|
THE 79th
US baseball All-Star Games on Wednesday (Tuesday in the
US) was just a fitting tribute to the soon-to-be torn
down Yankee Stadium.
It was
the longest All-Star Game to be seen in the history,
which lasted five hours and 15 innings with all 63
players giving their all-out performance. The American
League won, 4-3, over the National League, but the
sellout crowd of 55,632 saw a classic game inside the
“House That [Babe] Ruth Built.”
I
haven’t seen the game on television because several
meetings almost the whole day ate my time. But I caught
up with the news late in the evening and learned that
play ended the next day at 1 in the morning.
Tearing
down the Yankee Stadium was such a big thing for the
fans that they even had a snail-paced parade down 6th
Avenue, which lasted for several hours. Several pre-game
presentations made the game move deeper into the
evening. The field was teeming with stars as 49 former
greats were presented together with 64 of today’s
greats. Just before the games started, four former
Yankee Hall of Famers threw out the ceremonial first
pitches to four current Yankee players. But the party
won’t be completed without the popular Yankee owner
George Steinbrenner, who went out of the left field with
aviator sunglasses onboard a golf cart to ferry the
balls to the pitchers.
I’m no
die-hard fan of baseball, but I watched and even
finished a game on television on some nights. I would
surely look forward to watching that game even on a
replay one day. Not just to watch the whole game, but
also to watch the last game ever played at Yankee
Stadium.
THIS
Sunday marks another significant day in horseracing as
the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO)
sponsors one of the longest-running sponsorship races,
the PCSO Special Maiden Race, which is better known
before as the Sweepstakes Race.
There
are six runners vying for the total prize of P450,000
the PCSO is offering in the 1,500-meter race. The winner
receives the top prize of P300,000, while the second and
third placers receive P100,000 and P50,000,
respectively.
The PCSO
has been one of the ardent supporters of the local
hoseracing industry, and that Philippine Racing
Commission (Philracom) chief Jose Ferdinand Rojas II can
be credited for the resurgence of those regular PCSO
Special Maiden Races aside from the two major racing
events in the land today—the First Gentleman Silver Cup
and the blue-ribbon event, which is the Persidential
Gold Cup. It was Chairman Rojas who pursued the holding
of those regular maiden races, which give a lot of
incentives to budding local horses.
THE
major races for next month are already lined up by the
Philracom in its new announcements.
There
will be two gemstone races—the Philracom Peridot I,
which serves as the fourth leg of the Imported/Local
Challenge Series, and the Philracom Peridot II, which is
the fifth leg of the same series—and the keenly awaited
Philracom Lakambini Stakes.
The
Peridot I is scheduled on August 24, together with the
holding of the Lakambini Stakes, and will be held at the
San Lazaro Leisure Park. On the other hand, the Peridot
II is on August 31 and will be held at the Santa Ana
Park.
Both the
Peridot Stakes (taken from one of the very old gemstones
whose color is vivid green)—Peridot I will be disputed
over 1,750 meters while the Peridot II will be over
1,600 meters—will have the same total prizes of P500,000
each, with the winner receiving the top prize of
P300,000. The runner-up picks up P112,500, while the
third and fourth placers receive P62,500 and P25,000,
respectively.
For
those who would want to know, Peridot is the gemstone of
the summer month of August. Here’s a piece of an article
I’ve picked up on the matter: It is so ancient that it
can be found in Egyptian jewelry from the early second
millennium B.C. The stones used at that time came from a
deposit on a small volcanic island in the Red Sea, some
45 miles off the Egyptian coast at Aswan, which was not
rediscovered until about 1900 and has, meanwhile, been
exhausted for quite some time. The ancient Romans, too,
were fond of this gemstone and esteemed its radiant
green shine, which does not change even in artificial
light. That’s why it was called the “emerald of the
evening.” Peridot is also found in Europe in medieval
churches, where it adorns many a treasure, example is
one of the shrines in Cologne Cathedral. During the
baroque period, the rich green gemstone once again
enjoyed a brief heyday, and then it somehow faded into
oblivion. A rich deposit of
Peridot was recently found in the Kashmir region whose
supply could last up to one millennium.”
Going
back to the Lakambini Stakes, open to all three-year-old
fillies (yes, even for those who have participated in
the ongoing Triple Crown Championship Series), has a
whopping total of P1.2 million at stake. This is another
1,750-meter race where the winner receives the top prize
of P750,000, while the runner-up picks up P270,000,
third P150,000 and fourth P60,000.
I CAN’T
help but sympathize with those poor softball Little
Leaguers who hogged the limelight once again.
They participated and won in the recent Asia-Pacific
qualifier for the World Series. But their participation
could have hit another snag after their participation
was questioned when the ones who fielded them there
haven’t paid their entry fees.
Our
sports officials must look deeper into this mess because
the poor boys could have been used by enterprising
individuals using sports as a means to promote their
shady dealings. Reports by our sportwriter here have it
that some unwarranted persons were even in the
three-team delegation that went to China. |
