Flatter: If only racing coverage were more about the racing

Between Baffert vs. Wunderler and DiCorcia in California andSimms to Nickens in Phoenix and HBPA et al. vs. Black et al. in New Orleans andHISA and HIWU everywhere, I am left to lament the idea that this and rival websites were supposedto be all about horse racing.

You remember horse racing. That sport in which horses race.

As a kid I dreamt of sitting in press boxes and coveringraces and games. In my little town we did not have tall buildings. The booth ontop of the Erector Set-looking bleachers at Chico State University was going tobe my ticket to growing up.

Now press boxes and locker rooms have been replaced bycourthouses and meeting rooms. Or so it seems when the tasks of covering, ahem,racing, are at their most monotonous.

A friend in Las Vegas who is plugged into the races but notalways the news of racing wondered about one of these stories. Since we are oldguys, we actually were talking on the phone this week when he asked me for asnapshot of the details. When I ended it with something about “it’s in the handsof the lawyers,” I could hear the smile in his voice.

“You just don’t know when to stop being a newsman,” he said.“You always have to get back to the news angle.”

Well, no. The news angle always gets back to me. If I had chosento keep putting my front foot in news, I still might be at 1010 WINS in NewYork.

Instead, I got back to my roots in sports nearly seven yearsago and then specifically to racing. As I harbor a case of stomach flu thisweek, I long for simpler times when my PPs did not come with a more annoying task,too. I avoided using the more tempting homophone for too.

Bad boiler, court cases and commission hearings aside, I seesitting before me five Breeders’ Cup qualifiers and another 12 graded stakes betweenFriday and Sunday in the U.S. There also are 19 international races that areGroup 1s, Breeders’ Cup win-and-you’re-ins or both.

I really want to write about looking forward to Eda goingfor her eighth consecutive victory Friday and how I believe Speed Boat Beach isa good value play coming back to the dirt Saturday and how I think Defunded andNational Treasure are vulnerable against Stilleto Boy in the Awesome Again.

Doing all that, though, without the obligatory mention thatBaffert is suing to get a couple Xwitter critics to either show all their videocards or get off his backside wallet would be seen as hiding the bigger story. Onthe other hand, making that mention of the visual images that, according to thenew lawsuit, “they allege will ‘end’ Baffert’s career” diverts attention from thehorse races that were supposed to be the object of the writing game.

Quite the career I signed up for, eh?

As the late Paul Harvey used to say, you can run, but youcan’t hide. News leaches into all sports. Look at what is going on at MichiganState with so many of its athletic programs. Or how the NBA’s policy on starssitting out is being influenced by sports betting. Or how the A’s cannotfinalize whether they are coming or going with Las Vegas. Or how the NFL cannotget its act together with playing surfaces and head injuries.

Racing used to be bigger than all this drama. Hell, racing justused to be bigger. I pointed out last week how the sport is very, very good at buildingits stars, at least within the ever-shrinking sphere of the game itself. Italso is very good at tearing them down. In Australia it is called thetall-poppy syndrome. In Hollywood, it is where they eat their young.

Way back in the ’90s, when jockey Patrick Valenzuela was inthe throes of his substance-abuse trouble, it was a big talking point on itsown merit. But racing was so much bigger than that. We had other things todivert our attention. Things like more horses and more races at moreracetracks.

Social media were not around back then, but let’s be realhere. We are talking about a small pond full of big fish now.

The defendants in the new Baffert case have 12,914 and 15,820Xwitter followers. In contrast, Adam Schefter has 10.5 million followers,Adrian Wojnarowski 6.1 million, Ken Rosenthal 1.4 million, Bob McKenzie 1.5million. Don’t know that last one? He is hockey’s answer to the other three.That’s right. Hockey. Fifth of the four major sports.

The closest I found in our game was 99,000 for TVG, the nameFanDuel cannot squelch. In short, the expressions of wrath on racing’s socialmedia are tempests in a teapot.

We might say the same about the drama playing out in Arizona,where last week it was declared that Turf Paradise was closing forever. Then itwas declared this week Turf Paradise was reopening in January. Bothdeclarations came from, wait for it, Turf Paradise.

A cloak and a dagger come with the reluctant divulging ofFrank Nickens as a potential buyer who is kicking the tires of Jerry Simms’sracetrack. Let’s just see if that car is still on the lot in another week.

In the end, what is the care factor? Think about how muchmoney you bet on Turf Paradise in the past year or five years or 20 years. Didit exceed $0.00?

We spend a lot of time on social media and on this and otherracing-news websites discussing and ruing the demise of racecourses like Hollywoodand Calder and Arlington and Golden Gate and maybe Turf Paradise, but how much havewe followed that modern-day talk with a dollar-spending walk?

When Thoroughbred Times folded 11 years ago, there were morethan a few souls who went on social media to express their sorrow and how theywould miss seeing it. At the same time the publisher’s 733-page bankruptcy filingwas posted publicly, complete with the names and addresses of the 9,892 payingsubscribers like me.

“It’s too bad that so many people paying tribute to ThoroughbredTimes were not paying subscribers,” I posted in response. “Names are on bankruptcypetition.”

My favorite excuse for that was, “Oh, I read the copy we getat the office.” Yeah. Right.

In short we do make a lot of noise, and all news sharks havean insatiable appetite for the chum of negativity. If a plane landssuccessfully, it is not news, but ...

Nevertheless, if things are looking better personally fromthe inside out, I look forward to going to the races Saturday at ChurchillDowns and getting back to that old dream of working from the press box, even ifthere is no actual press box anymore.

Win or lose, thinking about Warrant upsetting Rattle N Rolland finding a value play against Zozos is a lot more satisfying than the paperchase created by lawyers and bureaucrats.

By any measure, Churchill Downs racetrack in Louisvillebeats the Edward J. Schwartz federal courthouse in San Diego any day.