Two centaurs walk into a bar and get into a fight


This will tie together…promise!
So tonight I was at a Wellesley Club dinner, and the guest speaker was Mike Dowling, sportscaster for Channel 5 in Boston. The last time I saw him at a non-sports event was as MC of the Wellesley Spelling Bee. It’s an annual bee where teams of three from companies, community organizations, college alumni groups, neighborhoods or schools compete. It’s a fundraiser for the Wellesley Education Fund. A good cause, a fun night.

We be in the bee
A couple of years ago I got together with my two brothers, Hugh and Peter, and we formed a team for the spelling bee. We were The Kelley Brothers. Pretty clever name. Both of them went to Harvard. I didn’t, but I won a Hunnewell School spelling bee in 5th grade and I’m an excellent parallel parker.

We almost won
We were indeed a formidable team, making it to the final round. It had gone from 40 teams down to the final two: some guys from a law firm in town, and the Kelley Brothers. We went through seven ridiculous words that no one would ever use, and both teams were still standing. Then Mike Dowling gave us the next word…centauromacchia. Okay, Mike – use it in a a sentence. “A centaur is a mythical half-man, half-horse. When two of them are having a fight – In Latin – it’s a centauromacchia.” Really. Well, we got it wrong. To be honest, it was not I who blew it. One of my very smart brothers thought that “macchia” had only one c. So we lost, but at least it was on a word that would never come up in conversation.

Until the 2009 World Series
While the media was fawning all over A Rod during the World Series you may have heard some talk about his centaurs. A Rod has two of them painted on the wall above his bed, facing each other in ready-to-attack position. The heads on both of the centaurs are likenesses of A Rod. Seriously. Word of this got out when Kate Hudson let it spill that she thought they were a bit much and he should lose them.

So do you think A Rod knows how to spell centauromacchia?
I’m guessing no. It could be that he calls himself A because can’t remember how to spell Alex.

Exonerating footnote
If you look up centauromacchia in dictionary.com it isn’t there.