic rather quickly.

Bachman concludes that Narrative Science "can make some writing by humans obsolete."

That's probably true of routine writing assignments.

But if you want quotes (and surveys show that most readers do) about big plays or upcoming opponents — or if you want articles that call for dogged reporting on things that coaches and athletic departments may be reluctant to discuss in much detail — the severity of a player's injury, for example, or whether a star athlete is going to face criminal charges for something — computer software won't get the job done for you.

"After tackling sports," Bachman writes, Narrative Science "will move on to medical, financial, and survey data."

Good luck getting that software to explain complex medical and financial subjects in reader–friendly terms.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Borel Wins Again



Vic Ziegel of the New York Daily News deserves credit for predicting the winner of a Kentucky Derby that, by most accounts, was as wide open as any Derby in recent memory.

Ziegel was modest, almost apologetic, about his picks in the past, and he practically warned the reader not to take his advice too seriously. Someone is going to win the Derby, he wrote. "Somebody I didn't pick always does."

Well, this time somebody he picked did win.

Jockey Calvin Borel won his third Kentucky Derby in the last four years aboard 8–1 shot Super Saver.

Borel rode the Derby winner last year, and he followed that up with a win on a different horse in the Preakness, the second jewel in the Triple Crown. Keep that in mind two weeks from now.

Derby Day


In the 1973 Derby, Secretariat's times were faster every
quarter-mile, an unequaled achievement in Triple Crown races.


Today is the start of one of my favorite periods of the sports year — Triple Crown racing season.

At the most, this season will only last five weeks. The second jewel in the Triple Crown, the Preakness Stakes, will be run two weeks from today. And, if today's winner also happens to win the Preakness, that will make the Belmont, which is three weeks after the Preakness, the "Test of the Champion" it is billed to be.

This afternoon, the first jewel in the Triple Crown, the Kentucky Derby, will run for the 136th time. Ulysses S. Grant was president the first time the race was run at Churchill Downs, but I have seen no reports that he was in attendance.

Compared to modern Derbies, the time was positively pedestrian — 2:37.75 — but the distance was ¼ of a mile longer than it is now. When the Derby changed to a 1¼–mile distance, the times dropped to nearly the two–minute mark, setting the stage for the race's popular nickname, "The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports."

And, for more than a century, the winners of the race have run it in about two minutes. (Here's a little trivia for you: Only one horse, Northern Dancer in 1964, has ever run the Derby in two minutes flat. Spend A Buck came close in 1985, with a time of 2:00.20. So did Decidedly in 1962 with a time of 2:00.40 and Proud Clarion in 1967 with a time of 2:00.60.)

On two occasions, the winner of the race has crossed the finish line in less than two minutes. The last time was in 2001, when Monarchos recorded a time of 1:59.97.

That would be the Derby record, were it not for the legendary Secretariat, whose time of 1:59.40 in 1973 may be the Derby's holy grail. Like Joe DiMaggio's remarkable hitting streak, it may stand forever.

I've always enjoyed horse racing. It is called the sport of kings, and it always struck me as a regal competition, long before I ever went to a race track. It has been many years since I last went to a track, but I still enjoy watching the Triple Crown races.

If you're planning to put down a wager on today's race, naturally, you would like to know who the winner will be. I'd like to have that information myself, but I'll have to wait, like everyone else, to see how it plays out.
  • Andrew Beyer, of the Washington Post, writes that Lookin At Lucky, the 3–1 morning–line favorite in the Louisville Courier–Journal, is the justifiable favorite, but he warns that many factors can influence the Derby.

    The weather, of course, will be one such factor, and, based on the prediction from NOAA, the temperature should be mild, but there is a 70% chance of rain. That could well mean a sloppy track. Consequently, I would recommend looking for a horse that has a good record on muddy tracks.

    That is likely to be an exercise in futility, though. Few, if any, of today's entries seem to have any experience running on muddy tracks. In fact, they have even less experience than might be expected. Rain canceled the early morning workouts today, which would have been their last chance to get a little experience running in the slop.

  • Some folks put a lot of stock in the jockey. Vic Ziegel of the New York Daily News appears to be one of those. He makes the case for Calvin Borel, the jockey who rode Mine That Bird to victory in the Kentucky Derby last year (and also rode the winner at the Preakness). Borel is aboard Super Saver today, a 15–1 shot, but what the heck? Mine That Bird was an even longer longshot.

  • In what I presume passes for a consensus in a race that really seems to be up for grabs, Sports Illustrated's Gene Menez also favors Super Saver. He's not especially keen on Lookin At Lucky, though. "[T]here are others who provide better value," he writes.

  • Larry Stumes says, in the San Francisco Chronicle, that Sidney's Candy, a 5–1 pick in the morning line, can win the race.

  • Gary West told his readers in the Fort Worth Star–Telegram a few days ago that the draw for the post positions made this year's Derby unpredictable.
So who ya gonna believe?