The Sights, the Sounds, the Smells of Springtime in the U.S.
By GEORGE VECSEY
Sports of The Times
June 28, 2007
What do Americans do for sports in the spring? I asked this question, somewhat facetiously, when it worked out that I wouldn’t go overseas this year.
Normally I am running around the Tour de France, soccer’s World Cup or Wimbledon, but this time around I am saving my travel for domestic stories involving blokes named Beckham and Bonds.
This means my New Year’s postcards will not include some mountaintop in the Pyrenees where I might have watched the Tour with the goats, or heard the chatter during a rain delay at Wimbledon, but other good people will more than take care of scenes like that.
Instead, I have gotten in touch with late spring here in my homeland, paying more attention to sports I might have overlooked while packing my suitcase and booking hotel rooms overseas. With more time on my hands, I thoroughly enjoyed sports I might sometimes skip over.
As a Hofstra graduate who witnessed the innovative teams of Howdy Myers in the late ’50s, I hardly needed an introduction to lacrosse, with its special mix of creativity and physicality. This year I paid more attention to lacrosse because of the wrenching legal circus involving the Duke team, and also because John Danowski, the new Duke coach, and Matt Danowski, his son and playmaker, are Long Islanders, like me.
The best sports event I saw this spring was Duke’s seesaw victory over Cornell in the semifinals of the national tournament, now a big-time Memorial Day weekend event. After squandering a seven-goal lead, Duke found itself tied near the end of regulation time, when Terrence Molinari won a face-off (one of the more underrated skills) and passed the ball to Peter Lamade who alertly flicked the ball to Duke’s high scorer, Zach Greer.
•
Planted exactly where he should have been — about 8 yards in front of the Cornell goal, back to the net, like Kareem in the pivot — Greer juked one way and went the other, slinging the ball into the net with three seconds remaining, as good a finish as any sport can produce.
Then, in the final, Johns Hopkins lived up to its grand tradition by taking a six-goal lead, but Matt Danowski and his teammates fought back to lose by only one goal. Watching on television, I was delighted to be in the home continent of this truly native American sport.
The other event that captivated me was the Triple Crown of horse racing. It has taken most of my working life to recognize how much I look forward to my periodic visits to the track. Usually I focus on the talk around the barns and leave the analysis of the races and the odds to the experts, but this year I got caught up in three compelling races.
Rather than buy into the gloom and doom that, boo-hoo, once again poor old racing did not produce a Triple Crown champion, I thrilled to watch Street Sense roar along the inside to win the Kentucky Derby, Curlin fight back to win the Preakness and, in the marathon Belmont, a filly, Rag to Riches, outlast her male rivals.
To my chagrin, I also discovered there were old friends for whom I had little patience. While I love the recent emergence of international players in the N.B.A., and respect the superb skills in the league, ultimately the brilliant moves are worth only 2 or 3 points each, making me lose my attention, like somebody on a sugar high.
I went to a few Stanley Cup hockey games but found myself in a time warp, wondering where was Adam Graves, where was Scott Stevens, where were the Canadiens? The players were strangers — as a friend once described a dust-up between two Brooklyn Hasidic sects, “Men with beards hitting men with beards.” Somebody I respect around the N.H.L. has told me I need to move on. I’ll try again next season, I promise.
While not rushing to Lyon or Seoul, I had more time to follow the legal machinations in a dozen sports. I rejoiced in the disbarment of the Durham County (N.C.) district attorney, Michael B. Nifong, who took a seedy boys’ night out and turned it into fraudulent rape case, setting up knee-jerk responses everywhere. I watched professional cycling try to catch up after a drug-filled century, baseball try to make up for a generation of ignoring its steroid problem and the N.F.L. being forced to confront decades of brains and bones wrecked in the name of lucrative Sunday afternoon carnage, entertainment for the masses.
•
Instead of barreling around Europe or Asia, I had time for family and books, got out on the bay in my kayak or attacked the local hills on my bike, wearing a yellow Cycling for Dummies T-shirt.
It was delightful to be home, watching the wheels go round and round. On long beautiful June evenings, I stretched on the back deck and listened to the Mets and Yankees, reminding myself (as if I had ever forgotten) that there is nothing like local baseball on the radio. Now, vacation’s over. It’s time to go to the ballpark. That’s what we do this time of year in America.
E-mail: geovec@nytimes.com
Sports of The Times
June 28, 2007
What do Americans do for sports in the spring? I asked this question, somewhat facetiously, when it worked out that I wouldn’t go overseas this year.
Normally I am running around the Tour de France, soccer’s World Cup or Wimbledon, but this time around I am saving my travel for domestic stories involving blokes named Beckham and Bonds.
This means my New Year’s postcards will not include some mountaintop in the Pyrenees where I might have watched the Tour with the goats, or heard the chatter during a rain delay at Wimbledon, but other good people will more than take care of scenes like that.
Instead, I have gotten in touch with late spring here in my homeland, paying more attention to sports I might have overlooked while packing my suitcase and booking hotel rooms overseas. With more time on my hands, I thoroughly enjoyed sports I might sometimes skip over.
As a Hofstra graduate who witnessed the innovative teams of Howdy Myers in the late ’50s, I hardly needed an introduction to lacrosse, with its special mix of creativity and physicality. This year I paid more attention to lacrosse because of the wrenching legal circus involving the Duke team, and also because John Danowski, the new Duke coach, and Matt Danowski, his son and playmaker, are Long Islanders, like me.
The best sports event I saw this spring was Duke’s seesaw victory over Cornell in the semifinals of the national tournament, now a big-time Memorial Day weekend event. After squandering a seven-goal lead, Duke found itself tied near the end of regulation time, when Terrence Molinari won a face-off (one of the more underrated skills) and passed the ball to Peter Lamade who alertly flicked the ball to Duke’s high scorer, Zach Greer.
•
Planted exactly where he should have been — about 8 yards in front of the Cornell goal, back to the net, like Kareem in the pivot — Greer juked one way and went the other, slinging the ball into the net with three seconds remaining, as good a finish as any sport can produce.
Then, in the final, Johns Hopkins lived up to its grand tradition by taking a six-goal lead, but Matt Danowski and his teammates fought back to lose by only one goal. Watching on television, I was delighted to be in the home continent of this truly native American sport.
The other event that captivated me was the Triple Crown of horse racing. It has taken most of my working life to recognize how much I look forward to my periodic visits to the track. Usually I focus on the talk around the barns and leave the analysis of the races and the odds to the experts, but this year I got caught up in three compelling races.
Rather than buy into the gloom and doom that, boo-hoo, once again poor old racing did not produce a Triple Crown champion, I thrilled to watch Street Sense roar along the inside to win the Kentucky Derby, Curlin fight back to win the Preakness and, in the marathon Belmont, a filly, Rag to Riches, outlast her male rivals.
To my chagrin, I also discovered there were old friends for whom I had little patience. While I love the recent emergence of international players in the N.B.A., and respect the superb skills in the league, ultimately the brilliant moves are worth only 2 or 3 points each, making me lose my attention, like somebody on a sugar high.
I went to a few Stanley Cup hockey games but found myself in a time warp, wondering where was Adam Graves, where was Scott Stevens, where were the Canadiens? The players were strangers — as a friend once described a dust-up between two Brooklyn Hasidic sects, “Men with beards hitting men with beards.” Somebody I respect around the N.H.L. has told me I need to move on. I’ll try again next season, I promise.
While not rushing to Lyon or Seoul, I had more time to follow the legal machinations in a dozen sports. I rejoiced in the disbarment of the Durham County (N.C.) district attorney, Michael B. Nifong, who took a seedy boys’ night out and turned it into fraudulent rape case, setting up knee-jerk responses everywhere. I watched professional cycling try to catch up after a drug-filled century, baseball try to make up for a generation of ignoring its steroid problem and the N.F.L. being forced to confront decades of brains and bones wrecked in the name of lucrative Sunday afternoon carnage, entertainment for the masses.
•
Instead of barreling around Europe or Asia, I had time for family and books, got out on the bay in my kayak or attacked the local hills on my bike, wearing a yellow Cycling for Dummies T-shirt.
It was delightful to be home, watching the wheels go round and round. On long beautiful June evenings, I stretched on the back deck and listened to the Mets and Yankees, reminding myself (as if I had ever forgotten) that there is nothing like local baseball on the radio. Now, vacation’s over. It’s time to go to the ballpark. That’s what we do this time of year in America.
E-mail: geovec@nytimes.com
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