June 1, 1946: Assault Wins the Triple Crown

June 1, 1946, 80 years ago: We tend to think of horse racing as a sport with grace, rather than a contact sport full of violence. Yet, on this day, a horse named Assault won the Triple Crown.

Assault was foaled at King Ranch in south Texas, a son of 1936 Kentucky Derby and Preakness States winner Bold Venture. His maternal grandfather was Equipoise, the 1932 and 1933 Horse of the Year despite not winning any of the Triple Crown races. And he was a great-grandson of a sister of Man o' War, making him a cousin of both War Admiral and Seabiscuit.

Perhaps the true "assault" was the amount of injuries inflicted on him as a foal. He stepped on what was believed to have been a surveyor's stake, driving it through his front right hoof. The hoof was permanently deformed, and the colt developed a limp to accommodate the odd shape of his foot. However, the "Club-footed Comet," as he was later dubbed, showed no signs of abnormality when he was at a full gallop. Throughout his career, Assault also overcame kidney, splint bone, fetlock, knee and bleeding problems.

Trained by Max Hirsch, and ridden by Warren Mehrtens, he won only 2 races as a 2-year-old. One of them was a genuine rarity, a four-horse photo finish, in the perhaps aptly-named Flash Stakes at Saratoga Race Course in Upstate New York.

As a 3-year-old, he won the Wood Memorial, one of the major prep races for the Kentucky Derby, at Aqueduct Racetrack in New York's Queens, but ran badly in the Derby Trial Stakes, and was not considered a favorite for the 1946 Kentucky Derby, run on May 4.

Yet he ran "the Run for the Roses" in 2 minutes, 6 and 3/5ths seconds, and tied what was then the race record by winning by 8 lengths. The Preakness was run a week later, on May 11. With a furlong (1/8th of a mile) to go, he led by 4 lengths, but he tired, and ended up winning by only a neck over Lord Boswell.

At a mile and a half, the longest major stakes race in America, the Belmont Stakes is known as "The True Test of Champions." Although it had happened only once to that point -- Pensive finished 2nd in 1944 -- no fewer than 19 horses have won the Derby and the Preakness, but come up short in the Belmont between then and 2014. (From 1932 to 2026, 3 other Triple Crown potentials did not run in the Belmont due to injury concerns.)

So it was thought by racing experts that Assault would not hold up in the long distance at Belmont Park, just outside New York City in Elmont, Long Island, and Lord Boswell was the betting favorite for the Stakes on June 1.

The experts were wrong: Almost the exact opposite of what they expected happened. Assault stumbled out of the gate, and trailed almost the whole way. But it was the other 6 horses in the race that got tired, and Assault made a run with 200 yards to go, and won by 3 lengths, in 2:30 and 4/5ths. Natchez finished 2nd, and Lord Boswell faded to 5th. Assault had won the Triple Crown.

Injuries and illness troubled Assault for the rest of the year. Hirsch replaced Mehrtens with Eddie Arcaro, and he rode Assault to victory in both the Pimlico Special back in Baltimore and the Westchester Stakes at Belmont. He won 5 out out his 7 races as a 4-year-old, and, unusual for a major thoroughbred, was raced until he was 7.

Assault failed at stud, and lived until 1971. Jockey Warren Mehrtens lived until 1997. 

October 31, 2015: Horse Racing's 1st "Grand Slam"

October 31, 2015, 10 years ago: American Pharoah wins the Breeders' Cup Classic, the highlight of the annual Breeders' Cup meet, held this year at Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, Kentucky.

On May 2, 2015, at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, at 3-1 odds, American Pharoah won the Kentucky Derby, in 2 minutes, 3.02 seconds, by 1 length over Firing Line. Two weeks later, on May 16, at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, at 9-10 odds, he won the Preakness Stakes, in 1 minute, 58.46 seconds, by 7 lengths over Tale of Verve.

Since Affirmed won the Triple Crown in 1978, there had been several near-misses, horses winning the Derby and the Preakness, but not the Belmont Stakes, the mile-and-a-half "True Test of Champions." Spectacular Bid had failed in 1979, Pleasant Colony in 1981, Alysheba in 1987, Sunday Silence in 1989, Silver Charm by 3/4 of a length in 1997, Real Quiet in a photo finish in 1998, Charismatic due to an in-race injury in 1999, War Emblem in 2002, Funny Cide in 2003, Smarty Jones by 1 length in 2004, Big Brown due to an in-race injury in 2008, I'll Have Another scratched from the Belmont due to an injury in 2012, and California Chrome due to an in-race injury in 2014. Racing fans were wondering if they would ever see another winner.

On June 6, American Pharoah was loaded into the paddock at Belmont Park in Elmont, Long Island, New York, just over the City Line from Queens, at odds of 3-4. There was no injury, no fade, and not even any drama: He won by 5 1/2 lengths over Frosted, in a time of 2 minutes, 26.65 seconds.

The idea for the Breeders' Cup was proposed at the 1982 awards luncheon for the Kentucky Derby Festival by pet food heir John R. Gaines, a leading Thoroughbred owner and breeder who wanted to clean up the sport's image.

The event was created as a year-end championship for North American thoroughbred racing, and also attracts top horses from other parts of the world, especially Europe. The Cup was initially faced with much skepticism in the racing community, but with the vocal support of legendary trainer John Nerud and others, the event was carried out for the 1st time in 1984, and subsequently experienced tremendous popularity domestically and abroad.

The feature race is the Breeders' Cup Classic, a mile and a quarter like the Kentucky Derby. Usually, it is won by a horse that has won at least 1 of the Triple Crown races, although the 1st winner, Wild Again, didn't even enter any of those races, but held off 1983 Three-Year-Old Male Champion Slew o' Gold and 1984 Preakness winner Gate Dancer at Hollywood Park outside Los Angeles.

American Pharoah was the 1st Triple Crown winner to whom the Classic was available. On Halloween, October 31, 2015, at Keeneland in Lexington, Kentucky -- practically home soil -- he won by 5 1/2 lengths, in 2 minutes, 0.07 seconds, by 6 1/2 lengths over Effinex. Thus, he became the 1st winner of an American thoroughbred racing "Grand Slam." Through the 2025 Classic -- taking place tomorrow, but with no Triple Crown winner -- he remains the only one.

It was his last race. Unlike many 3-year-old champions, he did not have a money-making 4-year-old season, and was immediately retired to stud. As of October 31, 2025, American Pharoah stands at Ashford Stud farm in Kentucky. Most of his descendants who have gone on to race have done so outside the United States, winning races in Britain, Europe and Australia.

July 6, 1975: The Tragedy of Ruffian

Ruffian, before an earlier race at Belmont Park

July 6, 1975, 50 years ago: Another sport has set up an equivalent to the "Battle of the Sexes" that tennis had 2 years earlier. Only this time, it didn't seem so ridiculous, mainly because the male competitor wasn't running his mouth.

He couldn't: Like his female opponent, he was a horse.

Of course, when Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs, there was a chance that Riggs, then 55 years old, could have had a heart attack and dropped dead. But he didn't.

This time, the competition did end in tragedy.

*

Every now and then, there is a racehorse about whom the sport's observers say loves to run, was born for it. Ruffian was the 1st filly about whom it was said. Foaled on April 17, 1972 at Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky, she was a granddaughter of 1957 Preakness Stakes winner Bold Ruler, making her a niece to 1973 Triple Crown winner Secretariat. Her other grandfather was 1953 Preakness and Belmont Stakes winner Native Dancer. (This was not surprising: Both grandfathers can count dozens of winning horses among their descendants.) She was large for a filly, and ran 5 races as a 2-year-old, winning them all.

As a 3-year-old, she ran 5 races, and won them all. This included the Triple Tiara, the fillies' version of colts' Triple Crown: The Acorn Stakes, at Belmont Park, just outside New York City in Elmont, Long Island, New York; the Mother Goose Stakes, also at Belmont; and the Coaching Club American Oaks, at Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs, in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York State.

An "oaks" is the female version of a "derby." The Mother Goose Stakes has since been dropped from the Triple Tiara. Now, it's the Acorn Stakes, the Coaching Club, and the Alabama Stakes, which is run at Saratoga. The Kentucky Oaks, run annually the day before the Kentucky Derby, is a prestigious race for fillies, but is not part of the Triple Tiara, which is probably why Ruffian was not entered into it. And while fillies are eligible for the Triple Crown races, very few run in them: The Kentucky Derby has had just 3 female winners in 151 races, the Preakness Stakes 6 out of 150, and the Belmont Stakes 3 out of 157.

Ruffian had been working her way up in length, as young racehorses tend to have done for them. Until her 8th race, the Acorn Stakes on May 10, 1975, she had never run as long as a full mile. But in winning the Coaching Club and taking the Triple Tiara on June 22, she had run a mile and a half -- the same length as the Belmont Stakes, whose length has given it the name "the true test of champions."

It wasn't just that she was undefeated: She won big. Her 10 races were won by an average distance of 8.3 lengths. She won the Mother Goose by 13 1/2. And in every stakes race she ran, she set a new record for that race. This was the closest thing that fillies had ever had to Secretariat, who had blown away the competing colts to win the Triple Crown 2 years earlier.

The question was asked: Could the best filly in the country defeat the best colt in a match race?

Match races are rare. There had been 4 big ones in the 20th Century:

* 1920: Belmont Stakes winner Man o' War over the previous year's Triple Crown winner Sir Barton, at Kenilworth Park in Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit.

* 1923: Preakness and Belmont winner Zev over Epsom Derby winner Papyrus, at Belmont Park.

* 1938: West Coast champion Seabiscuit over the previous year's Triple Crown winner War Admiral (a son of Man o' War), at Pimlico in Baltimore.

* 1955: Preakness and Belmont winner Nashua over Kentucky Derby winner Swaps, at Washington Park in Chicago in 1955.

So a match race between Ruffian and a leading colt would be the first major match race will full television coverage.

Her trainer, Frank Whiteley, had preferred to take her up to Saratoga, and run her against colts in the Travers Stakes, America's leading Summer thoroughbred race. "Prove the point one time, and that'll be it," he said. But her owners, Stuart and Barbara Janney, overruled him, because the money from a match race against the top colt in the country was too good to pass up. Stuart did insist that it take place on her usual home track, Belmont.

So it was set up for Sunday, July 6: Ruffian, wearing Number 2, would take on Foolish Pleasure, wearing Number 1. Foolish Pleasure, bred, foaled and trained in Florida, was a first cousin of Ruffian: Each was a grandchild of Bold Ruler.

Foolish Pleasure won the Kentucky Derby by making a late charge to beat Avatar, finished 2nd to the not-quite-aptly-named Master Derby in the Preakness, and finished 2nd to Avatar in the Belmont. Given this record, he was probably the best 3-year-old thoroughbred colt in the country, but it was hardly definitive.

Foolish Pleasure

There was another issue: Both horses had the same jockey, Jacinto Vásquez, a 31-year-old native of Panama. He had to make a choice, and he chose Ruffian, which spoke volumes. After all, he probably knew each horse as well as its owners and trainers, and he was certainly the only person who knew the tendencies, and the emotional makeups, of both horses.

So Braulio Baeza, 35 and also from Panama, was hired to ride Foolish Pleasure. He had won the 1961 Belmont Stakes aboard Sherluck, both the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont in 1963 aboard Chateaugay, and the 1969 Belmont aboard Arts and Letters. So he was certainly familiar with Belmont, its track and its atmosphere. His win aboard Chateaugay made him the 1st Hispanic jockey to win the Kentucky Derby. If he wasn't the best possible choice, he was certainly a very good one.

Belmont Park, which originally opened in 1905, had been rebuilt, and reopened in 1968 with a 33,000-seat grandstand, and, with infield seating, necessary for the Belmont Stakes, could seat over 100,000 people. The infield seating was needed again, as over 50,000 people came to see "The Great Match." Another 20 million watched on ABC, obliterating the record for TV viewership of a horse race set at the 1973 Belmont Stakes won by Secretariat.

The odds on Ruffian were 20-1. Horse racing oddsmakers are usually older men, and they seemed sure that there was no way any filly could beat a champion colt. But Vásquez knew better than anyone, because he had ridden both horses, and he chose Ruffian because he genuinely believed she was the better horse. The winner-take-all prize: $350,000. (About $2.08 million in 2022 money.)

The horses broke from the starting gate. But Ruffian did not do so straight, bumping her shoulder on the gate before straightening out. If that had been the worst of it, it would have been a footnote: Even if she had run the race to its conclusion and lost, that probably wouldn't have been considered the reason.

The 1st quarter-mile was run in 22 1/5th seconds, and Ruffian was ahead by a nose. A furlong later, she had a lead of half a length. It was too soon to tell if she would hold the lead the whole way.

Just then, both jockeys heard a sound that they described as a crack. A bird had flown across the infield, distracting Ruffian, and she took a bad step. She had broken both of the sesamoid bones in her right foreleg.

Vásquez, not possessed of X-ray vision, didn't know exactly what was wrong, but he knew horses well enough to know that this was a devastating injury. He tried to pull her up, to get her to stop. But this horse that loved to run, apparently not yet feeling the pain, kept going. This further damaged the leg's bones, and tore its ligaments. Vásquez finally got her to stop, and Baeza guided Foolish Pleasure to a win in what amounted to a walkover.

Ruffian was loaded onto an ambulance, and taken to Belmont Park's veterinary clinic. Surgery on her leg took 12 hours, and she had to be revived twice. The next day's first edition of the New York Daily News, sent to press while Ruffian was still alive, printed a hopeful, if tasteless, secondary headline.

But in her padded recovery stall, she kept flailing her legs, knocking the plaster cast against the wall, until it came loose. Her continued flailing undid all the surgery. The doctors concluded that she could not survive another operation. She was euthanized in the middle of the night. Later editions of newspapers had to print the awful truth. 

This was something relatively new in American sports. There had been deaths on the field of play before, but most of them happened before television came along (as with baseball player Ray Chapman in 1920), or had only happened on local TV, with the footage not preserved due to the high cost of videotape (such as happened to hockey player Bill Masterton in 1968, and a few football players in the 1960s and early '70s). Ruffian didn't die during the race, but she died as a result of it, and the announcers let the audience know that it could happen.

Some of the 20 million people watching on TV were women who had never watched a horse race before, not even with Secretariat, but were watching because Ruffian was a girl going up against the best of the boys. Many of the viewers, men and women alike, swore they would never watch another horse race.

Sure enough, in spite of 2 more Triple Crown winners in the decade -- Seattle Slew in 1977 and Affirmed in 1978, and the dramatic story of the 1980 Kentucky Derby (more about that in a moment), TV viewership of horse racing severely declined. So did live attendance, as the growth of cable TV led to more sports viewing opportunities without having to leave your house.

Up until the dawn of the TV era, horse racing was the 3rd-most popular sport in America, behind baseball and boxing. Even in 1975, with football having surpassed everything, horse racing was still more popular than basketball and hockey. Now, despite 2 Triple Crown winners in the 2010s, it might not even be one of the top 10 sports.

Ruffian was buried in the infield at Belmont, with her nose pointing toward the finish line. She is the only horse laid to rest there. The following year, the Ruffian Handicap was founded, and was run annually at Belmont until 2009. In 2010, it was moved to Saratoga. In 2014, it was moved back to Belmont. The veterinary clinic at Belmont, where Ruffian died, is now named Cornell Ruffian Equine Specialists, run by Weill Cornell Medicine, of Cornell University.

Foolish Pleasure, forever to be remembered for a race that, officially, never took place, raced as a 4-year-old, and was retired to stud. He died of a stomach ailment at a ranch in Wyoming in 1994.

In 1980, Jacinto Vásquez accomplished something that he hadn't done even with Ruffian: He won the Kentucky Derby aboard a filly, Genuine Risk. The 2 Kentucky Derbies he won would be the only Triple Crown races he won.

In 1976, Baeza rode Honest Pleasure, another first cousin of Foolish Pleasure, to a 2nd-place finish in the Kentucky Derby. After finishing 5th in the Preakness with Honest Pleasure, he finished the season, and retired with 3,140 wins.

That year, he was elected to the National Racing Hall of Fame. So was Ruffian. Vásquez kept racing until 1996 -- racing into one's 50s is not unusual for a jockey -- and retired with 5,231 wins. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1998. As of July 6, 2025, Baeza is 85, and Vásquez is 81.

The racing magazine The Blood-Horse ranked Ruffian as the top female thoroughbred racehorse of the 20th Century -- but only 35th overall on their list of the top 100 thoroughbreds. Foolish Pleasure was ranked 97th.

A film titled Ruffian was made in 2007. Sam Shepard played Whiteley, Nicholas Pryor played Stuart Janney, Christine Belford played Barbara Janney, Vladimir Diaz played Vásquez, Francisco Torres played Baeza, Frank Whaley played Sports Illustrated racing writer William Nack, and original track announcer Dave Johnson, needing only to provide a repeat of his announcing, not needing to show his older face, played himself.

There would not be another match race in America until July 23, 1988, at Ak-Sar-Ben Racetrack in Omaha, Nebraska. (Ak-Sar-Ben, also the name of an adjacent sports arena, is "Nebraska" spelled backwards. Both the arena and the track have since been demolished.) Again, it was a "Battle of the Sexes," but neither horse had won any Triple Crown races. The colt Who Doctor Who beat the filly Explosive Girl by 3 1/2 lengths.

May 17, 1875: The 1st Kentucky Derby

May 17, 1875, 150 years ago: The 1st Kentucky Derby is run, at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky. It was a mile and a half, with 15 horses, 13 of whom were ridden by black men. The winning horse, by 2 lengths, was named Aristides, in 2 minutes, 37.75 seconds. His jockey, Oliver Lewis, then 19, was black. (Lewis lived until 1924, not quite to the 50th Anniversary of the event.)

The Derby has been run every year since, usually on the 1st Saturday in May. (The 1875 race was on a Monday.) In 1896, the length of the race was shortened to a mile and a quarter, which it has remained ever since. It became the 1st leg of the "Triple Crown" of American thoroughbred racing, along with the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore, held on the 3rd Saturday in May; and the Belmont Stakes, just outside New York City, held on the 1st Saturday in June.

Churchill Downs was built in 1875, by Colonel Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr., grandson of explorer William Clark. It was built on land leased to them by his uncles, John and Henry Churchill. The famous twin spires were built in 1895. In 2005, luxury boxes were built. This "Millionaire's Row" now dwarfs the spires, and ruins the perspective of one of the most historic sports venues in America. The grandstand seats about 50,000 people. Only on Derby Day is the infield opened, giving it a seating capacity of 170,000.

The Kentucky Derby -- and, in America, if someone says simply "The Derby," this is what they mean -- is billed as "The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports." Two horses have won it in less than 2 minutes: Secretariat in 1973, in 1:59 and 2/5ths (traditionally, the Triple Crown races were measured in fifths of a second); and Monarchos, in 2001, just under, in 1:59.97.

Every horse in the race was born 3 calendar years before. Every horse carries exactly 126 pounds, including the jockey. If the jockey weighs more than 126 pounds, he is disqualified from the race. If he weighs less than 126, weights are added to the horse, so that every horse, at least in theory, is equal.

Every year since 1932 -- when the Derby became the 1st sporting event ever broadcast live on radio around the world, and Burgoo King, named for a local stew, won it -- The Governor of Kentucky and the Chairman of Churchill Downs, Inc. present the winning horse with a blanket of 554 red roses. Hence, the race is nicknamed "The Run for the Roses."

1997 Winners Silver Charm and Gary Stevens, with the garland

The Preakness is "The Run for the Black-Eyed Susans." The Belmont is "The Run for the Carnations." Los Angeles Times sports columnist Jim Murray had lost some friends to fatal crashes at the Indianapolis 500, and called America's most famous auto race "The Run for the Lilies," as in the flowers often seen at funerals. He also turned the traditional introduction, "Gentlemen, start your engines!" into, "Gentlemen, start your coffins!"

Among the traditions of the Derby are dressing up, including women wearing the fanciest hats this side of a British royal wedding; the drinking of mint juleps, an iced drink of bourbon, mint and sugar syrup, introduced at the 1938 Derby; and the singing of "My Old Kentucky Home," the State Song, written in 1852 by Stephen Foster.

(According to the International Bartenders' Association, this is the official recipe for a mint julep: 2 fluid ounces of bourbon whiskey, 4 mint sprigs, 1 teaspoon of powdered sugar, and 2 teaspoons of water, served over crushed ice.)

Eddie Arcaro won 5 Kentucky Derbies as a jockey: 1938 aboard Lawrin, 1941 aboard Whirlaway, 1945 aboard Hoop Jr., 1948 aboard Citation, and 1952 about Hill Gail. That record was tied by Bill Hartack: 1957 aboard Iron Liege, 1960 aboard Venetian Way, 1962 aboard Decidedly, 1964 aboard Northern Dancer, and 1969 aboard Majestic Prince. But it has never been broken.

Ben A. Jones trained 6 winners, between 1938 and 1952. That record hasn't been broken, but it has been tied by Bob Baffert, between 1997 and 2020. Calumet Farm is the leading owner, with 8 wins, from 1941 to 1968.

The longest shot to win the race has been Donerail, 91-1 in 1913. Since then, the longest has been Rich Strike, 80-1 in 2022. Three fillies have won: Regret in 1915, Genuine Risk in 1980, Winning Colors in 1988.

The Kentucky Derby is the oldest continuously-run professional sporting event in America. It was not suspended for World War I. It was not suspended for the Great Depression. It was not suspended for World War II. The Indianapolis 500 can be delayed by rain, but if it rains on Derby Day, the race is run on the sloppy track, anyway. Even in 2020, when COVID restrictions meant that it couldn't be run on May 2, it was postponed to the 1st Saturday of another month, September 5. The winner was named Authentic.

June 9, 1973: Secretariat Wins the Triple Crown

June 9, 1973, 50 years ago: The Belmont Stakes is held at Belmont Park, just over the New York City line in Elmont, Nassau County, New York. The big story: Secretariat is going for the Triple Crown.

Secretariat was born on March 30, 1970, at Meadow Stud in Caroline County, Virginia, the son of Something Royal and Bold Ruler, winner of the 1957 Preakness Stakes. (Being a son of Bold Ruler also made Secretariat an uncle of Kentucky Derby winners Dust Commander, Cannonade, Foolish Pleasure, Bold Forbes, Seattle Slew and Spectacular Bid; and of Ruffian, the leading filly of the 1970s.) He was born with a "star" with a narrow stripe on his nose, and 3 of his 4 legs had "white socks."

Meadow Stud's owner, Penny Chenery, asked her secretary, Elizabeth Ham, for suggestions for a name. Mrs. Ham was an old lady who had worked at the Secretariat of the League of Nations -- the failed attempt at a peacekeeping organization after World War I, which led to the United Nations being founded after World War II, and it has its own Secretariat -- and she suggested "Secretariat." So that's what was chosen.

But Secretariat grew to be a big horse, with a gorgeous dark brown coat that looked red from a distance. So "Big Red" was an obvious nickname.

He made his 1st race on July 4, 1972 at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, New York City, and finished 4th. But 11 days later, he ran at Aqueduct again, and won. After 2 races with Paul Feliciano aboard, he was given a new jockey, a 31-year-old French-Canadian named Ron Turcotte. He wore the colors of Meadow Stud: Blue and white checks on the body, blue and white stripes down the sleeves.

Secretariat ran 7 more races as a 2-year-old, winning all but 1, missing that 1 by just 2 lengths. He entered 1973 as the leading 3-year-old horse in the country, a favorite to win the "Triple Crown" races.

Those races are the Kentucky Derby, traditionally run on the 1st Saturday in May at Churchill Downs, in Louisville, Kentucky, a mile and one-quarter; the Preakness Stakes, usually run 2 Saturdays later at Pimlico Race Course, in Baltimore, a mile and three-sixteenths; and the Belmont Stakes, usually run on the 1st Saturday in June at Belmont Park, known due to its distance, a mile and a half, as "the true test of champions."

In 1919, Sir Barton became the 1st horse to win all 3 in a single year, and it became known as "the Triple Crown of American thoroughbred racing." For fillies, each of those tracks hosts a race the day before, known as the Triple Tiara: The Kentucky Oaks, the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes, and the Acorn Stakes.

Secretariat began his 3-year-old season at Aqueduct, winning the Bay Shore Stakes on March 17 and the Gotham Stakes on April 7, but only finished 3rd, 4 lengths back, at the Wood Memorial on April 21. Along with the Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park outside Miami, and the Santa Anita Derby at Santa Anita Park outside Los Angeles, the Wood is considered one of the major warmups for the Triple Crown races. Each of the 3 is a mile and one-eighth, a little shorter than the Kentucky Derby, but slightly longer than the Preakness. And Secretariat hadn't won it.

So, on May 5, 1973, he went into the paddock at Churchill Downs, wearing Number 1A, as a joint entry with another Meadow Stud horse, Angle Light, as the favorite with odds of 3-2 (or one and a half to one). He won the race in 1 minute, 59 and 2/5ths seconds. Each quarter-mile was faster than the last: Secretariat was running faster at the end. Runner-up Sham was 2 1/2 lengths back.

It wasn't just a record: It was the 1st time the Kentucky Derby, the most famous American horse race, billing itself as "The Most Exciting Two Minutes In Sports," had been run in under 2 minutes since its mile-and-a-quarter length was set. It would take until 2001 before another horse ran the Derby in under 2 minutes, Monarchos. Secretariat's record still stands.

On May 19, Secretariat went into the Preakness as a 3-10 favorite, wearing Number 3. He won it in 1:53, a new record. Again, Sham was 2 1/2 lengths behind, and also broke the previous record.

Horse racing had been in a bit of a slump. It used to be that the 3 biggest sports in America were baseball, boxing, and horse racing, "the Sport of Kings." It helped that there had been 6 Triple Crown winners in 19 years between 1930 and 1948. But there hadn't been any since.

It took a while for the Triple Crown to become a big deal: Man o' War, considered the greatest racehorse of all time when he ran in 1920, only competed in one of them, the Belmont, winning it. (He ran 21 races, and won 20. The horse that beat him was named Upset, but the term "upset" for an unexpected win in sport was already in common use, so it wasn't named after the horse.)

The Triple Crown was won again by Gallant Fox in 1930, Omaha in 1935, War Admiral in 1937, Whirlaway in 1941, Count Fleet in 1943, Assault in 1946, and Citation in 1948. Citation, in particular, had been so dominant, that when racing fans were asked to name the greatest thoroughbred of all time, he was the 1st one to seriously challenge Man o' War for the title.

From 1949 to 1972, there were 7 horses that won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, but not the Belmont: Tim Tam in 1958, Carry Back in 1961, Northern Dancer in 1964, Kauai King in 1966, Forward Pass in 1968, Majestic Prince in 1969, and Cañonero II in 1971.

It had been 25 years since Citation did it. Could it be done again? Secretariat was big, and he was fast, and he loved to run. But he had never run a mile and a half before. (Then again, most Derby and Preakness contenders, let alone winners, don't run that far until they get to the Belmont. And somebody has to win the mile-and-a-half race.) The story got huge, made bigger by the fact that Belmont Park is just outside New York City, so the New York media got involved.

The national media got involved: Secretariat's bid for the Triple Crown became a nice distraction from the growing national scandal of Watergate, and the unsatisfying end to the Vietnam War. But could he do it?

On June 9, 1973, wearing Number 2 -- an omen that he would finish 2nd, not 1st? -- Ron Turcotte mounted Secretariat, and guided him into the paddock at Belmont. There were only 5 horses in the field. The odds were 1-10: Secretariat was considered so likely to win the race, a 10-dollar bet would win you only 1 dollar.

A crowd of 69,138 packed into the stands. Millions more watched on CBS. The weather was warm, but not hot. The Sun was out. The track was fast. The gates were opened, and, as expected, Secretariat and Sham were the fastest, Secretariat on the inside. The 1st quarter-mile was run in 23 and 3/5th seconds; the 2nd, in 22 and 3/5ths. Together, they were 10 lengths ahead of the other horses.

In the 3rd quarter-mile, Sham began to lag, and would finish last. Secretariat, on the other hand, picked up speed. Charles "Chic" Anderson, describing the race for CBS, delivered the most famous commentary in the history of any race, be it man, animal or automobile:

They're on the turn, and Secretariat is blazing along! The first three-quarters of a mile are 1:09 and 4/5ths! Secretariat is widening now! He is moving like a tremendous machine! Secretariat by 12! Secretariat by 14 lengths on the turn!

Secretariat broke the Belmont Stakes 1st-mile record set by his father, Bold Ruler, in 1957: 1 minute, 34 and 1/5th second. Except Bold Ruler conked out and finished 3rd. Secretariat did not: Anderson yelled, "Secretariat is all alone! He's out there, almost a sixteenth of a mile away from the other horses!"

Looking at the footage now, from a 21st Century perspective, following some racing tragedies, including that of Barbaro in the 2004 Preakness, it's easy to think, "Don't break down. You're doing this magnificent thing, don't ruin it by breaking down. Please, God, don't let him break down."

Secretariat did not break down. He kept going and going. When he crossed the finish line, Anderson said he'd won by 25 lengths. That would have matched the record set by Triple Crown winner Count Fleet in 1943. In fact, it was 31 lengths. The time was 2 minutes, 24 seconds even. That's an average speed of 37.5 miles per hour. The greatest race any horse has ever run.

The performance was so spectacular, the fact that he'd just won the 1st Triple Crown in a quarter of a century became secondary. It's like asking someone who remembers the 1956 World Series, "Who won it?" and being told about Don Larsen's perfect game in Game 5, before being told the Yankees won it in 7.

Did I say, "perfect"? That night, Jack Whitaker, part of CBS' broadcast team, received a phone call from Jack Nicklaus, preparing to defend his title at golf's U.S. Open the following weekend, at Oakmont Country Club outside Pittsburgh. (Johnny Miller ended up winning it.)

Nicklaus: "Jack, I gotta tell you, when I saw Secretariat running, I had tears in my eyes."

Whitaker: "That's because you've been pursuing perfection your whole life, and you finally saw it."

How can you follow up something like that? You couldn't. Not then: There would be no Breeders' Cup until 1984. Secretariat ran 6 more races, before retiring at the end of that season. He won 4 of them: The Arlington Invitational outside Chicago, the Marlboro Cup and the Man o' War Stakes back at Belmont, and the Canadian International at Woodbine in Toronto. His career record: 21 races, 1st in 16, 2nd in 3, 3rd in 1, 4th in 1. Earnings: $1,316,808 -- a little under $9 million in 2023 money.

The Triple Crown was subsequently won by Seattle Slew in 1977 and Affirmed in 1978. Another long drought with several near-misses (horses winning the Derby and the Preakness, but not the Belmont) followed, until the Triple Crown was again won by American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify in 2018.

Unlike his father, Bold Ruler, Secretariat did not have many champion descendants. His grandson, A.P. Indy, won the Belmont Stakes and the Breeders' Cup Classic in 1992; Indy's son Rags to Riches won the Belmont in 2007; and Indy's great-grandson California Chrome won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness in 2014.

Secretariat had been retired to stud at Claiborne Farm, outside Paris, Kentucky. He developed a hoof infection called laminitis, and did not respond to a month's worth of treatment. He was euthanized on October 4, 1989, at the age of 17. He was buried at Claiborne.

(Barring such infections, an average lifespan for a racehorse is between 25 and 28. Silver Charm, winner of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness in 1997, is the oldest living winner of either of those races, at 29. The oldest living winner of any of the 3 is Editor's Note, 30, winner of the 1996 Belmont.)

In 2005, ESPN ranked the Top 20 greatest individual sports performances ever. Secretariat's Belmont win came in 2nd, behind Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game in 1962. ESPN also estimates that Secretariat has had more streets in the United States named after him than any other athlete: 263. (There are probably more streets named Ruth, including a Ruth Street in my hometown of East Brunswick, New Jersey, but most of those are not named for Babe Ruth.)

Statues of Secretariat now stand outside the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame at Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga, New York; the Kentucky Horse Park and Keeneland Race Course, both in Lexington, Kentucky; and, with Turcotte aboard, in Turcotte's hometown of Grand Falls, New Brunswick, Canada.

Unfortunately, Turcotte himself had a grand fall: During a 1978 race at Belmont, he fell from his mount, and was paralyzed. As of June 9, 2023, he is 81 years old, still lives in Grand Falls, and is an advocate for disability research.

Turcotte at Secretariat's statue at the Kentucky Horse Park

In 1975, Sports Illustrated horse racing writer William Nack, who covered every race "Big Red" ever ran, published Secretariat: The Making of a Champion. In 2010, it served as the basis for the film Secretariat. Diane Lane starred as Penny Chenery, real-life jockey Otto Thorwarth played Turcotte, Kevin Connolly played Nack, and the horse that played Secretariat was not identified. 

Farewells: Hal Greer, William Nack, John Amirante

Over the last few days, we've lost some people, including Night Court star Harry Anderson, who was only 65 years old.

He also starred in Dave's World, a sitcom based on the columns of Dave Barry of the Miami Herald. I remember TV Guide doing a Best-of/Worst-of list for the TV season. In addition to "Best Dressed" and "Worst Dressed," they named Pamela Anderson, in her red Baywatch bathing suit, as "Best Undressed," and Harry as Dave in his bathrobe, as "Worst Undressed." He certainly wore a better robe as Judge Harry Stone on Night Court!

And just as I finished writing this, news came over the wire (as we used to say) that Barbara Bush, wife of one President (1989-93) and mother of another (2001-09), died at the age of 92.

*

In sports, the biggest name we lost was Hal Greer.

Harold Everett Greer was born on June 26, 1936 in Huntington, West Virginia. Schools in West Virginia were then segregated, and he attended Frederick Douglass High School in Huntington. He stayed in the city and went to Marshall University, becoming the 1st black man to play basketball at a public college in the State. He was named All-Conference in the Mid-American Conference in 1958.

The guard was drafted by the Syracuse Nationals, and played 5 seasons with them before they moved in 1963, to become the Philadelphia 76ers. He was named to 10 NBA All-Star Games, including being named MVP of the 1968 game.

But the Sixers kept smacking into the Boston Celtic dynasty, never more noticeably than on the last play of Game 7 of the 1965 Eastern Conference Finals at the Boston Garden. The Celtics led by 1 point, and Greer inbounded the ball. He tried to pass to Chet Walker, with the idea that Chet the Jet would pass the ball to Wilt Chamberlain, and that Wilt would score the winning basket. But John Havlicek tipped the pass, sending the ball to Sam Jones, the Celtics to victory, and Celtic radio announcer Johnny Most into yelling, "Johnny Havlicek stole the ball!" It is up there with Willie Mays' 1954 World Series catch as the most famous defensive play in sports history.

But the 76ers started the 1966-67 season on fire, going 7-0, 15-1, 26-2, 37-3, 46-4. Eat your heart out, present-day Golden State Warriors. (Note that the reason the Nats could move to become the 76ers is that the Warriors moved out of Philadelphia to the Bay Area in 1962.)

The Sixers finished 68-13, with the most wins in a single NBA season to that point. It would be surpassed by the 1972 Los Angeles Lakers (69-13), the 1996 Chicago Bulls (72-10), and the 2016 Warriors (73-9) -- the difference being, the '16 Warriors did not win the NBA title.

In the 1st Round of the Playoffs, the 76ers dispensed with Oscar Robertson, Jerry Lucas and the rest of the Cincinnati Royals 3 games to 1. Then came a showdown with the Celtics, and it was one of the epic victories in the history of Philadelphia sports. In Game 1, Chamberlain had a quadruple-double: 24 points, 32 rebounds, 12 assists and 12 blocked shots. In Game 3, Wilt grabbed 41 rebounds, still an NBA Playoff record.

The Sixers were up 3-0, and while the Celtics won a thriller of a Game 4 on their own parquet floor, Game 5 was played at the Convention Hall of the old Philadelphia Civic Center -- The Spectrum would open in September -- and it was an annihilation: April 11, 1967, Philadelphia 140, Boston 116. Bob Ryan, soon to go from Boston College to the The Boston Globe, but a Trenton, New Jersey native who grew up rooting for the Warriors (and thus had no emotional connection to the Sixers), was at this game, and does not like to be reminded of it.

Appropriately enough, it was the team then known as the San Francisco Warriors that the 76ers would face in the Final. On April 24, in Game 6 at the Cow Palace in Daly City, Philadelphia finished the job, 125-122. Greer had averaged 22.1 points per game in the regular season, and upped that to 27.7 for the Playoffs. His rebounds (5.3 to 5.9) and assists (3.8 to 5.3) also went up in the Playoffs.

Greer stayed with the 76ers until 1972-73, going from perhaps the best team in NBA history to its worst, as age, injuries, and bad management dropped them to 9-73, still the league's worst record ever.

He was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame, and he was named to the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players. Marshall retired his Number 16. The 76ers retired his Number 15, and last year dedicated a statue to him outside their training complex, across the Delaware River in Camden, New Jersey.

He was married to a woman named Mayme, they had a son and 2 daughters, and had retired to Scottsdale Arizona. There, Hal Greer died this past Saturday, April 14, 2018, at the age of 81.

Still alive from the 1967 NBA Champion Philadelphia 76ers are 8 players: Forward Dave Gambee, 81 years old; guard Chet "the Jet" Walker, 78; guard Walter "Wali" Jones, 76; forward Luke Jackson, 76; guard Bob Weiss, about to turn 76 and an assistant coach with the Denver Nuggets; guard Matt Guokas, 74; forward Billy Cunningham, 74; guard Bill Melchionni, 73.

Greer was preceded in death by center Wilt Chamberlain in 1999; guard Larry Costello in 2001, head coach Alex Hannum in 2002, and general manager Jack Ramsay in 2014.

Greer, Chamberlain, Walker, Cunningham, head coach Alex Hannum and general manager Jack Ramsay are in the Hall of Fame. Greer (15), Chamberlain (13) and Cunningham (32) would get their numbers retired by the 76ers. So would Wali Jones (24), but for the unrelated Bobby Jones. Melchionni would get his number retired by the team now known as the Brooklyn Nets (25, wore 28 with the 76ers).

Hannum had previously coached the St. Louis Hawks to the 1958 NBA Championship, and would coach the Oakland Oaks to the 1969 ABA title. Costello would coach the Milwaukee Bucks to the 1971 NBA title. Ramsay would coach the Portland Trail Blazers to the 1977 title. Cunningham, with Guokas as his assistant, would coach the 76ers to the other title they've won, in 1983.

*

William Nack wrote about basketball in the 1960s. He wrote so well about sports, including some events that happened long ago, that I thought he was considerably older.

Nack at Churchill Downs in Louisville,

home of the Kentucky Derby

William Louis Nack was born on February 4, 1941 in Chicago, and grew up in the northern suburb of Skokie, Illinois. He and his sister Dee worked at a stable in nearby Morton Grove, and both became competitive riders.

In 1955, Swaps won the Kentucky Derby. Three months later, he raced at Washington Park, on Chicago's South Side. (The grandstand burned down in 1977, and the track was never reopened.) Just 14, Nack saw Swaps set a course record in the American Derby, and came to revere him more than any human athlete: "The clarity of that performance, the decisive finality that I had yearned for and missed in the world of horse shows ruled by fallible and sometimes idiotic judges, had won me to racing as a sport and to the memory of that horse forever."

Eleven days later, Swaps was paired in a match race, at Washington Park, with Nashua, the other contender for Horse of the Year, although his victories didn't include any of the Triple Crown races. Nack couldn't go, and had to watch it on television. Nashua won, and Nack later wrote that he had run out of his seat, into his next-door neighbor's yard, and threw up on a tree.

A week later, a magazine included a photo of Swaps. Nack cut it out, and put it in his wallet. He kept that photo in subsequent wallets until 1983, when his pocket was picked at Madison Square Garden, covering the fight between Roberto Duran and Davey Moore.

Nack became a groom at the biggest racetrack in the Chicago area, Arlington Park in the northwestern suburb of Arlington Heights. In 1958, he helped take care of Horse of the Year Round Table. He went to the University of Illinois, and became sports editor of the Daily Illini, whose editor-in-chief was future film critic Roger Ebert.

He enlisted in the U.S. Army, and was sent to Vietnam, where he wrote publicity for General William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. troops there. After his discharge, he moved to Long Island, and wrote for Newsday. At the paper's Christmas party, he recited the names of every Kentucky Derby winner in chronological order, from the 1st race in 1875 to the most recent in 1971. The editor took the not-so-subtle hint, and assigned Nack to cover racing for the Sunday edition. Nack had been covering politics, and said, "I'd love the chance to cover the whole horse."

This enabled him to cover nearby Belmont Park, including Secretariat clinching the Triple Crown by winning the 1973 Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths, the 1975 match race between Kentucky Derby winner Foolish Pleasure and doomed champion filly Ruffian, and Seattle Slew clinching the Triple Crown by winning the 1977 Belmont Stakes.

He would write Secretariat: The Making of a Champion in 1974, and Sports Illustrated excerpted it. It would later be adapted to a feature film. In 1978, SI hired him away from Newsday. In addition to horse racing, subjects of his articles included Keith Hernandez of the Mets, the USFL's lawsuit against the NFL, Garry Kasparov's dethroning of world chess champion Anatoly Karpov, and the man who made Karpov champion by refusing to defend his title against him, the reclusive, paranoid genius Bobby Fischer.

He also wrote about boxing, including current profiles of boxing champions Leon Spinks, Larry Holmes, Roberto Duran, Sugar Ray Leonard, Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis. His story on former middleweight contender Rubin Carter was adapted into the film The Hurricane. He won an award for "O Unlucky Man," his profile of 1962-64 Heavyweight Champion Sonny Liston.

My favorite piece of his SI writing was his 70th Anniversary article on the Long Count Fight, when a misunderstanding of a new rule -- which he had asked for -- caused Jack Dempsey to fail to regain the Heavyweight Championship from Gene Tunney in 1927. It was so clear that I believed he had to be at Soldier Field that day -- or, at the least, listening to the fight in one of the earliest major coast-to-coast radio broadcasts of a sporting event.

He wrote My Turf: Horses, Boxers, Blood Money and the Sporting Life; and Ruffian: A Racetrack Romance. He continued to write for SI until 2001, and was a correspondent for ESPN. He was married to Carolyne Starek, and had daughters Emily, Rachel and Amy, and son William Jr.

The Nacks lived in Washington, D.C., and it was there that William Nack died this past Friday, April 13, 2018, after a battle with cancer. He was 77.

*

Hal Greer's basketball playing may have been musical, and Bill Nack's writing was certainly lyrical. But music and sports came together with John Amirante.

John J. Amirante (I can find no record of what the J stands for) was born on May 12, 1934, in The Bronx. He went to Cardinal Hayes High School, which had a dance band, and he sang with them. By night, he would sing in The Bronx and Yonkers. By day, he would work as a design engineer for a naval architecture firm owned by Dr. John J. McMullen.

McMullen was one of the "limited partners" that helped George Steinbrenner buy the Yankees in 1973, and he would later say, "There is nothing so limited as being one of George's limited partners." But on July 4, 1978, George's birthday, McMullen brought Amirante to George's birthday party, and Amirante sang for him. George liked him, and they were friends for life.

But it would be the Mets that would be the first team to have him sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" before a game, in 1979. He sent his audition tape to the Madison Square Garden Corporation, and in 1980, they hired him to sing before 3 Ranger games and 3 Knick games. They kept him on for 37 years.

From 1981 to 1985, he also sang the Anthem at some Yankee games, usually alternating with Robert Merrill, the legendary Metropolitan Opera singer from Brooklyn. By this point, McMullen had sold his share of the Yankees, and bought the Houston Astros. He'd also bought the NHL's Colorado Rockies, moved them to the Meadowlands, and renamed them the New Jersey Devils. He asked Amirante to sing the Anthem for their 1st game, on October 5, 1982, a 3-3 tie with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

McMullen asked him to sing for the Devils full-time, but he turned it down, saying, "I gotta stay where my faith is, and that's with the Rangers." He later said, "I wanted to be in The World's Most Famous Arena."

Stan Fischler, the longtime Ranger fan known as the Hockey Maven, who's written more books on the sport than anyone, wrote today, "At the old Garden, it was Gladys Goodding at the organ console who played for decades and also was an engaging, lovable personality. At the new Garden, John Amirante emerged as an anthem-singing favorite whose dynamic voice and enthralling style won the hearts of fans from the very top balcony seats right down to ice level.

On December 23, 1992, I attended my 1st live NHL game. I'd like to tell you that I heard John Amirante singe the National Anthem. But that wouldn't be true, because I couldn't hear him: 18,000 Ranger fans yelled and drowned him out. When they finally won the Stanley Cup after 54 years, on June 14, 1994, Ranger broadcaster Sam Rosen said he'd never heard The Garden so loud as when he sang before Game 7. Amirante recalled:

I couldn't hear myself, the Garden was so loud. It was absolutely fantastic. I felt like I was ten feet off the ice. And I had chills going through my body, and the fans were just screaming and chanting. I loved every minute of it. And to this day, I can remember specifically how it was. It's a memory I'll never forget.

And then the parade that followed, I was on a float, and the fans were singing the anthem to me as I went up Broadway. It was great.

Not long thereafter, he stopped doing Knick games. The Rangers gradually decreased his workload as he got older. As with some other sports figures, he was put into early retirement by his team and then had that recalled when fans revolted. His last performance was this past February 25, on Jean Ratelle Night.

He and his wife Ann lived in Plainview, Long Island -- Islanders territory. They had a son John and daughters Debi and Janice, although Janice predeceased him.

John Amirante died this morning, April 17, 2018, at age 83. He can now share a stage with Robert Merrill, Gladys Goodding and Lucy Monroe.

UPDATE: Hal Greer was buried at Woodlawn Memorial Park, outside Orlando in Gotha, Florida. John Amirante was buried at St. Margaret's Cemetery in Plainview, Long Island, New York. The final resting place of William Nack is not publicly known.

How to Attend the Kentucky-Louisville Basketball Rivalry

Downtown Louisville, Kentucky

Next Friday night, the basketball teams of the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville will renew one of the biggest rivalries in college hoops, playing at UK's home court, Rupp Arena in Lexington.

This will also allow me to get a Trip Guide done for a 49th State, leaving just 1 to go. Unfortunately, the schedule dictates that I won't get to do the 50th and final State, in this case Nevada, until March 7, 2018, as the New Jersey Devils don't make their 1st trip to the expansion Vegas Golden Knights until March 14.

Before You Go. Kentucky can get really hot in the Summer, but this will be the Winter. Both the Lexington Herald-Leader and the Louisville-based Courier-Journal are predicting this for next weekend: Low 30s by day, high teens by night. Bundle up.

Although the Western part of the State is in the Central Time Zone, most of Kentucky, including Lexington and Louisville, are is in the Eastern Time Zone, so you won't have to set your clocks back. And, while Kentucky is, despite its appearance on a map to be Midwestern, historically a Southern State, it never seceded from the Union. Regardless, you won't need a passport, and you won't have to change your money.

Tickets. Good luck. Rupp Arena seats 23,500 people. The Yum Center seats a little less, 22,090. Those are big arenas, but this game would sell out at either one. You may have to go to StubHub or a similar site.

Ordinarily, Kentucky basketball tickets go for $75 and up, when available. Louisville basketball tickets are a lot cheaper. Only the upper deck usually stays on sale, $65 between the baskets and $25 behind them.

Getting There. It's 706 miles from Times Square in New York to downtown Lexington, and 740 to downtown Louisville. United Airlines does fly nonstop from Newark to both, and a round-trip fare to each city can be had for under $800.

Amtrak doesn't go to either Louisville or Lexington. Greyhound does. Round-trip fare to Louisville is $556, and to Lexington it's $414. These fares can drop to, respectively, $331 and $327 with advanced purchase. The Louisville station is downtown, at 720 W. Muhammad Ali Blvd. The Lexington station is at 477 NW New Circle Road, about 3 miles northeast of downtown. Take Bus 6 to get there.

If you decide to drive, it's far enough that it will help to get someone to go with you and split the duties, and to trade off driving and sleeping. Take Interstate 78 West across New Jersey to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. There, switch to Interstate 81 South to Williamsport, Maryland. There, switch to Interstate 68 West into West Virginia, to Morgantown. There, switch to Interstate 79 South, to the State capital, Charleston. There, switch to Interstate 64 West, which will take you into Kentucky, and to both Lexington and Louisville.

If you do it right, you should spend an hour and 15 minutes in New Jersey, 2 hours and 45 minutes in Pennsylvania, an hour and a half in Maryland, 4 hours in West Virginia, and, if your destination is Lexington, 2 hours in Kentucky, for a total of 11 and a half hours. Counting rest stops, it's more like 15 hours. If you're going on to Louisville, it'll be more like 3 hours and 15 minutes in Kentucky, for a total of 12 hours and 45 minutes, making it more like 17 hours with rest stops.

Once In the City. Like Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia, Kentucky officially calls itself a "Commonwealth" rather than a "State," thinking it more independent-sounding. Legally, though, there is no difference. The State is named for the Kentucky River, which itself appears to trace its name to an Iroquois word meaning "on the meadow."

Kentucky Turnpike logo.

Note that it has a Cardinal, not a Wildcat.

Kentucky was given permission from Virginia to separate on December 18, 1789, and was admitted to the Union as the 15th State on June 1, 1792. As a slave State and a border State, it never seceded from the Union during the American Civil War, but representatives from 68 of the Commonwealth's 110 Counties met at Russellville and passed an Ordinance of Secession on November 20, 1861, setting up a counter-capital at Bowling Green.

The Confederate federal government thus considered Kentucky one of its States, but, officially, it never left the Union. Oddly, the Presidents of both countries were born in Kentucky: Abraham Lincoln in Hodgenville, outside Elizabethtown; and Jefferson Davis in Fairview, in the western part of the State. But neither man lived there as an adult: Lincoln was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives by Illinois, Davis to the U.S. Senate by Mississippi.

Kentucky is famously known for its grass, often called "Kentucky bluegrass," even though it's all green. It's "the Bluegrass State," and the bluegrass form of country music, made up entirely of stringed instruments, traces its origin to the State. It has been said to have been invented by Rosine, Kentucky native Bill Monroe, and even if he isn't the inventor, he and his brother Charlie Monroe popularized term, because their band was known as the Blue Grass Boys.

At any rate, the University of Kentucky used blue as its color before either bluegrass or the blues were invented, but it's convenient. Most likely, the University of Louisville chose cardinal red as a contrast.

Bill Monroe is also known for having written "Blue Moon of Kentucky," which was one side of the 1st record made by Elvis Presley, in Memphis in 1954, on the other side of the blue song "That's All Right." Steve Martin and John Candy famously sang it in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," even though they were in Illinois at the time. (Although Michael McKean's uniform and car are clearly those of the Wisconsin State Police, which is because the scene was filmed in Wisconsin.)

Louisville -- and that's pronounced LOO-uh-vull, maybe LOO-ee-vill, but never LOO-iss-vill -- is home to 760,000 people, which is more than half of the cities that currently have a Major League Baseball team. But its metro area of just 1.5 million would make it last in MLB and MLS, but larger than New Orleans in the NFL; New Orleans, Oklahoma City and Memphis in the NBA; and Calgary, Ottawa, Edmonton and Winnipeg in the NHL.

Louisville was founded in 1778 by General George Rogers Clark, older brother of William Clark of Lewis & Clark fame. Louisville Gas & Electric (LG&E) runs the electricity. The city is about 72 percent white, 23 percent black, 3 percent Hispanic and 2 percent Asian.

Lexington, originally named McConnell Springs but renamed when the residents heard about the Battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, and incorporated as a city in 1783, has about 320,000 people, about 76 percent white, 14 percent black, 7 percent Hispanic and 3 percent Asian. Overall, Kentucky has about 4.4 million residents.

Louisville was struck by anti-German riots in 1855. Eastern Kentucky, along the Big Sandy River which formed a State Line with West Virginia, was the site of the Hatfield-McCoy Feud, which lasted from 1863 to 1891. (The Hatfields were on the West Virginia side, the McCoys on the Kentucky side.)

There was a riot in Louisville in 1968 -- not on April 4, when Martin Luther King was assassinated, but on May 27, when a rumor spread that civil rights activist Stokley Carmichael, who was supposed to speak there, was held up by police before he could get there. In fact, Carmichael had never even been contacted about making an appearance in Louisville.

(UPDATE: On March 13, 2020, just as America was going into lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 3 white plainclothes officers of the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) forced their way into the home of Breonna Taylor. Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, claimed he hadn't heard them announce themselves as police, thought they were intruders, and fired his gun at them, wounding one. In return, they fired 32 shots. Walker wasn't hit, but Ms. Taylor was, 6 times, and died. One of the officers was fired, but all criminal charges against the 3 officers were dropped. The City of Louisville awarded Ms. Taylor's family $12 million in restitution.)

ZIP Codes for Kentucky begin with the digits 40 and 41, including 402 for Louisville and 405 for Lexington. The Area Code for all of Kentucky used to be 502. It still is for Louisville. But when a new one was needed, and Lexington was to be included, it was made 859 -- or UKY for the University on the keypad. The sales tax is 6 percent. The capital is Frankfort, 54 miles east of Louisville, and 25 miles northwest of Lexington.

The State House in Frankfort

In Lexington, Limestone Street is the street address divider between East and West, and Main Street between North and South. In Louisville, Main Street is the North-South divider, and 1st Street the East-West. Lexington has no beltway, but Louisville has one, Interstate 465.

The Transit Authority of River City (TARC) runs Louisville's buses. A single ride is $1.75. Lextran runs the buses in Lexington, and it's even cheaper: $1.00.

I was very surprised to find out that the University of Louisville is by far the older school, founded in 1798, while the University of Kentucky wasn't founded until 1865, shockingly late, considering that Kentucky was 1 of the 1st 15 States in the Union.

Notable non-sports graduates of UK include 14 Governors of Kentucky, and 2 of other States: J.C.W. Beckham (Class of) 1889, William J. Fields 1896, James Scrugham 1900 of Nevada, Earle Clements 1917, Keen Johnson '22, Albert "Happy" Chandler '24 (Commissioner of Baseball 1945-51), Bert Combs '37, Ned Breathitt '48, Julian Carroll '54, John Y. Brown Jr. '57, Martha Layne Collins and Paul Patton '59, Steve Beshear '66, Ted Strickland '66 of Ohio, Beverly Perdue '69 of North Carolina, and Ernie Fletcher '74.

They also include Sportscaster Tom Hammond '67, Outback Steakhouse founder Chris Sullivan '72, Cartoonist Don Rosa '73, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Michael York '74, and actress Ashley Judd, who got famous years before going back and completing her Bachelor of Arts degree in 2007.  Actor Harry Dean Stanton left the University before getting his degree to serve in World War II, went into acting, and, unlike Judd, never went back.

Alas, aside from Johnny Unitas, the most notable graduate of UL is Mitch McConnell '64, Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate and poisoner of the American political process.

Going In. The official address of Rupp Arena is 430 W. Vine Street, in downtown Lexington, and about a mile north of the University of Kentucky campus. UK is the only Southeastern Conference school to play its home basketball games in an off-campus facility. If you drive in, parking is $10.

Adolph Rupp, a son of German immigrants, learned basketball in the early 1920s, from its inventor, Dr. James Naismith, and legendary coach Forrest "Phog" Allen, when theywas teaching and coaching at the University of Kansas. He went to Marshalltown, Iowa, was hired as the coach of the wrestling team, a sport he knew nothing about, read a book, and coached them to a State Championship.

He then coached basketball and taught history and economics at Freeport High School in northern Illinois -- and coached the school's 1st black player, William Mosely. It appears that Mosely's race was not an issue for Rupp, who was not a Southerner.

In 1930, he was hired to coach basketball at the University of Kentucky. "The Baron of the Bluegrass" left the post in 1972, for one reason and one reason only: He turned 70, the mandatory retirement age for University employees. He lived long enough to be elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame (while still coaching) and to see the arena that bears his name opened.

Within 2 weeks of this cover, UK would lose the NCAA Final.

Even the Baron wasn't immune to The Dreaded SI Cover Jinx.

Despite hosting UK basketball, and being named for the school's leading athletic figure, it is owned not by the University, but by Fayette County. It opened in 1976, about a year before Rupp's death, with 23,500 seats, making it the largest basketball-specific building in the world. Only the Charlotte Coliseum would surpass it, and, as it has been demolished, Rupp Arena is, again, 1st in that regard. The court runs southwest-to-northeast.

It hosted the NCAA Final Four in 1985, during what turned out to be a down period in UK hoops history. (This is a bit like the Miami Dolphins being in the Super Bowl and hosting it a few times each, but never in the same season.) In addition to Wildcat basketball, it has hosted a pair of minor-league hockey teams, each with a name that ties into Kentucky's tradition of thoroughbred horse racing: The Kentucky Thoroughblades of the American Hockey League (1996-2001) and the Lexington Men O' War of the East Coast Hockey League, named for 1920 superhorse Man O' War (2002-03). It's also hosted concerts and professional "wrestling."

The official address of the KFC Yum! Center is 1 Arena Plaza, bounded by the downtown streets of River Road, 2nd Street, Main Street and 3rd Street, about 3 miles north of the University of Louisville campus. If you drive in, parking starts at $17 and goes up from there.

Yum! Brands, headquartered in Louisville, owns the State's greatest culinary icon, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and also Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and WingStreet. Previously, it owned Long John Silver's and A&W Restaurants.

It opened in 2010, not because Freedom Hall was too small or in bad shape (despite its age, it was neither), but because it didn't have the precious luxury boxes. There was opposition to the downtown site, as some people wanted the new arena at the Exposition Center site (which includes Freedom Hall), and others wanted it on campus. In the end, things were smoothed over, and the only member of the task force responsible for building the arena to vote against the downtown site was... John Schnatter, the bigoted, greedy founder of Papa John's Pizza.

The court is aligned north-to-south, and it is also Kentucky's leading concert center.

Food. As you might guess, concessions at the KFC Yum! Center are dominated by the Yum! Brands: KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. But since it's the University of Louisville, Papa John's has also slithered in. They also have roasted nuts, ice cream, and Skinny Skins potatoes.

The Rupp Arena website is less specific, but mentions, beyond the usual array of comestibles (hot dogs, pretzels, popcorn, soda, ice cream), pizza (Hunt Brothers, not Pizza Hut or Papa John's), bratwursts, grilled chicken sandwiches, pulled pork BBQ sandwiches, and not "hamburgers" or "cheeseburgers," but "Steakburgers."

Team History Displays. Much like the Yankees, the Montreal Canadiens, and, more to the point of basketball, the Boston Celtics and, more recently, Duke University, the University of Kentucky has so much history, and they don't mind telling you all about it, or even shoving it in your face. The word "insufferable" comes to mind.

They've won 50 regular-season Conference Championships since 1926 -- 47 since the founding of the Southeastern Conference in 1933. They've won 31 Conference Tournaments. They've reached the NCAA Final Four 17 times, most recently in 2015. And they've won the NCAA Championship 8 times, 2nd only to UCLA's 11. Various agencies have retroactively awarded pre-NCAA titles, so, by some reckonings, Kentucky may have 11.

The Final Four and National Championship banners.

They don't hang banners for the retroactive titles.

Adolph Rupp won 28 regular-season Conference titles, won 13 Conference Tournaments, reached 6 Final Fours, and won 4 (or 5, or 6, or 7) National Championships. He won them in 1948, 1949, 1951 and 1958. They were retroactively awarded National Championships in 1933 and 1934.

The 1948 and '49 teams were nicknamed the Fabulous Five, and several of their players led the U.S. team to the Gold Medal at the 1948 Olympics in London. Rupp wasn't too confident about his 1958 team, saying they were just "fiddlin' around," so when they made their successful run at the title, they became the Fiddlin' Five.

The NCAA came down on UK after the 1951 point-shaving scandal, found that they'd done other things, and had their 1952-53 season canceled. They then went 25-0 in 1953-54, but when their graduate students were prohibited from playing in the NCAA Tournament, Rupp "took his ball and went home," boycotting the tourney rather than use his remaining players. The Helms Foundation recognized them as National Champions, rather than NCAA Champion LaSalle or NIT winners Holy Cross.

But the most famous game Rupp coached was one that he lost. As the other Southern States were struggling with legally-enforced racial integration, including whether to put black students on their sports teams, Rupp knew the end was near.

At one point, he told his 1965-66 players -- including a not-quite-21-year-old Pat Riley -- that they were ranked Number 1 in the country, Duke was Number 2, and Vanderbilt was Number 3. He wrote this on a chalkboard, and said, "Look at that! One, two, three! All Southern! All white! And you'll never see that again!" He was right.

This team, generally short and thus nicknamed "Rupp's Runts," got to the Final, at the University of Maryland, but their all-white team was defeated by the all-black starting lineup of Texas Western University (soon to become the University of Texas at El Paso, or UTEP), on March 19, 1966. As much as the 1979 Final between Magic Johnson's Michigan State and Larry Bird's Indiana State, this was a watershed moment in college basketball -- and while Rupp made what we now call the Elite Eight 3 more times, he never made the Final Four again.

Rupp was succeeded by Joe B. Hall, who got them to the 1975 Final and won the 1978 National Championship. He was succeeded by Eddie Sutton, who got them to the Final Four in 1984 (part of his unique feat of getting 4 different schools to the Final Four), but another scandal almost got them another "death penalty" in 1989.

Enter Rick Pitino. Having gotten Providence College to a Final Four, he left the Knicks to take over at UK, got them to the Elite Eight in 1992 (losing an overtime thriller to Duke), got them to the Final Four in 1993, won the 1996 National Championship, and got them back to the Final in 1997 -- and then he abandoned perhaps college basketball's most storied team to run the NBA's, the Celtics.

His assistant, Orlando "Tubby" Smith, became the team's 1st black head coach, and he won the 1998 National Championship. John Calipari came aboard in 2009, and won the 2012 National Championship, also reaching the Final Four in 2011, 2014 and 2015. Along the way in 2012, they beat Louisville in the Semifinal, the biggest bragging rights in the State's sports history. (For comparison's sake, Duke and North Carolina have made the same Final Four only once, in 1991. North Carolina lost their Semifinal to Michigan, who then lost the Final to Duke.)

The Wildcats do not retire numbers. They do hang banners of jerseys, with the numbers, honoring 37 players in this manner:

* From the 1920s: Basil Hayden, Burgess Carey and Carey Spicer.

* From the 1930s: Forest Sale, John DeMoisey and Layton Rouse.

* From the 1948 National Champions, all of the Fabulous Five: 12, Ralph Beard; 15, Alex Groza; 22, Cliff Barker; 26, Kenny Rollins; and 27, Wallace "Wah-Wah" Jones. All but Rollins were also members of the 1949 National Champions.

* From the 1951 National Champions: 77, Frank Spivey.

* From the 1954 "National Champions": 6, Cliff Hagan; 16, Lou Tsioropoulos; 20, Gayle Rose; 30, Frank Ramsey; and 42, Bill Evans.

* From the mid-1950s: 22, Jerry Bird; 44, Phil Grawemeyer; and 50, Bob Burrow.

* From the 1958 National Champions, two of the Fiddlin' Five: 24, Johnny Cox; and 52, Vernon Hatton.

* From the 1960s: 10, Louie Dampier; 42, Pat Riley; 44, Cotton Nash; and another 44, Dan Issel.

* From the 1975 NCAA runners-up: 35, Kevin Grevey.

* From the 1978 National Champions: 4, Kyle Macy; 21, Jack "Goose" Givens; and 53, Rick Robey.

* From the 1984 Final Four team: 34, Kenny "Sky" Walker.

* From the 1992 Final Four team: 11, Sean Woods; 12, Deron Feldhaus; 24, Jamal Mashburn; 32, Richie Farmer; and 34, John Pelphrey.

* From the 1996 National Champions: 0 (number zero), Tony Delk. No more recent players have been honored.

Hagan, Ramsey, Dampier, Issel, and coaches Rupp, Pitino and Calipari have been elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. So have "Fabulous Five" member C.M. Newton and "Rupp's Runts" member Pat Riley, but as coaches elsewhere. So has Adrian Smith, from the 1950s, not honored with a banner. So has Cawood Ledford, who received the Curt Gowdy Award, the Hall of Fame's award for broadcasters. The coaches and Ledford have been given banners. So has Bill Keightley, longtime equipment manager.

Louisville's history isn't nearly as storied. It's sort of like the Michigan State has with Michigan in football: They can hold their heads high with almost anybody, but there's those insufferable, arrogant blue bastards across the State that never shut up about their achievements!

The Cardinals have 15 regular-season Conference Championships, the 1st in 1967, and the last 3 since moving to the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC); 19 Conference Tournament wins, starting in 1928; won the most recent of each in 2014; have been to 10 Final Fours, 1959, 1972, 1975, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1986, 2005, 2012 and 2013; and have won 3 National Championships,  in 1980, 1986 and 2013.

They have retired 4 numbers: 8, for forward Charlie Tyra, Class of 1957, who played 4 seasons for the Knicks; 31, for center Wes Unseld, Class of 1968, a Hall-of-Famer for the Washington Bullets; 35, for guard Darrell Griffith, star of their 1980 National Champions, a.k.a. "Doctor Dunkenstein," and a star with the Utah Jazz; and 42, for center Pervis Ellison, who led them to the 1986 National Championship just before turning 19, known as "Never Nervous Pervis," but whose injury-riddled pro career got him nicknamed "Out of Service Pervis."

Louisville honors 20 players with banners, in addition to those 4:

* From the 1940s: 13, center George Hauptfuhrer; 13, guard Kenny Reeves (not to be confused with the coach from The White Shadow); and 16, forward Jack Coleman.

* From the 1950s: Tyra; 9, guard Phil Rollins; 12, guard Jim Morgan; 16, forward Chuck Noble; 20, forward Bob Lochmueller; and 24, forward Don Goldstein.

* From the 1960s: Unseld; 13, center Bud Olsen; 14, guard Butch Beard; and 22, forward John Turner.

* From the 1972 Final Four team: 15, guard Jim Price.

* From the 1975 Final Four team: 10, guard Junior Bridgeman; and 20, guard Allen Murphy.

* From the 1980 National Champions: Griffith; 22, forward Rodney McCray; and 43, guard Derek Smith.

* From the 1982 and 1983 Final Four teams: McCray, Smith, and 4, guard Lancaster Gordon.

* From the 1986 National Champions: Ellison, and a pair of players from Camden, New Jersey, who would go on to play for the Los Angeles Lakers' 1987 and 1988 NBA Champions: 20, guard Milt Wagner; and 55, forward Billy Thompson.

* From the 1990s: 32, guard DeJuan Wheat.

Unseld is the only Louisville player in the Basketball Hall of Fame. The coaches of their National Champions are also in: Denny Crum, 1980 and 1986; and... Rick Pitino, once despised by Cardinal fans for having coached UK, but he revived their program as much as he revived the Wildcats', and took them to the 2013 title.

For a while, both teams were damn near impossible to root for, because both coaches, Pitino and Calipari, were raging egomaniacs, seemingly more concerned with their hair, their suits, and their own glory, rather than their teams', and not unwilling to treat the rules of ethics as things that didn't apply to them.

I used to think Washington Post columnist and ESPN Pardon the Interruption co-host Tony Kornheiser coined the phrase "preening schmo" to describe one of them, but I couldn't remember which. (Turned out, it was neither: It was Brian Billick, then the head coach of the Baltimore Ravens.)

This past June 15, the NCAA ended the Pitino-Calipari rivalry by charging Pitino with failure to monitor his program, as a result of a sex-for-pay scandal. The investigative process is not yet done: While St. Joseph's in 1961, both Villanova and Western Kentucky in 1971, UCLA in 1980 (when they lost to Louisville in the Final), Memphis in both 1985 and 2008, Michigan's "Fab Five" in 1992 and 1993, Massachusetts in 1996 (coached by Calipari), Minnesota in 1997 (losing to Kentucky in the Semifinal), and Ohio State in 1999 were stripped of their Final Four berths by the NCAA, Louisville could end up being the 1st NCAA basketball program to be stripped of a National Championship.

Kentucky and Louisville have actually not met each other on the court as many times as you might think, largely due to not being in the same league. They first met in 1913, but met only 3 times from 1922 to 1983, before being paired in the Elite Eight of the 1983 NCAA Tournament in Knoxville, Tennessee. (UL won.) They've met in the Big Dance twice more, Kentucky winning both times, in the 2012 Semifinal in New Orleans, and in the 2014 Sweet Sixteen in Indianapolis. UL won the most recent meeting, but UK won 8 of the previous 9, and holds a 34-16 overall edge.

In football, they first met in 1912, but it was a rare rivalry until 1994, when they began to meet for the Governor's Cup. Louisville won this year's game, to tie the series at 15-15.

Kentucky also has rivalries with Southeastern Conference teams Tennessee (fueled mainly by football), Mississippi State (by basketball), and Louisiana State (by both). They also have a cross-conference rivalry in both sports with Indiana. Louisville has rivalries with the universities of Cincinnati (their football teams play for a trophy known as the Keg of Nails) and Memphis.

(UPDATE: Through the 2019 football season, Kentucky leads Louisville 37-16 in basketball, and has taken the lead in football, 17-15. In their other major football rivalry, Kentucky trails Tennessee by a whopping 81-25-9; in their other major rivalry, Kentucky leads Indiana 32-25 in basketball, but trails them 18-17-1 in football.)

The schools have been much less successful in football. UK has only 1 outright SEC Championship, won in 1950, coached by Bear Bryant, and quarterbacked by Babe Parilli, later Joe Namath's backup on the Super Bowl Jets. They shared the SEC title with Georgia in 1976. And that's it. Their legends include Parilli, George Blanda, Bob Gain, Steve Meilinger, Lou Michaels, Art Still, Jeff Van Note, Dermontti Dawson and Tim Couch.

They have 2 retired numbers, but none of those are among them: 21, for 1950s running back Calvin Bird; and 22, for 1980s running back Mark Higgs. I can't figure out why: Neither led them to a major title, neither had a great pro career, and neither (as is sometimes the case with retired numbers) died while still an active player.

Louisville has been more successful in football than Kentucky, winning Conference titles in 1970, 1972 (both in the Missouri Valley Conference), 2000, 2001, 2004 (those 3 in Conference USA), 2006, 2011 and 2012 (those 3 in the Big East, before moving into the ACC). In 2006, they were awarded the Lambert Trophy, for "the best college football team in the East."

As for notable players, in 1954, the produced perhaps the greatest quarterback who has ever lived, Johnny Unitas. His Number 16 is the only one they've retired, and a statue of him stands outside Cardinal Stadium. (UPDATE: They have since added the Number 8 of Lamar Jackson, the 2017 Heisman Trophy winner.)

Other Cardinal football greats include Super Bowl-winning Jet John Neidert, Doug Buffone, Bruce Armstrong, Joe Jacoby, Mark Clayton, Frank Minnifield, David Akers and Deion Branch.

Stuff. The Cardinal Authentic Store is in the Yum! Center's main lobby. Adidas makes all of UL's clothing. There is a UK Team Shop at Rupp Arena, but the University website doesn't say where it is. UK's bookstore is at 334 Lexington Avenue, UL's at the Swain Student Activities Center at 2100 S. Floyd Street.

Last year, Tom Wallace and Cotton Nash collaborated on The University of Kentucky Basketball Encyclopedia. The DVD 100 Years of Kentucky Basketball was released in 2006. There don't seem to be corresponding books and DVDs about Louisville basketball. Also available are DVDs of the National Championship games of 1978 (UK), 1980 (UL), 1986 (UL), 1996 (UK), 1998 (UK), 2012 (UK) and 2013 (UL).

During the Game. Kentucky is in the South, so the best advice I can give you is to stick with the home fans, and don't antagonize the visitors. If you abide by this, your experience will be more "Southern hospitality" than "Southern sports rivalry."

Louisville's fight song is "Fight! U of L." Kentucky's is "On, On, U of K." Not particularly imaginative. Louisville's mascot is officially "The Cardinal Bird," but is nicknamed Louie, as in "Louie-ville." His face resembles the logo on their football helmets, rather than any other Cardinals known to sports, such as the St. Louis baseball team.

Kentucky's mascot is a bit more complicated. They have a live one, not a wildcat, but a bobcat, named Blue. He is kept at the Salato Wildlife Education Center, near the State capital of Frankfort, and is never taken to games. Not because he'd be too dangerous. In fact, it's the opposite: Despite being the mascot of many high schools, a few colleges, and, formerly, the Charlotte NBA team that has reclaimed the Hornets name, bobcats are naturally shy, and don't handle crowds well.

Instead, UK uses 2 costumed mascots. The 1st one, who debuted in 1976 (no doubt due to the success of the San Diego Chicken), is usually called simply "The Wildcat." At some point, people began calling him "Scratch." A few years later, a secondary mascot -- possibly meant to be the son of the preceding character -- was introduced, and he is officially named Scratch. He's said to be more child-friendly. He wears his hat backwards, drinks Mountain Dew, and "loves to party." In other words, he's stuck in the early 1990s.

The Wildcat, left, and Scratch.

After the Game. The downtowns of both Louisville and Lexington, and the campuses (campii?) of each school, should be safe. I've never heard of either city having much of a crime problem.

I can find no references to well-known postgame bars, or to places where New Yorkers gather in or around Louisville or Lexington.

If you visit Kentucky during the European soccer season, which is now around its midpoint, the main "football pub" in Louisville is Molly Malone's, at 933 Baxter Avenue, about 2 miles southeast of downtown. Bus 23 or Bus 40.

Sidelights. Before the Yum! Center, UL played basketball at the 18,865-seat Freedom Hall from 1956 to 2010. It was home to the Kentucky Colonels of the American Basketball Association from 1970 to 1976, winning the 1975 ABA Championship.

Freedom Hall hosted 6 NCAA Final Fours. Kentucky's Fiddlin' Five beat the University of Seattle, led by future Laker star Elgin Baylor, in 1958. The University of California, with Darrall Imhoff, beat West Virginia, with Jerry West, in 1959. Cincinnati, with Paul Hogue, beat Ohio State, with Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek, in 1962. Cincinnati was then dethroned by Loyola of Chicago in 1963. UCLA and Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) completed an undefeated season by defeating the University of Dayton in 1967. And Lew/Kareem completed his incredible college career at 88-2 as UCLA topped Purdue in 1969.

It was home to 2 brief minor-league hockey teams, the Louisville Rebels of the International Hockey League from 1957 to 1960, and the Louisville Panthers of the American Hockey League from 1999 to 2001. Louisville native Muhammad Ali, then still Cassius Clay, had his 1st professional fight there, winning a 6-round decision over Tunney Hunsaker on October 29, 1960.

The Beatles never played in Kentucky, but Elvis Presley sang at Freedom Hall on November 7, 1971; June 26, 1974; July 23, 1976; and May 21, 1977.

Despite its age and its replacement by the Yum! Center, there are no plans to close or demolish Freedom Hall. It remains part of the Kentucky Exposition Center, site of the State Fair. Also part of the complex is Cardinal Stadium. Known as Fairgrounds Stadium from 1956 to 1982, it is one of the largest and greatest stadiums in minor-league baseball history, seating up to 47,925 fans for Triple-A baseball or University of Louisville football.

The Louisville Colonels won International League Pennants there in 1960, 1961, and 1962. The Louisville Redbirds won American Association Pennants there in 1984, 1985 and 1995. Charlie Finley wanted to move the Kansas City Athletics there for the 1964 season, and had even signed a contract to do so, but the move was voted down by the other American League owners, voiding the contract, and the A's moved to Oakland 4 years later.

Louisville thus remained, and still does, without a Major League Baseball team since 1899. As it would rank dead last in metropolitan area population in MLB and MLS, next-to-last in the NFL, 4th-from-last in the NBA, and last among U.S. teams (5th-from-last counting Canadian ones) in the NHL, don't count on it getting a team in any major league anytime soon.

The Kentucky Exposition Center site also includes the Kentucky Kingdom theme park. 937 Phillips Lane, on the grounds of the Kentucky Exposition Center. Bus 18.

Before the construction of Cardinal Stadium, the Colonels played at Parkway Field from 1923 to 1956. Here, they won IL Pennants in 1925, 1926, 1930, 1939, 1940, 1944, 1945, 1946 and 1954. The stadium is gone, but the field still exists. 101 Eastern Parkway, on the UL campus. Bus 2.

This was the 1st professional home of Louisville native Harold "Pee Wee" Reese, later the shortstop and Captain of the Brooklyn Dodgers' "Boys of Summer." Other legends who played home games here include Yankee Hall-of-Famers Earle Combs (a Kentucky native) and Joe McCarthy (the future manager never reached the majors as a player), Billy Herman and Phil Niekro.

Previously, Louisville baseball teams had played at wooden stadiums named Eclipse Park. The 1st was at 2801 W. Broadway, at 28th Street, about a mile west of downtown. It opened in 1874, and the Louisville Eclipse of the American Association began playing there in 1882, changed their name to the Louisville Colonels in 1885, won the AA Pennant in 1890, and joined the National League in 1893. But the ballpark burned down after that season. A Taco Bell is now on the site.

The 2nd Eclipse Park opened in 1894, across the street, at 2800 W. Broadway. It burned down in 1899, and this is a major reason why the team was folded by the NL after the season, its assets bought by the Pittsburgh Pirates -- mainly because their greatest asset was the contract of their best player, Pittsburgh native Honus Wagner. This team also featured Fred Clarke, Pete Browning, Hugh Jennings, Rube Waddell, and William "Dummy" Hoy, a fantastic all-around player despite being deaf. An industrial park is on the site now. For both, Bus 23.

The best picture I could find of Eclipse Park II.

I couldn't find any of Eclipse Park I.

The 3rd and last Eclipse Park opened in 1902, for a minor-league team that assumed the Colonels name. They won IL Pennants there in 1909, 1916 and 1921. The Louisville Breckenridges, or Brecks for short, played football there from 1902 to 1922, including the 1st 3 seasons of the NFL (1920-22). And UL played football there from 1909 to 1922. Buildings of Simmons College are now on the site. 1000 S. 7th Street at Kentucky Street, about a mile south of downtown, in the formerly Irish neighborhood of Limerick. Bus 4.

Eclipse Park III

The current local nine is named the Louisville Bats. Obviously, named after the Louisville Slugger, but Hillerich & Bradsby, who bought the naming rights to the ballpark, and named it Louisville Slugger Field, wasn't willing to get the team named the Louisville Sluggers.

Currently a Cincinnati Reds farm club, after spending most of their history with the St. Louis Cardinals (hence "Redbirds," not named for the UL Cardinals), the Louisville baseball club has featured such legends as Honus Wagner, Willie McGee, Vince Coleman, Deion Sanders, Adam Dunn, Joey Votto and Aroldis Chapman.

Louisville Slugger Field opened in 2000, with 13,131 seats, making it one of the largest in the minor leagues. The Bats won the Pennant in 2001, the 19th and most recent Pennant won by a Louisville team. It is also home to Louisville City FC of the United Soccer League, the 2nd division of American soccer. 401 E. Main Street, downtown, just short of the Ohio River waterfront, at the interchange of Interstates 64 and 65.

UPDATE: In 2020, the 11,700-seat Lynn Family Stadium opened, and Louisville City's owners moved the team into it. In 2021, the owners also entered the National Women's Soccer League, introducing Racing Louisville FC, who also play at Lynn Family Stadium. This team is named partly for Kentucky's horse racing tradition, but also for several European teams, which started out as footracing clubs. 350 Adams Street, about 2 miles east of downtown. Bus 15 will get you to Market & Shelby, a 15-minute walk away.

Lynn Family Stadium, with the Louisville skyline in the background

But the most famous sports venue, and the most famous building, in Kentucky is Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby, known as "The Run for the Roses" and "The Most Exciting Two Minutes In Sports," since it opened in 1875. The current grandstand, with the famed twin spires, opened in 1895. Luxury suites were added in 2005, almost obscuring the spires, but the place is still loaded with tradition.

The front entrance. The statue is of Barbaro

2006 Kentucky Derby winner, whose career ended

and whose life was cut short by an injury in the Preakness.

The Derby, the 1st leg of U.S. thoroughbred racing's Triple Crown, is still run annually, shortly after 6:00 PM on the 1st Saturday in May. Other than the Triple Crown, the biggest day in U.S. racing is the Breeders' Cup, and Churchill Downs has hosted it more often than any other track, 8 times: 1988, 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2006, 2010 and 2011. It will host the Cup again in 2018.

There is a Kentucky Derby Museum on the grounds. 700 Central Avenue, about 4 miles south of downtown. Bus 4.

Almost right across from Churchill Downs is the current home of UL football, Papa John's Cardinal Stadium. Opened in 1998, the stadium is currently undergoing an expansion to 65,000 seats. Its field, which has always been artificial, is surrounded by, appropriately, a horseshoe shape, open at the north end. 2800 S. Floyd Street.

UPDATE: Because of racist remarks made by Papa John's founder and CEO John Schnatter, the Papa John's name was taken off, and it's now just Cardinal Stadium.

Before Rupp Arena opened in downtown Lexington, Kentucky played at the 10,000-seat Memorial Coliseum from 1950 to 1976. It was here that they fielded the teams that won the 1951 and 1958 National Championships. 201 Avenue of Champions, about a mile south of downtown. Bus 1.

Before that, from 1924 to 1950, the Wildcats played at Alumni Gymnasium, until 2,800 seats proved too small for Adolph Rupp's Fabulous Five. It is still open as a student recreation and intramural center. 120 Avenue of Champions, almost across the street from the Coliseum.

Directly across from the Coliseum is the site of what's generally regarded as the 1st college football game in the South, with Transylvania University of Lexington defeating Centre College of Danville, Kentucky, 13 and 3/4 to 0 in 1880. (No, I don't have information about how it was then possible to score three-quarters of a point.)

It was named Stoll Field, and a stadium for UK football was built on the site in 1916, renamed McLean Stadium in 1924, named for Price McLean, a Kentucky center who died from injuries sustained in a game against the University of Cincinnati the year before. Its 37,000 seats proved too small for modern college football, and the new stadium was built. The UK marching band now practices on the site.

UK plays football at Kroger Field, which was known as Commonwealth Stadium from its 1973 opening under earlier this year, when the Kroger supermarket chain bought the naming rights. Unusual among football fields, due to the angle of the Sun, the 61,000-seat bowl has a field pointing east-to-west. Ironically, the stadium in the State known for its grass has had artificial turf since 2015. 1540 University Drive, about 2 miles south of downtown. Bus 5 from downtown.

For both campuses, the closest MLB and NFL teams are in Cincinnati, 82 miles from Lexington and 102 from Louisville. The closest NBA team is the Indiana Pacers, 117 from Louisville and 188 from Lexington. (This would also be the distance for the NFL's Indianapolis Colts.)

The closest NHL team is different for each: The Nashville Predators and 177 from Louisville, and 214 from Lexington, while the Columbus Blue Jackets are 189 from Lexington and 206 from Louisville. For the moment, the Columbus Crew are the closest MLS team, 192 from Lexington and 213 from Louisville. The new Nashville franchise would complicate this even if the Crew don't end up moving to Austin.

Kentucky State University, in the capital of Frankfort, won the "National Championship of black college football" 3 straight seasons: 1933, 1934 and 1935. With integration allowing black students into UK and UL, KSU's enrollment seriously declined, and the school now competes in NCAA Division II.

In addition to his Freedom Hall shows, Elvis sang at the Rialto Theater (now the Palace Theatre, 625 S. 4th Street) on December 8, 1955; and the Jefferson County Armory (now the Louisville Gardens, also downtown at 525 W. Muhammad Ali Blvd.) on November 25, 1956.

The aforementioned Pee Wee Reese is buried at Resthaven Memorial Park, 4400 Bardstown Road, about 9 miles southeast of downtown Louisville. Bus 40. The aforementioned Earle Combs is buried at Richmond Cemetery, 606 E. Main Street in Richmond, about 30 miles southeast of Lexington, and not reachable by public transportation.

The Kentucky Horse Park is a working horse farm and an educational theme park that opened in 1978, "dedicated to man's relationship with the horse." Man o' War, the leading racehorse of the 1920s and a benchmark for them thereafter, is buried there. So is Cigar, the winner of the 1995 Breeders' Cup Classic who retired as the all-time money-winning horse. So is John Henry, the 1980s horse that Cigar replaced as the all-time money-winning horse. 4089 Iron Works Parkway, about 9 miles north of downtown Lexington. No public transportation.

The Kentucky Horse Park also has a statue of Secretariat, the 1973 Triple Crown winner, but he's buried at Claiborne Farm. 703 Winchester Road in Paris, 91 miles east of Louisville and 19 miles northeast of Lexington. No public transportation.

Whirlaway, the 1941 Triple Crown winner, and Citation, the 1948 Triple Crown winner, both ridden by Eddie Arcaro (the only jockey to win the Triple Crown twice), were born, trained, housed, died and buried at Calumet Farm. 3301 Versailles Road, about 6 miles west of downtown Lexington. No public transportation.

Keeneland Race Track hosted the 2015 Breeders' Cup, and annually hosts the Blue Grass Stakes. 4201 Versailles Road, in Lexington, about 6 miles west of downtown. Bus 21.

Of course, Louisville's, Kentucky's, and perhaps America's and even the world's greatest sports icon -- emphasis on "The Greatest" -- was not a horse. Rather, he floated like a butterfly, and stung like a bee. The Muhammad Ali Center opened in 2005 in the Champ's hometown, even though he hadn't lived there since 1960. (He lived, subsequently, in Las Vegas, Miami Beach, Houston; Cherry Hill, New Jersey; Berrien Springs, Michigan; and Phoenix.)

As he got older, Ali became philosophical about his life and legacy, saying, "There are better things to do in life than beating up people," and, "If you're the same man at 50 that you were at 30, then you've wasted 20 years of your life."

He and his wife Lonnie established the Center to teach, and to show how his life reflected, what they called his "six core principles of confidence, conviction, dedication, giving, respect, and spirituality." Indeed, his dedication changed him from an unknown young man, to one of the most exciting men alive, to (following his decision to refuse to accept being drafted) one of the most hated men alive, to (once people realized he had a point) one of the most admired men alive. 144 N. 6th Street. Admission is $12.

Ali is buried at Cave Hill Cemetery. So is Pete Browning, the Louisville native and star outfielder for the 1880s Louisville Eclipse, who first contacted John F. "Bud" Hillerich Jr., son of the founder of Hillerich & Bradsby, about making him a proper bat. As Browning was nicknamed the Louisville Slugger, so that became the name of any bat the company produced. Oddly, despite this role, and a .341 lifetime batting average, he is not in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Also buried there is Harland Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken. He never served in the military: "Kentucky Colonel" is a civilian award given by the Governor (in Sanders' case, Ruby Laffoon in 1935) for meritorious service to the State.

Also buried there is the city's founder, George Rogers Clark; his brother William's grandson, Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr., founder of Churchill Downs (but William is buried in St. Louis); Thruston Morton, who served Kentucky in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953 and the Senate from 1957 to 1968; and Harry Pulliam, the National League President who ruled that the 1908 New York Giants-Chicago Cubs "Fred Merkle Game" had to be replayed, giving the Cubs the Pennant, and was driven to suicide by the controversy. 701 Baxter Avenue, about 2 miles southeast of downtown. Bus 23 or Bus 40.

A block to the west of the Ali Center, at 727 W. Main Street, is the Kentucky Science Center. A block to the west of that, at 829 W. Main Street, is the Frazier History Museum -- not named for Ali's great rival, Smokin' Joe Frazier. As far as I know, neither the Ali Center nor the Frazier Museum is run by a man named George whose title is "Foreman."

Across the street from the Frazier Museum, at 800 W. Main Street, is the Louisville Slugger Museum, dedicated to the history of baseball bats, in particular the eponymous bat made by Hillerich & Bradsby. A mockup they call "The World's Largest Baseball Bat" is outside, although, at 120 feet, it is exactly as tall as the smokestack built outside the old Yankee Stadium, designed to look like a Babe Ruth model Louisville Slugger (with the company's participation).

In UK's seat of Lexington, the Mary Todd Lincoln House, where Abe's wife grew up, is at 578 W. Main Street, just a block north of Rupp Arena. Ashland, the estate of early Kentucky political figure Henry Clay, is at 120 Sycamore Road, about 2 miles southeast of downtown. Bus 11.

In 1853, Stephen Foster wrote "My Old Kentucky Home," which is recognized as the State Song, and is played before the running of the Kentucky Derby, allegedly making even the most hardened and cynical of people weep with sentiment. Somehow, the song became associated with Federal Hill, the farm and mansion owned by U.S. Senator John Rowan, which is now My Old Kentucky Home State Park. 501 E. Stephen Foster Avenue, in Bardstown, 42 miles southeast of Louisville, and 58 miles southwest of Lexington. No public transportation.

There are 2 Presidents traditionally associated with Kentucky. Although born in Virginia, Zachary Taylor grew up in Louisville, became the main hero of the Mexican-American War, and was elected President in 1848. The former General known as Old Rough and Ready tried to reconcile the two sides of the debate over slavery, but died in office on July 9, 1850.

His house, Springfield, is at 5608 Apache Road, 7 miles east of downtown Louisville. He is interred at Zachary Taylor National Cemetery, at 4701 Brownsboro Road, a 15-minute walk away. Both can be reached by Bus 15.

I said that Churchill Downs was the most famous building in Kentucky, but this is because the log cabin that serves as Abraham Lincoln's "birthplace" is a re-creation of the original. Actually, 7 Presidents were born in log cabins. Chronologically: Andrew Jackson, Taylor, Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and James Garfield. But not, as the 1840 campaign songs said, William Henry Harrison.

Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park consists of a recreated log cabin, designed to look like the one that Abe's father, Thomas Lincoln, built, and where Abe was born on February 12, 1809, and lived for his 1st 7 years. The cabin is indoors, inside what looks like a small Greek temple, making it look more like a tomb than a birthplace. 2995 Lincoln Farm Road, in Hodgenville, 58 miles south of downtown Louisville, and 88 miles southwest of downtown Lexington. No public transportation.

The tallest building in Kentucky known only by its downtown Louisville Address, 400 West Market. Built in 1993, it stands 549 feet tall. The most secure building in Kentucky is the United States Bullion Depository, a gold preserve built in 1937 at Fort Knox, named for Henry Knox, the 1st U.S. Secretary of War (the post now called Secretary of Defense).

The fort also contains a museum dedicated to World War II General George S. Patton. It's 31 miles southwest of downtown Louisville, and you can forget about visiting. The fort, and the Patton Museum, maybe, if you can get permission; the Bullion Depository, not a chance in hell. No public transportation.

Kentucky's role in fiction is extensive. Walter Tevis' 1963 novel The Man Who Fell to Earth is set in the State, and became a movie starring David Bowie. Madison County is the setting for David Morrell's 1972 novel First Blood, which introduced the character of John Rambo. But the most famous novel set in the State was Harriet Beecher Stowe's slap against slavery, Uncle Tom's Cabin. (Reminder: While Kentucky was a slave State, it did not secede from the Union.)

In the 1960s, 2 separate TV shows titled Daniel Boone followed the legendary Kentucky frontiersman. More recently, Justified was set in Harlan. Films set in the State include a few about Boone; Coal Miner's Daughter, the film version of country singer Loretta Lynn's memoir; The People vs. Larry Flynt, about the Kentucky native porn mogul; Elizabethtown, set in the town of the same title; various films about the late 19th Century "family feud" between the Hatfields and the McCoys; various film versions of Uncle Tom's Cabin; and, perhaps, most iconically, Goldfinger, the 1964 James Bond film set partly at a Kentucky horse farm and at Fort Knox. "Operation Grand Slam."

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Kentucky likes football. It likes baseball very much. It loves horses and horse racing. But it is absolutely nuts about basketball. The rivalry between the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville is as intense as any in North American sport.