Baseball Quiz: 1) Ty Cobb is #1 all-time with 50 steals of home.
Among modern players, Rod Carew is #14 with 17. Who is the
only other player who played post-1970 to steal home 10 or more
times. [Hint: It”s not Tim Raines or Vince Coleman.] 2) Among
pitchers who threw 3,000 innings in their career, Walter Johnson
is #1 in ERA at 2.37. Three pitchers who threw some in the 1980s
are in the Top Six lifetime. Name them. Answers below.
Mario Andretti
While I was in Rome, one of my waiters appeared to have a
pretty good grasp of English and I just casually asked him if he
had been to America. “Nazareth, Pennsylvania,” he replied. “Ah,
Mario Andretti country,” said I, knowingly. “I met Mario a
number of times,” said the waiter. It turns out the fellow worked
in a pizza parlor in Nazareth and both Andretti and fellow racer /
actor Paul Newman were frequent visitors. How cool would that
have been? My friend assured me that both Andretti and
Newman were also great guys, as you would expect from the
stories one”s heard over the years.
A panel of auto racing experts last year voted Andretti the “Greatest
Race Driver of the 20th Century.” There can be little dispute
of that. Andretti is the only driver in history to win the Indy 500,
the Daytona 500 and the Formula One championship. [Indy in
”69; Daytona, ”67; and the World Driving title in ”78.]
Born in Montona, Italy in 1940, life for the Andretti family wasn”t
exactly a piece of cake. Of course, for all Italians, the next five
years-plus were to be a veritable hell. Forget the action in World
War II, which consumed much of the country, you also had the
post-war political battles, where the communists won out for
some time.
After the war, with the country in ruins, Mario”s father lost his
little hotel. [The Nazis had occupied it at one point during the
war and then the communists took it over.] So the Andretti
family was forced to spend most of the period from 1946-54 in a
refugee camp, the last six years of which while they waited for an
American visa to come through.
But in the camp, Mario and his twin brother got jobs helping out
a mechanic, and then in 1954, shortly before the Andrettis
emigrated to America, Mario went with some boys to see the
great Alberto Ascari race in the Italian Grand Prix. Mario was
hooked.
The family settled in Nazareth and, as you might imagine, it
wasn”t an easy time for Italian immigrants with heavy accents.
Papa Andretti never learned to speak English, but he was anxious
to help Mario with his love of cars and one day they came upon a
dirt track. The rest is history.
Racing on dirt, Mario began to build up a store of knowledge that
he would apply throughout his career.
“What I learned, sliding all over the place, I used years later
driving in the rain in Japan in a Formula One car.”
Andretti rose from dirt tracks to Indy car racing in the early 60s.
In 1969 he really burst on the national scene with his win at Indy
in Andy Granatelli”s “STP Oil Treatment Special” car.
But Andretti”s career is known for his stunning setbacks as much
for his triumphs. Through the former, he developed his
reputation as one of the fiercest competitors the sport has ever
seen. Many was the time he didn”t have the best equipment on
the track but he kept persevering. And his ”coolness” under fire
was legendary. He once said that his greatest enemy when he was
blasting around at 200 mph was boredom. The hairier things got,
the calmer he became.
[I attended the Indy 500 in 1983 and had a seat on the infield of
the first turn. I”ve expressed my admiration for NASCAR racers
before in this space, but just once in your life you have to go to
Indy, and get a seat on the inside of the track where you will be
stupefied at the speed at which these guys are going. By the way,
in 1993, at the age of 53, Andretti set the closed-course speed
record of 234 mph in qualifying at the Michigan International
Speedway.]
In an article for “Primo” magazine, Mike Dillon got Andretti to
make a few comments regarding his competitive nature and his
handling of pressure.
“In the face of a crisis, in the face of adversity, I can really stop
and think. You must stay cool, you must maintain 100 percent
concentration and dedication. It”s easy to drop off the pace by 1
or 2 percent and then you become average. That”s the appeal of
mediocrity – you don”t have to put forth the supreme effort. And
when you accept that, somebody else blows past you and eats
your lunch.” [This is the same principle which made Dale
Earnhardt great. And believe me, not all race drivers have it. I
would venture to say that only 10 or so NASCAR drivers today
do…just an educated opinion.]
And Andretti had the following to say about his Italian heritage
(he returns home often).
“I have learned to appreciate certain things in life and not take
things for granted. I appreciate the basic amenities that are taken
for granted here. And there”s more. basic etiquette. The
discipline of the highway, for instance. There are none of these
road vigilantes in Europe. People use the left lane to pass and
then move over. None of this cruising in the left lane.” Oh, don”t
you know if you”re daydreaming in the left lane on the
Pennsylvania Turnpike and Mario comes up behind you.
Wednesday, I have a little tale about Andretti”s win at Daytona in
1967.
*Racing trivia: The only other American to win the Formula One
driving title is Phil Hill. Andretti does trail A.J. Foyt for most
Indy-car wins (CART), 52 to Foyt”s 67.
Back in Time
Britain is in an increasingly depressed frame of mind over the
emergence of mad cow and, now, the foot-and-mouth outbreak.
It”s as if the country has been taken back to the Middle Ages.
Writing in the London Times, Hannah Betts notes, “Nature is
kicking back with a virtuoso demonstration that there”s life in the
old crone yet, and we are being forced back on a medieval
mindset of fatalism, passivity and despair.”
So let”s go back to the Black Death of 1348, where in 5 years, 25
million people lost their lives, one-quarter of the entire European
population. Boccaccio”s “Decameron” described the scene.
“The sick communicated it to the healthy who came near them,
just as a fire catches anything dry or oily near it.
“Many who breakfasted with their kinsfolk…supped with their
ancestors in paradise.”
In England, the Black Death caused the disappearance of 1,000
villages. And, across the continent, the population of Europe did
not attain 1348 levels until the mid-1500s.
That”s the future, folks…just kidding…no I”m not…yes I am…
Sturgeon
Just another update on the fish that supply us with caviar.
Officials now are saying that the Sturgeon will shortly become
extinct in the Caspian Sea, because of factors like overfishing and
pollution. Another London Times columnist, Philip Howard,
writes of caviar and its place as the king of luxury foods. It
always comes priced “subject to availability.in order not to give
the punters a heart attack until after they have eaten it.”
[You have now learned two new words, in the last two articles,
”crone” and ”punters.”]
I love Howard”s description of an alternative, lobster.
“Lobsters are delicious, but cooking them and getting them out of
their shells involve giving them a brutal going over reminiscent of
the worst zealotries of Torquemada.”
Now the finest caviar is called ”malassol” and it”s taken from
sturgeon caught at the start of the season. Malassol is the roe of
the virgin sturgeon. [Hell hath no fury like a virgin sturgeon!]
Howard also adds the following tale of note.
“The last Shah of Iran served the best Persian caviar off a glass
table, through which a river ran. You could see fish swimming
beneath your plate. Enough to bring on sympathetic queasiness,
or an Ayatollah.”
And lastly, there is the role of the “Green EcoWarriors” in this
whole issue of what to do with the declining sturgeon population.
The Greens, Howard writes, ” who are graciously ”allowing” the
scientists to experiment with genetically modified rice in order to
stop millions (from) starving in the Third World…are unlikely to
tolerate efforts to preserve caviar for the tables of the rich and the
Ritz.”
Shakespeare
You may have seen that evidence has been brought forward
which attempts to explain that Shakespeare may have been a
crackhead. While the earliest known use of cocaine in England
was thought to be just two hundred years ago, researchers
involved in an excavation of Shakespeare”s Stratford-upon-Avon
home have found cocaine residue on his clay pipes. Which
explains Willie”s strange use of the language, I guess. [Source:
Reuters]
Stuff
–Dale Earnhardt memorabilia has soared. The Intimidator was
responsible for one-quarter of NASCAR”s $1 billion in
merchandise sales last year. So now we have his die cast cars
rising in price from $60 to $300, and autographed pictures going
for $760. But what is kind of humorous is how trucks are being
backed up to gas stations and 7-11”s, for the purpose of hauling
off Coke machines that have Earnhardt”s image on them.
–On Friday, a factory worker was checking the ductwork at the
Magna Tools plant in Racine, WI, when he opened an access
panel and found a coat. The worker tugged on the coat and
discovered a body was inside it.
“Needless to say, he flew back down the ladder,” said the local
police lieutenant, who believes the body had been lodged there
since November. The man was trying to rob the place and
evidently got stuck. Dohh!
–Wohh…take it easy! In South Africa on Friday night, 7 were
killed during a stampede to catch a commuter train. Witnesses
said passengers were rushing down the stairs to catch it, even
though the gate to the platform had been closed. The gates are
regularly closed several minutes before trains depart.
Top 3 songs for the week of 3/4/72: #1 “Without You” (Nilsson)
#2 “Hurting Each Other” (Carpenters) #3 “Precious And Few”
(Climax). [There seems to be a theme here.]
Baseball Quiz Answers: 1) Steals of home: Paul Molitor stole
home 10 times. No way, with salaries being what they are today,
will anyone risk their career stealing home these days.
Incidentally, Babe Ruth stole home 10 times as well, just another
reason to love the Bambino. 2) ERA: Johnson #1, 2.37; Grover
Alexander #2, 2.56; Whitey Ford #3, 2.74; Greg Maddux #4,
2.83; Tom Seaver and Jim Palmer are tied for 5th at 2.86.
Next Bar Chat, Wednesday.
