On the Eve of History?

It is the night before the Belmont.

California Chrome apparently is still scheduled to run for a Triple Crown tomorrow — unlike the last horse to win the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, I'll Have Another, yanked at the last minute, to the frustration of horse racing fans.

I'll admit it. I would like to see a Triple Crown winner — not the way some folks do, the ones who say they want to see one more Triple Crown winner before they die, but because I think it would be good for horse racing. And I like horse racing.

Forty years ago, the great Secretariat ended a 25–year Triple Crown drought. He breathed new life into his sport, and there were two more Triple Crown winners (and nearly a third) before the decade ended. The drought is much longer this time, and California Chrome is the 13th horse to win the first two jewels of the Triple Crown since Affirmed won the last Triple Crown in 1978.

It has been noted often that attendance at America's tracks has been declining for years — and suggested that even a Triple Crown winner won't be enough to bring those patrons back. The longer fans stay away, the harder it is to bring them back. It isn't impossible, as baseball demonstrated after a strike wiped out the 1994 World Series, but it is difficult to achieve.

Maybe too much time has passed. That happens in sports — and in life. There are windows of opportunity; when they slam shut, it is awfully difficult to open them again. Baseball was fortunate to have two charismatic players, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, dueling to set a single–season home run record in 1998. Their battle brought fans back to the ballparks, but attendance had been down in the years since the strike.

I have often wondered if baseball had reached a critical point when the McGwire–Sosa home run race captured the public's imagination. If the McGwire–Sosa duel had not materialized, would baseball have remained America's pastime?

Team sports are different from individual sports, though, and a horse is, after all, an animal, not a person who may be able to use his charisma to get back in the public's good graces. Animals have no real charisma — at least none of which they are aware, just the charisma that is generated by a picture or video.

I don't know if winning a Triple Crown can reverse horse racing's fortunes. I get the feeling, though, that, with California Chrome, I have seen this before, and I really expect to see the same kind of outcome tomorrow as we have seen nearly a dozen times since 1978.

This is how it generally seems to play out. A horse wins the Kentucky Derby (OK, that happens every year; nothing special about that, right?), but there are doubts about the horse that persist until he wins the Preakness two weeks later. Most of the time, the Preakness win is convincing enough that the questions about the horse disappear, and momentum for the two–time winner starts to build.

The horse looks great in training and is greeted with lots of hesitant–yet–hopeful hype when he arrives in New York. Now, that kind of attention has been known to turn many an athlete's head. But an animal doesn't have human emotions and can't feel the pressure of high expectations. As time passes, the conventional wisdom becomes the horse is a lock to win. Confidence begets overconfidence; overconfidence begets a belief that it will be different this time.

But it never is.

There are all kinds of ways for this to happen. I thought I had seen them all — until I'll Have Another was pulled out the day before the Belmont in 2012. When that happened, I figured that I hadn't seen them all.

It could be a repeat of something we've seen before. Smarty Jones faded in the stretch in 2004. War Emblem broke badly in 2002 and never recovered. In 1998, Real Quiet looked like he would win it, then lost at the wire. Big Brown, so dominating in the first two races in 2008, was eased out of the money in the third.

Or it might be something new — or, at least, something we have not seen in a long time.

So, in spite of all the enthusiasm about California Chrome, put me down as skeptical.

Perhaps I am wrong. Frankly, I hope I am. It would be nice to see a Triple Crown winner. And I am sincere when I say it would be good for horse racing. I do believe that.

Well, we'll find out in 24 hours.

By the way, if you're looking for something to kill some time between now and post time, USA Today reprinted a Belmont Stakes horse name generator that apparently originated in the Reno Gazette–Journal.

Give it whirl. My Belmont Stakes horse's name was Reno Prince.

I'm Disappointed in You, Hank

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"We have moved in the right direction, and there have been improvements, but we still have a long ways to go in the country. The bigger difference is that back then they had hoods. Now they have neckties and starched shirts."

Hank Aaron

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Yesterday, I wrote about Hank Aaron's achievement, 40 years ago, when he passed Babe Ruth and became baseball's all–time home run king.

He remained the all–time home run king for the rest of the 20th century.

I watched, transfixed (thanks to my family's television), as he slugged home run #715. I was just a boy, of course, and there were many things I did not know or understand — but I did know about prejudice and racism. I knew there were racists who objected to a black man breaking a record that had been held for decades by not just a white man but perhaps the biggest idol the sport of baseball has ever had, and I regretted that. Still do.

It really wasn't a difficult conclusion to reach in 1974 — that nearly all of those who opposed Aaron were motivated by racism — but it was a different time. It wasn't far removed from the protests and riots in the streets or brutal attacks on blacks in the 1960s.

Even though I was quite young, I knew that there were people — most but not all (I have learned in my life that nothing is absolute) — who were opposed to Aaron because he was black. And I can understand why he would be bitter about that, even 40 years later. I've seen some of the letters that were sent to him — vile, disgusting.

I also know that we are all the products of our experiences, and his experience during the 1973–74 offseason was the kind of thing that no one should have to face. Again, I understand why he is bitter. I was glad then, and I am glad now, that the threats against his life were never carried out. He had my respect for the way he carried himself in the face of all that.

But he was wrong to assert, in an interview with USA Today, that little has changed. A lot has changed, particularly here in the South. Aaron is right. We do have work to do, but I hear kids talk of racism today in a way that tells me they really don't know what racism is.

That is one area where we need to do some hard work — educating our young people so they will be able to tell the difference between someone who is racist and someone who disagrees.

(I teach writing at the community college here, and I had a student last semester who accused me of racism when his final exam brought his grade down. He was expecting an A. He got a B. Why? Well, my final exam in this class — which is called developmental writing and is designed to make up for deficiencies in students' written language education — is to write what I call an essay — on a topic that I choose — so I can see if the students are applying what they have learned in the class to their writing. I mark off three points for every element that was covered in class but the student in question does not use in the essay, and I mark off one point for each word that is misspelled or should be there but isn't.

(This particular student left out three things that we discussed in class during the semester, and he had a grand total of 19 words that were either misspelled or left out completely. That made his grade on the exam 72.

(Without even seeing the marked–up essay, he accused me of making 10–point deductions — which I have never done — and, when I denied doing that, he accused me of racism.)

Aaron was wrong to suggest that Barack Obama's problems were due to racism. It's much more complicated than that.

Before anyone goes ballistic on me, yes, I know there are some people who are opposed to Obama because he is black. But I can't go along with blanket assertions of any kind. It is precisely that kind of mindset that is behind injustice of any kind — racial, sexual, religious, you name it.

I disagree with Obama on many things, but my dissension is not based on his skin color. It is based on the fact that I disagree with him. If Obama was white, I would still disagree with him on many things. (I agree with him on some things, but I disagree with him on far more.)

There are others who feel that way, too. Every president, even the popular ones, has had his detractors.

I am an American citizen, and I am entitled to disagree with Obama or anyone else — and that does not give anyone the right to dismiss my deeply held beliefs as invalid nor does it give anyone the right to falsely accuse me of anything.

My beliefs matter to me. Others are free to agree with me or disagree with me, but they have no right to belittle me if I don't agree with them.

Now if I cross that line and commit a violent act, that is a crime and should be dealt with as such, but it is not a crime for me to disagree.

At the time that Aaron was chasing the Babe, law enforcement in the South still often looked the other way when violent acts were committed against blacks. But that really has changed in the last 40 years.

Other things will change, too, as time passes.