Well, isn’t this fun! Two weeks after bluebloods Dinny Phipps and Stuart Janney win the Kentucky Derby with a horse trained by 62-year-old Shug McGuaghey, here comes racing relic D. Wayne Lukas, a good-looking 77, to win the Preakness with his 50-year-old jockey, Gary Stevens, a mere pup in this company. I haven’t looked at my Chinese calendar but I have a sneaking suspicion that this is the Year of the Old Guy. What’s next—Lazarus makes another comeback to take the Belmont with a horse ridden by Old Man Mose? Louis Armstrong could sing as the horses paraded onto the track. Maybe all this bodes well for old Bill, no Spring chicken himself. Maybe I can talk Steve Cauthen, Affirmed’s old rider, out of retirement. That still leaves a problem with my trainer—Larry Pilotti is too young. Where the hell is Dominic Imprescia (abandoned Earth recently at 94) when you really need him?
Forrest Gump Was Right
Racing, like life, really is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get. What we got this time was the complete antithesis of what we got in the Kentucky Derby. Racing people like to say pace makes the race and this was never truer than in the first two installments of the Triple Crown. In the former race, half-a-dozen horses, led by Mike Smith on Palace Malice, were hell-bent-for-election out of the gate, setting impossible fractions. Naturally, all the leaders fell apart in the stretch or earlier, leaving the closers to pick up the checks. Of the horses closest to the early lead in the Derby, Oxbow hung on best to finish sixth.
Perhaps chastened by the Derby experience, the jockeys were on their best behaviors this time, determined not to make the same mistake. The horses crawled out of the gate and wise old rider Gary Stevens found himself with an easy lead. Jockeys like Stevens have been around long enough to realize that if everybody wants to give you something, particularly in a race of this magnitude, well, shucks, it would be plumb unneighborly not to take it. So he put his good but not great horse on cruise control and galloped around the track to the finish line, winning one of the slowest versions of the Preakness ever. For racing neophytes, if a horse on the lead is not pushed and is allowed to set his own pace, he will not be backing up in the late stages and nobody is going to catch him.
Orb, the rail horse, found himself surrounded much of the time, got open way too late and finished a poor fourth. Some commentators felt Joel Rosario, his jockey, had a brief opportunity to break through the traffic jam, and didn’t take it. That’s not what I saw. I saw a horse who didn’t look comfortable running inside horses and who may not have liked the Pimlico surface proving he was not the kind of horse which wins Triple Crowns. In last week’s column, I wrote of Orb being dissimilar to the most recent Triple Crown winners, Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed, they being horses who ran close to the pace, he being an inveterate closer. There is too much opportunity for these horses to get beat on any given day. It’s difficult to pick against a horse like Orb because he is the most talented of this group. If he comes out of this race well, he’ll probably be the favorite for the Belmont. At a longer distance of 1 1/2 miles, the final race of the Triple Crown series is well-suited for Orb. If you’re getting excited about Oxbow, be cautious. The Preakness may be his one great shining moment.
Oxbow Wins The Preakness
Looking Ahead
If not Orb, who? Well, Itsmyluckyday, trained by Calder’s Eddie Plesa, finished well to be second, beaten a little over two lengths. He has run twice in two weeks but had two months off before that. The mile-and-a-half distance is a big question. Mylute keeps getting better. Todd Pletcher is planning to run Revolutionary at his home track as well as Palace Malice and Overanalyze, with an outside possibility of adding Micromanage and the filly, Unlimited Budget. The Derby second, Golden Soul, is expected back and there are a couple more possibilities. Except for Revolutionary, nobody scares you to death but I think it is safe to say no horse will go off at 3-5 in the Belmont.
Hey, Bill….
I was looking at your winners’ circle photo and I saw a picture of a rickety-looking old guy that doesn’t look at all like the fellow in your column head. I know when the winners’ circle picture was taken. What about the other one?—An admirer
The photo atop the column was taken in late October of last year, 2012. Devotees of The Flying Pie realize that we post an annual birthday suit picture of Bill on—guess when—his birthday, November 2 or thereabouts. You’re right about the other photo, though. And, if you think that one is pretty rough, you should see my driver’s license photo. I look like a guy who lives under a bridge. It seems the quick snaps are the worst. Siobhan has the same problem. Sometimes we look halfway nice, other times like people you don’t really want to invite to your symposium. Each year is more of a challenge. I’m thinking of getting one of those masks the Anonymous people wear. Hey, and don’t worry—when the body regresses as far as the face, you won’t be seeing any more of those birthday pictures, either.
Looking For A Job?
Tried to hire anybody lately? We have. And we highly recommend this if you’re sitting around bored and looking for a few laughs. I read a syndicated column a few days back which decried the lack of prepared job-hunters being sent forth by the community colleges and universities of our land. The columnist is right on point but he doesn’t know the half of it. Applicants show up late, wearing rags and texting their friends between interview questions. HELLO! Why the hell should we hire YOU? Remember when we used to go and apply for jobs? Your mother would send you over there in a suit and tie even if you were looking to pick strawberries. Yes, sir. No, sir. Whatever you say, sir. We’ll be here anytime you want. Pay us anything. What vacations? What fringe benefits? Go out and get coffee? No problem.
I drove a cab once. I worked in a Syrian bakery, for a real-life Syrian. I worked in an assembly-line plant, making boxes. My employers weren’t exactly father figures. They didn’t pat me on the knee when I was feeling blue. They knew there was always another schmuck waiting right outside to replace me as soon as I felt too unloved to be productive. This alternative seems not to occur to present-day job-hunters. One girl emailed us her application, complete with spotty resume and one reference. Siobhan called to set up an interview. The girl said she would call back with “a good time.” See ya, honey. Do any of these people have mentors, advisors, parents? Well, one kid did. Born in this country, Chinese parents, speaks better English than Shakespeare. Has a decent job, wants a better one. Wants to learn about what Siobhan is doing. Available anytime. Yes, ma’am, no ma’am, whatever you say, ma’am. Pay me anything. Wouldn’t know what to do with a vacation if I had one. His name is Austin Li. We hired him. He starts next month. He speaks Chinese even better than he does English. We’re thinking of expanding into the Orient.
The Further Adventures Of Lila
People ask about Lila more than anything else. Well, Lila is getting big. When she moved in , she weighed 22 pounds—now, she’s double that. She’s housebroken and sleeps on the floor next to our bed. She gets to come up on the bed for about twenty minutes every morning. Lila is not one to awaken quickly, like some dogs. Lila would rather sleep in. She has learned to obey the commands “sit” and “wait,” which is what she does when the myriad of delivery trucks invade the yard. When the trucks stop and the drivers get out, she is allowed to greet them, which sometimes—when she gets a trifle carried away—involves actually jumping on them. Nobody seems to mind. Yet. Our post-Larry Fedex man, a big black guy who listens to Rush Limbaugh despite my constant admonishments, says he’s making friends with Lila “while she’s small.” Nobody’s fool, he.
Lila spends most of her day hanging out at the Pathogenes office next door. She is very big on greeting everybody and even RE-greeting them each time she returns to the office from play time. The other day, she re-greeted Debbie, the can lady, after wriggling around a mud puddle for several minutes. Good thing Debbie wasn’t wearing her formal ensemble. Lila has also discovered the horses, though she gives them a wide berth. This morning, she wasn’t paying attention outside Juggernaut’s stall window and he almost picked her up by the ears.
Lila’s last official duty of the day is to accompany us down the driveway for the nightly gate closing. She sits and raptly watches as Bill pushes the button and the gate barks out its pre-closing warning, then slowly swings shut. Lila is either very fascinated by this or by her owners’ strange inclinations to raise it to the level of a ceremony. “What the hell?” probably thinks Lila. “It’s a gate.”
Lila eats like….well….like a horse, actually. She still likes eggs but she likes chicken better. We know this because if she is in the house at dinner time—a decidedly bad idea—she will try to jump up on the table to get some. We keep her on the porch with her own food which seems like a big gyp to Lila. She has come to the conclusion that anything Bill and Siobhan appear to be eating is probably good, except, of course, for kale. Lila does not understand the health benefits of certain foods and therefore does not understand why anyone would eat kale. She has plenty of company in this reckoning. Anyway, Siobhan has gone and signed Lila up for obedience school, starting next week. Lila is a smart girl and we’re sure she’ll catch on in no time. The dog school people tell us we should bring tons of little treats to reward her for good conduct during the lessons. We have no problem with that. Colonel Sanders is on the way.
Racing Update
Hannah is beginning to show signs of life after an unencouraging start at Calder. After getting buried in a half-mile work against a nice filly, she has stopped sulking and is returning to form. Trainer Larry Pilotti let her stretch her legs last Saturday morning and she’ll probably be asked to do a little more this week. Some horses just mature more slowly than others and some horses just don’t like the whole concept, especially fillies. We have told Hannah that the only alternatives are cart-pulling or the polo pony life, neither of which is particularly appealing. At least, in thoroughbred racing, nobody bonks you in the shins with a mallet.
Cosmic Flash, aka Puck, got a few days off to mosey around town and go to the beach, there being such a long interval between his maiden win and the next race on June 22nd. He’s back on the track now, taking care of business. Two-year-old action has picked up at Calder but the field for the $100,000 stakes will probably be modest and Cosmic Flash should stand as good a chance as anyone. We told him nobody won the Triple Crown again this year and it was up to him now. He wanted to know what he got out of the deal. We tried to explain to him the many wonderful benefits of a future career in the stud but he didn’t seem to entirely understand. “GIRLS? I have to mess with GIRLS? I told you a long time ago I’m NEVER getting married!” We promptly assured him this would never be a requisite.
That’s all, folks….
