Maddux Sports Blog

The only question I have about the Mariners decision to fire their manager to day is why it took so long. I am embarrassed to admit that I thought that they would be the class of the AL West. Instead, they are the cellar dwellers in the entire league. It’s not like they are coming up just short, either. They have all sorts of talent, and highly paid talent at that, but they just can’t get anything going. This year is a total write-off, but hopefully this change coupled with the fired general manager last week will get the message across that this team can’t be this bad anymore. I have always liked the mariners, and I will continue to as long as they don’t make the decision to get rid of Erik Bedard this season. That would be painfully shortsighted.

Portugal got a tough break at Euro 2008 today. They had played very well throughout the tournament, but Germany lost to Turkey in round-robin play so Portugal had to play the tournament favorites in the first round of the playoffs. Portugal played a solid game in virtual monsoon conditions today, but Germany was just that much better, and they won 3-2. One tough draw and they are out. In the meantime, Croatia and Turkey play to be the next opponents of Germany, and Portugal could easily have beaten either of those teams. By the time this tournament is over the draw is going to be a major story. It has already punished France and Portugal.

Big Brown has emerged from seclusion. We had heard a lot from his trainer and jockey since the crushing disappointment of the Belmont, but the horse had been mostly out of sight. He’s been training at Aqueduct, though, and he’s reportedly been doing well. He was originally supposed to be pointed to the Travers at Saratoga at the end of August, but instead he will next head to the other big summer Derby - the Haskell at Monmouth on August 3. That choice opens up the possibility, and indeed most likely the probability, of another race between that one and the Breeders’ Cup Classic at the end of October. Going into that race off a three month break doesn’t seem like a good or likely idea.

I’ll say darn, but rest assured that that isn’t the word I have in mind.

I don’t know why horse racing hates me so much.

I am counting the seconds until post time for the Belmont. It’s not hard, because they are passing so slowly. I have been waiting for a Triple Crown for most of my life, and I believe that the wait could and should be coming to an end. I’ve felt that several times before, and I have had my heart broken by each impressive horse - Alysheba, Silver Charm, Real Quiet, Funny Cide, and Smarty Jones more than the others. Something seems different this year, though - Big Brown is more of a freak than past horses in this situation, and the field contains fewer landmines (I want to be clear that I am not nearly as negative about this crop of three year olds as most people, but I just don’t think that there is a horse of Big Brown’s class) than recent years.

I think Big Brown will win handily (like everyone else on the planet), and I think that he will be well below his 2/5 morning line by post time. That means that the race will not be a good source of profit unless something bizarre happens. I can’t pass on the race, though, so I am going to make two different bets. First, I will bet Big Brown to win (just two dollars, and I likely won’t cash the ticket if he wins - I’m a hopeless romantic when it comes to racing). For a shot at making at least a little profit I will look to the superfecta. I will obviously key Big Brown on top, and I am going to buy into the hype because of the need to create an affordable ticket and key Casino Drive in second. That means I can afford to have a bunch of horses under those two. I’m going to have Macho Again, Icabad Crane, Denis of Cork and Tale of Ekati in the third spot and I might add Ready’s Echo and Anak Nakal to the bottom to make it an even $20 ticket. It won’t pay much, but it will it will at least give me something to cheer for. Not that I will need it.

The interesting thing to watch is going to be how the race plays out. Outside of Big Brown, the only horse that seems to be interested in the lead is Da’ Tara. That horse doesn’t have anywhere near the quality to stay at the lead to the end, so Kent Desormeaux won’t be too worried about him because Big Brown can probably brush him aside whenever he wants to. On the other hand, Casino Drive is the first horse he has faced with a closing kick that can even remotely rival his own. On top of it all, Desormeaux has to deal with the inside post and will have to make sure that his horse doesn’t get trapped somewhere he wants to be. Desormeaux could go for the lead early, but he has the memory of doing so with Real Quiet and then running out of gas just before the finish line. He could settle back and wait until a better time to make a move. This race is more than long enough to reward patience, but Desormeaux showed in the backstretch of the Preakness that he will go to great lengths to avoid being boxed in. He could try to move outside as quickly as he can to stay out of trouble. With so many options it will be interesting to see what strategy is employed for Big Brown, and how aggressively the other jockeys are riding to beat him. Jerry Bailey took all sorts of criticism in 2004 when it looked like he was riding to beat Smarty Jones instead of to win the race himself.

I’ll warn you now - if Big Brown doesn’t win I’ll be pouting in this space for weeks.

Big Brown returned to the track sooner than expected yesterday after suffering a quarter crack injury. He was back again today with a solid gallop. As far as I’m concerned the injury isn’t going to factor into my handicapping of the Belmont at all unless something comes up between now and then to make me think otherwise.

Casino Drive, Big Brown’s biggest threat, had a truly bizarre outing this morning. He was to work with a stable mate, but he was acting up in the warmup so they sent him off alone instead. His time was more than 1:12 for five furlongs. Even fairly average horses race six furlongs in less time. The time was so slow that Belmont clockers couldn’t record it as an official work. Bizarre. They obviously do things differently in Japan. One good thing happened for the horse today - he secured Edgar Prado as his Belmont rider. I like that a lot better than the idea of bringing a jockey over from Japan.

The White Sox scored three in the seventh to come back and beat Cleveland 6-5 today. I don’t know if the Indians suck or the White Sox are pretty good. I am finding it increasingly difficult to like anyone better than Chicago to come out of the Central, though.

Baltimore is above .500 at this point of the year. They are a ridiculous 16-7 at home. If they could play on the road even a little they would actually be competitive. That’s yet another thing that doesn’t make any sense about this season so far. It’s obvious that bettors and oddsmakers didn’t see this coming, either. Despite being just one game above .500 going into tonight’s action they are up about five units on the season on the moneyline.

Maria Sharapova won her second round match at the French Open today, but it sure wasn’t pretty. Serena Williams cruised. The women’s draw sure was easier to figure out when Justine Henin was still playing. Ana Ivanovic, the second seed, won her second match easily as well. The more I see her, the more I think she is the one to beat here. Things make much more sense on the men’s side where Rafael Nadal made it look easy.

My best guesses - Boston and Pittsburgh both look pretty good in earning home playoff wins tonight. I’ll especially be shocked if Boston doesn’t come out on put on a clinic.

The Dodgers look to have a live arm to help with the problems at the bottom of their rotation. They rushed their next phenom, Clayton Kershaw, into the lineup straight from Double-A on Sunday. They needed his arm because they have no others - they cut Esteban Loaiza on Saturday because he couldn’t get it done anymore, and they hadn’t found anyone better. They are pretty desperate right now, too - they play 17 straight without a rest, so they will need five arms to keep the Diamondbacks within sight. Kershaw was the first high schooler chosen in the 2006 draft when he went to the Dodgers seventh overall. He was the national player of the year as a high school senior. The 20 year old was 0-3 in Double-A, but he wasn’t getting much run support. His ERA was only 2.28, and the most eye-opening number was his 47 Ks in 43 innings. He has a solid fastball, a nasty curve that drops more than 20 mph from that fastball, and a circle change. His first appearance in the pros was a decent one. He lasted six innings, striking out seven with just one walk. He allowed five hits and two earned runs. He didn’t get a decision, but his new team did beat the Cards. On Tuesday I’m going to take a look at how to deal with these phenoms as they come along.

The biggest single day of car racing of the year didn’t disappoint. Lewis Hamilton won an exciting F1 race in Monte Carlo to start off the day. Scott Dixon followed it up with win in the Indy 500. That result was sweet justice for him - he was the fastest car all month and he stayed out of trouble in a race that was far from accident-free. The biggest non-story of the day was Danica Patrick - she ended up 22nd when she was taken out in pit lane by Ryan Briscoe. The best part was that she looked like she was going to beat Briscoe senseless. The nigh ended with a win by Kasey Kahne in the longest NASCAR race of the year, the Coca Cola 600. As is so often the case, Tony Stewart was the biggest story - he should have won, but he gave up his lead with three laps left when he bumped the wall and got a flat tire.

The Belmont is still two weeks away, but there is no end of intrigue on that front. Big Brown has a small crack in his left front foot. He’s missed two days of training and could miss three more. He’s getting the best possible care, and it’s pretty likely that he’ll be just fine by race time. More interestingly, there are rumors out there that Kent Desormeaux’s agent is angling to get his charge the mount on Casino Drive in the Belmont. The rider of that horse will be named on Wednesday. It seems almost impossible that this would be true sine Desormeaux is on Big Brown, but it opens up a million different possibilities for conspiracy theorists.

Joakim Noah got arrested in Gainesville for drinking in public and marijuana possession. Also, Noah is an idiot.

Phil Mickelson won this weekend with a spectacular wedge shot on the 72nd hole to set up winning birdie putt. Now all he has to do is put together a knockout blow like that against Tiger Woods instead of Rod Pampling.

I’ll say this right up front - I think that Big Brown is going to win the Preakness handily and I am going to bet accordingly. Just to be contrary, though, here are seven reasons why you could choose not to bet on him if you were so inclined. As an aside, I can’t help but be haunted by the 2000 Preakness when I think of this race. Fusaichi Pegasus was a freak who was under-raced but had won the Derby impressively after a ton of hype. He was 3/10 in the Preakness against a field of largely uninspiring horses. Kent Desormeaux had that mount as well. Before the race was run everyone and their dog was looking ahead to the Belmont. He got caught at the wire by Red Bullet, a 6/1 shot who had tanked it in the Wood Memorial last time out. That was a bad year for Triple Crown watchers, and certainly not one I am anxious to relive:

1. Inexperience - The argument that turned people off of him in the Derby is still relevant here. He has only run four times, and he has never had to face adversity in any of those races. A lot can happen in a race full of youngsters, and we don’t know how he will handle it if it does.

2. The field - I don’t think that the field provides much of a challenge for him, but that lack of quality could be a problem. Several of these horses don’t belong here, so they could get themselves in trouble if the pace gets out of hand. As they fade they could create an obstacle for the favorite, and even a horse that good might not be able to get around it.

3. His health - After running in his first race he suffered two different foot injuries that kept him out of training for months. He seems to be healthy now, but he has never run back in just two weeks before, so we don’t know if he can hold up to the strain.

4. The price - There are 13 horses in this field. It doesn’t make any sense at all that one of them should be at 1/2. He’s far better than the rest, but that price is so low (and will likely go lower once the public gets a hold of it) that it can’t possibly accurately reflect the risk involved in putting your money on him.

5. Travel - The horse only arrived at Pimlico on Wednesday night. He’s the last horse in the field to show up. That means he won’t be particularly familiar with his surroundings, and he won’t have worked hard over the somewhat quirky Pimlico surface. Yet another thing we don’t know - how he will handle it all.

6. Conspiracy theory - This is admittedly a stretch, but so are most conspiracy theories. Kent Desormeaux rides Big Brown. He also rode Casino Drive, the super horse from Japan who is awaiting Big Brown in the Belmont, in his only North American appearance. If Desormeaux had a good feeling that this horse wasn’t good enough to beat that horse then he might not push as hard as he could here because a loss here would almost certainly keep Big Brown out of the Belmont. It would at least theoretically be easier to handle to lose here than in New York when you have the Triple Crown in your grasp. As an added bonus for Desormeaux, he could then have the mount on Casino Drive and would likely win the race anyway.

7. For sport - What’s the fun in backing a heavy favorite and being right? It would make for a way better story if a 30/1 shot pulls off the miracle and you can show off your winning ticket.

It’s Saturday night and you should be out doing something more interesting than reading what I have to say, but I will hit three quick topics that caught my eye today:

1. A somewhat dull Triple Crown trail just got a whole lot more interesting. It looked like we were living in a one freak world - Big Brown. A second one emerged today. Casino Drive had only run once in his life before today, and it was in Japan. He won by a mile, though. More significantly, he has captured the attention of racing fans because he has shipped over here specifically for the Belmont, and because he is (at least) a half brother to Jazil and Rags to Riches (the last two Belmont winners). To tune up for that race which is a month off, the horse ran in the Peter Pan Stakes at Belmont against a reasonably decent crowd. It was a massacre. I could describe it further, but you had better see this one for yourself:

Click here to see the video

One last interesting note. Kent Desormeaux rides Big Brown. He also rode Casino Drive in this race. This will perhaps be the first time in history that a top jockey wins a race that impressively and steps off the horse for its next race.

2. The streak came to an end. Detroit beat Orlando by a point in Florida to become the first road team in the second round to win and only the second one to cover. Cleveland started a new streak in the second game, and they did it with an exclamation point - they covered the two point spread by 22 points.

3. I know you can’t bet on high school girl’s track and field (not legally anyway, and if you are doing it illegally then you might have a problem), but this story is too amazing not to mention. Rochelle High School won the girl’s 1A Texas state team championship. So what? Bonnie Richardson was the only girl to qualify for the meet from the school. She won two events, was second in two others, and added a third in another. That earned her more points that the second place school. The best part? She’s only a junior. I know who I am betting on next year. I doubt there will be much value in her, though.