It Turns Out That Maybe Mom Knew Best

Mad at the postal service? Well, sometimes letters go astray for a good reason, as this tale from England suggests.

In 1950, Roy Sutcliffe, then 16, was given a tryout by Manchester United, one of soccer’s wealthiest and most illustrious clubs. He thought he did well but never heard from the team again.

Until now.

Recently, Sutcliffe unearthed a letter posted in 1950 that invited him back for a second trial. It appears his mother, who died not long ago, had forgotten to give it to him.

“My mum must have just put it in a drawer or something,” said Sutcliffe, 63, who became an engineer instead of a soccer pro. “I was a little upset at first.”

But not for long.

“If I’d succeeded in that trial,” he said. “I might have been in the first team in 1958 and been killed in the Munich air disaster.”

On Feb. 6, 1958, 23 Manchester United players, coaches, officials and journalists were killed in a plane crash in Germany, while returning from a European Cup game.

*

Trivia time: It has been almost 20 years--1978--since Army’s last postseason basketball appearance. Who coached the Black Knights then?

*

Once beaten, twice shy: Eddie Arcaro, who died last week at 81, is identified as the first jockey to switch hands with the whip.

Angel Cordero, who as a youth in Puerto Rico watched films of Arcaro’s races and tried to copy his style, still does not know quite how he did it.

“I told my friends I saw a guy ride with two whips,” Cordero told Newsday’s Steve Jacobson. “They tell me that’s not allowed. I looked at the films again and again, and I can’t even blink so fast. He switched too quick for me to believe.”

*

A step up: Sammy Renick, a rival jockey but close friend of Arcaro, once gave a very young Cordero a pair of Arcaro’s goggles.

“I wore them every day for two years,” Cordero told Jacobson. “We had an old saddle at my house [that] I used to put on the cement steps. I put on the goggles, got on those steps, put the races on the radio and beat the cement with branches.”

And went on to ride solid favorites from then on.

*

No looking back: It was 20 years ago today that the Chicago Bears defeated the Minnesota Vikings, 10-7, in an NFL game whose result was far less important than how it was achieved.

The Bears’ Walter Payton ran for 275 yards in 40 carries to break O.J. Simpson’s single-game rushing record by two yards.

Said Payton, who gained 144 yards in the first half and 131 in the second: “The holes were there and I just ran.”

*

Trivia answer: Mike Krzyzewski, a 1969 West Point graduate.

*

And finally: Denying a report that he would be buying the Chicago Bears in concert with Walter Payton and Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan had this to say:

“I’ve always said I would never own a team and I hold true to that because I can’t pay all that money to these athletes.”