Brown and out at Belmont

By Ron Kantowski

Sunday, June 8, 2008 | 11:52 p.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

NOW

----- What can Big Brown do for you? Not a lot, if you put $2 on his nose in return for a betting slip you planned to hang onto as a souvenir of horse racing immortality. So he's not the second coming of Secretariat. But in becoming the first Triple Crown contender to finish dead last in the Belmont Stakes, Mr. Ed -- er, Big Brown -- unwittingly still may have done the Sport of Kings a service: He showed how difficult it is to win its Triple Crown and that it takes a truly special horse, not merely a good one, to do it.

---- Former UNLV Rebel Ryan Ludwick belted his 14th home run of the season for the Cardinals on Saturday, equaling his total of last year. Albert Pujols, who is hitting in front of Ludwick in Tony LaRussa's batting order, wants the Cardinals to sign the Durango High product to a long-term contract now. Ludwick, whose older brother, Eric, pitched for St. Louis in 1996 and '97 before being traded to Oakland (with others) for Mark McGwire, inked a one-year deal with the Redbirds in March, and Pujols has been getting better pitches to hit ever since.

----- The San Diego Padres this weekend (actually, Wednesday through Saturday) won four straight games by 2-1 scores, the first time that had ever happened in major league baseball. That's amazing -- not that the Friars won four 2-1 games in a row, but that somebody actually keeps track of this stuff.

----- I listened to the Cubs-Dodgers game on the radio Thursday night. Dodgers broadcast legend Vin Scully mispronounced the names of four Chicago Cubs during the first three innings. Maybe it was just an off night for the Hall-of-Famer. But at the same time, I couldn't help but think of Willie Mays playing center field for the Mets.

----- Word of advice to Floyd Mayweather Jr.: If your palatial estate has 17 bathrooms, get rid of a couple of them. Then you might not wind up destitute like Evander Holyfield and can stay retired.

----- "They're all gone." And sadly, now the man who made those words immortal is, too. The human drama of athletic competition just won't be the same without Jim McKay, who died Saturday at age 86, to chronicle it.

THEN

----- Netflix recently sent me a DVD called "Deep Water," which I can only attribute to giving "White Squall" a passing grade when I rented it two or three years ago. But other than the dust-up between the Tampa Rays' battery, the documentary about a famous around the world yacht race held in 1968 was the best thing I watched on TV over the weekend.

Of the nine sailors who entered the race, only one finished. One who appeared well on his way to victory but became fed up with the commercialization of the event made a left turn at the Cape of Good Hope and kept right on going, nearly sailing around the world a second time before finally coming ashore.

Another simply turned his boat around to give the impression that he had covered the entire route, a la Rosie Ruiz at the Boston Marathon. But when he found himself in the "lead," Donald Crowhurst became paranoid and delusional and wrote a rambling 25,000-word essay. Then he committed suicide by jumping overboard.

OK, so it wasn't exactly "Gilligan's Island" and there weren't any flying submarines. But it sure was a lot more interesting than watching Rafael Nadal win another French Open.