Connect with us

Published

on

MATT BOLDY LOVES playing hockey in Minnesota. The way the community supports the sport at all levels. The thousands of fans who watch the Minnesota Wild in warm-ups. And, if he’s being honest, the level of celebrity an NHL player can attain after just 47 games in the show.

“It’s crazy. Everyone’s a huge fan,” the 21-year-old told ESPN. “Can’t really go anywhere without getting recognized, which is pretty cool in a lot of ways.”

Of course, scoring 39 points in those 47 games can get one noticed. Being the rookie who helped power the Wild to their most successful regular season in franchise history will earn that recognition.

Marco Rossi watched from afar as Boldy, who was his linemate with the AHL Iowa Wild, lived the NHL dream. They’re both first-round draft picks and among the best young forward prospects in the league. Boldy was called up to contribute to the Wild while Rossi was getting his reps in the AHL, one year after COVID-19 complications nearly derailed his career.

Was it inspiring? Like, if Boldy could do that in the NHL, could Rossi do that?

“Yeah, of course,” Rossi said with a laugh. “But I don’t really like to focus too much about that.”

Rossi, 20, played two games with the Wild last season and hopes to play many more.

“Every hockey player dreams, like since day one, to play hockey one day in the NHL. That’s the best league in the world,” Rossi said. “It would mean a lot for me, but I know nobody’s gonna give it to me. You have to earn that spot.”

Boldy and Rossi are part of the wave of young players who have populated the Minnesota roster in recent seasons. Joel Eriksson Ek is 26. Jordan Greenway is 25. So is Kirill Kaprizov, the franchise’s biggest star and the face of that youth movement. One of the catalysts for the Wild’s recent success is striking that balance every NHL team seeks to strike: Talented kids meshing with productive veterans such as Mats Zuccarello, Ryan Hartman and the majority of their defense corps.

“We’ve got a good balance. I think part of the beauty of it is that the older guys embrace the youth,” general manager Bill Guerin said. “They’re excited to have Boldy on the team. They’re excited about Marco. They’re excited to see Greenway and Ek take steps in their careers. They’re not threatened by them at all. They want them to be good and they help them. They just want to win. And they realize we all need each other to do that.”

Now it’s up to Boldy and Rossi to reward that excitement.


DID BOLDY OUTPERFORM Guerin’s expectations last season?

“One hundred percent,” the Wild GM said with a laugh.

Boldy was drafted 12th overall in 2019 as a highly skilled winger from the U.S. National Team Development Program. It was a banner year for that program, which produced Boldy, first overall pick Jack Hughes, Trevor Zegras and Cole Caufield, among others in that draft class.

He spent two seasons at Boston College, earning a spot in the final 10 for the Hobey Baker Award as a sophomore. He joined the Wild organization in March 2021 and was hyped as being part of that young wave of talented forwards set to power the roster.

“It’s so cool, honestly, just to be considered in that category with Kirill, watching him every day,” Boldy said. “You look up to those guys. You want to be as good as Kirill. You soak up everything they have to say. But you gotta go out there and earn that. It’s about going up there and earning your way into that spot.”

Last season, Boldy earned a valuable spot in the Wild lineup: playing the vast majority of his minutes with Kevin Fiala, the forward who posted 33 goals and 85 points. He won’t have the same luxury this season. Fiala was traded to the Los Angeles Kings; his next contract was going to be too rich for the Wild’s salary-cap situation.

“Kev’s awesome. I mean, I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t a little bit disappointed seeing him go,” Boldy said. “I get it. There’s a lot of business to hockey too. But he’s an awesome player. He’s an awesome teammate. So it’s tough to see him go, but that’s kind of the nature of the game. You gotta find different ways to score and build chemistry with different players. And we got plenty of players on our team that are really good and that can hopefully make me a better player.”

Guerin scoffed at the idea that Boldy might be negatively impacted by Fiala’s departure.

“I’m not worried at all. Kevin’s a good player,” Guerin said. “Look, I’m sure that Colorado would love to have [Nazem] Kadri back. I’m sure Calgary wanted [Johnny] Gaudreau and [Matthew] Tkachuk back. You lose good players. That’s what happens.

“Matt Boldy’s going to be fine. As much as Kevin helped him, he helped Kevin.”

What Guerin is more concerned about is how Boldy adjusts to his opponents’ adjustments.

“The thing about these second-year players is that you’re not a secret anymore. Everyone knows how good you are,” Guerin said. “A veteran defenseman knows that if he doesn’t play Matt Boldy hard, he’s going to get burned. Sometimes that takes a second for a second-year forward to learn. It’s like, ‘Hey, these guys are playing me differently.’ And it’s like, yeah, because you’re good.”


MARCO ROSSI DOESN’T want to be defined by COVID-19. That much is clear.

“We don’t try to think too much about what happened like last year,” he said. “I focus and think more in the future than the past right now.”

Rossi left Wild training camp in February 2021 because of complications from COVID-19, for which he had tested positive the previous November. Rossi was diagnosed with myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle. He returned to Austria to recover with family and resumed training in June 2021. He played 63 games in the AHL along with his brief stint with the Wild in January.

“The hardest part was to stay patient. It’s not gonna be done in two weeks or something like that,” he said. “After the recovery time, you gotta come back to training and try to get better and that’s not easy.”

Rossi said that in the beginning of his comeback, he worried too much about his heart. Was it really healthy? He’d feel something in his chest during training and worry. It took a while for him to fully believe that he was 100 percent as the doctors were telling him.

“Health-wise, it was a scare. But he’s come back from it. He’s healthy,” Guerin said.

Rossi was drafted No. 9 overall in 2020 by the Wild as a dynamic offensive center for the OHL Ottawa 67’s. Born in Austria, Rossi remembers navigating through some cultural differences in North America. Like, for example, the affinity for one of his favorite sports.

“Three years ago, I was talking in Ottawa that I like to watch Formula One,” he recalled. “Not many guys knew what that really was or how it worked.”

Things change.

“They promote it so good right now,” Rossi said. “I mean, with the Netflix show, it’s now something that so many people watch.”

Rossi has his engine primed for the NHL but doesn’t know if he’s in the race yet. The expectation is that he’ll make the leap to the main roster, but both Guerin and Rossi said that’s contingent on a strong training camp.

“I think he’ll do very well. He’s a smart kid. He analyzes where he’s at. There’s no secret to his work ethic and his competitiveness,” Guerin said. “I think his game will transition well, but he has to do it right off the hop. He has gotta come in and prove himself.”

Boldy, his friend and potential linemate, thinks he will.

“He can play,” Boldy said, laughing. “I think he’s just a really, really good skater. Really good on his edges. He’s got a lot of speed. He’s smart and scores goals. He can pass. He’s kind of got it all. He’s definitely got every tool that you need to be successful.”

The Wild have the tools now, too, thanks to this balance between established talents and emerging ones such as Boldy and Rossi.

“It’s really good. It’s a good mix between us,” Rossi said. “Because like the younger kids can learn a lot from the older guys and even like the older guys can learn a lot from the young guys. You can see everyone likes each other. That helps a team to push it all the way to the end.”

Continue Reading

Sports

Remembering Ruffian 50 years after her breakdown at Belmont

Published

on

By

Remembering Ruffian 50 years after her breakdown at Belmont

Thoroughbred racing suffered its most ignominious, industry-deflating moment 50 years ago today with the breakdown of Ruffian, an undefeated filly running against Foolish Pleasure in a highly promoted match race at Belmont Park. Her tragic end on July 6, 1975, was a catastrophe for the sport, and observers say racing has never truly recovered.

Two years earlier, during the rise of second-wave feminism, the nation had been mesmerized by a “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. King’s win became a rallying cry for women everywhere. The New York Racing Association, eager to boost daily racing crowds in the mid-1970s, proposed a competition similar to that of King and Riggs. They created a match race between Kentucky Derby winner Foolish Pleasure and Ruffian, the undefeated filly who had dominated all 10 of her starts, leading gate to wire.

“In any sport, human or equine, it’s really impossible to say who was the greatest,” said outgoing Jockey Club chairman Stuart Janney III, whose parents, Stuart and Barbara, owned Ruffian. “But I’m always comfortable thinking of Ruffian as being among the four to five greatest horses of all time.”

Ruffian, nearly jet black in color and massive, was the equine version of a Greek goddess. At the age of 2, her girth — the measurement of the strap that secures the saddle — was just over 75 inches. Comparatively, racing legend Secretariat, a male, had a 76-inch girth when he was fully developed at the age of 4.

Her name also added to the aura. “‘Ruffian’ was a little bit of a stretch because it tended to be what you’d name a colt, but it turned out to be an appropriate name,” Janney said.

On May 22, 1974, Ruffian equaled a Belmont Park track record, set by a male, in her debut at age 2, winning by 15 lengths. She set a stakes record later that summer at Saratoga in the Spinaway, the most prestigious race of the year for 2-year-old fillies. The next spring, she blew through races at longer distances, including the three races that made up the so-called Filly Triple Crown.

Some in the media speculated that she had run out of female competition.

Foolish Pleasure had meanwhile ripped through an undefeated 2-year-old season with championship year-end honors. However, after starting his sophomore campaign with a win, he finished third in the Florida Derby. He also had recovered from injuries to his front feet to win the Wood Memorial and then the Kentucky Derby.

Second-place finishes in the Preakness and Belmont Stakes left most observers with the idea that Foolish Pleasure was the best 3-year-old male in the business.

Following the Belmont Stakes, New York officials wanted to test the best filly against the best colt.

The original thought was to include the Preakness winner, Master Derby, in the Great Match Race, but the team of Foolish Pleasure’s owner, trainer and rider didn’t want a three-horse race. Since New York racing had guaranteed $50,000 to the last-place horse, they paid Master Derby’s connections $50,000 not to race. Thus, the stage was set for an equine morality play.

“[Ruffian’s] abilities gave her the advantage in the match race,” Janney said. “If she could do what she did in full fields [by getting the early lead], then it was probably going to be even more effective in a match.”

Several ballyhooed match races in sports history had captured the world’s attention without incident — Seabiscuit vs. Triple Crown winner War Admiral in 1938, Alsab vs. Triple Crown winner Whirlaway in 1942, and Nashua vs. Swaps in 1955. None of those races, though, had the gender divide “it” factor.

The Great Match Race attracted 50,000 live attendees and more than 18 million TV viewers on CBS, comparable to the Grammy Awards and a pair of NFL “Sunday Night Football” games in 2024.

Prominent New York sportswriter Dick Young wrote at the time that, for women, “Ruffian was a way of getting even.”

“I can remember driving up the New Jersey Turnpike, and the lady that took the toll in one of those booths was wearing a button that said, ‘I’m for her,’ meaning Ruffian,” Janney said.

As the day approached, Ruffian’s rider, Jacinto Vasquez, who also was the regular rider of Foolish Pleasure including at the Kentucky Derby, had to choose whom to ride for the match race.

“I had ridden Foolish Pleasure, and I knew what he could do,” Vasquez told ESPN. “But I didn’t think he could beat the filly. He didn’t have the speed or stamina.”

Braulio Baeza, who had ridden Foolish Pleasure to victory in the previous year’s premier 2-year-old race, Hopeful Stakes, was chosen to ride Foolish Pleasure.

“I had ridden Foolish Pleasure and ridden against Ruffian,” Baeza said, with language assistance from his wife, Janice Blake. “I thought Foolish Pleasure was better than Ruffian. She just needed [early race] pressure because no one had ever pressured her.”

The 1⅛ mile race began at the start of the Belmont Park backstretch in the chute. In an ESPN documentary from 2000, Jack Whitaker, who hosted the race telecast for CBS, noted that the atmosphere turned eerie with dark thunderclouds approaching before the race.

Ruffian hit the side of the gate when the doors opened but straightened herself out quickly and assumed the lead. “The whole world, including me, thought that Ruffian was going to run off the screen and add to her legacy,” said longtime New York trainer Gary Contessa, who was a teenager when Ruffian ruled the racing world.

However, about ⅛ of a mile into the race, the force of Ruffian’s mighty strides snapped two bones in her front right leg.

“When she broke her leg, it sounded like a broken stick,” Vasquez said. “She broke her leg between her foot and her ankle. When I pulled up, the bone was shattered above the ankle. She couldn’t use that leg at all.”

It took Ruffian a few moments to realize what had happened to her, so she continued to run. Vasquez eventually hopped off and kept his shoulder leaning against her for support.

“You see it, but you don’t want to believe it,” Janney said.

Baeza had no choice but to have Foolish Pleasure finish the race in what became a macabre paid workout. The TV cameras followed him, but the eyes of everyone at the track were on the filly, who looked frightened as she was taken back to the barn area.

“When Ruffian broke down, time stood still that day,” Contessa said. Yet time was of the essence in an attempt to save her life.

Janney said that Dr. Frank Stinchfield — who was the doctor for the New York Yankees then and was “ahead of his time in fixing people’s bones” — called racing officials to see whether there was anything he could do to help with Ruffian.

New York veterinarian Dr. Manny Gilman managed to sedate Ruffian, performed surgery on her leg and, with Stinchfield’s help, secured her leg in an inflatable cast. When Ruffian woke up in the middle of the night, though, she started fighting and shattered her bones irreparably. Her team had no choice but to euthanize her at approximately 2:20 a.m. on July 7.

“She was going full bore trying to get in front of [Foolish Pleasure] out of the gate,” Baeza said. “She gave everything there. She gave her life.”

Contessa described the time after as a “stilled hush over the world.”

“When we got the word that she had rebroken her leg, the whole world was crying,” Contessa said. “I can’t reproduce the feeling that I had the day after.”

The Janneys soon flew to Maine for the summer, and they received a round of applause when the pilot announced their presence. At the cottage, they were met by thousands of well-wishing letters.

“We all sat there, after dinner every night, and we wrote every one of them back,” Janney said. “It was pretty overwhelming, and that didn’t stop for a long time. I still get letters.”

Equine fatalities have been part of the business since its inception, like the Triple Crown races and Breeders’ Cup. Some have generated headlines by coming in clusters, such as Santa Anita in 2019 and Churchill Downs in 2023. However, breakdowns are not the only factor, and likely not the most influential one, in the gradual decline of horse racing’s popularity in this country.

But the impact from the day of Ruffian’s death, and that moment, has been ongoing for horse racing.

“There are people who witnessed the breakdown and never came back,” Contessa said.

Said Janney: “At about that time, racing started to disappear from the national consciousness. The average person knows about the Kentucky Derby, and that’s about it.”

Equine racing today is a safer sport now than it was 50 years ago. The Equine Injury Database, launched by the Jockey Club in 2008, says the fatality rate nationally in 2024 was just over half of what it was at its launch.

“We finally have protocols that probably should have been in effect far sooner than this,” Contessa said. “But the protocols have made this a safer game.”

Said Vasquez: “There are a lot of nice horses today, but to have a horse like Ruffian, it’s unbelievable. Nobody could compare to Ruffian.”

Continue Reading

Sports

Volpe toss hits Judge as sloppy Yanks fall again

Published

on

By

Volpe toss hits Judge as sloppy Yanks fall again

NEW YORK — A blunder that typifies the current state of the New York Yankees, who find themselves in the midst of their second six-game losing streak in three weeks, happened in front of 41,401 fans at Citi Field on Saturday, and almost nobody noticed.

The Yankees were jogging off the field after securing the third out of the fourth inning of their 12-6 loss to the Mets when shortstop Anthony Volpe, as is standard for teams across baseball at the end of innings, threw the ball to right fielder Aaron Judge as he crossed into the infield from right field.

Only Judge wasn’t looking, and the ball nailed him in the head, knocking his sunglasses off and leaving a small cut near his right eye. The wound required a bandage to stop the bleeding, but Judge stayed in the game.

“Confusion,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “I didn’t know what happened initially. [It just] felt like something happened. Of course I was a little concerned.”

Avoiding an injury to the best player in baseball was on the Yankees’ very short list of positives in another sloppy, draining defeat to their crosstown rivals. With the loss, the Yankees, who held a three-game lead over the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League East standings entering June 30, find themselves tied with the Tampa Bay Rays for second place three games behind the Blue Jays heading into Sunday’s Subway Series finale.

The nosedive has been fueled by messy defense and a depleted pitching staff that has encountered a wall.

“It’s been a terrible week,” said Boone, who before the game announced starter Clarke Schmidt will likely undergo season-ending Tommy John surgery.

For the second straight day, the Mets capitalized on mistakes and cracked timely home runs. After slugging three homers in Friday’s series opener, the Mets hit three more Saturday — a grand slam in the first inning from Brandon Nimmo to take a 4-0 lead and two home runs from Pete Alonso to widen the gap.

Nimmo’s blast — his second grand slam in four days — came after Yankees left fielder Jasson Dominguez misplayed a ball hit by the Mets’ leadoff hitter in the first inning. On Friday, he misread Nimmo’s line drive and watched it sail over his head for a double. On Saturday, he was slow to react to Starling Marte’s flyball in the left-center field gap and braked without catching or stopping it, allowing Marte to advance to second for a double. Yankees starter Carlos Rodon then walked two batters to load the bases for Nimmo, who yanked a mistake, a 1-2 slider over the wall.

“That slider probably needs to be down,” said Rodon, who allowed seven runs (six earned) over five innings. “A lot of misses today and they punished them.”

Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s throwing woes at third base — a position the Yankees have asked him to play to accommodate DJ LeMahieu at second base — continued in the second inning when he fielded Tyrone Taylor’s groundball and sailed a toss over first baseman Cody Bellinger’s head. Taylor was given second base and scored moments later on Marte’s RBI single.

The Yankees were charged with their second error in the Mets’ four-run seventh inning when center fielder Trent Grisham charged Francisco Lindor’s single up the middle and had it bounce off the heel of his glove.

The mistake allowed a run to score from second base without a throw, extending the Mets lead back to three runs after the Yankees had chipped their deficit, and allowed a heads-up Lindor to advance to second base. Lindor later scored on Alonso’s second home run, a three-run blast off left-hander Jayvien Sandridge in the pitcher’s major league debut.

“Just got to play better,” Judge said. “That’s what it comes down to. It’s fundamentals. Making a routine play, routine. It’s just the little things. That’s what it kind of comes down to. But every good team goes through a couple bumps in the road.”

This six-game losing skid has looked very different from the Yankees’ first. That rough patch, consisting of losses to the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Angels, was propelled by offensive troubles. The Yankees scored six runs in the six games and gave up just 16. This time, run prevention is the issue; the Yankees have scored 34 runs and surrendered 54 in four games against the Blue Jays in Toronto and two in Queens.

“The offense is starting to swing the bat, put some runs on the board,” Boone said. “The pitching, which has kind of carried us a lot this season, has really, really struggled this week. We haven’t caught the ball as well as I think we should.

“So, look, when you live it and you’re going through it, it sucks, it hurts. But you got to be able to handle it. You got to be able to deal with it. You got to be able to weather it and come out of this and grow.”

Continue Reading

Sports

Former White Sox pitcher, world champ Jenks dies

Published

on

By

Former White Sox pitcher, world champ Jenks dies

Bobby Jenks, a two-time All-Star pitcher for the Chicago White Sox who was on the roster when the franchise won the 2005 World Series, died Friday in Sintra, Portugal, the team announced.

Jenks, 44, who had been diagnosed with adenocarcinoma, a form of stomach cancer, this year, spent six seasons with the White Sox from 2005 to 2010 and also played for the Boston Red Sox in 2011. The reliever finished his major league career with a 16-20 record, 3.53 ERA and 173 saves.

“We have lost an iconic member of the White Sox family today,” White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf said in a statement. “None of us will ever forget that ninth inning of Game 4 in Houston, all that Bobby did for the 2005 World Series champions and for the entire Sox organization during his time in Chicago. He and his family knew cancer would be his toughest battle, and he will be missed as a husband, father, friend and teammate. He will forever hold a special place in all our hearts.”

After Jenks moved to Portugal last year, he was diagnosed with a deep vein thrombosis in his right calf. That eventually spread into blood clots in his lungs, prompting further testing. He was later diagnosed with adenocarcinoma and began undergoing radiation.

In February, as Jenks was being treated for the illness, the White Sox posted “We stand with you, Bobby” on Instagram, adding in the post that the club was “thinking of Bobby as he is being treated.”

In 2005, as the White Sox ended an 88-year drought en route to the World Series title, Jenks appeared in six postseason games. Chicago went 11-1 in the playoffs, and he earned saves in series-clinching wins in Game 3 of the ALDS at Boston, and Game 4 of the World Series against the Houston Astros.

In 2006, Jenks saved 41 games, and the following year, he posted 40 saves. He also retired 41 consecutive batters in 2007, matching a record for a reliever.

“You play for the love of the game, the joy of it,” Jenks said in his last interview with SoxTV last year. “It’s what I love to do. I [was] playing to be a world champion, and that’s what I wanted to do from the time I picked up a baseball.”

A native of Mission Hills, California, Jenks appeared in 19 games for the Red Sox and was originally drafted by the then-Anaheim Angels in the fifth round of the 2000 draft.

Jenks is survived by his wife, Eleni Tzitzivacos, their two children, Zeno and Kate, and his four children from a prior marriage, Cuma, Nolan, Rylan and Jackson.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Continue Reading

Trending