I was already feeling guilty about not supporting one of my home tracks on its closing weekend; now that the Withers has become something of an end-of-season embarrassment, I am even more chagrined about my defection to points south instead of being at Aqueduct today. This storied race, first run in 1874, drew a field…
I’ve just discovered (thanks, Ernie) that the photos uploaded of ACRC aren’t appearing in the blog…the html code for them is showing, but the original photos are on a computer at home, so I can’t do any triage at this point. I’ll fix it later…and thanks for the info! Grumble, grumble…
I learned three things on my sojourn Thursday to Atlantic City Race Course: –Do not rely on Mapquest for directions to the track (Mapquest didn’t provide an exit number, and the state highway route number was wrong).–Do not, under any circumstances, miss the exit off the Atlantic City Expressway (you have to go an additional…
It’s hard for me believe that we’re coming up to the last weekend of the Aqueduct meet; I’ve always been fond of the track, and having spent more time there this meet than any other time, it is truly with some regret that I will bid it farewell until October. OK, so the racing’s not…
I’m in the middle of reading T.D. Thornton’s Not By A Long Shot (better late than never), and shortly after reading last week’s report that the Jockeys’ Guild recommended a 50% cut in the fees that jockeys pay their valets, I came across this paragraph: Aside from laying out the equipment for three or four…
Slowing down as we age is distastefully inevitable–I wish that running fast and far was as easy today as it was ten years ago–and even if we do a pretty good job of denying it in ourselves, we find ourselves reminded of its truth when we are lucky enough to watch some of our favorites…
Alerted to the New York Times review of The First Saturday in May by J.S’s comment on Friday, I was as dismayed by Manohla Dargis’s review as J.S. In my writing classes, students often workshop their papers, sharing them with classmates to get feedback and comments for improvement, and I always caution: “Don’t suggest that…
…and it’s Rangers in 5. I attended the opening of The First Saturday in May on Friday night, and as the movie ended and John Hennegan opened the Q&A segment, he announced that the Rangers were up 3-1 (having seen the movie twice before, I was tempted to check the score on my little portable…
I really wish that I could post standings from the Take Ten! game over at ST Publishing, but for the second consecutive week, a full list of standings hasn’t been published. The top forty are posted…but none of us is up there, so I can’t congratulate a leader, or send kudos to someone who’s made…
At least one regular reader will note with dismay that this post has nothing to do with horse racing. But hey, it was a momentous game, I just got home, and it’s too late and I’m too tired to write anything with some clever (or not) connection between hockey and horse racing. So I go…
Brooklyn Backstretch 