The Sporting Life:
The Public Professor’s
Saturday Sports Column
Horse racing isn’t a sport that too many people pay attention to anymore. It seems like something from a bygone era when most men wore fedoras and smoked. My grandfather wore a fedora, usually one with a small feather in the band. He’s also been dead for 25 years.
I remember living in Michigan during the late 1980s, not long after he had passed. I was feeling sentimental one day and
decided to go buy a fedora. There was still a small men’s clothing store in downtown Ann Arbor, the kind of place that’s since been run off by the likes of The Men’s Warehouse. Why on earth would anyone want to shop for clothing at a goddamn warehouse?
I don’t remember the name of this particular men’s store, but I do remember my disappointment in finding out that they didn’t carry fedoras anymore. No demand for `em. The best I could do was a greenish/brown Pendleton with a thin, brown leather band. After getting it home, I realized it looked like something Indiana Jones would wear. Just hideous. Largely ignored, it finally found it’s way to a Goodwill a few years back.
Despite the fact that few people still wear fedoras, smoke cigars, or hangout at the track anymore, the Triple Crown of racing has managed to maintain the national spotlight. The Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes have a bit of a gimmicky feel at this point, and if you’ve ever been to the infield at either Churchill Downs or Pimlico, then you know that most people in attendance know next to nothing about horse racing and are merely there to party.
But that’s fine by me. Whatever keeps it going. Because when the bell sounds, the gate lifts, and the announcer shouts “And they’re off!” . . . well, there’s really nothing else like it in the world of spectator sports. Which perhaps explains why 
American culture is still suffused with references to horse racing in general, and the Kentucky Derby in particular.
My personal favorite is a little-remembered line from the television show The Odd Couple. Oscar Madison, the sloppy, bedraggled, divorced sportswriter played by Jack Klugman is talking to his ex-wife Blanche. She’s complaining that he never paid attention when they were married. She goes so far as to accuse Oscar of not even remembering how long they were married. Defensive and incensed, Oscar struggles to rise to the occasion. He starts counting on his fingers, mumbles to himself, then smiles and says to her triumphantly: “Of course I do! We were married for three Kentucky Derbys.”
Maybe the most famous reference is in the Rolling Stones song “Dead Flowers” from the 1971 album Sticky Fingers:
When you’re sitting back
In your rose pink Cadillac
Making bets on Kentucky Derby Day
I’ll be in my basement room
With a needle and a spoon
And another girl to take my pain away
I always thought the last line would work better if the verb were “shoot” instead of “take,” but Mick was always kind of a pretender anyway. Pretending to be a black woman, pretending to be gritty, pretending to be American. Christ, he 
doesn’t even know how to pronounce Kentucky. But if you are just pretending, what better way to assert a sense of Americaness than to sing about a pink Cadillac and the Derby?
Either way, Townes Van Zant fixed the song for good when he covered it. You may have heard his version at the end of The Big Lebowski, during a slow motion montage of that other great American sport, bowling. Even before the film came out, I used to play Townes’ version on the radio back in Nebraska, and in my book his is the definitive take. It’s the one that lets you know all the people wearing seersucker suits and fancy hats, and sipping mint juleps up in the boxes, they’re just visiting. His version is really for the railbirds, those folks who don’t need an occasion to drink the hard stuff, and who are scrounging together some $5 win tickets and maybe an exacta box today, just like they do most every day. And you put up with all these fancy pants tourists because 
you need them to keep this thing going the rest of the year.
I make no promises, but here’s what I know. A man called The Knish likes Archarcharch, Midnight Interlude, and Dialed In if you wanna play it safe. But if you’re looking for a longshot, he recommends Brilliant Speed.
Enjoy the beautiful weather, enjoy your cocktail, and enjoy the races everyone.
You can also find me every Saturday at Meet the Matts.