The next two days, a small contingent -- very small, actually -- will be traveling down to Manhattan College's Draddy Gymnasium for the Brother Jasper Invitational.
Before The Armory was The Armory of modern times, our program scheduled meets at Draddy with alarming frequency. In fact, the MAAC Indoor Championships were held there for many, many years.
Once The Armory became reinvigorated more than a decade ago, we stopped going to meets at the then rather drabby Draddy Gymnasium. However, our good pal down at Manhattan, long-time head coach Dan Mecca, was raving about their new track at Draddy. He invited us to take part in their meets. We caught a glimpse of it at the end of XC season (the MAAC XC banquet was held at Manhattan). It looks very nice!
Anyway, we wondered why the meet was named after Brother Jasper, which led us to the discovery of the Manhattan athletic program's unique nickname (the Jaspers), which led us to this link ... which led us to the amazing discovery that Brother Jasper invented the seventh inning stretch in baseball!
Being a purveyor of useless baseball knowledge, I find it amazing that in my 47 years I never knew this story. Click on the link to see how Brother Jasper invented the seventh inning stretch.
And click back here later in the weekend to see the smattering of Marist Track results from the Brother Jasper Invitational at Draddy Gymnasium.
It was also featured in this episode of the Cosby show, couldn't find the link where they showed the track, but Theo was practicing with his Dad to get him ready for the race.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb9WwqsTX4g
Also I believe we ran an NEC championship there too.