But of course 2020 has been a year unlike any other year in recent memory. It's been disrupted by coronavirus, lockdowns, self-quarantining, and my favorite, social distancing. All words no one was uttering at the start of the New Year. Some much for all those predictions.
No need to rehash the impact. It's huge, and as Yogi told us, it ain't over till it's over. There have been postponements, cancellations, and workarounds. The Kentucky Derby has been moved to the first Saturday in September. The Preakness and Belmont, run at tracks other than Churchill Downs, and at venues controlled by different states, have not really cemented their intentions.
The New York Racing Association, NYRA, ever an organization that marches to the tune of different drummers, has announced they will open Belmont on the regularly scheduled Belmont Day, June 6th. This of course would scramble the traditional order of the Triple Crown races. But any student of racetrack history will tell you that the Preakness was once run before the Derby, but that was a long time ago. There are strange things done under the racetrack sun, and scrambling the order would just add to the pile.
Live televised sports is dead. At least for now. I'm ready to look forward to curling matches, but they're probably called off as well. Is darts safe to play?
Networks, ever creative, have been showing rebroadcasts of football, baseball, basketball, hockey, and boxing matches. I toured the remote last night and Curt Gowdy was announcing The Ohio State/USC football game. Archie Griffith was doing well. Nice to hear Curt again. He's been dead since 2006.
Horse racing, impacted like all sports, has found a crack in the wall. Racing has crawled through with live racing from Oaklawn Park, Gulfstream Park and Tampa Bay Downs, tracks in Arkansas and Florida respectively. Live racing, taking bets, but no one in the stands. No hardcore horseplayer ever needed to gaze at pretty women wearing floppy hats, holding over-priced drinks in order to make a bet. In fact, if you really bet, women are a distraction best avoided.
Two Guys Talking sports was a theme of many Bill Gallo sport cartoons in the Daily News. Put two guys from different generations in a bar, or some setting that serves alcohol, and conversations might come around to who "was better?" Mythical matchups. Joe Louis vs. Muhammad Ali? Ty Cobb and Pete Rose? That game has endless pairings across all sports, and horse racing is no exception.
Cleverly filling the void of a shifted Derby, Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Arkansas moved its Arkansas Derby to the first Saturday in May. Yesterday.
The Arkansas Derby has become a major prep race for the Kentucky Derby. Points from the running of the race go to the top tier finishes and count toward Kentucky Derby starting eligibility. And this year was no exception to that. Except as a prep race, it was being run months before the rescheduled Kentucky Derby.
The Arkansas Derby is Grade 1 race, and attracts to best of the three-year-olds hoping for a little immortality. In face, so many owners and trainers wanted in on the race that it needed to be run in two divisions, with the $1 million purse being split. Oaklawn couldn't handle the number of prospective starters with its smaller starting gate, so the race was split.
It must be nice to be Bob Baffert, because his entrants in each race race. Charlatan in the first division, and Nadal in the second won. Bob wasn't even there. He social distanced from his California home.
Charlatan's race was a front-running bore, and Nadal's race was a bit more exciting, as he came from second place to run down the leader in the stretch, Both horses were prohibitive favorites. Betting money was to be made in the multi-leg races, or the exotics, triple and superfecta. Honestly, I watched, but didn't back any dogs in the fight.
But there was a third Derby on the first Saturday in May, a computer simulated race conceived by NBC, matching all 13 Triple Crown winners against each other in a mythical 2020 Derby.
The ultimate bar room proof was programmed to settle all boasts of who's the best. Joe Drape of the Times reported on the concept, and even offered picks: a boxed exacta of Secretariat (1973), America Pharoah (2015) and Affirmed (1978). There was no betting on the race in this country, but I heard a rumor that the bookies in England, always eager to set a line on anything, were taking action. My own pick was just Secretariat to win. After all, his winning times in all three Triple Crown races were track records, and his Belmont win was a world record—and they all still stand, 47 years later.
As I write this, I can look up and see the framed, famous 16x20 black and white photo of Secretariat and Ron Turcotte winning the Belmont Stakes, with the rest of the field a nearly a sixteenth a mile behind. A sixteenth of a mile is 110 yards.
Turcotte's head is cranked to look at the tote board and absorb the ungodly fractions Secretariat was ripping through on his way to the first Triple Crown since Citation's 1948 victories.
I've written before about this. My friend Dave (Fourstardave) and I were there, screaming at the fractions as well. We had arrived at the track when it opened and raced to secure the few remaining seats left for the public who didn't buy reserved seat tickets. We did what we always did. We took pages from the Morning Telegraph that we didn't need, folded them neatly, and taped them to the three seats we staked out.
In that era, I carried a stub of pencil with me and had a few feet of masking tape wrapped around it. We always had fresh tape, and our papers never blew away. I was rummaging around in a closet not too long ago and came across that pencil, still with a supply of very dried out masking tape attached. Now in my museum.
Two of us, and three seats. Why? One was for Les, our handicapping mentor, probably about 25 years older than us, but who we hooked up with at the track through someone else, years before 1973.
Les was a Citation fan. And why wouldn't you be? The horse won 16 straight races. Won the Triple Crown in 1948, and was probably the best horse there was before Secretariat came around, probably even better than Kelso, who didn't win a Triple Crown.
Les was in love with Citation. We heard it often. We joked amongst ourselves that Les would have sex with Citation if he could.
On that historic day in 1973 we found Les and told him he had a seat for him. He wasn't interested. What? Here's a guy who came to the track with numbers on his Morning Telegraph for each horse. He taught us whatever we knew by them. Pace makes the race. We nicknamed Les Mr. Pace.
Les had Pass Catcher in the 1971 Belmont, that saw Cannonero II fail to win the Triple Crown. Pass Catcher paid a box car price, and Les had a deuce on him. He had come to the track almost beside himself, bursting with Pass Catcher's chances, showing anyone who would turn around and look at the number Pass Catcher had achieved in his handicapping system, a system that played heavy toward assigned weights, since in that era, weight was a real handicapping factor. Andy Beyer's speed ratings were not yet conceived.
Les never came to the seats. He was depressed. Why? After appearing on the cover of three magazines (Sports Illustrated, Newsweek and Time) before the Belmont, Secretariat was considered the overwhelming favorite to become the first Triple Crown winner since Citation's 1948 achievement. Les left the track early and never watched Secretariat win.
Les couldn't contemplate a world that was going to anoint Secretariat as being a great horse. Would Citation beat Secretariat in a race? Who knew? It would have to be a mythical matchup.
In a Brave New World of live sports programming, NBC wisely came up with the idea of putting all 13 Triple crown winners into a mythical, computer generated virtual race to determine the greatest of all time. The GOAT as they say now.
They would run the race at the same time they would run the Derby: 5:46. They weren't going to have to worry about running over programming time due to a jockey's objection and a disqualification after 22 minutes of painstaking review this year.
I have to admit, the simulation was very realistic. The race unfolded with Seattle Slew taking the lead and stubbornly holding it. There was even a little bumping coming into the stretch. (Oh no, don't tell me they're going to program an objection!) Fractions were posted.
Where's Secretariat? He's easy to spot, since the colors are easily recognized. He's back a bit, between horses. What the hell is Turcotte doing?
They get into the stretch, and Larry Colmus's call acknowledges that Citation is becoming prominently placed, coming up the rail. Eddie Arcaro has been saving ground the whole way.
Prior to the race the usual Derby broadcasters, Randy Moss, Mike Tirico and Jerry Bailey, all patched in from homes, offered their picks. Randy Moss made his points for Secretariat. Jerry Bailey, perhaps not so surprisingly, chose Citation. He offered his conclusion was reached not because he ever saw Citation run, but on being told by Eddie Arcaro that Citation was the greatest horse he ever rode. And Arcaro won two Triple Crowns; the only jockey to ever do so.
Arcaro was the greatest jockey of his generation. And before Money Mike, Mike Smith, there was Jerry Bailey, a rider who I always hoped was on the horse I bet who might now be in a tight finish to the wire. Jerry Bailey, to me, would win more tight finishes than anyone.
Jerry rode Cigar to 16 straight victories, tying Citation's record. Cigar couldn't get the 17th straight win. But I did that exacta, and it paid handsomely.
God damn it! Where's Secretariat? This race is not going to end with him losing to Citation is it? Jesus Christ, if that happen someone is coming out of their grave, whipping off their binoculars and telling us who's the greatest now.
Well, as anyone who watched it, Secretariat did prevail in a tight finish that saw Citation finish second. A very believable outcome.
Guys at the track usually know little about the people they're surround by. For all the years we knew Les we never knew him in a setting other than the racetrack, and never with anyone he brought to the track.
Les always found us sometime after the first race, after the Daily Double, then the only exotic bet. He didn't want to get caught up in too many double bets and get wiped out by the first race. He only ever brought so much money with him, sand left if he tapped out. He never asked to borrow money. He never seemed to make any large bets.
He was married, perhaps for the second time, had a son, worked for ARA food services at some point, had a Master's Degree in something, drove a Triumph sports car, lived somewhere on York Avenue, and had a TR, Trafalgar phone number that I had on a very worn index card in my wallet. I never had a reason to call him.
Once, in the dead of winter before there was an inner track at Aqueduct, Les us to Liberty Bell for some cold weather action. We ran into other New Yorkers, some of whom knew Les quite well. One was the comedian Joey Faye, who in that era was starring in Alka-seltzer commercials. We all were huddled in the glass-enclosed grandstand, shivering when the door was opened to go out and view the races.
At one point we learned Les owned a bar somewhere, sometime ago. We suspect he knew some wiseguys by their full name, but he always hung out with us.
Immediately after the simulated race my friend and I talked on the phone and the subject was Les. God, can imagine if Les were alive today how disappointed, morose, depressed, suicidal he'd be?
We last saw Les sometime shortly after 1975 in the paddock area of Belmont. I had just gotten married and introduced him to my wife. We hadn't been seeing Les lately, and he seemed somewhat distant. I think his was recovering from some serious burns on an arm suffered in a commercial kitchen fire. He didn't hang out with us, and I don't remember ever seeing him again.
Les Barrett could be alive, but he'd be in his mid 90s now. My friend and I are in our very early 70s.
After the simulated race, did the earth move somewhere just a bit? Did an urn shake a bit and inch its way toward the mantle's edge? Any horseplayer knows they usually all lose sometime.
Les, go back to what you were doing. It's been decided. RIP.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment