This Turf Writer’s Preakness Selection Is Less Than a Lock

Let the Beyer beware: The day before Saturday’s 111th running of the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico, Washington Post racing columnist Andrew Beyer ventured out onto the thinnest limb in Baltimore. The next day, it broke with a resounding crack.

“Mortgage the house. Hock the family jewels. Crack open the kids’ piggy bank. Badger Land is a mortal lock to win the Preakness,” Beyer wrote in Friday’s Post.

Alas, instead of being a mortal lock, Badger Land proved merely mortal. He finished fourth in the field of seven, 10 1/2 lengths behind the winner, Snow Chief.

On Sunday, to his credit, Beyer swallowed the crow he had found at the end of that thin limb. In doing so, he recalled something former racing writer Toney Betts had once said.

“ ‘There is somebody who knows more than anybody, and that is everybody,’ ” Beyer quoted Betts as saying. “Certainly, in the Preakness, ‘everybody’ knew a lot more than the Washington Post’s turf expert.”

The eyes have it: After undergoing a recent eye examination, Cincinnati third baseman Buddy Bell was told he needed glasses. However, Bell decided not to wear them in games and hit .414 (12 for 29) in a 10-game stretch.

Gentlemen, stop your engines: On May 31, 1911, the day after the first Indianapolis 500, the Indianapolis News carried an editorial reading, in part: “Interesting and thrilling as was the race at the Speedway yesterday, it is to be hoped we have seen the last of these 500-Mile contests.

“The winning driver (Ray Harroun) said that the limit had been reached and that the strain of the participants was far too great. . . . So it seems we have gone too far in this form of sports.”

New Yawn, New Yawn: Phil Elderkin of the Christian Science Monitor came up with a novel twist on an old phrase the other day and at the same time took a nice swipe at the cleanliness of the Big Apple’s streets.

Wrote Elderkin: “You hear the name Darryl Strawberry and right away you figure it has to be invented, a piece of Hollywood hype that somehow found its way to New York, the city that never sweeps.”

At least one golf fan in Texas failed to find anything amusing about Jane Blalock’s comment after she had shot an 85 in the Chrysler-Plymouth tournament at Chatham, N.J.

Said Blalock of her round: “If I could have found an outhouse, I would have locked myself in.”

The day before at the Colonial National Invitation tournament in Fort Worth, that was precisely one fan’s predicament. The unfortunate spectator got locked into one of the portable toilets and had to be removed with the use of a sledgehammer.

Quotebook

Frank Luksa of the Dallas Times Herald on his dislike of things modern: “Witnessing a domed stadium event is like being trapped in a test tube.”