The Sports Curmudgeon®

When I was a kid, I would go to the movies on Saturday afternoon. One genre of film that I liked was the old “horror flick” – not the new ones with gaudy special effects. I mean the ones with Bela Lugosi as Dracula and Boris Karloff as Frankenstein. Each of those films had innumerable sequels to the point where the titles became confusing such as Brother-in-law of the Cousin of the Next Door Neighbor of the Bride of Frankenstein. I bring up those movies only because they all started in the same way. Some goof finds Dracula “dead” in his coffin with a stake in his heart – or the Mummy’s newest tomb or the body of the Frankenstein monster conveniently close to an electrical supply that might be connected across those terminals sticking out of its neck. Then that same goof pulls out the stake or fires up the monster and all hell breaks loose for a couple of hours until someone finds a way to put things back the way they were at the beginning of the movie.

It seems as if we have one of these “monster movie sequels” about to play itself out in the sports world this weekend. We’ve seen this before but that won’t keep us from peeking in to see if the end is as horrible as it has been in the past. I’m speaking of Michelle Wie entering a men’s golf tournament – the Reno-Tahoe Open. If you follow professional golf, you probably think that the main event for the weekend is the World Golf Championship – Bridgestone Invitational in Ohio because that is where most of the top names on the PGA Tour will be. But now the sponsors of the Reno-Tahoe Open have a way to get some of the attention deflected from Ohio to their junior varsity event. You don’t think that might be part of their motivation for the sponsors there, do you? Neither do I…

Now that Michelle Wie is 18 years old, she is an adult and therefore she is responsible for making decisions relative to her life. In the past, one could point to greedy promoters who might be manipulating her overly ambitious parents for exploiting the talents of a teenage girl for their benefits. Those exploitations surely did Michelle Wie’s golf game no good; in the past two years, she has made the cut in exactly two tournaments on any of the tours she plays in and neither of those “successes” came this year. She needs to finish well in the LPGA Canadian Open and other LPGA events where she can get in just to avoid having to qualify for LPGA events next year.

But now Michele Wie is an adult and she can do what she wants to do with her time; and so, this decision is on her. Sure, the promoters want ESPN to show Michele Wie playing in their second-rate tournament and ESPN will do just that. Sure, her parents/handlers want promoters to continue to fawn over them. Those things are true, but Michele Wie holds the ace of trump here; she can tell all those folks to pound sand. Instead, she chooses to pull the stake out of the heart of the vampire - - and so this one is on her.

Memo to Michelle Wie: Since you insist on playing against the men yet again, please remember that the PGA also requires you to sign your scorecard and to turn it in promptly after every round of golf. You are welcome.

On more than one occasion, I’ve ranted about the boneheadedness of the folks who run horseracing in the US. Rather than repeat any of those rants let me just say that the Captain of the Titanic navigated his treacherous course about as well as the US horseracing mavens have managed their industry. However, there may be a spark of a new idea for horseracing coming from Great Britain.

The British horseracing industry wants to start something called the Sovereign Series starting next year. It will be a season-long competition comprised of ten Group I races. [In North America, we call them Grade I races but the idea is the same; these are major racing events that draw top talent.] These races will be contested over a 5 month span (May – October) meaning that there will not be huge gaps between the events where fans can lose interest or forget about the competition. The shortest race will be a mile and the longest race will be a mile-and-a-half; there will be no sprints.

Horses can earn points based on their finishing position in each of these races and the finale of the series will be something called the Champion Stakes. The prize pool for the Sovereign Series itself will be 2 million pounds (almost $4M at today’s exchange rate). In addition, the Sovereign Series will add 3 million pounds to the purses of the ten races in the series; those races already carry purses that total over 4 million pounds.

The Champion Stakes would fall in late September or early October meaning it would be very close to the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in France and the Breeders’ Cup in the US. While that may sound as if it poses a huge problem for racing, it may in fact be the basis for people to sit down and talk about how to make horseracing a lot better than it is on a worldwide basis.

The British idea has some exceptionally good ideas:

1. The idea that there is a series of races that could happen every few weeks where the results might actually matter in some context other than the payoffs to the bettors at the conclusion of the race should generate interest in the sport. Lord knows, horseracing can use that.

2. The idea that the shortest race will be at a mile is a good one because just about everyone agrees that breeders have damaged the species by breeding only for speed and not for endurance too. Having a lot of purse money out there for “distance horses” might be good for the breed and therefore good for the sport.

3. Who says the Sovereign Series cannot become an international competition to include horses and races that would make the competition a year-round event by including places such as Dubai, Hong Kong and Australia?

This idea comes from “across the pond”. It will be interesting to see if the geniuses who run horseracing in North America can remove their heads from their colons long enough to see the potential to do something different that might be beneficial. And if they do rectify their rectal blindness momentarily, can they put a leash on their collective egos long enough to think about the concept of “cooperation”? Maybe they need to go and watch some of the old Sesame Street episodes about “cooperation”?

Finally, an item from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

“Sign spotted on the back of the San Jose Sharks’ Zamboni: ‘Driver carries no cash.’ “

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…