I’ve seen a lot of phenoms come through Louisville. A phenom, short for “phenomenal,” is a can’t-miss big-league prospect. You know the type. A player so gifted at a young age that he leads fans and sports writers to believe they’re seeing the next Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle or Sandy Koufax.
Back in the 1950s, […]

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I really hope that Australian car driver Ryan Briscoe is a fine and upstanding chap who’s a lot more culturally evolved than, say, the Neanderthal who held up a sign at Hillary Clinton speech that said, “Iron my shirt.”

I hope that because it sure looked to me as if Briscoe intentionally knocked Danica Patrick out […]

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The noted historian Robert Montgomery Knight once said that if the NCAA had been in charge of planning the D-Day Invasion, the Allied troops would have landed in Portugal. Sadly, the same can be said for the organizations that govern thoroughbred racing.
Historically, racing’s leaders pay lip service to the concepts of teamwork and sacrificing for […]

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I never knew that Norm Iler was an All-American basketball player at Washington & Lee, which tells you more about Norm than about my lack of reporting skills. Some people love to talk about themselves. Norm wanted to talk about anything but himself. He was the soul of modesty.
I got to know Norm and his […]

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Today let us give thanks to Kentucky basketball coach Billy Clyde Gillispie for making sure that our commonwealth looks like the Goober capitol of the college hoops world. You can hear the jokes now, can’t you? You know, the ones about how basketball is so important in Kentucky that cradle-robbing now is an essential part […]

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Earlier this year, Denny Schrecker was in Florida, playing golf with his wife, when his doctors asked him to come home so they could treat the brain tumor that was killing him. But Denny said no. He said this was maybe the last chance he’d ever have to play golf with Linda in Florida, so […]

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Tom Crean’s excellent adventure as Indiana University basketball coach took a really weird turn in April, when Eli Holman, a 6-foot-9 sophomore-to-be, came to the office to tell the coach he was transferring. During the meeting, Holman became so agitated that Crean, fearing Holman might be “a danger to himself and others,” called the campus […]

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A few days before the Kentucky Derby, former Governor Brereton Jones was standing on the backstretch at Churchill Downs, talking about trainer Larry Jones’ decision to run the filly Eight Belles in the Kentucky Derby instead of the Kentucky Oaks. Brereton applauded the decision, and not just because it meant that his filly, Proud Spell, […]

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On the morning of the 40th Kentucky Derby that the grandfather would see in person, he picked up his daughter and son-in-law so that they could go to Churchill Downs together. It was a splendid first Saturday in May, the warming sun promising relief from the previous day’s rain, and the grandfather felt the old […]

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The “scattered showers” predicted for Friday afternoon turned into a steady downpour that soaked a lot of Derby hats and took the starch out of just about everything except the Kentucky Oaks, where Proud Spell lit up the day with a stunning performance that defied the slop and the gloom.
I had been on her bandwagon […]

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