Dirty Little Secret

CHAPEL HILL - Forget Sosa’s corked bat, the UNC basketball coaching turmoil, the Wizard’s firing of Michael Jordan, the biggest scandal this spring is turning out to be the supposed “shady origins” of the fabled Trinidad Cup. Long considered a classic and honored Southern sporting tradition, rumors are swirling in the usually sedate Chapel Hill that there’s some very dirty laundry in the Cup’s past.

“I don’t want to get into details and finger pointing,” says an unidentified source in the Vascular Division at UNC Surgery, “but 'something’s rotten in Denmark,' you might say.”

Leaks from the National Enquirer and an upcoming Jerry Springer Show, indicate that Trinidad Cup officials and representatives of the Friends of the Cup, a booster club, will not look good as they try to explain the supposedly distinguished history of the race. They’ve released a statement to the media in an effort to quell the rumors but have acknowledged,

“while it honors its past and future resident-scholar-athletes, and seeks to instill in them gentlemanly and gentlewomanly conduct, it cannot take responsibility for former Cup competitors who may have behaved in less than perfect ways.”

Insinuations have been rampant lately and documents posted on the Smoking Gun website have connected the original Trinidad Cup to Mob-financed pinball tournaments, arrest for public drunkenness of persons “very high up in the surgical hierarchy," Monica Lewinsky and point-shaving schemes. Suggestions of a connection to the recent resignation of School of Medicine Dean Jeffrey Houpt have been vehemently denied by Cup officials.

An unsigned packet postmarked from “Room 14” and written on a Medtronic Endovascular letterhead has recently been received by investigative reporter Jennifer Julian at WRAL in Raleigh. Its contents purport a “very dark and seedy underbelly” and that the first Cup was not a famed and respected event but rather “ a cheap, sleazy, drunken pinball game.” Ms Julian will reveal its additional contents in a special later this week on Channel 11 News.

Spokesman for the Friends of the Cup, Dr. Robert D. Croom III, has speculated that the “whole thing smells of a Yankee conspiracy.” Others at the Cup Headquarters in Charlotte are not so circumspect;

”Blair’s got an axe to grind. He acted like his pathetic loss in 1976 was funny at the time, but I bet that embarrassment has come back to haunt him. Now he just wants to ruin it for everyone.” Adds Croom,

“It certainly would explain that ugly accusatory tone Dr. Keagy directed toward Dr. O.C. Mendes at this year’s Womack Society when he interrupted the meeting to offer his ‘clarification of events.’ And by the way, it may be worth noting that Dr. Keagy still hasn’t paid off his beer and Swisher Sweet tab at Merritt’s Grill and Grocery.”

Nevertheless, respected figures from the sporting world, including Pete Rose, Don King and Dennis Rodman have hastened to rally around the Cup in this moment of controversy and the French Ice Skating Federation has sent a letter of support. Meanwhile in quiet, little Chapel Hill, people wait anxiously and wonder: which side will Dean come out on?