by Steve Wulf
Now it’s testing time. Take a spoonful of soil from the holes the aerator made—down at least 2 inches—from various areas of your lot. Mix them together before sending it off to the local agricultural cooperative in your county. Universities also often have a testing laboratory. For a minimal fee, they test the soil to see if you need lime or other treatments to regulate the pH. The lab can tell you what soil type you have, what grass species and fertilizer to use. They’ll tell you what mineral elements are missing, if you need nitrogen, potash, or phosphorus.
You’ll need to use different seeds depending on where you live. If you live in the transition zone—that’s the upper half of the country, from about St. Louis up—you’ll need to use cool-season grasses, like fescues, perennial ryegrass, and Kentucky bluegrass. If you live in the lower portion of the country, Bermuda grass works well.
Next, prepare the seedbed. You’ll need to rent a Verticut machine, which is used to cut grooves into the ground that the seeds will drop into. Again, take it through your land more than once. It’s best to take it through two ways, creating a crosshatch.
After you decide on what type of seed you’re going to use, measure out your field and use the amount of seed at the recommended rate for square footage. It will be on the bag of seed. You’ll measure out the seed and spread it out. You can do this by hand or by using a seed spreader. Fertilizer goes down next. You only need a small amount. Again, read the directions so you use the proper amount.
Water your land. It should be moist but not saturated. That might mean watering one to three times a day, keeping the seed moist so it will germinate. In the northern part of the country, September, October, November is Mother Nature’s time to seed a field. In the South, it would be in the spring.
When your lawn has grown, mow it no lower than an inch and a half. With the Bermuda grass, you can mow it down to an inch.
Legendary grounds keeper George Toma tends the turf during the Chicago Bears’ 20-12 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1988 NFC divisional playoff game at Soldier Field.
Now, if you want to experiment a little and see what the grass will look like, Toma says you can try pregermination. Here’s something even kids can do:
Take an old nylon stocking, cut the heel off, and tie a knot at one end.
Put a half pound of seed in the stocking.
Place the stocking with the seeds in a bucket of water— we do this for the Super Bowl, where we have 10 to 20 55-gallon barrels.
If you put the seed in the water at 8 A.M., at 5 or 6 P.M. replace the water. (You put it in the stocking so the seeds don’t float out when you dump the old water out.) This gets the jump on the germination.
Do this for three days. By then, the seeds should be popping.
THE CRADLE
THE ESSENCE OF LACROSSE
The cradle is the essential action of lacrosse. Without a good one, you can’t run down the field with the ball without losing it. Here are a few tips on proper cradling:
Put your dominant hand right under the throat of the head of the stick. This will be the hand you are using to control the stick. Place your bottom hand loosely at the very bottom of the stick over the butt end. Remember, you will be controlling the stick entirely with your top hand; the bottom hand is only for stability.
Roll your top wrist to its full extension while using your bottom hand loosely to stabilize the stick, making a loose C shape with the thumb and fingers of your bottom hand. When cradling, you should feel the weight of the ball in the stick.
Cradle back and forth about a foot in front of your face. Keep your stick at a 45-to 60-degree angle to the ground and directly in front of your face.
Practice picking up ground balls. To do this, throw a few balls on the ground, get your elbows locked, and scoop the ball up. Be sure to bend your knees and get your stick as parallel to the ground as you can in order to ensure the retrieval of the ball. Don’t stop when the ball is in your stick, but go through it and drop your bottom hand down in order to keep the ball in your stick.
If lacrosse itself had a cradle, it would be Maryland. It’s 19th in population of the 50 states and 42nd in area, but it’s generally acknowledged as the sport’s most fertile ground. “The beauty of it is that it was kind of accidental,” says Joe Finn, the archivist for US Lacrosse. “It just happened.”
Back in 1878, members of the Baltimore Athletic Club attended a lacrosse match in Newport, Rhode Island. They were so enthralled by the sport, then mostly played in Canada, that they brought equipment home with them and started playing games. By 1882, the BAC had moved its practice facility close to Johns Hopkins University, and students at the school quickly fell in love with the sport. In 1908, the U.S. Naval Academy, in Annapolis, took up lacrosse, and two years later the University of Maryland joined in the fun.
Johns Hopkins has won nine Division I national championships, and Maryland two. Salisbury University, also in Maryland, has won eight Division III titles. Two more Maryland colleges, Loyola and Towson, have fielded strong teams. The National Lacrosse Hall of Fame is in Baltimore. (Its members outnumber those of the Baseball Hall of Fame, 343–286.)
So how come the state sport of Maryland is jousting?
THE BIGGER THEY COME …
A SPORTS PROMOTION GONE WRONG
Lacrosse in Maryland provides the backdrop for one of history’s most ill-fated sports promotions. Back in the 1970s, the National Lacrosse League was trying to get people interested in box (indoor) lacrosse, and Andy Dolich was the VP of business operations for the Maryland Arrows. “Our marketing slogan was ‘You gotta be mean to play box lacrosse,’ and our mascot was a cartoon character called Crunch Crosscheck,” says Dolich, who went on to serve as an executive with the Oakland A’s, the Memphis Grizzlies, and the San Francisco 49ers. “That should give you some idea of our level of sophistication.”
Anyway, I hatched a scheme that we were going to call Guaranteed Shutout Night. We would give free tickets to the next home game if our opponents scored a goal.
Even though the goal is 4 feet high and 4.9 feet wide, a shutout is no easy feat. Teams usually score in double figures. But I had this idea:
If I could find a large human being, put him in uniform with the goalie pads, and jam him in the goal, all he had to do would be to stand there and—voilà—we would shut out the other team. So I found an over-the-hill wrestler named Man Mountain Mike, who was 6-foot-5 and 600 pounds. We suited him up and brought him to practice to see how this would work before we went public.
After the first few practice shots bounced off the Mountain, the Arrows decided to turn up the heat.
Our star player, Paul Suggate, was one of the NLL’s leading scorers and had a laser shot, which he could pinpoint with surgical precision. Suggate comes in and launches a missile right at the family jewels, and Mountain goes down in a landslide. It seems he didn’t put on a cup. As he was carted off on a stretcher, my dreams of Guaranteed Shutout Night went out with him.
Man Mountain Mike fills the cover of Wrestling magazine, 1972.
MIGHTIEST FIGHT (NONBOXING)
THE DAY SANTA CLAUS DROPPED HIS GLOVES
Christmas Eve 2005. Peace on earth, goodwill toward men. Except at the Nassau Coliseum, where a New York Islanders promotion offering free tickets to anyone dressed as Santa Claus went awry. Some 500 Santas showed up for the game against the Philadelphia Flyers, more than twice the number expected, and all of them were invited to walk across the ice between the first and second periods.
The trouble started when a few of the Santas ripped off their red jackets to reveal—gasp!—New York Rangers jerseys. To put it mildly, the fans of the Islanders and the fans of the Rangers are like the Jets and the Sharks. The dis was too much for the Islander Santas, who swarmed the Ranger Santas, and a brawl ensued. One junior Kringle was seen trying to pull a Pavel Bure Rangers sweater over the head of one of the subversives. It took a full nine minutes for order to be restored, as the public-address announcer k
ept saying, “All Santas will be escorted from the building.” Fortunately, nobody was hurt.
The Islanders won the game, 4–2, on two goals by Arron Asham. Told about the fight, Asham said, “Really? That’s awesome. I hope they have that on tape.” You can find it on YouTube, under “Santafight.”
The only doubleheader in NHL history was held on March 3, 1968, at Madison Square Garden (Flyers-Seals, Rangers-Blackhawks) because the roof at Philadelphia’s Spectrum had blown off in a snowstorm.
FORE SCORE
THE BEST PRESIDENTIAL GOLFER MIGHT SURPRISE YOU
Among all American presidents, who was the best golfer? Before you answer, here’s a warning: It’s a trick question.
The answer isn’t Dwight David Eisenhower (number 34). Even though Ike played more golf than any of his peers, he never scored better than the low 90s. It isn’t Gerald Ford (number 38), who was a better athlete than he was a hacker. “I know I’m getting better,” he once said, “because I’m hitting fewer spectators.” Nor was it Bill Clinton (number 42), whose skills were overshadowed by his billigan ethics.
Ulysses Grant (number 18) was the first president to play golf and thus the first to discover the 19th hole. At 330 pounds, William H. Taft (number 27) was the biggest president to play golf, and though he helped popularize the game, critics accused him of spending too much time on the links. George W. Bush (number 43) was once a 15 handicap, but he dropped the game shortly after he was interviewed on the first tee at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland. After telling the interviewer, “I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killings,” Bush blurted out, “Now watch this drive!”
Gene Littler won the 1961 U.S. Open with a putter he had discovered at a miniature golf course.
We’ve kept you in suspense long enough. The best golfer among our chief executives was none other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt (number 32). FDR fell in love with golf as a teenager, and by the time he left Harvard to attend Columbia Law School, he was scoring consistently in the low 80s. According to Don Van Natta Jr., in his book First Off the Tee, Roosevelt made sure to squeeze in a couple of rounds at St. Andrews during his honeymoon in Europe with Eleanor in 1905. After Woodrow Wilson (number 28), who once took 15 putts to finish a hole, appointed him assistant secretary of the navy in 1913, Roosevelt established himself as one of the best golfers in D.C.
But in 1921, he was stricken with polio, and according to Eleanor he never so much as uttered the word “golf” again. Still, the game never left his mind. On December 8, 1941, a White House photographer captured FDR signing the declaration of war against Japan as senators and congressmen looked on. There, on his desk, was a cigarette lighter in the shape of a golf ball.
FDR tees off at Campobello, 1904.
HARDWARE STORIES
THE TALES BEHIND SOME FAMOUS TROPHIES
Besides the fact that they are three of sports’ most coveted trophies, what do the Stanley Cup, the World Cup, and the Claret Jug have in common? Well, for one thing, each has to be returned before a new champion has won it. And for another, they have rich histories befitting their 328 combined years of presentation.
The Claret Jug
Officially known as the Golf Champion Trophy, a replica of the original 1873 silver jug is presented to the winner of the British Open, which is officially known as The Open Championship. The original Open trophy was the Challenge Belt, leather with a silver buckle, but Tom Morris Jr. retired it after winning the Open three straight times (1868–70). After a year’s hiatus, the Open resumed in 1872, but the cup wasn’t commissioned until two days before the tournament, which Morris won again, over seven other players. So the first golfer to receive the jug, valued at £30 and made by Mackay Cunningham and Company of Edinburgh, was the 1873 winner, Tom Kidd. Morris, as the first winner, was the first to have his name engraved on the trophy.
Tiger Woods kisses the Claret Jug after winning the 135th Open Championship at Royal Liverpool Golf Club in Hoylake, England, on July 23, 2006.
Billy Joe Patton, an amateur who was a lumber salesman, led the 1954 Masters with only seven holes to play when he was overtaken by Ben Hogan and Sam Snead.
After Bobby Jones won the 1927 Open, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club decided that henceforth it would retain the cup while the winner would keep a replica for a year. The original is on display in the R&A Clubhouse, along with the Challenge Belt. Replicas are also on display at the British Golf Museum in St. Andrews and in two traveling exhibitions. Open winners often commission their own replica to keep.
When Mark Calcavecchia won the Open in 1989, he said, “How’s my name going to fit on that thing?” As the most recent winner, Pádraig Harrington, held the jug, his four-year-old son, Paddy, asked, “Dad, can we put ladybirds in it?”
The World Cup
There have actually been two trophies presented to the winner since the first World Cup tournament in 1930—make that three, but we’ll get to that.
The first was the Jules Rimet Trophy, originally named Victory and later renamed for the FIFA president who initiated the tournament. Made of gold-plated sterling silver and lapis lazuli, it depicted Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. After Italy won the World Cup in 1938, Italian FIFA official Ottorino Barassi secretly transported Victory from a bank in Rome and hid it in a shoe box under his bed to prevent the Nazis from absconding with it. (The trophy was returned when the war ended.)
Four months before the 1966 World Cup, in England, the trophy was stolen from an exhibition at Central Hall Westminster. It was found just seven days later, wrapped in a newspaper at the base of a garden hedge in Norwood, in South London, by a black-and-white mongrel named Pickles. When England won the Cup, Pickles was invited to the celebration banquet, where he licked the plates clean.
Pickles, the hero of the 1966 World Cup.
When Brazil won the tournament for the third time, in 1970, it was allowed to keep Victory, according to Rimet’s stipulation that the first three-time winner should retain it. The cup was stolen again in 1983, however, from the Brazilian Football Confederation in Rio de Janeiro, and never recovered. (Alas, Pickles could not be sent to search for it—he had died in 1973 when he choked on his leash while chasing a cat.) Brazil is now in possession of a replica.
The second World Cup (or the third, if you count the Brazilian replica of Victory) is called simply the FIFA World Cup, and it depicts two human figures holding up the globe. Made of solid gold with a malachite base, it is now in the possession of the Italian Soccer Federation. Fabio Cannavaro, Italy’s captain, was photographed a few days after the 2006 World Cup holding a piece of green malachite that had broken off the base. The shard has since been glued back into place.
The Stanley Cup
The holy grail of hockey dates back to 1892, when Lord Stanley, Canada’s governor general, purchased a silver bowl for 10 guineas ($48.67), to be presented each year to Canada’s top hockey team, which in 1893 was the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association’s hockey club. In 1907, the bowl went to the team from the small town of Kenora, Ontario (population 4,000). The Cup went pro in 1915, and by 1926 it belonged to the National Hockey League.
By then, a band had been added to the base to accommodate the engraving of the names of the winners. In 1958, the present-day Cup took shape: a five-band barrel containing enough space for the names of 65 teams. Whenever the bottom band is maxed out, the top band is sent to the Hockey Hall of Fame, in Toronto, and a blank is added to maintain the Cup’s signature look.
A great deal of lore comes with the trophy. In 1907, before losing to Kenora, the Montreal Wanderers left it behind after a team picture, and the photographer’s mother turned it into a flowerpot. Several members of the Montreal Canadiens left it in a roadside snowbank after repairing a flat tire; when they returned, mortified, it was still there. Bryan Trottier of the New York Islanders once unscrewed the bowl and used it as a food dish for his dog. More typically, players sip champagne from it, and th
e Cup has been known to make appearances in late-night establishments.
For those and other reasons, the Cup now has a fulltime bodyguard. One was in Sweden in the summer of 2008, when Tomas Holmström of the Detroit Red Wings had his day with the Cup. He used it to baptize his seven-week-old niece, Alva Felicia.
Anaheim Ducks goaltender Jean-Sébastien Giguère (not pictured) put his infant son, Maxime, in the Stanley Cup after defeating the Ottawa Senators in Game 5 of the 2007 Stanley Cup finals.
A BUMP UP
YOU MAY NEVER BE A MOGUL, BUT YOU CAN SKI ONE
It’s one thing to be able to cruise down a nicely groomed ski slope looking good, but as any expert skier knows, the real fun to be had on a mountain is in the bumps. At first, trying to navigate uneven terrain with 4-to 5-foot planks on your feet may seem daunting, but Aspen Highlands Ski School manager Andy Docken says that turning on moguls—provided you can make short turns on groomed surfaces—is actually easier. Here are his tips for skiing the bumps:
Don’t Ski Them like a Pro. There are three ways to tackle moguls, Docken says. The easiest way is to ski up the back of the bump and make your turn on top, when the tips and tails of your skis are not touching the snow. It’s a good way to get comfortable, but it’s not very fast or very fun. What the pros do is the opposite: They make their turns in the troughs between bumps, aka the zipper line. (Imagine where blue paint would end up if you dumped a can of it at the top of a mogul field—that’s the zipper line.) Unless your name is Tomba, you don’t want to do that either. But you want to do something close to it. “Intermediate skiers first getting into moguls should ski a rounder line,” Docken says, meaning that they should turn on the side of the bump, just above the zipper line. “Because you’re turning on the bank,” he explains, “you don’t have to focus on putting your ski on its edge so much. It’s deflection, so it’s actually easier.” Skiing a rounder line also keeps your speed in check.