BUILDING A BRIDGE TO THE 1920'S:

Needed: One-Horse Power (Tony Kornheiser, May 18, 2004, Washington Post)

[S]marty Jones is a great American Dream story: A rags-to-riches colt, an underdog from a small track, ridden by a small-time, unknown jockey, owned by an elderly man now in a wheelchair, and breathing oxygen through a tube. They're all straight out of a Damon Runyon story -- and, boy, am I dating myself with that reference. But that's the point here: When Damon Runyon was writing these kinds of stories that would lead to "Guys And Dolls," horse racing was just about the biggest sport in America.

That was in the 1940s and '50s. Horse racing was still near the top through the 1960s and even into the '70s, when Secretariat was easily one of the biggest stars in sports. Just 30 years ago, the greatest sports columnists, like Red Smith of the New York Times, Shirley Povich of The Washington Post and Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times, set their writing calendar by three sports: horse racing, boxing and baseball. Starting with spring training in late February, the best columnists followed their baseball teams all the way through the World Series, detouring to cover every big boxing match and every major stakes race from Hialeah in Florida, through Santa Anita in California, to Saratoga in upstate New York. All that other stuff -- the NFL, the NBA, the NHL, the Final Four -- that was just stuff they went to if it was being played in a town near a good track, a title fight or a major league ballpark.

Things change, of course. Boxing is dead now. You can't watch it on TV unless you pay for it. Great young athletes no longer box, they play sports that are more lucrative and safer, like basketball and, yes, football.

Most of all, boxing is dead because society has turned its back on it. Society no longer sees "the sweet science." Now it sees a brutal vestige of an old, unenlightened America. Boxing is a guilty pleasure now, appropriately centered in Las Vegas. It may as well be held on barges outside the three-mile limit.

Baseball is making a comeback of sorts. Attendance is up, and the playoffs and World Series are still widely watched and romanticized by a generation of sons, grown old themselves, who picture their fathers coming home from the war and heading straight for the ballpark. Baseball may still have a nostalgic hold on our hearts, but nobody in his right mind thinks baseball is anywhere close to the NFL in popularity. Some years it seems baseball rests below basketball. The good news for baseball is all the renewed interest in home run records. (The dirty little secret is that steroids and "supplements" have been very, very good for baseball.) Last year's playoffs showed it's even better news when Old School franchises like the Cubs and Red Sox battle the Yankees for dominance.

Horse racing needs Smarty Jones to win the Triple Crown to mount a comeback of its own.

America needs Smarty Jones to win because a country where horses are heroes is better than one where horses' asses, like the folks on reality TV shows, are.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 20, 2004 8:11 AM