By now, we all know which facts are beyond dispute: Harvard professor/celebrity Henry Louis Gates came home to Cambridge from a trip, found his front door jammed, and enlisted his driver in forcing it open. Someone observing the scene called police and reported it as a break-in. Police officers arrived, questioned Gates, and eventually learned that he did indeed live at the house.
We don't know who said what wrong thing first, or how the incident escalated, but Gates was not pleased with some part of the encounter, and asked the investigating officer for his name and badge number. The officer exited Gates' home through the front door, Gates followed him, and was arrested on his front porch for disorderly conduct. The charges were quickly dropped.
Gates has discussed the incident as if it is an example of how black men in America are treated by police. He's right about part of the equation. If you're an average guy in an encounter with a police officer, his badge gives him license to hold all negative attitudes -- yours and his -- against you. Unless and until all the traditional negative attitudes have disappeared from black-white encounters, a black man running into a white cop is likely to end up on the receiving end of a few more negatives than his white neighbor crossing the path of that same cop. Gates, like Leroy Average Brother, has reason to think that his close encounter with police went sour more quickly than it would have if he looked different.
Gates probably knows that there are Harvard professor/celebrities who would have been treated like the big shot pillars of the community they consider themselves to be. "Very sorry sir, nothing personal. All we knew was that we got a phone tip that two men were breaking in the front door. We're glad it turned out to be a false alarm, and we want you to know we're here for you in case the call is real next time. Are you all set with getting that door fixed?"
It's also probable that what Gates got instead was tone and body language that said something more like, "Who the hell are you to be questioning me? You're lucky I didn't dent your skull for taking too long to show me some ID." It's a very rare black man vs. police encounter where both behave as if law enforcement is the side that has to be careful and accommodating. Almost every black man in America knows that he doesn't have status that trumps a police officer's feeling that he is freer to vent on you than your neighbor.
Galling as that fact may be, though, it's still worth Gates' time to recognize that while he may have been lined up for disrespect for the same reason as Mr. Average Brother, that dis took far less severe form than Leroy would have expected. Insert Leroy into the scene -- upscale neighborhood, report of a burglary, front door forced open, Leroy Average Brother found inside -- our boy Leroy is lucky to avoid becoming the latest Amadou Diallo. If Leroy happens to go unshot, he'd know to cut his losses at the scene, hold his temper and tongue, and express any irritation about the incident to someone other than the offending officer. And if Leroy couldn't help venting his frustration, even if only by running off at the mouth, he'd likely have some cuts, bruises and lumps to show for it, along with some extra charges like resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer. Gates told officers that he was uncomfortable with his arms cuffed behind his back and the arresting officers loosed his wrists and recuffed them in front of him. Think they would have done the same for Leroy?
If the reaction to Gates' trauma is something less than boiling outrage even from the Leroys of America, it's probably not because they think race is no factor in police treatment of black men. It's more likely that folks are feeling the disconnect between Gates' treatment and his reaction.
If Gates had received the Leroy treatment, had lumps on his head, broken bones and swollen eyes, there'd be a wave of anger as a result. Millions would be upset at the demonstration that the wrong appearance makes you unsafe from the police in your own home. Getting denied the upper-crust treatment you think you've earned doesn't quite have the same widespread resonance. This is not nearly Rodney King; it's a bit more like Oprah being turned away from the Hermes shop in Paris.
The most obvious solution when you're denied the BMOC/HNIC treatment: make the mope recognize that he should have known who he was messing with. Make some phone calls. Pull some strings. Get the guy transferred to a hellhole. Or fired. Behind the scenes, leaving no fingerprints. Let him and his former coworkers suspect that the day his life started to spiral downhill was the day he got on your bad side.
Gates will serve his image well if he can get satisfaction for his personal insult in that kind of private way. He'll make better use of his public platform by focusing attention on how Leroy gets treated.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Michael Jackson
Broad poetic license is granted for the purpose of praising the dearly departed in the course of a eulogy.
So when Magic Johnson told the world that watching Michael Jackson made him a better point guard, heads were cocked and eyebrows were raised not because the words were out of character for the moment.
It was because they were unnecessary. Magic didn't need to exaggerate to give Michael Jackson the praise he deserved. Later speakers, like Berry Gordy, groped for the correct note. But when Gordy found it, he and everybody else heard that it rang true, and the bell has been sounding ever since.
Michael Jackson was the greatest entertainer ever.
"Greatest" does not necessarily mean "most talented." Jackson didn't compose as much or as well as Stevie Wonder or Smokey Robinson. He didn't have the vocal chops of Luther Vandross or the instrumental virtuosity of Prince. He didn't stamp a single sonic style for all time the way James Brown did. Sammy Davis was Jackson's peer in singing and dancing, plus he had enough extra skill in acting, comedy and impressions to win an overall talent decathlon.
But greatness is measured by more than the height of a performer's peak. Roger Maris hit 61 home runs in a single season and Hank Aaron's one-year best was only 47, but nobody would dare to suggest that Maris was a better home run hitter. Greatness is a measure of the sum total of your flight path: how high, how far, and for how long. Add up those columns, and Jackson can't be matched.
How high did MJ fly? His His Motown career with his brothers began with four straight singles that went to number one on Billboard's U.S. pop charts. He went even higher as a solo artist: five straight multiplatinum albums, one of which, as everyone knows, is the top-selling album of all time. 12 number one singles, and 13 more that were in the top ten.
The distance of the Jackson flight pattern was unprecedented, and it's not likely to be duplicated. Jackson came along when the development of technology enabled facts, sounds, images, and people to move around the globe with an ease unknown to prior generations. Cultural fads that took months to cross oceans during Sinatra's peak years and weeks at the start of Beatlemania happened in a matter of days when Thriller was released. And the whole world saw the premiere of Black Or White at about the same time.
Jackson's career was perfectly timed to take advantage of shifting trends in another way: during his prime, more of the world than ever before began to use the new ease of travel and transport to import American culture. The fraying of the Soviet Bloc and the end of the Cold War opened up new markets for Coca-Cola and McDonald's, but they also meant that Beat It and Bad were not seen as evil capitalist symbols the way Blue Suede Shoes and Hound Dog would have been. The result: Michael Jackson played to sellout crowds in football-sized stadiums not just in New York, London, Tokyo and Paris, but also in Moscow, Prague, Budapest, Bucharest and Warsaw. Add those cities to Jackson concert stops that would have been too much trouble to reach in 1955 or 1965, like Tunis and Tel Aviv, Mumbai and Manila, Bangkok and Buenos Aires, plus Cape Town, Santiago, Mexico City and Sao Paolo, and you've got a star whose reach could not have been imagined in the world that existed at the start of his career.
The increasing ease of information transfer helped make Jackson a star whose like had not been seen, and it's also likely to keep him from being eclipsed. The world had opened up just enough for everybody to be a recipient of the same information in the 80s and 90s, but it hadn't quite reached its current point -- where everybody can generate and disseminate their own information. Today's audience is more fragmented and has more producers creating content for every identifiable niche. Which makes it much more difficult to reach the kind of cross-section of viewers and listeners to make a Thriller-sized blockbuster possible. In 2009, a would-be Michael Jackson might spring his own version of the moonwalk at a broadcast like Motown 25, but fewer homes will have three generations of viewers sitting around the same TV to see it. Grown men will be watching ESPN, little kids will have Disney on their own sets, plenty of women will be watching Lifetime, and the core music-consuming audience of teens and twentysomethings will spend less time being awestruck than their 80s counterparts and more time trying to create knockoffs, spoofs, and superior moves to upload to YouTube. With so many more distractions in today's media world, it'll be hard for anybody to grab as much attention as MJ did at his best.
The duration of Jackson's stardom will be just as tough to match. I Want You Back, the Jackson 5's first Motown hit and a Billboard #1 single, was released in 1969. You Rock My World, Michael's last single to reach the top ten on the Billboard pop charts in the U.S., was released in 2001. That 32-year span, remarkable when considered in isolation, is even more majestic when viewed in comparison to the longevity of other music icons. In 1995, 32 years from the Beatles' first appearance in the Billboard U.S. top ten, Paul McCartney was ten years past his most recent top ten single. In 1987, 32 years after Elvis Presley's first charting single, he was 15 years past his last top ten single and ten years gone from the face of the earth. Jackson's stardom was steady during that long span. Either as a solo artist or in combination with his brothers or others, he had at least one top ten single in 13 of the 20 years from 1970 to 1989, and six more in the 1990s.
Jackson's longevity is the obvious explanation for the outpouring of emotion triggered by his passing. We've known Michael Jackson for 40 years. For the first twenty years, we'd seen nothing more sinister than a sad dissatisfaction with his appearance and a harmlessly weird reluctance to grow up. By the time things began to look worse, we'd known and liked him for so long that some of us refused to believe he'd done anything wrong, others wished he hadn't, and plenty more preferred to avert our eyes and thoughts. Until the end, we'd hoped against hope that he could find the uncompromised happiness that filled so much of his music. His death makes it clear that there will be no such finding for him in this life, and that's a sad fact to have to digest.
So when Magic Johnson told the world that watching Michael Jackson made him a better point guard, heads were cocked and eyebrows were raised not because the words were out of character for the moment.
It was because they were unnecessary. Magic didn't need to exaggerate to give Michael Jackson the praise he deserved. Later speakers, like Berry Gordy, groped for the correct note. But when Gordy found it, he and everybody else heard that it rang true, and the bell has been sounding ever since.
Michael Jackson was the greatest entertainer ever.
"Greatest" does not necessarily mean "most talented." Jackson didn't compose as much or as well as Stevie Wonder or Smokey Robinson. He didn't have the vocal chops of Luther Vandross or the instrumental virtuosity of Prince. He didn't stamp a single sonic style for all time the way James Brown did. Sammy Davis was Jackson's peer in singing and dancing, plus he had enough extra skill in acting, comedy and impressions to win an overall talent decathlon.
But greatness is measured by more than the height of a performer's peak. Roger Maris hit 61 home runs in a single season and Hank Aaron's one-year best was only 47, but nobody would dare to suggest that Maris was a better home run hitter. Greatness is a measure of the sum total of your flight path: how high, how far, and for how long. Add up those columns, and Jackson can't be matched.
How high did MJ fly? His His Motown career with his brothers began with four straight singles that went to number one on Billboard's U.S. pop charts. He went even higher as a solo artist: five straight multiplatinum albums, one of which, as everyone knows, is the top-selling album of all time. 12 number one singles, and 13 more that were in the top ten.
The distance of the Jackson flight pattern was unprecedented, and it's not likely to be duplicated. Jackson came along when the development of technology enabled facts, sounds, images, and people to move around the globe with an ease unknown to prior generations. Cultural fads that took months to cross oceans during Sinatra's peak years and weeks at the start of Beatlemania happened in a matter of days when Thriller was released. And the whole world saw the premiere of Black Or White at about the same time.
Jackson's career was perfectly timed to take advantage of shifting trends in another way: during his prime, more of the world than ever before began to use the new ease of travel and transport to import American culture. The fraying of the Soviet Bloc and the end of the Cold War opened up new markets for Coca-Cola and McDonald's, but they also meant that Beat It and Bad were not seen as evil capitalist symbols the way Blue Suede Shoes and Hound Dog would have been. The result: Michael Jackson played to sellout crowds in football-sized stadiums not just in New York, London, Tokyo and Paris, but also in Moscow, Prague, Budapest, Bucharest and Warsaw. Add those cities to Jackson concert stops that would have been too much trouble to reach in 1955 or 1965, like Tunis and Tel Aviv, Mumbai and Manila, Bangkok and Buenos Aires, plus Cape Town, Santiago, Mexico City and Sao Paolo, and you've got a star whose reach could not have been imagined in the world that existed at the start of his career.
The increasing ease of information transfer helped make Jackson a star whose like had not been seen, and it's also likely to keep him from being eclipsed. The world had opened up just enough for everybody to be a recipient of the same information in the 80s and 90s, but it hadn't quite reached its current point -- where everybody can generate and disseminate their own information. Today's audience is more fragmented and has more producers creating content for every identifiable niche. Which makes it much more difficult to reach the kind of cross-section of viewers and listeners to make a Thriller-sized blockbuster possible. In 2009, a would-be Michael Jackson might spring his own version of the moonwalk at a broadcast like Motown 25, but fewer homes will have three generations of viewers sitting around the same TV to see it. Grown men will be watching ESPN, little kids will have Disney on their own sets, plenty of women will be watching Lifetime, and the core music-consuming audience of teens and twentysomethings will spend less time being awestruck than their 80s counterparts and more time trying to create knockoffs, spoofs, and superior moves to upload to YouTube. With so many more distractions in today's media world, it'll be hard for anybody to grab as much attention as MJ did at his best.
The duration of Jackson's stardom will be just as tough to match. I Want You Back, the Jackson 5's first Motown hit and a Billboard #1 single, was released in 1969. You Rock My World, Michael's last single to reach the top ten on the Billboard pop charts in the U.S., was released in 2001. That 32-year span, remarkable when considered in isolation, is even more majestic when viewed in comparison to the longevity of other music icons. In 1995, 32 years from the Beatles' first appearance in the Billboard U.S. top ten, Paul McCartney was ten years past his most recent top ten single. In 1987, 32 years after Elvis Presley's first charting single, he was 15 years past his last top ten single and ten years gone from the face of the earth. Jackson's stardom was steady during that long span. Either as a solo artist or in combination with his brothers or others, he had at least one top ten single in 13 of the 20 years from 1970 to 1989, and six more in the 1990s.
Jackson's longevity is the obvious explanation for the outpouring of emotion triggered by his passing. We've known Michael Jackson for 40 years. For the first twenty years, we'd seen nothing more sinister than a sad dissatisfaction with his appearance and a harmlessly weird reluctance to grow up. By the time things began to look worse, we'd known and liked him for so long that some of us refused to believe he'd done anything wrong, others wished he hadn't, and plenty more preferred to avert our eyes and thoughts. Until the end, we'd hoped against hope that he could find the uncompromised happiness that filled so much of his music. His death makes it clear that there will be no such finding for him in this life, and that's a sad fact to have to digest.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
If A-Rod Could Have Been Honest . . .
He might have said something like:
"As you all know, I tested positive for steroids in 2003.
That's because I was using them.
I'm not going to say which ones I was using. And I'm not gonna say when I used them, where I used them or how I got them. I'm not trying to offer any steroid endorsements, and I'm not trying to incriminate myself or anybody else. As a league, we agreed to the 2003 testing not to get anybody prosecuted or suspended; the point was to see how widespread the steroid using was. We all have a better idea of the answer to that question now.
Yes, it was cheating. It was against the rules, and that's what cheating is. I was breaking the rules, and I knew it, so I have to own up to the label.
Why did I cheat? The same reason that hitters cork bats and pitchers doctor balls. It was to get an edge. I've heard some people say, 'He didn't need to break the rules to do well. He was doing well enough.' But nobody is doing 'well enough' in baseball. No hitter gets a home run in every at bat. Everybody wants to get better. If you're hitting .300, you want to hit .310. If you're hitting .340, you want to hit .375. I thought that using could make me better, and so I used. If I thought I could have gotten the same results by eating spinach like Popeye, I would have done that, too.
Yes, I lied about it. That's human nature. I was doing something that I knew was against the rules, and I didn't want to advertise that fact, so when I was asked about it, I lied. Once I'd lied, I lied more to cover up what I was doing and to hide the fact that I'd been lying about it. When you cheat and then lie, that's the cycle you lock yourself into.
Am I happy I was caught? Of course not. When you get caught in a situation like this, you do feel some sense of relief at not having to hide the truth any more. But if you thought you'd rather have that relief than keep up the facade, you'd come clean on your own. Obviously, I didn't do that.
Since I used on purpose and lied about it, it wouldn't make sense for me to sit here now and act like I really felt terrible about what I did. I knew I was cheating. I also knew that plenty of players in the history of baseball broke the rules to get an edge, and the battle between them trying to cheat and the folks trying to catch them was just a part of the competition to win. I knew that using steroids was more serious than throwing spitballs, because I knew there were laws against drug use. But I figured those laws were kind of like laws against using marijuana: on the books, but not really enforced. That was clearly the case in baseball at the time, because there wasn't any testing or punishment for juicing. Since then, the league has made it clear that it is going to take drug use seriously, and that steroids aren't just like stealing signals from the centerfield scoreboard. That's why I'm not using any performance enhancing drugs any more.
I know that some fans supported me personally or the game in general because they did not know the extent of the cheating and lying on my part or in the rest of the game. I'm sorry to those fans for being such a disappointment to you. Of course, I'm sorry to any current or former teammates who will now have to suffer the intrusion of questions about me, or feel the taint of guilt by association with me. If the edge I got by cheating was the difference between anybody staying in the majors or having to leave, I'm sincerely sorry to anybody in that category. And as for all the other players I've competed against, I know that if they want to think less of me as a man and a player because they know I've cheated, I have to accept that as a fair consequence of what I've done."
"As you all know, I tested positive for steroids in 2003.
That's because I was using them.
I'm not going to say which ones I was using. And I'm not gonna say when I used them, where I used them or how I got them. I'm not trying to offer any steroid endorsements, and I'm not trying to incriminate myself or anybody else. As a league, we agreed to the 2003 testing not to get anybody prosecuted or suspended; the point was to see how widespread the steroid using was. We all have a better idea of the answer to that question now.
Yes, it was cheating. It was against the rules, and that's what cheating is. I was breaking the rules, and I knew it, so I have to own up to the label.
Why did I cheat? The same reason that hitters cork bats and pitchers doctor balls. It was to get an edge. I've heard some people say, 'He didn't need to break the rules to do well. He was doing well enough.' But nobody is doing 'well enough' in baseball. No hitter gets a home run in every at bat. Everybody wants to get better. If you're hitting .300, you want to hit .310. If you're hitting .340, you want to hit .375. I thought that using could make me better, and so I used. If I thought I could have gotten the same results by eating spinach like Popeye, I would have done that, too.
Yes, I lied about it. That's human nature. I was doing something that I knew was against the rules, and I didn't want to advertise that fact, so when I was asked about it, I lied. Once I'd lied, I lied more to cover up what I was doing and to hide the fact that I'd been lying about it. When you cheat and then lie, that's the cycle you lock yourself into.
Am I happy I was caught? Of course not. When you get caught in a situation like this, you do feel some sense of relief at not having to hide the truth any more. But if you thought you'd rather have that relief than keep up the facade, you'd come clean on your own. Obviously, I didn't do that.
Since I used on purpose and lied about it, it wouldn't make sense for me to sit here now and act like I really felt terrible about what I did. I knew I was cheating. I also knew that plenty of players in the history of baseball broke the rules to get an edge, and the battle between them trying to cheat and the folks trying to catch them was just a part of the competition to win. I knew that using steroids was more serious than throwing spitballs, because I knew there were laws against drug use. But I figured those laws were kind of like laws against using marijuana: on the books, but not really enforced. That was clearly the case in baseball at the time, because there wasn't any testing or punishment for juicing. Since then, the league has made it clear that it is going to take drug use seriously, and that steroids aren't just like stealing signals from the centerfield scoreboard. That's why I'm not using any performance enhancing drugs any more.
I know that some fans supported me personally or the game in general because they did not know the extent of the cheating and lying on my part or in the rest of the game. I'm sorry to those fans for being such a disappointment to you. Of course, I'm sorry to any current or former teammates who will now have to suffer the intrusion of questions about me, or feel the taint of guilt by association with me. If the edge I got by cheating was the difference between anybody staying in the majors or having to leave, I'm sincerely sorry to anybody in that category. And as for all the other players I've competed against, I know that if they want to think less of me as a man and a player because they know I've cheated, I have to accept that as a fair consequence of what I've done."
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Discussion Reset: The NCAA
The NCAA is shocked -- shocked! -- that former University of Southern California basketballer O.J. Mayo might have been given money and other goodies by an agent's go-between while he was in high school and during his one year in college. If that happened, NCAA rules have been violated. Not only that; according to ESPN, it's a misdemeanor in California for sports agents to give stuff to student-athletes. So Mayo, the agent, the alleged agent of the agent, USC, and everybody under the sun is gonna get investigated for this. Just like another recent USC star in another sport, Reggie Bush.
My question is: Why?
I understand that the NCAA has rules, and it wants to make sure that its participants abide by those rules. But in this case, I don't understand what evil the rules are meant to prohibit, and I don't understand why society at large would spend any of its resources to enact laws to enforce rules that benefit the NCAA, which is just a private club.
I get the NCAA prohibition on school boosters paying kids, and the expansive definition of booster: basically anybody who wants a kid to go to a particular school. If money could buy college rosters, Tiny College would stand even less of a chance of ever being competitive with Gigantic State than it does today.
But what's alleged in the Mayo situation, so far, at least, isn't that somebody was paying him to get him to go to a specific school. If that turns out to be the case, I understand the NCAA's desire to squash that kind of thing. Supposedly, though, some agent who figured Mayo to be a sure-fire NBA player wanted to start paying him to get on his good side early so that he could become his agent and get a percentage of the millions he'll make if that dream comes true. The stories surrounding Mayo when he was nearing the end of his high school days were that various advisers were looking to see if there were ways to avoid the need for college at all: the NBA rule against drafting guys straight from high school had kicked in, and the suggestions were that some folks around Mayo were looking to see if he could spend the year playing professionally in some non-NBA forum, like Europe or the Harlem Globetrotters. So if people were paying Mayo, it looks like it had nothing to do with his choice of college.
And if that's the case, who's it hurting?
It makes sense that the NCAA doesn't want its ranks filled with ringers: college kids are at a disadvantage if they have to play against professionals, and if the NCAA doesn't want the Tiny College kids to play against old guys from the Eastern Industrial League, fine. But does O. J. Mayo have any greater advantage over a Tiny College kid because some agent gives him some cash? No, I think it's the other way around: the agent wants to give Mayo some cash only because it's already clear he's better than the Tiny College kid. If that agent gave Mayo a Hummer, a wardrobe, and courtside tickets to the Lakers game, none of that gives him any on-court advantage. If these prohibitions are there to protect the Tinys, they don't make sense.
My question is: Why?
I understand that the NCAA has rules, and it wants to make sure that its participants abide by those rules. But in this case, I don't understand what evil the rules are meant to prohibit, and I don't understand why society at large would spend any of its resources to enact laws to enforce rules that benefit the NCAA, which is just a private club.
I get the NCAA prohibition on school boosters paying kids, and the expansive definition of booster: basically anybody who wants a kid to go to a particular school. If money could buy college rosters, Tiny College would stand even less of a chance of ever being competitive with Gigantic State than it does today.
But what's alleged in the Mayo situation, so far, at least, isn't that somebody was paying him to get him to go to a specific school. If that turns out to be the case, I understand the NCAA's desire to squash that kind of thing. Supposedly, though, some agent who figured Mayo to be a sure-fire NBA player wanted to start paying him to get on his good side early so that he could become his agent and get a percentage of the millions he'll make if that dream comes true. The stories surrounding Mayo when he was nearing the end of his high school days were that various advisers were looking to see if there were ways to avoid the need for college at all: the NBA rule against drafting guys straight from high school had kicked in, and the suggestions were that some folks around Mayo were looking to see if he could spend the year playing professionally in some non-NBA forum, like Europe or the Harlem Globetrotters. So if people were paying Mayo, it looks like it had nothing to do with his choice of college.
And if that's the case, who's it hurting?
It makes sense that the NCAA doesn't want its ranks filled with ringers: college kids are at a disadvantage if they have to play against professionals, and if the NCAA doesn't want the Tiny College kids to play against old guys from the Eastern Industrial League, fine. But does O. J. Mayo have any greater advantage over a Tiny College kid because some agent gives him some cash? No, I think it's the other way around: the agent wants to give Mayo some cash only because it's already clear he's better than the Tiny College kid. If that agent gave Mayo a Hummer, a wardrobe, and courtside tickets to the Lakers game, none of that gives him any on-court advantage. If these prohibitions are there to protect the Tinys, they don't make sense.
Nor do they make sense if they're there to protect some sort of outmoded ideal of what it means to be an "amateur." Maybe a century ago, there was some perceived nobility in playing collegiate sports purely as an afterthought and not very well. And that may still be true for many participants in many sports on many college campuses. But that isn't the case for top level basketball and football. Kids at the powerhouse schools in those sports are supposed to be the next best thing to the top professional ranks, with the best of their members clearly preparing as well as they can to take that next step up. How do they demean the sport by fixing their eyes on the pro prize? Why is a college athlete banned from participating in his sport just because he hires an agent in contemplation of turning pro? Does a kid in a college theater program get banned from the school stage if she gets an agent to try to get her auditions on Broadway? Does a journalism student get banned from the school newspaper for doing an internship with the Washington Post? I see no reason why preparation for professional sports should irrevocably taint a college student any more than any other half-step toward earning a living doing whatever you're doing in college.
Are we supposed to believe that these rules are there to protect the athletes themselves? I don't get that one, either. Colleges don't prevent students from getting into premature relationships with employers, creditors or significant others. Some of each are bad, and some of each are good, just like the agents who want to woo tomorrow's pro stars. The NCAA could limit authorized contact to those agents who are approved by the players' associations of the pro leagues the kids aspire to; the lists are already out there and readily available. Banning relationships with agents is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
If the baby you want to save is the kid's interest, that is. But it seems more likely that the NCAA is trying to preserve its own product. It wants to punish kids for even thinking about leaving the college game, and it holds over their heads a threat that only the smallest group of the most gifted players can ignore: if you're caught looking to the pros and you're not as good as you thought you were, you'll lose your chance to play in college, too.
That sense of self-preservation is natural. What isn't natural is that society spends its resources on enforcing NCAA rules. The NCAA is just a private club of member schools. If you don't follow the rules of your local Elks or Water Buffalo chapter, they'll kick you out, but there's no criminal law consequence. Why should there be for failing to follow rules of a bunch of well-to-do schools? How come it's a crime for an agent to give money to a student-athlete, and not to give the same amount of money to a student?
The NCAA has been getting the benefit of the doubt, along with a free ride on society's coattails, for far too long. If there's no apparent greater good, why should we continue to act as if they're on the side of right and justice?
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Discussion Reset: "Free Markets"
"Free markets."
I see the term used as if everybody understands it to refer to an absolute good. The Cato Institute, for example, calls "free markets" a "traditional American principle," right up there with individual liberty and peace. As if everybody understands that regulation of markets is an unnecessary evil, only to be tolerated barely, if at all.
Like the way food products are sold with the term "all-natural." If it's all natural, it must be good, right? And free markets are better than markets with regulation, right?
Well, let's hold it a minute.
Unless I have my homespun medicine wrong, leprosy and bubonic plague are all-natural. And completely unregulated markets gave us feudalism and snake oil salesmen.
The bottom line: "free market" only describes an unequivocal positive if you're in a position to exploit it. If that free market puts you in a position to get exploited, or to have to clean up the fallout of someone else's exploitation, then "free market" probably describes an unequivocal negative.
When we're talking about what's good public policy, "free market" shouldn't be swallowed as necessarily a good thing any more readily than we'd take a big gulp of all-natural crude oil.
Discussion Reset: Unions
Sometimes, American conversation takes off down a path and stays on that path indefinitely, without recognition of obvious realities that should redirect things a bit. Sometimes it's worthwhile to take a look at those realities and step away from those well-worn paths.
So it is with some of the discussion that is provoked when the subject of unions comes up. Unions get blamed for plenty of problems. The state of public education, for example. Supposedly, a big part of the problem with public schools in America is the behavior of teachers' unions: they are accused of being more concerned with protecting their jobs and making those jobs easier and more lucrative than they are with teaching children.
Unions are prime suspects when an explanation is needed for the decline of America's auto industry. They demanded fat pensions and medical benefits whose costs drag down the potential quality and value of every vehicle that rolls off a Detroit assembly line. They insisted on work rules that filled factories with unnecessary employees and kept them paid whether those factories were making cars or not.
Darts get thrown at unions even in sports discussions. They're at least partly to blame for major league baseball's steroid woes, you know. After all, baseball's owners and commissioner wanted to have a strict testing and punishment policy long before all the juicing got out of hand. The only reason they couldn't implement one is that the players' union wouldn't allow it.
So there's this general background noise that's humming the tune that unions, since they are watching out for their own interests and are unconcerned with bigger pictures and greater goods, are doing something that is somehow wrong.
And that is where some rethinking is in order.
Unions, in attempting to ensure that their members get the hugest possible money for the smallest possible effort, and that they don't have to do anything that troubles them, are not doing anything that is remotely evil.
What they are doing is exactly what unions are supposed to do. They are using the power of collective bargaining to negotiate arrangements that are best for their members. While individual members of a union may feel an obligation to interests other than their own, the unions themselves are supposed to be looking out for their members.
When the battle between union interests and employer interests produces results that are bad for third parties, that's not the fault of a union; it is the fault of the belief that unregulated combat between opposing interests necessarily produces positive results for anybody other than the winner of the battle.
If we are willing to see corporate employers attempt to make as much money as possible, it is only right that we are willing to see their employees' unions try to take as much of that money for as little work as possible. When we don't like the fallout, we shouldn't blame the unions, we should blame our trust that those struggles are going to be good for us.
So it is with some of the discussion that is provoked when the subject of unions comes up. Unions get blamed for plenty of problems. The state of public education, for example. Supposedly, a big part of the problem with public schools in America is the behavior of teachers' unions: they are accused of being more concerned with protecting their jobs and making those jobs easier and more lucrative than they are with teaching children.
Unions are prime suspects when an explanation is needed for the decline of America's auto industry. They demanded fat pensions and medical benefits whose costs drag down the potential quality and value of every vehicle that rolls off a Detroit assembly line. They insisted on work rules that filled factories with unnecessary employees and kept them paid whether those factories were making cars or not.
Darts get thrown at unions even in sports discussions. They're at least partly to blame for major league baseball's steroid woes, you know. After all, baseball's owners and commissioner wanted to have a strict testing and punishment policy long before all the juicing got out of hand. The only reason they couldn't implement one is that the players' union wouldn't allow it.
So there's this general background noise that's humming the tune that unions, since they are watching out for their own interests and are unconcerned with bigger pictures and greater goods, are doing something that is somehow wrong.
And that is where some rethinking is in order.
Unions, in attempting to ensure that their members get the hugest possible money for the smallest possible effort, and that they don't have to do anything that troubles them, are not doing anything that is remotely evil.
What they are doing is exactly what unions are supposed to do. They are using the power of collective bargaining to negotiate arrangements that are best for their members. While individual members of a union may feel an obligation to interests other than their own, the unions themselves are supposed to be looking out for their members.
When the battle between union interests and employer interests produces results that are bad for third parties, that's not the fault of a union; it is the fault of the belief that unregulated combat between opposing interests necessarily produces positive results for anybody other than the winner of the battle.
If we are willing to see corporate employers attempt to make as much money as possible, it is only right that we are willing to see their employees' unions try to take as much of that money for as little work as possible. When we don't like the fallout, we shouldn't blame the unions, we should blame our trust that those struggles are going to be good for us.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Changing Horse Racing
I'm a horse racing fan.
That would have been an unremarkable statement in 1948 America. But sixty years later, with racing now overshadowed by spectator sports that previously garnered only a fraction of its attention, racing fans are a bit more of an oddity. As a fan in today's America, I get the feeling that I belong to a steadily shrinking cult -- kind of like the players of straight billiards who have to explain to the rest of us how they can play pool on tables that don't have pockets.
Non-fans get to hear about the sport in mainstream media in no more than four instances in the average year: the three Triple Crown races and, to a lesser extent, I think, the Breeders' Cup. On those occasions, true racing fans speculate among ourselves about why the sport doesn't get the kind of attention it once did. There are some explanations that are beyond the capacity of the sport to change: for one, racing once had a state-sponsored monopoly on legal gambling, but there are now plenty of legal wagering alternatives, including many that offer a chance for a bigger win and demand no special attention or expertise.
Another factor, though, is a situation created entirely by people inside the racing industry. The modern American thoroughbred is more fragile than its predecessors. That fragility is displayed in one form that is certain, and in another that is suspected, but perhaps not proved. Neither is helpful to the sport.
Today's thoroughbred races less frequently than did his ancestors of just a few generations ago. Many commentators have compiled statistics demonstrating the decline in the average number of races run by horses in various categories. They prove the point, but there's an obvious, non-statistical shortcut to the same conclusion. Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby, shares the spring racing calendar in Kentucky and does not open until one week before the Derby, which is run on the first Saturday in May. That one week before the Derby was traditionally considered plenty of time for a contender to get in a prep race and still be rested enough to be at his best in the Run For The Roses. In fact, five days was considered enough, as was demonstrated by the fact that Churchill's main prep, the Derby Trial, was run on the Tuesday before the big race. In 1948, 1952, 1953 and 1958, the Derby Trial winner was also the winner of the Derby itself. In 1949, 1959, 1964 and 1965, the Derby Trial winner started the Derby as the favorite. In the 1970s, Derby contenders still ran in the Derby Trial. In the 1980s, Churchill, recognizing the belief that horses were starting to need more rest between races, moved the Derby Trial ahead as much as they could, to the Saturday one full week before the main event.
Despite that move, no trainer pointing his horse for the Derby today seriously considers the Derby Trial to be what it is named. Not a one of the 20 starters in the 2008 Derby had run in the Derby Trial, because no trainer today would run a valuable three-year-old a mere week before a big race. Today, the Derby Trial, despite its name, is more likely to be a prep for the second jewel in the Triple Crown, the Preakness, run three weeks later. In 1975, each of the 15 Kentucky Derby starters ran in a prep race within two weeks of the big day. This year, not a single one of the 20 starters did.
Any sport will suffer when its performers don't perform often enough to build up some name recognition. Which is why the NCAA and the NBA don't like their basketball players going from college to the professional ranks so quickly: when your favorite college team isn't bringing back any of its stars from last year, it'll take you longer to decide that you care about the new squad; and when your NBA team spends its first round draft pick on a guy who only played three national television games in college, it's hard to get excited. Today's best horses tend to run only a few races, and as soon as they've shown a flicker of special ability, they're retired. Nobody's building up any Seabiscuit-style following.
The suspected but not proved manifestation of modern thoroughbred fragility may have reared its head in last week's Derby. As everyone now knows, Eight Belles, one filly running against 19 colts, ran a race outstanding enough to thrash all but one of her opponents, but some distance after crossing the line, broke both of her front ankles and had to be immediately put to death on the track where she fell.
There have always been tragic, fatal breakdowns in thoroughbred racing. Even in Triple Crown races. (Black Hills in the 1959 Belmont, for example) But the fatalities in the prime time events seemed relatively rare. Until recently. The grouping may just be happenstance, and the inclusion of the Breeders' Cup to the picture adds at least seven events to each year's ledger, so we're not talking about similar sample sizes, but each of the last three calendar years has produced a fatal injury in a marquee race: Pine Island in the 2006 Breeders' Cup Distaff, George Washington in the 2007 Breeders' Cup Classic, and Eight Belles. And not least: Barbaro. He was an undefeated Derby winner, with the look of one who was on his way to special achievements. More eyes than racing usually gets were anticipating a view of the best the sport currently had to offer. Potential fans got caught up in the story of the efforts to save him, and their hopes for him were dashed after months of emotional investment.
Horse racing isn't just failing to attract new fans, it is horrifying fresh batches of would-be fans every year. With this year's Derby fresh in our minds, fans of the sport are again asking what should be done.
Animal rights activists have a simple answer: abolish racing. There is inarguable consistency to their argument. Even in the safest form imaginable, the training and racing of thoroughbreds will cause some of them to suffer injuries, including many which will be fatal. They suffer those injuries and fatalities for the profit and entertainment of humans; if there is any great intrinsic good for the horses themselves in being raced rather than being treated to a pet's life of leisure, I'm not aware of it. And unlike humans who risk life and limb in pursuit of the rewards granted to the winners in our spectator sports, the horses aren't thought to be able to understand the risks we're asking them to take. "Stop racing," the animal rights folks say, "and you'll at least stop all the harm people subject the horses to by asking them to run."
I can't disagree.
I'm just not that noble yet.
I may be that noble someday, but for now, I have to admit that I am willing to know that other living creatures are risking their lives for my entertainment. I've seen other racing fans write that the horses want to run, that they risk their lives running on their own in fields every day, and that the fatal injuries in racing are relatively rare. None of those responses disproves the notion that injuries and deaths that would not otherwise occur happen as a direct result of racing. The reality, as I see it, is that most fans are willing to abide that fact if the injury/fatality rates aren't beyond some unspecified level that constitutes "too much." It's feeling like "too much" now, though, and so many fans are weighing in with their thoughts on steps that might reduce injuries to a level that makes them feel really rare again.
Since everybody else is, I'll join in -- with the same solution I've been mumbling to myself for a couple of years now: instead of changing the game to follow the trend in breeding, change it in the other direction to provoke the breed to change for the better. Lengthen the races instead of shortening them. Introduce participation bonuses for horses who can finish in the money for multiple objectives in a season.
It can't just be done at the top of the food chain, though. And it can't be done overnight. Announce a participation points-based series of distance stakes for older horses starting next year, and you'll have nearly as many no-shows as the races get now, plus a few horses taped together to trot around the track to try to get an appearance fee when they should be in the barn.
No, this kind of thing has to be done throughout the condition book, and over a period of time. A track could announce that in five years' time, five and six furlong races will be carded as rarely as two-mile races are today. Starting four years from now, two thirds of all of the races in the condition book would be at least one furlong longer than currently carded, maybe two, and maybe a half mile. The most common distance on a day's program would be a mile or a mile and an eighth instead of six furlongs. More than half of the races carded would be a mile or longer, and a third would be ten furlongs or longer. Beyond that four-year mark, races would gradually stretch out even more.
At the same time, the track could restructure its purse program to skew some of its rewards toward participation bonuses. At all levels of racing. Races for individual conditions, whether in the claiming ranks or in stakes, could be grouped together over the course of a meeting, with a race or two at the end as climaxes, and bonus payouts for high point totals achieved by in-the-money finishes.
The other notion that would accompany these announced changes: when they came, they'd bring with them a race-day ban on medications like Lasix and Bute.
What would result? Some might speculate that the result would be empty barns and no entries for the races of the track that announced these changes. And I do agree that they'd be pretty drastic for any one track to be able to pull off.
But the reason I think they could be implemented now to an effect not possible in previous generations is that there is an unprecedented level of consolidation in race track ownership. NYRA has been a big fish since the 1950s with its ownership of New York's three biggest tracks, Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga. But there are other whales besides NYRA these days. Churchill Downs Inc. owns its namesake track, the home of the Kentucky Derby, plus Arlington Park, Fair Grounds and Calder. The Magna Entertainment Group owns Pimlico, the home of the Preakness, plus Santa Anita, Gulfstream, Laurel, Golden Gate, Lone Star and Thistledown.
When a single state announces that its racetracks are going to have a reasonably well-funded program of restricted races and purse bonuses for horses bred inside its borders, that's enough to change trainer behavior in what kind of horses they buy and where they choose to race them. Eventually, it changes the behavior of owners and would-be breeders as well. If a single state's breeding program can have an impact, I have to believe that any two of NYRA, Churchill and Magna implementing changes like these would be impossible to ignore.
The change I'd expect is that there would be less demand for the kind of horses that look like speedballs early. And less demand for bloodlines that carry iffy prospects for durability and stamina. Maybe it will still be the case that the horse able to run the fastest mile and a quarter on the first Saturday in May of his three-year-old season will be a grandson of Mr. Prospector out of a granddaughter of Storm Cat. But without medication, maybe that horse won't make it to the starting gate at all. Today, I imagine that the midlevel buyer or breeder gambles that some slightly above average descendants of the aforementioned Mr. Prospector and Storm Cat will be throwbacks far enough that they can achieve greatness, look the part well enough to make a good impression at a sale, or throwback at least far enough to be the quickest at six furlongs in Thursday's third race at Nowhere Downs. After these changes, I'd expect that same buyer or breeder to think more about an offspring of an Ascot Gold Cup winner.
If you know that there are good places for you to run them, you'll be more likely to buy and breed horses that have stamina. If durability brings with it extra money-making potential, you'll be emphasizing that more, too. I'm no horseman, but I hear tell that the physical types that lean toward stamina also tend to be more sound.
So maybe then the Skip Aways of the world, who aren't quite as fashionably bred as some of their less accomplished contemporaries, would get some more love from breeders because of their proven toughness over multiple campaigns. Maybe a Silver Charm would be too big a star at stud to be sold away to breeders outside the United States. Maybe winners of the St. Leger or the Melbourne Cup could become relevant and start showing up in American pedigrees again.
And maybe, with their opportunities for generating cash at stud somewhat diminished when they haven't proven their durability, the Smarty Joneses and Afleet Alexes of the world wouldn't be rushed off to stud quite so quickly.
The hope, obviously, is to make it more attractive to breed some of the types that will stay on the track longer -- both in each individual race and over the course of their careers. It seems to me that this would be in the interest of a racetrack owner who is planning to stay in the game with multiple properties for the long haul. The benefit is apparent at both ends of the sport. The states and tracks need their racing revenue, so they'd like to see the number of dates and races stay up; if there are more healthy horses running more often, there are fuller fields everywhere, which makes for more betting and more money for everybody, even in Thursday's third at Nowhere. At the top end, every sport benefits when star performers get onto the radar screen and stay there for a while. Horse racing tells potential fans that a star is on the horizon, and more often than not, they're gone by the time anybody pays attention: Point Given in 2001, Smarty Jones in 2004, Afleet Alex in 2005 and the tragic Barbaro in 2006 were all gone from the track by September of their highlight seasons. No matter how fast his speed figures were, most folks outside of hard-core racing fans never heard of Ghostzapper; racing wins fewer new fans from a dozen Ghostzappers than it would from a single Kelso.
So this is a shout-out to NYRA, Churchill and Magna. Get together -- no, I won't be holding my breath in the meantime -- change the game, force a change in the breed, and we'll all reap the benefits of the sport you're so heavily invested in.
That would have been an unremarkable statement in 1948 America. But sixty years later, with racing now overshadowed by spectator sports that previously garnered only a fraction of its attention, racing fans are a bit more of an oddity. As a fan in today's America, I get the feeling that I belong to a steadily shrinking cult -- kind of like the players of straight billiards who have to explain to the rest of us how they can play pool on tables that don't have pockets.
Non-fans get to hear about the sport in mainstream media in no more than four instances in the average year: the three Triple Crown races and, to a lesser extent, I think, the Breeders' Cup. On those occasions, true racing fans speculate among ourselves about why the sport doesn't get the kind of attention it once did. There are some explanations that are beyond the capacity of the sport to change: for one, racing once had a state-sponsored monopoly on legal gambling, but there are now plenty of legal wagering alternatives, including many that offer a chance for a bigger win and demand no special attention or expertise.
Another factor, though, is a situation created entirely by people inside the racing industry. The modern American thoroughbred is more fragile than its predecessors. That fragility is displayed in one form that is certain, and in another that is suspected, but perhaps not proved. Neither is helpful to the sport.
Today's thoroughbred races less frequently than did his ancestors of just a few generations ago. Many commentators have compiled statistics demonstrating the decline in the average number of races run by horses in various categories. They prove the point, but there's an obvious, non-statistical shortcut to the same conclusion. Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby, shares the spring racing calendar in Kentucky and does not open until one week before the Derby, which is run on the first Saturday in May. That one week before the Derby was traditionally considered plenty of time for a contender to get in a prep race and still be rested enough to be at his best in the Run For The Roses. In fact, five days was considered enough, as was demonstrated by the fact that Churchill's main prep, the Derby Trial, was run on the Tuesday before the big race. In 1948, 1952, 1953 and 1958, the Derby Trial winner was also the winner of the Derby itself. In 1949, 1959, 1964 and 1965, the Derby Trial winner started the Derby as the favorite. In the 1970s, Derby contenders still ran in the Derby Trial. In the 1980s, Churchill, recognizing the belief that horses were starting to need more rest between races, moved the Derby Trial ahead as much as they could, to the Saturday one full week before the main event.
Despite that move, no trainer pointing his horse for the Derby today seriously considers the Derby Trial to be what it is named. Not a one of the 20 starters in the 2008 Derby had run in the Derby Trial, because no trainer today would run a valuable three-year-old a mere week before a big race. Today, the Derby Trial, despite its name, is more likely to be a prep for the second jewel in the Triple Crown, the Preakness, run three weeks later. In 1975, each of the 15 Kentucky Derby starters ran in a prep race within two weeks of the big day. This year, not a single one of the 20 starters did.
Any sport will suffer when its performers don't perform often enough to build up some name recognition. Which is why the NCAA and the NBA don't like their basketball players going from college to the professional ranks so quickly: when your favorite college team isn't bringing back any of its stars from last year, it'll take you longer to decide that you care about the new squad; and when your NBA team spends its first round draft pick on a guy who only played three national television games in college, it's hard to get excited. Today's best horses tend to run only a few races, and as soon as they've shown a flicker of special ability, they're retired. Nobody's building up any Seabiscuit-style following.
The suspected but not proved manifestation of modern thoroughbred fragility may have reared its head in last week's Derby. As everyone now knows, Eight Belles, one filly running against 19 colts, ran a race outstanding enough to thrash all but one of her opponents, but some distance after crossing the line, broke both of her front ankles and had to be immediately put to death on the track where she fell.
There have always been tragic, fatal breakdowns in thoroughbred racing. Even in Triple Crown races. (Black Hills in the 1959 Belmont, for example) But the fatalities in the prime time events seemed relatively rare. Until recently. The grouping may just be happenstance, and the inclusion of the Breeders' Cup to the picture adds at least seven events to each year's ledger, so we're not talking about similar sample sizes, but each of the last three calendar years has produced a fatal injury in a marquee race: Pine Island in the 2006 Breeders' Cup Distaff, George Washington in the 2007 Breeders' Cup Classic, and Eight Belles. And not least: Barbaro. He was an undefeated Derby winner, with the look of one who was on his way to special achievements. More eyes than racing usually gets were anticipating a view of the best the sport currently had to offer. Potential fans got caught up in the story of the efforts to save him, and their hopes for him were dashed after months of emotional investment.
Horse racing isn't just failing to attract new fans, it is horrifying fresh batches of would-be fans every year. With this year's Derby fresh in our minds, fans of the sport are again asking what should be done.
Animal rights activists have a simple answer: abolish racing. There is inarguable consistency to their argument. Even in the safest form imaginable, the training and racing of thoroughbreds will cause some of them to suffer injuries, including many which will be fatal. They suffer those injuries and fatalities for the profit and entertainment of humans; if there is any great intrinsic good for the horses themselves in being raced rather than being treated to a pet's life of leisure, I'm not aware of it. And unlike humans who risk life and limb in pursuit of the rewards granted to the winners in our spectator sports, the horses aren't thought to be able to understand the risks we're asking them to take. "Stop racing," the animal rights folks say, "and you'll at least stop all the harm people subject the horses to by asking them to run."
I can't disagree.
I'm just not that noble yet.
I may be that noble someday, but for now, I have to admit that I am willing to know that other living creatures are risking their lives for my entertainment. I've seen other racing fans write that the horses want to run, that they risk their lives running on their own in fields every day, and that the fatal injuries in racing are relatively rare. None of those responses disproves the notion that injuries and deaths that would not otherwise occur happen as a direct result of racing. The reality, as I see it, is that most fans are willing to abide that fact if the injury/fatality rates aren't beyond some unspecified level that constitutes "too much." It's feeling like "too much" now, though, and so many fans are weighing in with their thoughts on steps that might reduce injuries to a level that makes them feel really rare again.
Since everybody else is, I'll join in -- with the same solution I've been mumbling to myself for a couple of years now: instead of changing the game to follow the trend in breeding, change it in the other direction to provoke the breed to change for the better. Lengthen the races instead of shortening them. Introduce participation bonuses for horses who can finish in the money for multiple objectives in a season.
It can't just be done at the top of the food chain, though. And it can't be done overnight. Announce a participation points-based series of distance stakes for older horses starting next year, and you'll have nearly as many no-shows as the races get now, plus a few horses taped together to trot around the track to try to get an appearance fee when they should be in the barn.
No, this kind of thing has to be done throughout the condition book, and over a period of time. A track could announce that in five years' time, five and six furlong races will be carded as rarely as two-mile races are today. Starting four years from now, two thirds of all of the races in the condition book would be at least one furlong longer than currently carded, maybe two, and maybe a half mile. The most common distance on a day's program would be a mile or a mile and an eighth instead of six furlongs. More than half of the races carded would be a mile or longer, and a third would be ten furlongs or longer. Beyond that four-year mark, races would gradually stretch out even more.
At the same time, the track could restructure its purse program to skew some of its rewards toward participation bonuses. At all levels of racing. Races for individual conditions, whether in the claiming ranks or in stakes, could be grouped together over the course of a meeting, with a race or two at the end as climaxes, and bonus payouts for high point totals achieved by in-the-money finishes.
The other notion that would accompany these announced changes: when they came, they'd bring with them a race-day ban on medications like Lasix and Bute.
What would result? Some might speculate that the result would be empty barns and no entries for the races of the track that announced these changes. And I do agree that they'd be pretty drastic for any one track to be able to pull off.
But the reason I think they could be implemented now to an effect not possible in previous generations is that there is an unprecedented level of consolidation in race track ownership. NYRA has been a big fish since the 1950s with its ownership of New York's three biggest tracks, Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga. But there are other whales besides NYRA these days. Churchill Downs Inc. owns its namesake track, the home of the Kentucky Derby, plus Arlington Park, Fair Grounds and Calder. The Magna Entertainment Group owns Pimlico, the home of the Preakness, plus Santa Anita, Gulfstream, Laurel, Golden Gate, Lone Star and Thistledown.
When a single state announces that its racetracks are going to have a reasonably well-funded program of restricted races and purse bonuses for horses bred inside its borders, that's enough to change trainer behavior in what kind of horses they buy and where they choose to race them. Eventually, it changes the behavior of owners and would-be breeders as well. If a single state's breeding program can have an impact, I have to believe that any two of NYRA, Churchill and Magna implementing changes like these would be impossible to ignore.
The change I'd expect is that there would be less demand for the kind of horses that look like speedballs early. And less demand for bloodlines that carry iffy prospects for durability and stamina. Maybe it will still be the case that the horse able to run the fastest mile and a quarter on the first Saturday in May of his three-year-old season will be a grandson of Mr. Prospector out of a granddaughter of Storm Cat. But without medication, maybe that horse won't make it to the starting gate at all. Today, I imagine that the midlevel buyer or breeder gambles that some slightly above average descendants of the aforementioned Mr. Prospector and Storm Cat will be throwbacks far enough that they can achieve greatness, look the part well enough to make a good impression at a sale, or throwback at least far enough to be the quickest at six furlongs in Thursday's third race at Nowhere Downs. After these changes, I'd expect that same buyer or breeder to think more about an offspring of an Ascot Gold Cup winner.
If you know that there are good places for you to run them, you'll be more likely to buy and breed horses that have stamina. If durability brings with it extra money-making potential, you'll be emphasizing that more, too. I'm no horseman, but I hear tell that the physical types that lean toward stamina also tend to be more sound.
So maybe then the Skip Aways of the world, who aren't quite as fashionably bred as some of their less accomplished contemporaries, would get some more love from breeders because of their proven toughness over multiple campaigns. Maybe a Silver Charm would be too big a star at stud to be sold away to breeders outside the United States. Maybe winners of the St. Leger or the Melbourne Cup could become relevant and start showing up in American pedigrees again.
And maybe, with their opportunities for generating cash at stud somewhat diminished when they haven't proven their durability, the Smarty Joneses and Afleet Alexes of the world wouldn't be rushed off to stud quite so quickly.
The hope, obviously, is to make it more attractive to breed some of the types that will stay on the track longer -- both in each individual race and over the course of their careers. It seems to me that this would be in the interest of a racetrack owner who is planning to stay in the game with multiple properties for the long haul. The benefit is apparent at both ends of the sport. The states and tracks need their racing revenue, so they'd like to see the number of dates and races stay up; if there are more healthy horses running more often, there are fuller fields everywhere, which makes for more betting and more money for everybody, even in Thursday's third at Nowhere. At the top end, every sport benefits when star performers get onto the radar screen and stay there for a while. Horse racing tells potential fans that a star is on the horizon, and more often than not, they're gone by the time anybody pays attention: Point Given in 2001, Smarty Jones in 2004, Afleet Alex in 2005 and the tragic Barbaro in 2006 were all gone from the track by September of their highlight seasons. No matter how fast his speed figures were, most folks outside of hard-core racing fans never heard of Ghostzapper; racing wins fewer new fans from a dozen Ghostzappers than it would from a single Kelso.
So this is a shout-out to NYRA, Churchill and Magna. Get together -- no, I won't be holding my breath in the meantime -- change the game, force a change in the breed, and we'll all reap the benefits of the sport you're so heavily invested in.
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