Like Angel Cabrera’s unlikely Masters victory, it’s always fun to see someone stage a comeback win under immense pressure. Paige Railey pulled it off this weekend as well at the Princess Sofia Trophy in Palma by doing what she needed to do in the medal race to move from 2nd place to 1st overall. Whether you’re standing on the 10th tee in a playoff, in the batter’s box with the bases loaded in the 9th or on the starting line of the medal race 6 points out of first, there is no better feeling in sports than getting it done when the game’s on the line. Way to go, Paige!
Monthly Archive for April, 2009
A gaggle of tall ships are sailing to Boston in early July for SailBoston 2009, a reprise of the wildly successful SailBoston 2000 that, depending on which estimate you believe, attracted nearly a million visitors for the weeklong celebration. According to reports, the city and the SailBoston organization are at loggerheads over who will foot the estimated $3.5 million bill for incremental public safety and sanitation, and city officials are threatening to cancel the event. Problem is, the ships are coming anyway – they are currently at sea, and while not literally on the way, they are certainly figuratively en route.
Apparently, the disagreement stems from a $1.6 million bill that the city got stuck with after the 2000 event when the Celucci administration, we are told, welshed on a promise to pony up. We ran into this issue when we were selling the VOR Stopover to the Mayor’s office, and fortunately, the State House, having recently changed hands, agreed to split the tab. Not sure why they wouldn’t be willing to do the same in this case, though that was almost two years ago, and the economic landscape has certainly undergone a significant transformation since then.
Here’s where it gets interesting though. In order to enforce his “cancellation” of the event, the Mayor has threatened to have the Coast Guard turn the fleet of tall ships away when they get here – in effect, “closing” Boston Harbor. The concept is so absurd that it can’t be true, but if it is, perhaps we should take it a step further and turn the whole thing into a festival of its own – kind of a “Revolution Days” thing. We could re-arm all the forts that cover the approaches to Boston, and perhaps even send the Constitution out to take on the “invaders”. When the USS Chesapeake sailed out to meet the HMS Shannon on a June afternoon in 1813, it is said that the shore was lined with spectators who’d turned out to watch the duel. Imagine the crowd that would gather to watch the spectacle of a Boston “militia” led by a couple of USCG cutters turning back an estimated 52 ships (including, by the way, the USCG’s own training ship Eagle). This could be a huge draw and a massive revenue generator – one that could even dwarf SailBoston’s numbers and attract unprecedented global media coverage. Wonder whether we could get the survivors to come to Marblehead for a few days?