Free The Legend of Zippy Chippy by William Thomas Page B

with their long-practiced routine, so he bit Felix gently on the arm, for old times’ sake. And Felix, after making sure he didn’t need stitches, seemed to appreciate the gesture. Getting rid of a horse was normally easy. Getting rid of Zippy Chippy was proving impossible.
    Although the Zipster appeared keen to run and indeed went into a funk when he didn’t, his owner, his trainer, and the best friend he had ever had was losing his enthusiasm to race him. When Felix Monserrate was faced with the dark dose of reality that Zippy Chippy might have to be dispatched, it was the second worst moment of his life.
    ZIPPY CHIPPY AND MARV THRONEBERRY:
BEAUTIFUL LOSERS, BOTH OF THEM
    Bad horses – I mean really bad horses, like Ferby’s Fire and Ordvou, who earned the wrong kind of fame when they were beaten by Zippy Chippy – need not hang their heads all that low. Zippy’s losing ways may have left a dark stain on the track, on which these two horses may well have slipped.
    Case in point: Marv Throneberry, one of the most unpredictable major-league ballplayers to ever pick up a bat and glove. Marv played first base for the 1962 New York Mets, widely regarded as the worst team in modern baseball history, with just 40 wins in a 160-game season. This team was so bad that the manager, Charles Dillon “Casey” Stengel, looked up and down the Mets dugout one day and screamed, “Can’t anybody here play this game?” New York City’s wonderful slice-of-life columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote a bestseller posing that question as the title.
    At practice one day, weak-hitting “Marvelous Marv” was bouncing ground balls off his glove like it was made of solid steel. That’s when the legendary manager, seventy-two years old at the time, relieved him at first base. Stengel hadn’t played the game in more than thirty-seven years, but he was sure he could still show Throneberry a thing or two. “Stand over there, Marvin, and watch!”
    Stengel barked at the catcher to hit him a ground ball, which he did. The soft roller went through Stengel’s legs. (I did mention he was forty-three years older than Throneberry, right?)
    â€œHit it like a man!” he yelled. The catcher complied, and that one went over Stengel’s shoulder.
    â€œOne more,” screamed the manager, and that one hit him in the shin before he could quite bend over.
    Stengel dropped Throneberry’s glove and kicked it across the foul line, and as he stomped off the field he yelled back over his shoulder, “Throneberry, you have fucked up this position so badly, nobody can play it!” Practice was cancelled due to severe laughter.
    Later, on Throneberry’s birthday, Stengel, whose nickname was “the Old Perfessor,” eased up on his favorite first baseman. “We were going to get you a cake, Marvin,” said the manager, “but, well, you know, we figured you’d drop that too!”
    â€œThe Lovable Klutz” and “America’s Lovable Loser” – for the sake of comic relief and memorable entertainment, some days players like these bring more value to their sports than the ones who play them well. And that’s what it’s all about, because if you take entertainment out of sports, all you have left are the stats.
    Despite the utter futility of the 1962 Mets – you have to go back to 1899 to find a team with more season losses – the fans came out in droves. Their total attendance of 922,530 spectators was the sixth highest in the league that year. Who doesn’t love an underdog?

SEVEN

    A dog looks up to a man. A cat looks down on a man.
    But a patient horse looks a man in the eye and sees him as an equal
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    Anonymous
    His worst moment ever still brought fear into the eyes of Felix Monserrate when, years later, he remembered that dreary day in late November 1997, during one of Zippy Chippy’s worst losing streaks. In the midst of