Getting a Little Superstitious

NYT:

Between 1919 and 1978, 11 horses that won both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness went on to win the Belmont Stakes. In the 36 years since then, though, the 12 horses that won the first two legs of racing’s Triple Crown faltered before they got to the finish line — or even the starting gate — at Belmont Park.

Some superstitious New Yorkers say the recent record losing streak is not coincidental. They attribute it to a discordant break with tradition in 1997, one that might have California Chrome listening with a cocked ear on June 7 as he struts out of the tunnel leading to the track for the 146th running of the Belmont Stakes.

Call it the curse of Mamie O’Rourke — she is a character who pops up in “Sidewalks of New York,” a century-old song that had been considered the city’s anthem and that had been played at Belmont for decades as the horses made their way to the starting gate.

But in 1997, after racing officials deemed it too fusty, the song was replaced with “New York, New York,” which Frank Sinatra Jr. is scheduled to sing at Belmont this year. In 2010, hoping to appeal to an even hipper audience, officials experimented with Jay Z and Alicia Keys’s “Empire State of Mind,” but that proved too cutting-edge for the crowd.....

Belmont officials, bereft of a Triple Crown winner since 1978, are taking no chances and are resurrecting Mamie. After questions were raised, they said they would ask Sam (Sammy the Bugler) Grossman to play “Sidewalks” on his herald trumpet just before the Stakes, instead of before the Manhattan Handicap, an earlier race, as he usually does.

Good luck to California Chrome in his dash for immortality a week from Saturday.