Good morning!
The heart and soul of Thoroughbred Nation is 100 miles west of us in Saratoga where nine three-year-olds will go to post at 7:04 p.m. this evening and race for $2 million in Belmont Stakes purse money.
The brief five-day meet began on Wednesday when almost 12,000 fans came through the turnstiles and wagered nearly $1.9 million.
The field for the third leg of the Triple Crown is easier to sort than the Kentucky Derby where 20 horses played bumper cars until longshot Golden Tempo and favorite Renegade shook free in the final furlong and finished one-two separated by a neck.
They’re in again today with the same riders — Jose Ortiz on Golden Tempo and older brother Iran on Renegade — and the same expectations. Renegade is the 2-1 morning line favorite breaking from the four post, and Golden Tempo is the 9-2 third choice behind Bill Mott’s Chief Wallabee who’s 3-1 with Junior Alvarado in the irons.
Box those three in a 50 cent trifecta with Chad Brown’s Emerging Market and Brad Cox’s Commandment — 10th and 7th in the Derby — for $30 and you could net $50 but not the $5,625 a 50-cent triple paid on Derby Day.
Here’s another angle. Golden Tempo isn’t the only horse in today’s Belmont Stakes that won May 2 at Churchill Downs. Powershift won the first race going away at a mile-and-sixteenth and recorded the same 95 Beyer Speed Figure as Golden Tempo. If you want better value, take the aforementioned $30 and spread it across the board on this 12-1 longshot ridden by Luis Saez and trained by four-time Belmont Stakes winner Todd Pletcher.
Elsewhere, Vitruvian Man trained by Doug O’Neill is coming off a two-month layoff and is 30-1 under Antonio Fresu, and Peter Pan winner Growth Equity (12-1) is one of just two colts in the race to have already been over the Saratoga surface.
“Growth Equity gets better with every start from a speed figure standpoint,” said NYRA analyst Andy Serling. “He stretches out an eighth of a mile every time he runs.”
Greenfield’s John Dobrydnio plans using Growth Equity with a few horses but his primary wager will be on the No. 8: “I’m keying Emerging Market with Chief Wallabee and Renegade,” he said, “and in the tenth race I’m betting Six Speed under Irad Ortiz at 10-1.”
Impressive undercard
Governor Sam has the one post for the Gr. I Jaipur Invitational Stakes (Race 9; 4:13 post) to be run 5 1/2 furlongs on the turf. The 4-year-old gelding is named for Alex Bregman’s father Sam Bregman, who was clobbered on Tuesday by Deb Haaland in the Democratic primary for governor.
Other Grade 1 races on this afternoon’s stakes-studded card include the Just a Game Stakes going one mile on the inner turf (Race 7; 2:47 p.m.); the Woody Stephens (Race 10; 4:52 p.m.) going 7 furlongs on the dirt; the Metropolitan Handicap going one mile on the dirt (Race 11; 5:32 p.m.) and the Manhattan going 1 3/16ths miles on the inner turf I (Race 12; 6:11 p.m.).
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“Can you get better drama than the Women’s College World Series?” asked ESPN’s Kevin Brown, the former Orioles announcer who was working alongside ESPN analyst Amanda Scarborough.
Eight teams qualified for the trip to 13,000-seat Devon Park in Oklahoma City. Every time a hitter put one over the fence, an usher retrieved the ball and gave it to the player’s mother or another family member.
According to a Reddit post confirmed by AI, “College softball players made up only .8 percent of the NIL compensation in college sports two years ago while basketball and football made up 88.9% of total compensation.”
Softball’s share of the pie will grow, but weather conditions will keep the sport regional. Of ESPN’s Top 25, all but Oregon hailed from the southern half of the country.
Every season the best of the best hop from school to school. Texas Tech had 14 transfers, including iron horse hurler NiJaree Canady who signed back-to-back million dollar deals and threw nearly 250 pitches in winning three games in under 24 hours this week.
Rosters are filled with former Gatorade Players of the Year like Texas Tech sophomore southpaw Samantha Lincoln who posted a 0.21 ERA at Taunton High School. Lincoln was 7-0 with a 3.43 ERA for the Red Raiders but was used sparingly behind Canady and flamethrower Caitlyn Terry who transferred from UCLA.
By the time you read this the best-of-three championship between Texas (52-12; 16-8) and Texas Tech (61-9;21-3) will have ended, and the race to repopulate rosters will begin anew.
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Joe Lachance is gone at age 85, and part of the town’s character has left with him. They called him the hippie cop when he joined the Greenfield Police Dept. when the Vietnam War was raging, someone who got along with draft age kids.
Years ago I was doing a story for the Recorder about the town’s parking problems. “You ever write parking tickets?” I asked him.
“They never forget,” he said. “You can get ‘em for speeding or even a DUI, and they’ll get over it. Give ‘em a parking ticket and you’ve made an enemy for life.”
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After a Prop 2-1/2 override failed in South Hadley, Pedro Rios considered having his daughter Natalie live with a friend in the PVRS district so she could continue to throw the javelin. Rios set the school record at last year’s Divisional States with a throw of 120 feet, ten inches.
South Hadley has a storied tradition, anchored in part by the late Bob Dobias who coached Tigers football, and the town finally came up with $1.5 million in free cash to save athletics and other extracurricular offerings.
Rios continued on and placed second in the D-6 states last week at windy and cold Westfield State with a throw of 118 feet and five inches.
The county’s best javelin thrower was Frontier’s Marcia Chmura who earned a scholarship to South Carolina and was 11th at the 1996 D-1 Outdoor Track & Field Championships.
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With a runner on base in the sixth inning Sunday at Foley Field in Athens, Georgia, Bulldogs third baseman Tre Phelps struck a pitch off Liberty starter Cooper Harrington that sailed over the left field fence to give his team a 2-1 lead. Phelps acted like such a jerk rounding the bases that he was ejected by home plate umpire Javerro January for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Even the hometown announcer admitted, “He wasn’t exactly just getting down to first base.”
Georgia coach Wes Johnson put on his own show after realizing Phelps had been tossed. The former Minnesota Twins pitching coach stomped around like a crazy man in a subway station and got the boot.
At this writing Phelps was batting .334 with 24 home runs and 72 RBIs. He was projected by one draft site to go 54th overall, but let’s see where he winds up.
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New England college baseball had little impact on the grand scheme of this year’s D-1 tournament. Four schools made the 62-team tourney and none made it out of the regionals. Holy Cross was walloped by Texas and UCal-Santa Barbara by an aggregate 34-2 score and Yale lost to Oregon and Oregon State by a combined 23-4.
Boston College and Northeastern both finished three bricks shy of a load, BC lost back-to-back games to Liberty but beat LIU and set a school record winning 17 ACC games under third year coach Todd Interdonato.
The Huskies, meanwhile, beat Missouri State but lost to Kansas and Arkansas.
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Congrats to Greenfield’s Steve McKelvey and Pittsfield’s Howard Herman on being inducted into the Western Mass. Baseball Hall of Fame, together with Chad Paronto, Bill L’Heureux Bob Bohl and the entire 2010 Amherst Regional H.S. baseball team.
The induction ceremony was last night at the Wyckoff Country Club in Holyoke. McKelvey was an MLB agent and taught sports management at UMass. Herman covers virtually every high school and college sport west of Worcester for the Berkshire Eagle. He is diligent, accurate and deserving.
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SQUIBBERS: Wesleyan baseball improved from 2-10 in NESCAC and 11-24 overall to 6-6 in the conference and 13-23 overall under former UMass coach Matt Reynolds. Meanwhile Max Weir was named to take over UMass baseball duties fulltime after sharing the job with Brandon Shileikis this season. … Not only did Jose Siri reach over the wall to rob Tampa Bay’s Taylor Walls of a grand slam at the Trop on Sunday, his catch prevented the ball from landing in the complimentary buffet. It appeared to be destined for a bowl of ziti. … White Sox catcher Kyle Teel was hitting .333 with five home runs at Triple A Charlotte when he tweaked his knee and was lost for another month. .… Doug Stotz sent word that Canada’s second largest newspaper determined that the odds of Canada not winning a Stanley Cup for 32 years were 3 in 10,000. Oh, Canada!