Mark down the date as June 3 that Polar Bear Pete finally took the turf in Queens…kind of.
Okay, so it wasn’t defending NL Rookie of the Year Pete Alonso and the Mets taking the field – although if life had different plans, they would’ve been hosting the Houston Astros at Citi Field on Wednesday – but instead a horse named Polar Bear Pete that ran in the second race on opening day at Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y.
Unfortunately, the equine Polar Bear Pete wasn’t as successful as the human one, finishing seventh out of eight horses in the one-mile race run on Belmont’s outer turf track.
Opening Day at Belmont actually had quite a few sports-related names in the running, and also one reference to the current pandemic gripping America. Those intersected in the third race, as Fauci – yes, after Dr. Anthony Fauci – and Garoppolo both took the track for a five-furlong gallop; neither was able to grab the brass ring, though, with post-time favorite Fauci placing and Garoppolo finishing fourth in a race won by Prisoner.
On the rest of the slate, the sixth race was set to include a filly named Say Hey, and race seven had both a WWE flair with Apex Predator (not jockeyed by Randy Orton, sadly) and Macho Boy and a horse named Lorenzen, which was fittingly set to wear a blue drape similar to the Kentucky and New York Giants blue once worn by the late Jared Lorenzen (who also once quarterbacked a National Indoor Football League team called the Kentucky Horsemen after his NFL career ended).
More important than the results, though, is the fact that Belmont’s opening day is a win for New York, marking the resumption of sports in the state after an 80-day hiatus due to the COVID-19 outbreak.