The horse pictured above is a locally-stabled equine. It is not the horse that is so much in the news these days.
No, the current horse of renown, named “I’ll Have Another,” has already won two of the three horse races required to earn the fabled Triple Crown. Will he gain horse racing’s highest honor by winning three in a row? In a few days, we’ll find out.
Those who keep up with such things will recall the last Triple Crown winner, in 1978, named Affirmed. He was only the eleventh such winner, dating back to 1919. That’s an average of one Triple Crown winner every 5.36 years. Statistically, we’re way overdue.
Three days ago, at the Los Angeles International Airport, I heard the luggage belts creak under the combined weight of suitcases and sports bags, the unloaded belongings of thirty-five giant players of the triumphant Belmont Shore Rugby Club returning from Colorado, where these hulks had demolished the other national rugby championship contenders. There were winners’ medallions around their necks and high fives all around.
More sports victories–ice hockey fans are tumbling from obscurity into sports bars to observe the newly-minted triumphs of the Los Angeles Kings. This year–if the playoff finals go their way–they may win their first-ever Stanley Cup victory, the highest achievement in ice hockey.
I’m no sportster. I don’t generally attend sports arena-based athletic events. Most of this is beyond both my pocketbook and my personal interest.
Nonetheless, I experienced my most salient encounter with a professional sports personality during high school in 1969 on a Detroit freeway. A friend and I were sailing along in my very first car, a white 1962 MGA convertible, with the top down. In those days, the gas in my tank cost me 19.9 cents a gallon. We owned the road.
We were, quite logically to us, pretending to be flying in an aircraft, our hippie-era hair blowing freely, our arms extended outside our doors on either side of the car to imitate wings. We spoke back and forth to one another on pretend microphones grasped in our fists, checking altitude, wind velocity and destination headings. We were alone in our own world on the freeway.
Suddenly, the car ahead of us inexplicably slowed and pulled into the lane to our right. I looked up at the enormous automotive hulk. When the driver’s window got next to ours, his electric window descended, and he peered down at us. Our arms were still extended in airplane-flying mode.
A handsome, middle-aged man appeared from behind the lowered glass in the neighboring car, staring at us. Suddenly his hand emerged, grasping a big black object. On my second glance, I saw that in his hand he held a very large wingtip shoe, which he had extricated from his foot. He held it there, in the car window, toe to his ear, heel to his mouth, beaming gleefully back to us, pretending that it also was a microphone. Through his wingtip mouthpiece, he pretended to converse with us through our imagined fist-microphones. We were astounded. We were confounded. We were delighted that an adult would take us seriously–or playfully banter with us in our imagined world.
After a few moments, he was gone with a wave of his hand. The window rolled up, and he passed by us, our arms were still extended as wings.
As his car pulled in front of us, I read the personalized license plate displayed upon the car’s chrome rear bumper, identifying the car’s owner, and our freeway aircraft co-conspirator, as–Gordie Howe.
Yes, we had been trading antics with none other than that Gordie Howe, the Detroit Red Wings 23-time National Hockey League All Star. He is recognized as the greatest all-around ice hockey player in history, and, incidentally, the owner of an impressively large wingtip shoe and a generous sense of humor.
Whether “I’ll Have Another” or another horse yet to be born will eventually win the next Triple Crown is an open question. As for me, my wish is that I’ll Have Another life-long memory with the likes of an athlete like Gordie Howe, a man of generous heart who, on a Detroit freeway, inspired me to also live life generously.