Indy 500 no better in person

By By Stan Torgerson / guest columnist
June 1, 2004
Just one time before a nationally-televised major sports event, I'd like to hear someone sing the national anthem the way it was written. No new notes the author never created, no holding "Land of the freeeeeeeeeeeeeee" through a full tank of air and two different octaves on the word "free," no vocal gymnastics to make the song a rock, country, or soul style salute. No more cutesy vocal tricks. No more singers trying to focus attention on themselves, rather than on the music that for almost 200 years has inspired and made Americans proud on their own.
Just sing it the way it was intended to be sung, as a simple but stirring salute to our country.
And if you think I'm referring to the opening of the Indianapolis 500, you're right. I've heard worse, but I'd love to hear better. Perhaps some day.
As for the race itself, I'm opinionated about that too. It's hard to get interested in an event of that length when you literally don't know the players. I've heard of Al Unser, Jr. Helio Castroneves is the guy who climbed the fence when he won a couple of years ago if memory serves me correctly. Sam Hornish is vaguely familiar. And, of course, A.J. Foyt is a household name, even if this one has a IV behind it.
The funny thing is I once was a big fan of this race. Back in the early 1960s, as memory serves, I even went to the race. I was managing a radio station in Memphis at the time, and we were taking a feed of the event on radio. Since we had contracted to carry it on the air and paid their somewhat inflated fee, they offered me free tickets. I wasn't smart enough to realize that taking a wife and two kids on a trip from Memphis to Indianapolis, staying in motels two nights and feeding everybody for three days made those tickets anything but free.
But I owned a new Pontiac Grand Prix at the time, midnight blue with dark leather upholstery, one of the best looking automobiles ever designed, and the trip sounded like fun. It was for about 150 miles until the air conditioner stopped working. We pulled into a dealer who didn't have the necessary part and wouldn't be able to get it for several days. On we went, the kids whining about the heat and my wife complaining about the wind coming in the open windows and what it was doing to her hair.
On race day, we drove in the general direction of the track only to discover the nearest parking was a service station about a mile away. Further, the owner locked the bathrooms and you had to pay extra if you needed the facility. I tried to convince the kids the walk was an adventure. They wouldn't buy it. Neither would my wife, whose hair by now looked like a bale of steel wool.
When the race finally began, I discovered my free tickets were too low to see anything going on at the other side of the 2.5-mile oval, or in the curves either, for that matter. My memory of the race is that it was quite similar to sitting on a curb and watching traffic go by. And about as entertaining.
As I remember, some Scotsman won the thing, but all I got out of it was 200 five-second glimpses of him as he went by. I can't even remember his name today. I also choose not to remember the multi-hour traffic jam trying to get out of there and the un-air-conditioned trip home.
Could it have been worse than Sunday's race, with its two-hour rain delay and storm-shortened conclusion? No, I don't think so. But it further cemented an opinion I have held ever since.
There are two sporting events that are better on television than they are in person. The Indianapolis 500 is one of them. Judging by the large number of empty seats the cameras showed, other people have also gotten that message. Yes, the touted attendance was in excess of 200,000 and perhaps it was. Nobody named Torgerson was in that head count. Not this year, not any year.
The other sport that lends itself better to TV than being there is golf. Golf is fun if you're a player. But if you're a spectator at a 7,000-yard-plus course, you'll do a lot of walking just to see a handful of shots. Or you can do as many do, stake out a particular hole and stay there all day as the players go by. That way you'll see 1-18th of the action. Six or eight hours in the hot sunshine to watch 1-18th is also not one of my favorite things.
But golf on TV is fun, really fun. You're all over the golf course without getting out of your chair. You never have to wonder who's leading and by how much. And if something spectacular happens, you'll see it on replay two or three times. TV and golf were made for each other.
Football, basketball, baseball, boxing, track and field, all these are great spectator sports. Some seats are better than others, of course, but all of them let you see the action and, in effect, be part of it.
But as far as the Indy 500 is concerned, no way. Been there. Done that. Don't plan to ever do it again.