We should blame all of this on Spectacular Bid.
We'll get there in a minute …
This is how embedded in the national conscience the Sport of Kings was in those days: In the summer of 1978, when it seemed the Yankees were destined to fruitlessly pursue the Red Sox, somebody asked Reggie Jackson about his team's predicament.
Jackson, rarely at a loss for words or metaphors, shook his head ruefully as the Sox's lead reached 14 games.
"Even Affirmed," Jackson said, "couldn't catch the Red Sox."
Affirmed had spent the spring thrilling America, winning the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes by a length, a neck and a nose over Alydar, steered to glory by the most famous jockey of the day, Steve Cauthen.
It was a sporting year that would feature three great rivalries culminating the two most popular sports: Red Sox/Yankees followed by Yankees/Dodgers in baseball, Steelers/Cowboys in football.
And yet for most of it, the rivalry of choice for many was two horses. Johnny Carson cited Alydar-Affirmed in his monologue, Jimmy Carter in a press conference.
And Reggie Jackson in a concession speech.
Those were glorious years. Racing had endured 25 empty, Triple Crown-free years between Citation's win in 1948 and Secretariat's in 1973. Some even speculated it had become impossible to expect any modern horse to be able to endure that gauntlet, especially the Belmont's torturous mile-and-a-half test.
Secretariat, of course, changed that thinking. It is my earliest sporting memory: my living room in West Hempstead, my father screaming at the television screen, urging on a horse for one of the few times in his life that he didn't have a wager on, all in the name of history. I was 6, and I had never seen him get so worked up over a sporting event before. So I got worked up, too.
All over the county, as Ron Turcotte kept urging him on, as Secretariat's lead grew fantastically — five lengths, 10; 15 and 20 and 25 and, at last, 31 — the same scene was played out in thousands of houses, apartments, saloons. There were 5,617 people who held betting slips with Secretariat to win who never cashed them — the souvenir far more valuable than the $2.20 paid on a $2 bet.
By 1979, this had become virtually an annual spring ritual, in my house, in OTB parlors, at racetracks. Seattle Slew won all three in 1977, and then Affirmed had his spring in the sun in '78, and after three crown winners in six years it seemed ridiculous to remember a time when the very notion had seemed obsolete.
Then came Spectacular Bid and, man, was he something to behold. Some thought he was Secretariat's equal. He blitzed the field in Louisville, did the same in Baltimore. This was 1979, remember, so it was still the time of Muhammad Ali: brash, bold, enlivened with self-confidence. It was still the time of the Reggie's Bronx Zoo (as Billy Joel had sung in "Zanzibar" the previous year "… but the Yankees grab the headlines every time …")
And Spectacular Bid had a little bit of both. Maybe the horse couldn't talk about himself being the straw that stirred the drink, but his jockey, 19-year-old Ronnie Franklin, surely could: "We're a cinch," Franklin said of Bid's chances of winning the Belmont, making it three Crown winners in a row.
Why not? Bid had won 12 races in a row. It wasn't a matter of if he would win in Elmont, but by how much. But, like inside the Yankees clubhouse, there was trouble percolating within: a few days before the race, Franklin and Angel Cordero got into a fight in the jockeys prep room, and Franklin took a fine for that. Early in the race, Franklin took an aggressive rout with the horse, and some would later speculate it was his (or trainer Bud Delp's) mission to try and recreate Secretariat's victory lap.
But that never happened. It turned out that earlier in the day, Spectacular Bid had stepped on a safety pin, the pin embedded in a hoof, and that led to an infection and a clearly impaired horse. Bad luck? Bad karma? You decide. Coastal won. Spectacular Bid finished third, one of only four times in 30 career starts he wouldn't close the deal.
Almost eight miles due east, in that same living room in West Hempstead, I ceremonially tore in half the OTB ticket my father had bought for me. No payoff. No souvenir.
Thirty-five years later, California Chrome will try to serve as his sport's version of the bloody sock, his sport's Messier, trying to foil its jinx, its hex, its pox, its curse, something that was beyond the reach of Pleasant Colony and Alysheeba and Sunday Silence, Silver Charm and Real Quiet and Charismatic, War Emblem and Funny Cide, Smarty Jones and Big Brown.
Maybe racing can never elbow its way back to where it used to be — center stage in our living rooms, up front in our imaginations. But it would be nice to see it try. It's been long enough.
