Crackpottery for Tuesday, but Remembering the Incomparable Secretariat

 Peter Singer never should have been allowed in the United States to teach at Princeton, let alone be traveling everywhere peddling his "animal liberation" and euthanasia (for humans) bullshit.

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Another crackpot throws his hat into the ring running for president although he is going the third-party route.

West goes out of his way to piss people off.  It is to be hoped people simply ignore him.

Ditto for fellow crank RFJ, Jr.

By the way, West has been married five times and divorced four.  Like the crackpot Peter Singer, West taught at Princeton.  He also has an MA and Ph.D. from there.

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Later this week will mark the fiftieth anniversary of Secretariat winning the 1973 Triple Crown in his otherworldly performance in the Belmont.  This article in the Blood Horse marks it and CBS announcer Chic Anderson's legendary call of the race.  It might have been the best sports call in history.

It makes sense.  The greatest horse of all time winning the greatest horse race of all time and the greatest performance in sports history with the best call in sports history--a perfect combination.

Sadly, nobody remembers track announcer Dave Johnson's call of the race.  If you were at the Belmont track on June 9, 1973, you heard Johnson, not Anderson.  

Dave tried, though, despite not being a Chic Anderson.  He is 82 now.  Anderson was only 47 when he died from a heart attack in 1979.

Snip from the Johnson article:

"At the time in 1973 as a track announcer, you were paid to say what you see," Johnson said. "I had to shut my microphone off with about 70 yards left and I could not call the finish. We were told to keep going through the whole field and the only time you could call the finish was when it was on television or radio."

Due to those restrictions, Johnson's call was much more straightforward than Anderson's. For instance, while Pvt. Smiles, who was never a factor and disappeared from Anderson's call after the first six furlongs, Johnson's duty to his on-track listeners required him to still mention the well-beaten 14-1 longshot in the stretch .

Yet even with those shackles, Johnson still managed to capture the magnitude of what was happening as he spoke louder and quicker and with more emotion during the final stages.

Johnson was a good track announcer, but at that race he was 31 lengths behind Anderson.

Johnson's call can be found here. 

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"He Is Moving Like a Tremendous Machine!"

This week marks the 45th anniversary of Secretariat's epic win in the 1973 Belmont Stakes. Also on this day, forty-five years later, Chic Anderson's call of the 1973 Belmont Stakes for CBS Sports remains nearly as legendary as the horse who won the race.

His call perfectly captured the moment: "Secretariat is widening now. He is moving like a tremendous machine!" Everybody who was watching the race live on television remembers that call.

Anderson also called the 1978 Belmont for CBS, and his call was almost as great as his 1973 performance. Given it was the Affirmed and Alydar Belmont, the best contested race I ever saw in my entire life, nobody but Anderson would do calling it.

Anderson unfortunately died young, only 47, in 1979.

This article for Sports Illustrated remembering Anderson is great and almost looks like it was written by the late, great Bill Nack. A snip:

Two things: First, Anderson called that Belmont only for CBS; track announcer Dave Johnson called the race for the live audience. If you were at Belmont Park that day, you heard Johnson, not Anderson. Second, there seems to be little certainty as to where Anderson would have stood while calling the race that defined his career. Johnson would have been in the announcer’s stand at the top of the Belmont grandstand. Cassidy suggests that Anderson was probably beneath that position, in the clubhouse, but admits that’s just an educated guess based on where other announcers had been. The upper-levels of the Belmont grandstand are a labyrinth of hallways and small offices overlooking the track. Anderson could have been in any of them, always certainly wearing the ivory suit in which he did jockey interviews right before the race.

Yes, Dave Johnson called the race at the track that day, but unfortunately for him, nobody remembers his call. He peddled a recording of some of his calls for Secretariat years later, and his call of the race was nothing spectacular. Anderson's call, however, is legendary among not just track announcers but sportscasters.

The author of this article ought to write a book about Anderson.

Here is the FindAGrave memorial for Anderson.

More on Secretariat's Belmont

Found this article from 1998 from the Baltimore Sun marking the 25th anniversary of his Belmont win. This quoted jockeys who were "lucky" enough to get slaughtered by the big red comet:

Ask those who rode against him.

"Greatest horse I ever saw," said Laffit Pincay Jr., still racing at age 51.

"I watched his tail a lot of times," said Angel Cordero Jr., a member of the National Jockeys Hall of Fame. "I feel honored to have been whipped by Secretariat. It's like getting your butt beat by Muhammad Ali."

Twenty-five years later, Braulio Baeza can still hear the hooves crashing past as Big Red churned by him in the Belmont.

And then the horse just vanished. Baeza's mount ran second that day, losing by the length of a football field.

"By the time my horse got to where Secretariat had been, the dust had already settled," said Baeza, another Hall of Famer. "Beat him? Only with a jet."

And this is good:

Far back, Cordero, Baeza and their mounts struggled to stay within camera range. Cordero actually believed they were gaining on the leader.

"Every time I looked up, Secretariat looked smaller and smaller, which is what happens when a horse gets tired -- he looks scrunched up," Cordero said. "So I'd yell over to Baeza, 'We're getting close -- look how little he is.' "

At the sixteenth-pole, Baeza shouted back: "Forget it. He just finished the race."

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From two years ago is this very nice column about CBS track announcer Chic Anderson's famous call of the race, which is almost as famous as the race itself.

Anderson, who was a low-key announcer, captured the unbelievable performance perfectly.

Anderson, of course, was blessed with a great event. No horse had won the Triple Crown in 25 years when Secretariat made his bid on June 9, 1973, and the anticipation was feverish.

But Anderson didn't exploit it. He never got overwrought or wordy. He let the tone and timbre of his voice - not its volume - convey the excitement. Even if you'd never seen a horse race, you'd have sensed this was something special.

When the gate opened that afternoon, there was a slight edge to Anderson's voice as he noted how Secretariat had grabbed good position along the rail. Eventually the legendary horse and rival Sham pulled away from the small field and Anderson suggested it had become "almost a match race."

Then, as the two leaders neared the backside turn, Secretariat began to open a gap. Anderson's voice lifted an octave or two as he commenced the concluding half of what still remains the best sporting event I've ever witnessed, live or on TV.