A few things I care about …
▪ It’s Kentucky Derby time, which means it’s time to meet Hot Rod Charlie.
“Chuck,” as he’s known on the inside, drew post position No. 9 for Saturday’s Run for the Roses. And if you heard the whoops and hollers all the way from Louisville, no shocker.
The story behind Chuck is a movie-in-waiting tale of five college friends, all former football players at Brown, who formed Boat Racing LLC and decided to make horse racing their next competitive adventure.
Among them is Acton’s Dan Giovacchini, who took a moment from a whirlwind week in Louisville to reflect on this crazy adventure, one that saw Hot Rod Charlie overcome 94-1 odds to finish runner-up in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and finish in the top three in his last four races. The latest Vegas Insider odds put Hot Rod Charlie fourth, at 8-1, to win the Derby.
“It’s just pure bewilderment, disbelief, like pinching ourselves every morning,” Giovacchini said. “When we started this, it was the running joke, ‘Can you imagine our horse running in the Derby?’ It was like a ‘ha-ha’ thing. I don’t know what the odds are, but it has to be close to impossible.”
Yet here they are, alongside fellow owners Roadrunner Racing and Strauss Brothers Racing, crashing the blue-blooded party with their everyman ethos and Cinderella story, taking in every sight and sound they can find, spending the week seeing horse farms for the first time, visiting the area’s best restaurants, like tourists hiding in plain sight.
“Sticking out like sore thumbs isn’t close to describing it,” Giovacchini laughed. “Like a Red Sox hat in the middle of Times Square.”
They won’t be alone, surrounded by their 170 guests and guided by the memory of one of their own. Of the four other Brown grads — Eric Armagost, Reiley Higgins, Patrick O’Neill, and Alex Quoyeser — it was O’Neill who had the expertise, with a long family involvement in the sport. He also had the inspiration for the friends to partner with the Melanoma Research Foundation, with a portion of profits going to research for the disease that took the life of his father and one of his uncles.
“We’re using it as a way to brotherhood for Pat and his family,” Giovacchini said. “We call it sixth man, because Pat’s dad is like our sixth man, so a sixth of all the winnings — not just this weekend — will go to the cause.”
Who couldn’t root for that?
“We’ll be excited because it’s so fun for us,” Giovacchini said. “Some guys will be nervous, but at the same time, getting here was the win.”
▪ Come on, baseball. Madison Bumgarner threw a no-hitter, and your record books should say as much. The dominant Diamondbacks lefty blanked the Braves in a recent doubleheader, and because the game went only seven innings, he was not officially credited with a no-no. But that’s because of an old baseball rule, one before the pandemic-era change that made doubleheader games seven innings apiece.
It’s the same argument that drives me crazy with people who don’t think designated hitters belong in the Hall of Fame because they don’t play defense. What matters is that they play by the rules of the game, and Bumgarner played by the rules of the game.
If MLB says it’s an official game, then it should be an official no-hitter; if it doesn’t want seven-inning no-hitters, then don’t sanction seven-inning games.
▪ Leave it to the NCAA, perpetual losers in PR wars and important decisions, to do it again. Extending the contract of president Mark Emmert through 2025? Ridiculous. The guy should have been gone years ago, along with his utter tone deafness, but instead, the NCAA’s board of directors put in a line deep in a late-night press release that they’d added two more years to his contract.
▪ Sports as the best reality show of them all, again: Golfer Michael Visacki qualified for the Valspar Championship, realizing a lifelong dream, and shed tears as he talked on the phone to his father — and it was all caught by PGA Tour video.
It can be easy to forget there are real human emotions coursing underneath those very competitive athletes, but Visacki did a great job reminding us.
▪ Loved seeing gymnast extraordinaire Simone Biles go her own endorsement way. Not surprising, given her growing profile as a strong-minded, independent thinker unafraid to buck convention, but when Biles chose to leave Nike and sign with Athleta, an apparel branch of the Gap brand, she did it with purpose.
Biles told the Wall Street Journal she chose Athleta because ”I felt like it wasn’t just about my achievements, it’s what I stood for and how they were going to help me use my voice and also be a voice for females and kids.”
It wasn’t a direct hit at Nike, which remains the giant in endorsement deals, but still, this could be another sign that its hold is slipping. It was only recently that Vanessa Bryant, Kobe Bryant’s widow, let her late husband’s Nike contract expire without renewal, and megastars like Steph Curry and Jordan Spieth have long worn Under Armour.
▪ On a separate gymnastics note, Sarah Voss of Germany made headlines when she and two teammates competed in the European Artistic Championships in full-body leotards, eschewing the traditional bathing-suit or ballet-style leo.
For a sport that has had to reckon with serious issues of sexualization and abuse of its young athletes, allowing them to wear something in which they are most comfortable is a no-brainer.
As Voss described it, “We women all want to feel good in our skin. In the sport of gymnastics, it gets harder and harder as you grow out of your child’s body. As a little girl, I didn’t see the tight gym outfits as such a big deal. But when puberty began, when my period came, I began feeling increasingly uncomfortable.”
▪ I remember talking to NFL draft hopeful Alec Lindstrom about the decision by Boston College players to skip a bowl game so they could return to their families, and it was neat to see him included in the league’s advance list of draft notes about family connections. Lindstrom, an offensive lineman, hopes to follow his brother Chris, a guard for the Atlanta Falcons, into the NFL.
Another familiar name on the list? Florida State cornerback Asante Samuel Jr. Patriots fans might remember dad’s 11-year NFL career, which included two Super Bowl titles in New England.
▪ Hard to shake the heartbreaking story of Terrence Clarke’s death. I didn’t know him, but those who did made his impact known through emails and comments. As Dr. Craig Gemmell, the head of school at Brewster Academy, eloquently put it in an email, “We know that great sorrow is the sign that a life has touched others and will be deeply missed.”
Tara Sullivan is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at tara.sullivan@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @Globe_Tara.
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Rooting for an unlikely Kentucky Derby entry, and other thoughts - The Boston Globe
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