Scorecard

HORSE POWER
Thoroughbred racing makes a late-century stretch run

Anyone seeking signs of life in horse racing needs look no further
than this Saturday's Belmont Stakes. Sports fans everywhere, it
seems, want to see a Triple Crown winner. Charismatic, the former
claimer and 31-1 long-shot winner of the Kentucky Derby, will be
the 26th horse--and the third in three years--to journey to New
York with a shot at immortality, and even fans who think racing
lacks charisma are asking, "Can he do it?"

Back when swing and cigars were in style, horse racing wasn't
just the sport of kings. It was the king of sports. Then came
the late 1950s, when racing's leaders made a mistake they're
still paying for. Offered the chance to put their product on
television every week, as the NFL and major league baseball were
doing, the thoroughbred industry's clubby, insular brain trust
said no. If racing were on television, they reasoned, nobody
would come to the track. The consequences of that decision are
visible today in the sport's awful TV ratings and in attendance
figures that have been tumbling for three decades. Competing
forms of legal gambling also sped racing's fall into obscurity,
and by the early '90s it was stuck somewhere between billiards
and boxing on the sports barometer.

Things aren't much better now, but at least racing's kingpins
have a plan. In an unprecedented display of unity--and
desperation--track owners and other prominent horsemen formed
the National Thoroughbred Racing Association last year to boost
racing's profile, largely through aggressive advertising and
expanded TV coverage. Their Go-Baby-Go ad campaign may be
gathering steam: In New York, for instance, attendance was up in
'98 for the first time in 17 years. With swing and stogies
trendy again, who's to say horse racing won't be the third jewel
in a Triple Crown of comebacks?

Fans who trek to the track might applaud what they find. In what
other game can you make a dizzying array of legal bets and enjoy
a thrilling two minutes of action 10 times a day? In the era of
the $50 box seat, a day at the races is a bargain, too. For less
than it costs to buy two beers and a hot dog at Yankee Stadium, a
family of four can see a wall of horses turning for home near the
Pacific surf at Del Mar or enjoy the grubbier charms of Pimlico,
shoehorned into a neighborhood overlooking downtown Baltimore.
Better yet, you could spend this Saturday with 80,000 or so other
railbirds at Belmont, the Taj Mahal of American racing, and maybe
watch history unfold before your eyes. --Mark Beech

Baseball
SINGLE-HANDED SMASH

After Ada (Ohio) High senior centerfielder Nate Ulrey broke his
right arm crashing into the fence early this season, he knew he
could still play the outfield. "I'd broken my wrist when I was a
freshman," he says, "and learned back then how to catch a ball
with my left hand, take off my glove and throw the ball in."

What bugged him as he shagged flies with his right arm in a cast
was that he wasn't getting his cuts. "Hitting, that's my thing,"
says Nate, who had two homers and 13 RBIs in three games before
the injury. So he tried swinging with his good arm during
practice one day. His teammates laughed--until they saw the
results. "I hit the first pitch to deep right center," Nate says.
"After that, none of the guys said much." In his first game as a
one-armed hitter he bunted in a run and doubled down the first
base line against Delphos Jefferson High. "Their team had been
laughing too, but they shut up after I hit the double," he says.

Nate batted .404 for the season with seven doubles and a triple
for the 6-13 Bulldogs. He came within inches of clouting a
one-handed homer, too. "I hit a ball off the top of the 340 sign
in left center," says the only one-armed swinger on the
All-Northwest Conference team. "That one felt solid."

Hot Tickets
YOU'VE GOT MAIL--AND SEATS

Those pesky day traders aren't the only ones benefiting from
on-line technology. Dallas Stars fans have been snapping up
tickets to their team's NHL playoff games through E-Deals, a free
service the Stars introduced in February. The team sends out
targeted E-mail to fans who can elect electronically to receive
stats, injury reports, info on tickets and merchandise, and now
hot seats at the last minute.

After the league and the Oilers returned 300 tickets for Game 1
of the Stars' opening-round playoff series against Edmonton, says
Dallas executive Brian Byrnes, "we decided to give E-Deals a
shot." Subscribers who had requested E-mails about tickets were
sent a message offering the seats at a discount. "In 20 minutes,
300 fans who never thought they'd get to attend the playoffs had
tickets to the game," says Byrnes, who repeated the procedure to
distribute hundreds more tickets in the days before Game 2. "In
the near future this will eliminate the annoying sight of empty
seats at major sporting events."

The Texas Rangers launched a similar service, Inside Pitch, two
months ago and have signed up 5,200 subscribers. The Rangers are
considering asking next year's season-ticket holders to inform
the club if they won't be showing up for a game. Their tickets
could then be offered to Inside Pitch subscribers on game day.

Dallas-based ROI Interactive, the company behind E-Deals and
Inside Pitch, has provided software for similar systems to the
NBA's Hawks and Mavericks and has deals pending with four NHL
teams. "With this technology everyone wins," says ROI president
John Palms Jr. Now if only he'd do something about parking.

Media
FLEET STREET FRENZY

HUNBELIEVABLE read one. SUPER SUBS SINK KRAUTS roared another.
Faded accounts of the World War I Battle of Jutland? No, those
are English tabloid headlines celebrating Manchester United's
2-1 victory over Bayern Munich for the Champion's League title.
Man U, winner of England's Premier League and F.A. Cup, trailed
1-0 at the end of 90 minutes but stole the May 26 game during 3
1/2 minutes of stoppage time on goals by late replacements Teddy
Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. That made manager Alex
Ferguson's lads the first English team to achieve soccer's
triple--a league title, a national cup and the world's most
prized club trophy.

Fleet Streeters reacted with typical reserve. The Daily Mail
proclaimed the evening THE MOST DRAMATIC NIGHT EVER FOR BRITISH
FOOTBALL. The Sun called the triumph THE BEST OF ALL TIME! The
Mirror deemed the finale THE GREATEST TWO MINUTES IN THE HISTORY
OF SPORT. On the continent, Munich's Suddeutsche Zeitung lamented
THE MOTHER OF ALL DEFEATS.

Lest there be any doubt about the importance of Man U's feat,
consider the Mirror headline ARISE, SIR ALEX. That's an allusion
to the reward Ferguson might get: a knighthood.

NHL Playoffs
DIRTY POOL PARTY

Dale Hunter is a fair enough hockey player--he had 114 points in
167 postseason games coming into this year's playoffs--but the
Avalanche center is best known for racking up the most playoff
penalty minutes in NHL history. Hunter, 38, is the sneaky sort of
s.o.b. who's adept at what players in the league call dirty pool,
and that's why Colorado picked him up in a March 23 trade with
Washington.

Through the Avalanche's 7-5 Game 5 win over Dallas in the Western
Conference finals on Sunday, Hunter had scored just one goal in
the '99 playoffs. Yet he had played a pivotal role, for his
thuggery helped Colorado survive its second-round series against
Detroit. Near the end of the Avalanche's 4-0 loss in Game 2 of
that series, Hunter plowed into Red Wings goalie Bill Ranford,
knocking him off his skates. The play seemed a mere sideshow as
Detroit took a 2-0 series lead, but that hit incensed the Wings
and rattled Ranford, who never regained his composure. Colorado
shelled him for eight goals in the next two games--he was pulled
early in both--and won four in a row.

NHL players get so jacked at the thought of soothing their
swollen fingers on the cool silver of the Stanley Cup that
they'll do almost anything for the chance. Just ask Stars
rightwinger Pat Verbeek, who dealt a fiendish two-handed slash
to the back of Blues center Pierre Turgeon's left knee during a
second-round playoff game. Ask the Avalanche's usually
mild-mannered Peter Forsberg why he rammed Red Wing Brendan
Shanahan's face into the glass. The lowdown on the Stanley Cup
playoffs is that they're about as low down as it gets.

Through Sunday there had been only two brawls in these playoffs.
Fighting always drops in the postseason, when ice time is so
precious that the league's goons get little of it. That doesn't
mean virtue reigns, however. When Sabres goalie Dominik Hasek
returned to the Eastern Conference finals last week after missing
two games with a groin pull, the Maple Leafs went after him like
wolves on a wounded elk (page 78). They shoved and bumped the
Dominator, hoping to aggravate the injury and knock him out of
the game.

Of course Hasek was simply getting the treatment all goalies
receive in the postseason. Ask a forward to explain his team's
playoff strategy and he'll say, "We have to create traffic around
the net." Translation: We're going to slam into the goalie, slash
him, poke him, gouge him and elbow him.

Colorado's siccing Hunter on Ranford was part of such a plan. Yet
for all Hunter's success in goalie goading, his claim to infamy
will always be his patented "face-washing." In this maneuver,
Hunter drives an opponent to the ice, leaps on top of him and
vigorously rubs the victim's mug with his sweat-soaked glove. His
epic facial of Detroit's Steve Yzerman during last year's Red
Wings-Capitals Cup finals was perhaps his most memorable. After
that game, in which Hunter was not penalized, he explained, "I
was just playing hockey." That's right--playoff hockey. --Kostya
Kennedy

Adcock's Last Mile
JOLTED JOE

Joe Adcock's family and friends couldn't believe their bad luck.
After Adcock, the former Milwaukee Braves star, died last month
at 71, the hearse carrying his coffin to Holly Springs Cemetery
in Martin, La., had a flat tire. Adcock's coffin was loaded into
the back of a pickup truck for the last mile of the procession.

"After the service we were talking to Mary Ann Brown, Joe's
sister, about how we were sorry about what happened with the
hearse," says Bill Walters, one of four of Adcock's former LSU
basketball teammates who were among the mourners. "She said,
'You're not going to believe this, but before he got real ill,
Joe said that when he passed along, he'd just as soon we put him
in a pickup truck and take him to the cemetery.'"

COLOR ILLUSTRATION: ILLUSTRATION BY FRED HARPER

COLOR PHOTO: GREGORY C. JONES Sporting Cast An early-season crash into the outfield fence broke Ulrey's arm but not his spirit.

COLOR PHOTO: VINCENT LAFORET/ALLSPORT SCOTT WILLIAMSON

COLOR PHOTO: CHUCK SOLOMON BYUNG-HYUN KIM

COLOR PHOTO

FOUR COLOR ILLUSTRATIONS: ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARK ZINGARELLI

COLOR PHOTO: BOB ROSATO (SPREWELL)

THREE COLOR PHOTOS: JOHN W. MCDONOUGH (RIDER, GRANT, DUNCAN)

COLOR PHOTO: MANNY MILLAN (EWING)

COLOR PHOTO: JOHN BIEVER (ROBINSON)

TWO COLOR PHOTOS: AL TIELEMANS (SMITS, DAVIS)

Young Gun...
...Byung Gun

Meet baseball's flame-throwingest rookie relievers: the Reds'
Scott Williamson, 23, and the Diamondbacks' Byung-Hyun Kim, who
at 20 is the majors' youngest player. Last week Williamson struck
out all six Dodgers he faced, to tie a National League record and
put an exclamation point on a month in which he fanned 24 in
18 1/3 innings and had an ERA of 0.00. Though he was no phenom in
college, where a 4.31 ERA was his best showing in three years at
Tulane and Oklahoma State, Williamson became a star in less than
two seasons in the minors. This year he was a nonroster invitee
to Cincinnati's spring training camp, where his 97- and 98-mph
heaters had scouts shaking their radar guns in disbelief.

"I'm throwing harder now," says Williamson, a converted starter
who lives in Friendswood, Texas, a couple of minutes drive from
Nolan Ryan's ranch. "When you're a closer, you can just go out
there and let it go." Yet his secret is that he's been throwing
easier. Reds pitching coach Don Gullett, one of the guys with
whom Williamson now shares the league record of six straight
strikeouts, persuaded him to take a little off his fastball for
better control. He did--and hitters still couldn't catch up to it.
To make matters worse for Reds opponents, Williamson has a secret
weapon, a split-fingered fastball he might use only once in an
outing. He learned the pitch from the dad of a college teammate,
a fellow by the name of Bruce Sutter.

Kim, a submariner from South Korea who zipped through Arizona's
minor league chain in two months, has a trick pitch of his own.
It's a riser--a mutant slider that seems to go up as it reaches
the batter. "My dream is to strike out Sammy, McGwire, Mo Vaughn
and Mike Piazza," Kim said in the bullpen at Shea Stadium after
being called up from Tucson last week. A day later, in his big
league debut, he whiffed Piazza to earn the save in an 8-7 win
over the Mets.

Though he's three years younger than the Reds' rookie, Kim's
feats are already Williamsonic. While pitching for South Korea's
national team last June, Kim fanned 15 in 6 2/3 innings against
the U.S. Olympic team. He struck out 12, including eight in a
row, in an Asian Games outing against China in December. "He
comes at you from tough angles and throws strikes," a frustrated
Piazza said last Saturday.

"He threw Piazza a couple of Nintendo sliders," said Diamondbacks
catcher Damian Miller after Kim's debut, "the ones you see in the
video games with the huge bend on them."

Neither Williamson nor Kim has become his team's official closer
yet, but both appear to have the right stuff. The folks back in
Friendswood are mighty proud of their guy, and so are the folks
in Kim's hometown, Kwangsan-ku Songjung-dong.

Wish List

--That CART and the IRL bury the hatchet before NASCAR buries
them both.

--That Heather Locklear dug Greg Maddux's homer on Sunday.

--That Charismatic wins.

Go Figure

81
Age of Gerry Bloch, the oldest climber to scale Yosemite's El
Capitan.

11
Years since Mark McGwire hit a triple.

27
Years after Jim Chones left Marquette for the ABA before he
graduated with a degree in philosophy.

2
Underclassmen from Cal State-Northridge, the nation's
157th-ranked college basketball team, who declared themselves
eligible for the NBA draft.

40,000
Pounds of sand used to build a giant Castle of the Kings in
downtown Sacramento.

1
Rank of biathlon among fan favorites this winter on the Eurosport
TV network.

8
Specialists consulted about Reds lefty Denny Neagle's injured
shoulder last week.

8
Sweeps suffered by L.A.-area teams in recent playoffs--two each by
the Dodgers, Lakers and Mighty Ducks and one each by the Clippers
and Kings.

3
Months that skating champ Tara Lipinski will spend playing a
premed student on The Young and the Restless.

TV'S KNICKS-HICKS FIX

This year's NBA Finals may be no picnic for NBC. Unless the
Knicks eliminate the Pacers--"the Hicks," in New York tabloid
headlines--the Finals could feature the two lowest-ranked
television markets since Syracuse beat Fort Wayne in 1954. If
that happens, the network may have to get creative in plugging
the series' best matchups.

KNICKS
BLAZERS
The nation's top TV market vs. No. 23--the best NBC can hope for.
TV households: 7.8 million
Matchup: Latrell Sprewell against Isaiah Rider
TV promo: It's the Choker vs. the Toker!

KNICKS
SPURS
No. 1 vs. No. 37 could mean two million fewer viewers than
Portland-N.Y. if the Finals go 7.
TV households: 7.5 million
Matchup: Patrick Ewing-David Robinson
TV promo: Come see what's washed up at center!

PACERS
BLAZERS
The 25th-biggest market vs. No. 23 won't do the peacock proud.
TV households: 1.95 million
Matchup: Antonio (left) and Dale Davis against Brian Grant
TV promo: Dynamic Duo vs. the Dynamic 'Do!

PACERS
SPURS
Forget the Alamo--here's a ratings massacre even the WB network
wouldn't touch.
TV households: 1.6 million
Matchup: Rik Smits vs. Tim Duncan
TV promo: Dunkin' Dutchman meets Dunkin' Duncan the Demon Deacon!

This Week's Sign That the Apocalypse Is Upon Us

High jumper Amy Acuff and other track stars will pose nude for a
2000 calendar to raise money for disadvantaged children.

They Said It

BILL WALTON
NBC basketball analyst and UCLA alumnus, on Bruins sophomore
Baron Davis's entering the NBA draft: "He's walking away from
the most important asset he'll ever have: the ability to train
his mind at UCLA. If it was USC or Notre Dame, I could
understand."