Glory Days
In 1973 I won a contest run by George Plimpton for the New York Yankees. You had to write a short essay explaining why you wanted to play baseball in Yankee Stadium — the prize was getting to play baseball in Yankee Stadium, one exhibition inning before a real game against a team of former Yankee stars. BY LLOYD FONVIELLE
Monday, July 15, 2013Tracks That Burn
I was driven to the entrance of Churchill Downs by a pipemaker from Germany, who specialized in making the components of organs. I can't recall how he wound up in Kentucky, but I remember it was by way of Northeastern Ohio, after he'd been persecuted in his native country. The man didn't say much, but he did say that he didn't give a lick about horse racing. I took it as a sign that, even in Louisville, the Kentucky Derby isn't everything. But God help the poor bastards who listen to omens. BY JAMIE BERK
Bottom of the Ninth, Percy on the Mound
NEW YORK — A few weeks ago marked the latest outing from Benjamin Percy, the prodigiously talented but uneven right-hander from Oregon. Would this season be the 34-year-old's big break? BY NATHAN DEUEL
Soccer Bleu
Appropriately enough, I can’t recall the first time I stooped under the bar’s low entrance and walked inside. But at some point in the summer of 2008, while a student in Paris, I began going every day, and between long afternoons in the bar, I found I could not stay away. It was a compulsion that puzzled my friends, professors, and most of all the bar’s regulars, who still look at me like a stranger. But these were the days of the European Championship soccer tournament, and I’d become transfixed by the soccer talk in the bar. When my studies ended I returned home, but on the eve of the World Cup in June of 2010, I boarded a plane for Paris to settle back in at Le Village. BY JOHN SAMUEL HARPHAM
Whispers in the Shade of Roses
In the shadows were the days before. "This is what I want to do with my life, but we could have it all taken away from us, " said Dean Roethemeier, a young breeder for Darley America. There, too, was Joe Drape, the horse racing reporter for the New York Times — "I'm pausing just because I think there probably is," he speculated on whether there might be an illegally doped horse in the race. "I wouldn't put it past them." And then there was Bob Baffert, the Hall of Fame trainer, asked how badly he wanted to win. "That is the stupidest question you guys ask," he said. "How bad do you wanna get laid? Huh? How bad do you wanna get laid? Tell me." BY JAMIE BERK