Grip on Sports: Everything about the Indianapolis 500 has changed, including its place in America’s sports pantheon

A GRIP ON SPORTS • What’s on your agenda for this long holiday weekend? Catching up on sleep? How about battling the backyard’s weeds? A long bike ride or hike? Working? Whatever it is, there isn’t a lot of competition from televised sports.

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• The unofficial start of summer used to be the biggest weekend of auto racing. There was a time in the past century when the Indianapolis 500 was one of the most important sporting events of the year.

Memorial Day was the one day the nation’s ears were turned to the heartland, waiting to hear if Wilbur Shaw was going to win again.

Or A.J. Foyt. Or one of the Unsers.

Indy 500 winners were celebrities. Champions of one of the toughest tests in sports. Known the world over.

Heck, one of Spokane’s own, Tom Sneva, won the race in 1983, my first introduction to the race’s importance to this city.

But not to the race itself. The Indianapolis 500 was always on in our home, the radio blaring out the results (it was not televised live until the mid-1980s, with only highlights shown on ABC’s Wide World of Sports before then).

It was as much a part of Memorial Day in our home as my father talking about fallen comrades from his five-year Navy hitch during World War II. In other words, there wasn’t a lot of talking, just a lot of listening.

The roar is what I remember. Even a tinny AM radio caught the explosive nature of the cars and half-a-million folks crammed into the Speedway on Memorial Day. It was almost palatable.

Just like the heat. It didn’t matter what day of the week it was – remember, back then Memorial Day was always May 30, regardless of the calendar day – it always seemed to be hot in Southern California. With his only son out of school, yard work was always on the agenda for my dad as well.

The guys driving the cars around the track thousands of miles away were not sweating any more than I was as I half-heartedly pulled at weeds around the backyard tomato plants. I’m sure they complained less.

But as the race moved to its conclusion, my memories are of us taking a break, enjoying a glass of lemonade – homemade from the lemons in our backyard – and listening to Sid Collins describing Al Unser’s attempts to hold of A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Bobby Unser and some English dude.

(By the way, my dad always rooted for Andretti. Something about his Italian heritage. Or maybe they were connected another way, I’m not sure. All I know was 1969 was a special year.)

We would listen to the finish, drink the last of the lemonade and I would be tasked with mowing the lawn. Dad would head back inside. Within minutes I could hear his snoring above the mower. It sounded a bit like an out-of-tune Offenhauser engine.

That was then, though. These days the race isn’t the event it was. The ratings on ABC last year were the lowest ever. This year the race moves over the NBC, as a 54-year relationship between the race and ABC/ESPN comes to an end.

The race coverage won’t be the same. Neither is the race. But the memories remain. And that’s appropriate for this weekend.

• The NAIA World Series is a Memorial Day weekend tradition around these parts. Larry Weir talked with SWX’s Sam Adams about the tournament and more in the latest Press Box pod.

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WSU: It’s Saturday. A Saturday in May. So Jim Meehan has a golf column. It’s subject? Former Washington State golfer Derek Bayley and his current journey. … The NCAA West Regional in track and field is going on, with the Cougars doing well in one event. … The baseball team lost to Arizona again. Today is the final day of the season. … Elsewhere in the Pac-12, it’s time to look at who is doing well and who isn’t around the conference. … Oregon State got some good news last night. Tres Tinkle is returning for his senior year. … Washington thinks it has a difference-maker at wide receiver.

Gonzaga: The baseball season is over, though before the Bulldogs were eliminated from the WCC tournament last night, they knocked out top seed BYU. The conference will only get one team to the NCAA tournament this year.

Preps: The State track meets rolled on in Washington, with Ryan Collingwood writing from Tacoma on the 4A and 3A as well as the 2A meets. … Jason Shoot has the coverage of what occurred in the smaller schools’ meet at Eastern Washington. … Rain was the only winner yesterday in state softball play. The 4A schools will try again this morning at Merkel Field on Spokane’s North Side. … The local schools weren’t successful in the state soccer semifinals. … There was some tennis success.

Mariners: The M’s kept putting runners on base last night. But getting them home seemed a near-impossibility. The result was another loss. … Kyle Seager will make his season debut today in Oakland. … Gene Warnick has the usual Out of Right Field recap of yesterday’s action.

Seahawks: A contract can tell you a lot about how a franchise feels about a player.

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• I had forgotten Memorial Day wasn’t on a Monday when I was young. A lot of holidays were like that. They might have fallen on a Wednesday, disrupting the work week in many ways. But our government, in its infinite wisdom, fixed that in 1971. Washington D.C. couldn’t figure out how to get out of quagmire in Southeast Asia, but it could figure out how to move Washington’s birthday. Until later …