ON TODAY'S SCORECARD
Carry Me Back

Long shot Golden Tempo made a stretch run for the ages, coming from dead last to win the 152nd Run for the Roses. In the process, 45-year-old Cherie DeVaux became the first female trainer ever to win the Kentucky Derby.

In a Derby without a strong favorite, most of the public’s attention was on Arkansas Derby winner Renegade, Florida Derby winner Commandment, Santa Anita Derby winner So Happy and Bill Mott trainee Chief Wallabee.

But it was Golden Tempo, trained by DeVaux and ridden by Jose Ortiz, who went off at 23-1 and found itself in last place entering the final turns only to sweep past a tight pack in the stretch run to win by a nose over favorite Renegade. Ocelli, a 70-1 longshot, showed. The winning time was 2:02.27.

The stretch run from Golden Tempo was, in a few words, impossible to believe. As the pack entered the final turns, Golden Tempo wasn’t in view of the leaders, some 17 lengths back at a point.

As the pack entered the stretch, the 3-year-old had moved up to 13th in the 18-horse race, but still seemingly out of contention.

But Ortiz drove through traffic deftly, then found a lane on the outside straight to victory, edging out Renegade at the wire.

Thus, Golden Tempo became this decade’s version of Carry Back, who won the 1961 Kentucky Dery after being as many as 16 lengths back in the race. For what it’s worth Carry Back came back and won the Preakness two weeks later.

“History doesn’t just happen. Sometimes it explodes from the clouds in the final furlong,” said Dan Wolken of Yahoo Sports.

So the question is, are you a believer?

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TRENDING TODAY
You’re Outta Here!

Following a 9-19 start to the season, the Phillies pulled the plug on the Rob Thomson experiment.

Truth be told, the firing of Alex Cora made the firing of Rob Thomson easier, if not a necessity.

The Boston Red Sox and Philadelphia Phillies are cut from the same cloth: high-payroll teams off to disastrous starts facing April urgency with no avenues to change personnel. The Phillies are in worse shape than even the Red Sox. 

Managers are fired in bunches. Like paper towels and pet food, scapegoats come in bulk. General managers like the cover of company when it comes to change.

Thomson was fired three days after Cora, just as last year Baltimore fired Brandon Hyde nine days after Pittsburgh fired Derek Shelton, which preceded the firing of Dave Martinez in Washington 49 days later.

When poor roster construction leads to poor performance, blame goes to the manager and coaches, not the front office decision makers who put the team together, who have far more job security.

There was a time when general managers were reluctant to fire managers, because that moved them closer to having their own job on the line. As the saying went, GMs got two manager hires, in rare cases three. Times have changed. A.J. Preller of the Padres has fired seven full-time managers in 12 years. The body count around MLB dugouts rises:

• Eleven teams have changed managers in the past 12 months.

• More than half the teams in MLB, 16, have changed managers in the past 20 months.

• Dave Roberts is the only World Series winning manager who still has a managing job with the same organization.

Thomson led the Phillies to four straight playoff seasons with an average of 92 wins per year. Last year they gave the mighty Dodgers all they could handle in the NLDS, suffering all three losses with the tying run at the plate upon the last out.

The handwriting was on the wall.

Marc is red-hot hot in this postseason and is currently the No.1 ratedhandicapper by the
Sports Monitor
in Oklahoma.