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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2007 > May
May 2007
Ashley Judd turns a “no” into a yes.
INDIANAPOLIS — I’ve met Ashley Judd twice now.
The most recent was after Sunday’s rain-drenched Indianapolis 500 and she was delightful.
The first time — in St. Louis in 1999 — she was not. She wasn’t friendly at all, but I don’t blame her. She’s a diehard University of Kentucky basketball fan and the ‘Cats had just lost their bid to go to the Final Four, falling 73-66 to a Michigan State team that included Trotwood Madison’s Andre Hudson..
It was a few minutes after the game had ended and she was standing in the arena hallway with coach Tubby Smith’s wife not far from the ‘Cats dressing room.
Some Michigan State band members had come past and one made a crack. That’s when Judd had pushed aside those Baptist roots and suddenly she was one of those tough, rise-up-when-knocked-down characters she plays in her movies.
She was the woman who stands up to her abusive husband in “Double Jeopardy,” the doctor who refused to be treated as a victim in “Kiss the Girls,” the cagey lawyer in “High Crimes.”
And it was just after she had dispatched of the band member with a quick, go-for-the-jugular comeback that I walked up. Timing is not always my strong suit.
I started to ask something and she simply said, “No.”
I wanted to ask again. Wanted to tell her, “Hey, I’m not the enemy. My grandfather went to UK. He came from Maysville, Ky. just down the river from where you grew up in Ashland.. My grandma was from Mays Lick. My dad was born in Lexington.
Before I could say anything, she looked at me and again said “No.”
But Sunday, some eight years later, no became yes.
This time she told me and a couple of other reporters about her grandfather back in Ashland.
The story was from the days before she was a movie star or the magazine advertizing face of America Beauty, a brand of cosmetics sold by Estee Lauder. It was before she became a UK grad — majoring in French — and before she had married Scottish race car driver Dario Franchitti and they began living out their lives in Hollywood and around the open-wheel racing circuit and on their 19th century farm near Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee and in that old home they’re restoring back in Scotland.
No, this story came from her hard-scrabble childhood. Back from when her mom, Naomi — yet to launch her career as a big-time singer — had split with Ashley’s father and moved her kids from California back home to Ashland.
The family often struggled and there were times when there was no electricity, telephone or even running water. Even so there are some warm memories from back then, one of which she shared Sunday:
“My Papaw Judd ran an Ashland Oil filling station his entire life. Al Sr. (four-time Indy 500 winner, Al User Sr.) was the Ashland driver. I’ve got a photo of the filling station with 500 posters all over the wall.
“Dario would have loved my Papaw and he really would have loved Dario.”
Sunday everybody loved Dario.
Persevering over late-race troubles, he had just won the rain-shortened 91st running of the Indianapolis 500.
After 113 of the race’s 200 laps had been run, a rain storm had red-flagged the race for a 2-hour 57-minute weather delay. During that time cars are impounded so they was no way Franchitti’s crew could fix the cut rear tire he’d suffered when he’d run over a piece of wreckage on the track just before the break .
After the cars returned to the track, he’d been forced to make a lap, then limp back into the pits for a quick tire change and a splash of fuel.
The burdensome pit stop ended up being a plus.
On lap 155 — during a caution period for a one-car crash — several of the race’s front runners ducked into the pits for some final fuel and new tire tread. Franchitti — who had worked his way up from 14 cars back in the pack — stayed on the track, inherited the lead and 11 laps later — thanks to another caution and then a sudden thunderstorm — the race was over and he had won.
Suddenly the most unheralded driver on the powerful, five-car Andretti Green Racing team — a bunch that features Danica Patrick and 20-year-old sensation Marco Andretti — was the winner of the sport's most-heralded race.
Judd — in a print sun dress, floppy hat and fancy shoes — had gotten drenched in the pits and didn’t care. She held that crumpled hat in her hand, ditched her shoes to go barefoot and got up on the pit wall at race’s end.
After his victory lap in the downpour, Dario finally guided his car into the pits. That’s when his wife came running up to him and she hopped up and down in glee until she could lean into the cockpit and give her helmeted husband a big kiss.
Asked later if this was better than the ‘Cats winning the NCAA basketball title, Judd beamed: “At the risk of alienating my fellow Kentuckians, whose esteem I hold very dear….maybe.”
She was smiling, but having met her — before and now — I knew that’s just what she met.
TweetA Few Nights in the Fantasy Suites
INDIANAPOLIS - The window to my room has a bullet hole in it. The guy a few doors down is sharing his quarters with a massive Rottweiler which he tethers to a rope for their continual walks up and down the hallway.
A couple nights ago, two “working” gals got in a scrap outside my door and the cursing, hair pulling and slaps came to an abrupt end when one took off her high-heeled shoe and used it on the other one’s noggin.
At the far end of my hall are Cancun, Vegas, Florida and San Francisco.
Venice, Alaska and Niagara Falls are supposed to be on the way.
It’s another world alright. This is my annual home for the Indianapolis 500.
It’s the Budget Inn and Fantasy Suites and while it’s less than three miles from the track, it’s a hell of a lot farther from the other places I stay on the road during the sports year.
For the BCS game between Ohio State and Florida last January, the other press and I were in Scottsdale at the Camelback Inn Resort and Spa. We each had our own bungalow. At the Super Bowl, I was at the trendy Surf Comber on South Beach. For the Atlantic 10 Tournament in Atlantic City, they put the media up in the Tropicana casino.
But I’m a guy who doesn’t like change, so at Indy I keep coming back to the place where I’ve stayed for years.
Sometimes I hate it, sometimes I love it. Always I have a story to tell.
I started staying here a couple of decades ago when it was the Howard Johnson’s Speedway Inn. It was a way to avoid the traffic nightmare that used to snarl Indianapolis streets as some 350,000 people made their way to the track on race day. It’s where a lot of the press stayed back then.
They don’t now.
To many of my buddies , my digs are like the place that time forgot.
Some years ago, the place changed to a Super 8, then the Budget Inn and finally they added the Fantasy Suites, double rooms decorated to a certain theme with a big jacuzzi in the middle of the living room and some kind of mirrored ceiling over the bed.
Last year the regular rooms were filled when I showed up, so they put me in the Cancun Suite. Fading murals were painted on the walls, decorative plastic seashells were glued to the night stand and above the bed was an underwater scene painted on the mirror.
Around the jacuzzi, there were a few folded towels and several rolls of toilet paper — whose purpose I’ll leave to your imagination.
I called my wife to tell her the news and her voice immediately dropped into that register where I know there will be no debate.
“Do not get in that jacuzzi,” she said. “Do you hear me? If you do, don’t come home.”
I hadn’t planned to take a dip, but I wanted to share my good fortune with her. I had landed in the Budget vision of a Mexican paradise.
The sign along the highway advertises rooms for $31 — this should make the bean counters at our place absolutely giddy — but on race week prices do get jacked up.
Last night was $49. Saturday it’s $119. The only rules they stress are pay $5 to get your phone turned on and as the signs say on every door: “All dogs must remain on a leash, per Marion County law. Violators will be asked to leave.”
Downtown many rooms — if you can even find them — are going for $300 to $500 a night. Some even more. That appeals to a different clientele than at my place.
Race crowd aside, a lot of regulars show up here without any luggage.
This is not a vacation destination.
It’s a fantasy stop.
And with Barry White on the boom box, a peeling mural of cliff divers on the wall, some 40-ouncers or cheap champagne from the supermarket, bubbling water all around you and that TP within reach, hey, I guess you got it.
And the thing is, some of the people who work here are pretty friendly. They do little things to enhance your stay.
Like Thursday night when I got back in from the track, there were still a couple of that morning’s donuts left in the communal breakfast room. Well, one had a bite taken out of it, but the rest — albeit a bit crunchy — were okay.
And best of all, during the day they had decorated the front office.
“Welcome Race Fans” was painted in big letters on the front door.
And on the window, they’d put “Happy Fourth of July!!” and highlighted it with some popping firecrackers painted here and there.
While the rest of you might think they got the wrong holiday for this weekend, as a regular, I know what’s up.
Place that time forgot?
Nope.
The Fantasy Suites are way ahead of time.
Tweet“What Really Happened to Pogue and Hoover?”
It happened when my wife and I went to the Pine Club to eat Monday night. It happened Monday afternoon when I spoke to a journalism class at Xenia High.
It happened today when I stopped in at my neighborhood coffee shop in the Oregon District and it happened the last time I was at Madden Golf Course.
No matter where I’ve been. No matter if I’ve been around young people or old, folks black or white, the question has been the same:
“So what really happened to Pogue and Hoover?”
Two weeks ago, the pair of basketball big men — the 6-foot-9 Aaron Pogue from Dunbar High and 6-foot-11 Dorian Hoover, last of Sinclair Community College — were shot while sitting in a parked car along Salem Avenue.
The car they were in — which Hoover said had run out of gas — was riddled by bullets. The two athletes ended up running for their lives, Pogue with a bullet in his side, Hoover with one in his foot.
Pogue is now out of the hospital. Hoover is hobbling around town on crutches. Both still have the bullets in them.
Hoover told me last week that he has no idea who shot them — or why. Pogue was being shielded from the press by his family, but his mother told me that her son’s assessment and Hoover’s are the same.
Dayton police seem to agree. Last week a department spokesman told me it appears the pair were minding their own business and, at least as of now, there seems to be no motive other than random violence.
That said, Dayton police figure someone witnessed what happened and want someone to call the homicide division with any kind of tip.
Although no one is talking to the cops, it seems like everybody’s talking among themselves about the shooting. Maybe because I’ve written a couple of stories on the shooting or maybe just because I’m a sports writer, but people bring it up to me almost daily.
Everyone has his or her own speculation, own opinion. Some people think the two were up to no good. Some think someone was out to get them. Others think their car may have looked like someone else’s. It’s been suggested they were in a certain gang’s territory. Some think there might be some nut out there just potshotting people.
I’m not sure what to think, though I like Pogue and Hoover and tend to believe them, as do their respective coaches, Dunbar’s Pete Pullen and Sinclair’s Jeff Price.
Regardless, I know I’ll be asked about it again and again. I just wish I had a better answer to give when it happens.
TweetThe Dayton Flyers’ “No. 1 Mystery Man.”
During one of the daily practices during the University of Dayton basketball team’s 1961-1962 season, the Flyers pair of 6-foot-10 big men — Bill Chmielewski and Bill Westerkamp — started getting pretty physical with each other.
“We got into a little tussle at practice and we carried it on — pushing and shoving — the whole day,” Chmielewski said. “After practice, (Tom) Blackburn had the two of us run laps around the Fieldhouse court.
“One thing though, he had Bill run one way, but he turned me around to run the other way. That way the two of us had to pass each other every lap. And the first couple of times when we passed, we’d bump each other and try to knock the other guy off stride or even knock him down. But after 30 or 40 laps, we just passed each other with our heads down, just trying to survive.
“And the whole time, there sits Blackburn on a chair, legs crossed, just watching us run.”
Chmielewski told this story Saturday just a few hours before he and the rest of that 1961-62 Flyers’ team — who won the prestigious National Invitational Tournament at Madison Square Garden and became the toast of Dayton when they got back home — were inducted into the Ohio Hoop Zone Basketball Hall of Fame and Museum in Columbus.
The Flyers’ big man — now 65 and looking a lot like the Los Angeles Lakers’ Phil Jackson, just a little older and a bit more weathered — told this story to show the “psychology” used by Blackburn, the late Flyers coach whom he said “makes Bobby Knight look like a saint.”
My Sunday column in the Dayton Daily News was about Chmielewski, but I had quite a few other things I didn’t use there and want to share with you now.
One was the running-laps story that I think tells something else about Chmielewski: He was pretty practiced at going the opposite direction of his teammates.
And that makes him a Dayton Flyer like no other in the storied history of the program. I say that because after that ‘61-‘62 season he did something that stunned his teammates, the school, the city and the college basketball world in general.
Chmielewski — a 265-pound sophomore with a bruising inside presence — had scored 107 points in UD’s four NIT victories and that made him the MVP of the Tournament, which still was as prestigious as the NCAA Tournament.
Wire photos of the towering, grinning Chmielewski being mobbed on the Garden court by overjoyed fans ran in newspapers across the nation. Everyone knew of the Flyers’ young giant — he won second- team All America honors that year — and by fall he was considered the centerpiece of the UD team and a consensus, preseason first-team All America pick.
And then in early November — just 24 days before the Flyers’ first game of the ‘62-63 season — he abruptly quit the team, withdrew from school and moved with his pregnant wife back home to Detroit.
At the time, one Dayton Daily News story described him as “the sport’s No. 1 mystery man.”
Although in the 45 years since, Chmielewski has stayed close to basketball — he was drafted by the Cincinnati Royals, had a tryout with the Detroit Pistons, played for several minor league pro teams across the nation and made quite a name for himself in rec leagues and, more recently, the Senior Olympics — nothing quite matched the magic of that 1961-62 season.
UD realized it too and a few years ago Chmielewski was chosen to the Flyers’ All-Century Team, even though he had just one varsity season at the school.
“I was surprised and quite honored when they named me to the All Century team,” Chmielewski said. “And that started me thinking, ‘How good was I?’ Before that, in my mind, I was just playing baseball. I was a hefty guy who pushed and shoved and beat people up under the basket. Being recognized as more than that made me feel pretty good.”
He had been a Detroit high school player of considerable note — averaging 29 points and 21 rebounds a game as a senior — and was recruited by many of the nation’s top college programs. His parents were both Polish and they wanted him to go to a Catholic school and Dayton became his pick after he met Brooklyn schoolboy sensation Roger Brown, also headed to UD.
“The two of us played in the first East-West All America game in New Jersey in 1960,” Chmielewski said. “Roger and I hit it off and became good friends. We talked to each other and decided if one of us went to Dayton, then the other would, too.”
Once at UD, they joined the likes of Gordy Hatton, Chuck Izor and Jimmy Powers, giving the Flyers a sensational freshman team that went 36-4-1 and had the rest of the nation taking note.
The following year Chmielewski was averaging 15.4 points and 9.3 rebounds for the Flyers’ varsity, but found it tough sledding with Blackburn.
“He was on my case pretty good from the start,” Chmielewski said. “But looking back now, I realize some guys on that team needed a pat on the back to play well, while I was one of those guys — probably me and Gordy, too — who needed a kick in the butt.
“And Blackburn was on me so bad. There was a lot of verbal abuse about my talent and that made me want to rise up and prove him wrong.”
He started to laugh and admitted there were times when Blackburn may have been right:
“I got to say Gordy and I were two of the rougher guys. We didn’t go to church, we went to the places we weren’t supposed to be. The ‘other’ places.”
He told of how the team played at Madison Square Garden in a holiday tournament over the Christmas break:
“Past curfew call, Gordy and I and a couple of the guys went around to the Peppermint Lounge. It was the hot club back then, a real big deal and we wanted to be part of it.”
During the semester break in late January, Chmielewski suddenly quit the team and went back to Detroit, supposedly to work and help provide for his family.
That idea lasted one day and he was coaxed back to Dayton, where the Flyers were in the season’s only slump. They would end up losing five of nine games, the last one, a 22-point, Feb. 10 thumping by Detroit.
“Dave Debusschere played for them and set a Fieldhouse record with 44 points,” Chmielewski said. “After the game, Blackburn kept us there for a little practice and it was rough….But we never lost another game.
The Flyers closed the season with 11 straight wins, the last four in the NIT at the Garden. After dumping Wichita State, Houston and Loyola of Chicago in the tournament, they topped St. John’s 73-67 in the final.
Before the next season started, Chmielewski and then-wife Pat were living with the campus security guard. Pat was pregnant with their eldest daughter Shirley and Chmielewski said he needed better financial standing to make ends meet.
He said he sought help from Blackburn and several fans who’d had him over for dinner during the previous season and said he was turned down on all fronts. At the time UD was about to go on NCAA probation for violations involving Roger Brown’s one season stay before he was ousted by Blackburn and school, a move that still grates on Chmielewski.
When he decided to leave, Chmielewski said his wife really didn’t have a lot of say in the matter:
“I was from the old Polack school where a man makes the decision,” he said before a shrug turned into a knowing smile. “Over the years I’ve learned you listen to your wife every once in a while because sometimes they have the right answer.”
After leaving Dayton, Chmielewski signed for $6,500 to play for the Philadelphia Tapers in the short-lived American Basketball League.
After that came the preseason stints with the Royals and Pistons — he was the last cut made by each club — and seasons in the old Eastern and Midwest leagues.
An apprenticeship at the Ford plant in Detroit — which caused him to turn down a $12,000-a-season offer from the ABA Dallas Chaparrals — led to his current profession.
He’s a master electrician and has a Miamsburg-based company now. He moved back to the Dayton area in the late 1970s and after splitting with Pat, married current wife Gail 19 years ago. From their previous marriages, they have six kids which has led to 12 grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
Chmielewski also follows UD basketball again. He goes to some games, watches any that are on TV and made two observations:
• He appreciates the way current coach Brian Gregory has reached out to former players and made them feel a part of the program.
• He can’t understand why the UD big men — most recently Kurt Hueslman — “open or not, never get the ball.”
As for his own basketball, Chmielewski continued to play until troublesome knees finally sidelined him last season.
He’s trying fishing now, but admits it’s not the same:
“Basketball is the only thing I can do where — after two hours — I come away with a clear head. If the fish aren’t biting, I start to think I should be at work. But with basketball, I don’t think about my problems or my wife, my kids, the job, nothing else.
“When it came to the basketball court, I just concentrated on playing the game.”
Well, that and — after 40 laps — not running into Bill Westerkamp.
TweetBarry Bonds and the matters of race
Before getting into the Barry Bonds race issue, I need to tell you about my last encounter with the San Francisco slugger.
It was last season — during an early August series between the Giants and Cincinnati at Great American Ball Park — and with most of his teammates out on the field loosening up, I found myself alone with Bonds at his locker.
He wasn’t playing that day, so I thought he might have time to talk about a father-and-son story I wanted to do.
“Barry, could I talk to you a couple of minutes about your dad?” I asked.
“No,’ he said. “I’m off today.”
“Yeah, but I’m not,” I countered.
“That’s your f——ing problem,” he said as he turned away.
This was not the first time I’d been stiffed by Bonds. But it was a nicer brush off than I’d gotten a couple of years earlier.
So as you might guess, these exchanges haven’t warmed me to the surly superstar. He’s a great talent, but in my book he’s an A-1 jerk.
Not as big of a jerk as some athletes I’ve dealt with — the Chicago Bears’ Jim McMahon comes to mind and Rob Dibble sometimes could qualify — but the problem for Bonds is that he’s like this with almost everyone in the media.
Does it skewer how I look at him and his exploits?
To be honest, it sure doesn’t help.
But that’s not why I don’t want to see him break Hank Aaron’s career home runs record — something that should happen next month.
I hate seeing it for other reasons:
• Aaron’s mark was made by a man who had to show tremendous mettle throughout his career. There were the Jim Crow struggles as a young ball player and later — as he got ready to eclipse the record held by Babe Ruth — he was getting 3,000 letters a day. Much of it was hate mail, some of it punctuated by death threats.
• And Bonds, I believe, took steroids and knew he took them. His claims to a federal grand jury that he thought the “clear” and “cream” substances he received and used from his personal strength trainer were “flaxseed oil” are ridiculous.
So does this make my view — as a white sportswriter — racist when it comes to Bonds?
I don’t think so, but others, I’m sure, certainly do.
An ESPN/ABC poll released last week showed a real racial divide when it comes to Bonds.
While just 25 percent of white fans thought Bonds has been treated unfairly, 46 percent of black fans thought so. And 27 percent of the blacks who were surveyed said the reason he got such treatment was because of race. Conversely, only 1 percent of white fans thought it had to do with race.
No matter what the question, the racial divide was there.
The survey found 74 percent of black fans want Bonds to break Aaron’s record, while only 28 percent of whites want him to do so. It also revealed that while just 37 percent of the blacks thought Bonds knowingly took steroids, that number more than doubled — to 76 percent — when it came to whites.
As for why we see things so differently, I’m not a sociologist, a psychologist or a soothsayer. And I know because of our experiences our biases and the different prisms through which we see life, we will have different views.
I know many blacks think the sports media — which is predominately white and male — gave Mark McGwire pretty much of a free pass when he belted all those home runs in the late 1990s. But Sammy Sosa — a black man with a doctored bat, if not doctored muscles, as well — was pretty much given an easy ride, too.
And back then I don’t think as much was known about steroids, so it wasn’t the hot button issue it is now.
But I think the universal diss of McGwire’s in the recent Hall of Fame balloting shows the media has stepped up to the plate on him.
I also think black folks think there is an agenda of sorts by many to see blacks who reach the pinnacle brought down. That came up in the Clarence Thomas hearing, the O.J. Simpson trial and throughout Mike Tyson’s career.
Although there’s no defending Simpson (who I think is despicable) or Tyson (who, warts and all, I like), there is some credence to that line of thought.
If blacks seem to be looking through rose-colored glasses when it comes to Bonds, I’ve seen the same thing with whites. Especially around here, where Pete Rose is mostly embraced and even beloved.
And what about Lance Armstrong? He faced similar allegations and innuendos, but he faced mostly a supportive — sometimes even protective — press.
As to why Bonds acts as he does, it could be he has something to hide. It could be he’s just an arrogant, mean-spirited sort or it could be he’s tired of the routinely being everyone’s target.
To that last point, I remember Houston reliever Russ Springer throwing four straight pitches at Bonds before hitting him with the fifth. Springer was ejected, but the Astros crowd gave him a standing ovation.
Was this simply because Bonds was black?
I don’t think so. I think most people think he’s lied and cheated and, in the process, he’s turning some of the game’s time-honored statistics meaningless.
I also know I don’t feel any special empathy to him because of the short — blunt — conversations I’ve had with him the last two times I was with him.
I forgot to tell you this. As I stood there last August looking at Bonds’ back, he turned and did tell me one last thing:
“Go away.”
For once we were of the same mind..
Right then, I was thinking the same for him.
TweetBest Derby Moment: O.J. Gets Booted
My favorite Kentucky Derby moment was not watching Calvin Borel masterfully guide Street Sense along the rail to set up their victory. Nor was it seeing Queen Elizabeth II, herself an avid horse woman, enjoying the race from the Turf Club railing.
It wasn’t even listening to the pre-race tribute given last year’s fallen champion Barbaro and his wondrously empathetic owners, Roy and Gretchen Jackson.
While all offered something memorable in their own right, nothing topped hearing that O.J. Simpson — who I’ve seen in nasty action myself at Churchill Downs — was unceremoniously given the boot from a downtown Louisville steakhouse on Derby Eve.
For me, the hero of the 133rd Kentucky Derby is restaurateur Jeff Ruby, owner of Jeff Ruby’s Louisville.
“I didn’t want that experience in my restaurant,” Ruby told a Louisville reporter earlier this week.
He said seeing the former NFL great — who was found innocent in 1995 of killing his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ron Goldman, but was found liable in a civil trial — “makes me sick to my stomach.
“I didn’t want to serve him because of my convictions of what he’s done to those families. The way he continues to torture the lives of those families … with his behavior, attitude and conduct.”
And last year on the Churchill Downs backside — where Simpson has shown up the past four races — I got to witness some of that attitude and conduct up close.
Seeing Simpson one morning before the 2006 race, I approached him — and shame on me for doing so — to find out what he was up to.
In the late 1970s, I’d interviewed him as his NFL career was winding down and I’d done another story with him in the 1980s during one of his many trips to Miami, where I was a columnist I hadn’t talked to him since.
On this May day a year ago — as the aging, blond woman he was with stepped up onto a wooden viewing stand to watch the morning workouts — he talked about how he was picking Lawyer Ron in the Derby:
“I love lawyers, I know all about them. If there was a Lawyer Johnnie, Lord knows, I’d put my house on him,” he said in chuckling reference to Johnnie Cochran, the attorney who had helped him avoid murder charges.
Then Simpson started talking about the Derby party scene, which he said he was immersing himself in as much as possible:
“You got better parties here than you do in Miami at the MTV Awards. It’s the No. 1 event of the year. The hip-hop, movie and horse culture are all here. It comes down to Kentucky hospitality. I feel totally comfortable and everybody’s great.”
Simpson was making me sick to my stomach and finally I just turned away, leaving him talk to a fan.
Moments later, when he was ready to leave, Simpson looked up at the woman and said flatly, “Let’s go.”
Enjoying herself as she watched the horses, she said, “Just a minute, I want to….”
She never finished because Simpson commanded, “Get down here…now!”
The words were cold and hard. He glared at her and the animation instantly drained from her face. She came down without a word.
And then — in what was a subtle, but telling move — he reached over as if to take her hand, but instead clasped onto her wrist. And giving it a slight twist to make sure the torque was turned up, he walked her off in the direction he wanted to go.
Some six months later, after an offer to him for $3.5 million, he attempted to publish his book — “O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened,” — and do a two part TV interview, as well. Both projects were eventually cancelled over public outcry.
This Derby, O.J. was back in Louisville, laughing, telling stories, making the rounds. During race week, prices are jacked up considerably but that doesn’t seem to bother Simpson, who has not paid a cent of the $33.5 million he owes the Goldman family after being found “criminally liable” in a civil suit.
Finally, though, somebody here took a stand.
And the thing is, Ruby — who has a string of restaurants in Cincinnati, Belterra, Ind. and Louisville — always has been one to cater to big-name athletes.
In fact, before the 1994 murders, he served Simpson several times in his Cincinnati restaurant and used to have a picture of the two of them together on his wall. After the murders, Ruby said he took down the picture.
That sets the stage for last Friday night about 10:30 when Simpson showed up at Ruby’s W. Main Street restaurant with about a dozen people in his party.
Soon after, Ruby — in the account he gave the Louisville writer — said he informed Simpson, “I am not serving you.”
When Simpson didn’t respond, Ruby told him again and then left the room.
“This was the only thing I could do for the victims’ families,” said Ruby.
He said Simpson then approached him, told him he understood and then left the restaurant without incident.
“It was the first time since 1994 he has ever shown any class,” Ruby said. “He showed it that night in the restaurant.”
Ruby said some 50 people in the private room where Simpson had been seated “stood up and applauded me” when Simpson left. Since then Ruby said he’s gotten over 100 e-mails supporting his move.
But Simpson’s attorney, Yale Galanter, told the Associated Press:
“He screwed with the wrong guy, he really did.”
Galanter said he intends to pursue the matter and possibly go after the restaurant’s liquor license. He said Ruby’s move was done because of race.
On that, the guy is right.
But not the black race or the white race as he contends.
No, in my book, this was done for the human race to which Simpson is an affront.
And it was especially good to see Simpson getting some of that same Derby hospitality I saw him give that woman he was with last year.
With a verbal twist of the wrist, somebody finally told O.J.:
“Let’s go.”
TweetDerby Day: The Guy Everybody Is Pulling For
LOUISVILLE — In these last couple of hours before the 133rd running of the Kentucky Derby, let me tell you about a colorful guy I met on the Churchill Downs backside this week.
He’s somebody I’m pulling for in today’s race.
Larry Jones is the 50-year-old trainer of Hard Spun, the bay colt who was 15-1 in the Morning Line odds, but will be bet down today by Kentucky race fans, so many of whom are pulling for him, too.
He’s one of them. In these days when designer labels and corporate mind sets are becoming more prevalent in the paddock and barns, Jones is a homespun throwback in a white Stetson cowboy hat, scuffed boots and a big belt buckle.
He’s got a delightful sense of humor, he’s a good horseman and today, I think, his colt has a very good chance to hit the board.
Jones spent his childhood in Herndon, Ky. — population 150, he said, “if you count the dogs and cats.” He talked longingly of the country store there where he used to buy soda pop.
Then he moved to nearby Hopkinsville, a place he pays tribute to to this day. His racing silks are orange and white, the school colors of the Hopkinsville High Tigers for whom he played basketball.
“I think I looked good in those colors,” he said with a grin of that career that was some 35 years and 50 pounds ago.
Working the family vegetable and cattle farm, he bought his first race horse for a few hundred dollars and soon decided to train it himself.
That first year he cleared just over $3,000. As his wife Cindy put it: “He’ll tell you he was a trainer, but he won’t tell you he was a good trainer.”
Eventually he set up his low-budget stable at Ellis Park in Henderson Ky. and mostly trained fillies. He won his first stakes race just four years ago with an $800 horse.
When his wife was injured in a racing accident in the late ’70s and could no longer work as his regular exercise rider, he took over many of the rides, just as he does so many other jobs in his barn: hot walking, grooming, mucking stalls, you name it.
Watching him work his horses here this week, you were treated to a surprising — almost comical — sight. He’s almost twice the size of some of the jocks.
“After I got hurt myself in ‘99, my weight went up,” he said with a shrug. “Right now, I go about 180. If I were in the hog business, I’d be about ready to top out.
“When I get on horses now, sometimes they’ll turn and look at me, as if to say, ‘Hey, one at a time back there! I don’t ride doubles.’
“The way I look at it. I’m like a batter on deck swinging with two bats. Then he drops one and goes up with the real bat. So now when Mario (Hard Spun jock Mario Pino) gets on, it’s like ‘Okay, this is gonna be easy.’”
Running cheaper horses and mostly fillies, the Derby had been nothing but a dream for him in the past.
Five times in the past 20 years, he raced at Churchill Downs on Derby Day — always on the undercard. The rest of the time he watched from afar on television. Last year he was hunkered down in the Belmont Park tack room of fellow trainer Barclay Tagg.
He recently relocated to Delaware Park, where he now stables some 40 horses. Last year he won $2.8 million in purses, though most of that still was with fillies.
He got his break when Fox Hill Farms owner Rick Porter had a falling out with his trainer, John Servis, who guided Smarty Jones to such fame three years ago.
Porter gave Larry Jones — who happens to be friends with Servis — three horses to work for him.
One was Hard Spun, a Danzig colt to whom Jones instantly took a liking.
A friend lined him up with Pino, 45-year-old Maryland jockey, the greatest rider most people have never heard of. He’s Maryland’s all-time winningest jock — he just shy of 6,000 wins, something only 14 jockeys in the history of the sport have done — but he’s never ridden the Kentucky Derby.
Earlier this year, after Jones thought his colt was experiencing some problems with the racing surface at Oaklawn Park, he took him to Turfway, where Pino guided him to victory in the Lane’s End Stakes, insuring an earnings entry into the Derby.
Jones planned to run him in the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland, too, but pulled him out to get him used to the Churchill Downs surface.
The familiarity — possibly detrimentally so — produced a sizzling 57 3/5th seconds workout over five furlongs here Monday.
Although far faster than Jones wanted — “just one of them freaky deals” is the way he put it — he said Hard Spun ran “within himself…it was effortless for him” and said he has responded well in the days since.
Others wonder if the colt left his Derby race on the track Monday morning.
“No we love the way he’s coming into this,” Jones said with a smile. “We wouldn’t change anything. Nothing. We’ve got the mane the length we want it, every hair is exactly where we want it to be. I don’t know how we could make it better. The thing is ‘Is he good enough?’ And that will have to be decided on the track.”
Regardless, Jones had scores of Kentucky folks, owners, trainers and stablehands flock to is barn this week, wishing him luck.
“They know how many bad horses we had …They know how we struggled and they appreciate that no matter what I always worked hard,” he said. “After beating my way through every cheap race Churchill ever had, it an amazing feeling to be in their marquee race. It’s just amazing.”
While the overwhelming attention is something he’s not experienced before personally, he’s been close to it. He was stabled next to John Shirreffs-trained Giacomo, the 50-1 longshot who won here two years ago.
And he was stabled next to Servis and Smarty Jones at Belmont when they were running for the Triple Crown.
“Nothing beat that craziness,” Jones said. “There were Smarty Parties everywhere. Outside our barn there’d be 400 to 500 people every day. They built a platform outside for the media to stand on. When I’d lead my horse out, there were people who just didn’t know and they’d say, ‘Look, there he is. That’s Smarty Jones!’
“And the joke around the barn was, ‘Oh no, that’s the other one. That’s the dumb Jones.’”
That was then.
Today, Larry Jones and his colt — especially when they play “My Old Kentucky Home” and the locals all look out at one of their own — they will be the toast of the Derby.
TweetA Rich but Wrong Idea at the Derby
LOUISVILLE — To me — and many others around the Churchill Downs backside this Kentucky Derby week — this is the wrong way to honor Barbaro.
Meant to salute greatness with riches, it could, instead, foster ruin.
Or as trainer D. Wayne Lukas — who has won the Kentucky Derby four times, been victorious in 13 Triple Crown races and four times won the Eclipse Award as the nation’s top trainer —— put it while standing outside his barn here: “I think they may have missed the mark on this one.”
Yum! Brands — the Derby’s presenting sponsor and parent company of KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver’s and A&W restaurants — announced Monday it will pay a $1 million bonus if the race winner can surpass the whopping 6 1/2 length margin that Barbaro managed on last year’s runner-up Bluegrass Cat.
That was the second greatest margin of victory in the 132 years the Derby was run. Four horses had won by eight lengths.
“It’s certainly creative, it’s certainly fun and it has something for the horsemen, which we always want to embrace,” Churchill Downs president and chief executive Robert Evans said at a news conference. “What’s really cool is it will force us to remember Barbaro.”
Maybe for all the wrong reasons.
Two weeks after his Derby triumph, Barbaro suffered a catastrophic injury to his right hind leg in the Preakness Stakes. The battle to save him captured the hearts and imagination of the nation and left everyone crushed when complications set in yet again and forced him to be euthanized earlier this year.
A great and courageous champ, Barbaro also became a reminder of down side of this game and the toll it can take on the horses.
And that’s what bothers me and others about the $1 million bonus called the Yumfecta.
“What the hell is is called?” Lukas said shaking his head.” I just don’t know about that deal. I know one thing — if someone is ahead by five lengths, he’ll be whippin’ and slashin’ coming down the stretch….That horse won’t clean up his grain that night., he’ll be (too sore).”
If you already have the race won, why push your horse needlessly at the end? Especially with the grueling demand put on the young thoroughbreds in the following weeks at the Preakness and Belmont Stakes?
"(The bonus) is a great gesture, but if I was a rider of the winning horse in the Kentucky Derby and I came to the last sixteenth of a mile with horse in hand, knowing I was going to win anyway, I would be thinking of the Preakness and the Triple Crown, not about a million dollar bonus," jockey Gary Stevens, a three-time derby winner, told reporters here Tuesday.
Lukas agreed:
“I might even go so far as to say — not that riders ever listen to us as trainers — but still I might say ‘Don’t worry about that stuff. If it happens, it happens, but don’t be getting on your belly to beat that. In light of the fact of what’s ahead of you with the Preakness and everything, this might have the other effect.”
For Yum! Brands. I think this may be a well intentioned — especially with 25 percent of the bonus being set aside for the NTRA Charities Barbaro Memorial Fund — but it’s also an ill-conceived idea.
So do other people. Trainer John Servis, who won the 2004 Derby with Smarty Jones, told the Louisville Courier-Journal:
“I can think of a whole lot of better reasons for a bonus, I can tell you that. From a trainers standpoint, I sure wouldn’t be shooting for that bonus.”
Lukas was of the same mind:
“To pay tribute to Barbaro, I think they could have used their million dollars a lot of different ways. But then I think Yum probably isn’t in tune with our game very much either.
“I know we have to get commercial — to do things to draw interest — but I’m not sure this is right.”
In my book, it’s not.
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