According to This Tout Sheet, Blood Is Thicker Than ‘Snow,’ Too

Meltdown in the Soviet Union? Terror in the Middle East? Dollar falling? Deficit growing?

Forget it.

Want to make the world go away? Want to go where it’s always 1910, ‘tis summer and all is gay?

Well, then come here to Stephen Foster America, where they put grass in the drinks and a stutter in the taxi meters.

Come to America’s horse race, the Kentucky Derby. Never mind hard times. We’ll sing one song for my old Kentucky home, my old Kentucky home far away.

Horse racing is as removed from the real world as Oz. In fact, you know all you have to know about horse racing when I tell you that, one day in June of 1944, when nothing much was going on in the world except that the Allies were landing in Normandy, the headline in the daily racing paper was, “23 Go in the McClellan.”

So, if you’re worried about doomsday in Siberia, don’t be. The headline in the Form will read, “20 in Derby Field as World Comes to End.”

The charm of horse racing is, it belongs to a storybook world. It’s the last stand of the divine right of kings in this century. It still believes in archaic notions of nobility, monarchy, aristocracy.

Godless communism may rule one-quarter of the earth, representative democracy the rest. But horse racing is still an empire. Royalty prevails. Blood will out. Proletariat, get out.

You know how you tell who’s going to win a Kentucky Derby? Past performances? Won-lost percentages? Fast times? Conformation?

Don’t be silly. You throw those considerations right out. It’s not a horse’s performances that count. It’s his ancestors.

Does he come from a family that never did a day’s work in its life? Never pulled a cart or carried the mail? Is he maybe a bleeder? The equine equivalent of a Hapsburg cadet? A pampered loafer, good only for waltzes and parades?

That’s the one to bet.

You see, race-track scientists have delved into the pedigree of winning race horses and have come up with a common denominator called the Dosage Index, which is kind of the Almanach De Gotha for horses, Burke’s Peerage. If you’re not in there, you shouldn’t be in the Kentucky Derby either. Stop cluttering up the ball.

Dosage, I think, refers to the amount of blue blood that flows through the veins of favored horses. The more of it, the surer they are to win the Derby.

If they were human, they’d be riding around in spiked helmets or having liveried footmen open doors for them or dress them or draw their baths. Archdukes and earls. Fops.

It’s a theory that might outrage a V.I. Lenin, or even a Fidel Castro, to say nothing of a Patrick Henry or the Boston Tea Party.

But its inventors like it. It describes itself as “a mathematical expression of a thoroughbred’s speed and endurance using a list of chefs-de-race who prepotently transmit a predictable characteristic to their foals.” English translation: Them as has, gets.

It takes a lot of the suspense out of a Kentucky Derby. Our esteemed zoologists have nothing but scorn for today’s crop of runners, whom they find exceedingly common, a whole bunch of guys who would be told to wipe their feet if they showed up at the palace.

By the scientists’ snobbish reckoning, only a horse who scores a 4 or lower on their social scale is entitled to win a Kentucky Derby. Applying their formula, they say, no horse scoring a higher number than 4 has won this race.

The bad news is, the horse who is the favorite in prerace betting, Snow Chief, gets thrown out on his bunkhouse haircut. He has won more money than any horse in the race--more, in fact, than any 3-year-old in history--but that doesn’t cut any ice with the social elite. He’s just another social climber. A nouveau riche . Not our sort. Have the footman show him out.

He’s not the only one. You fancy Mogambo? Forget it. He’s a 4.6. His ancestors were servants. Charladies. Chimney sweeps. Like Bordeaux Bob? An 11.0. Probably came on a convict ship.

As systems go, I suppose it’s about as good as any. It beats betting on jockeys or horses with 13 characters in their names.

On the other hand, it’s the oldest horseplayer’s ploy in history, an ex post facto system. Applying a formula after an outcome is peeking at the cards, throwing dice in your hat. There never was a horseplayer who couldn’t go back to the Form after a race and prove conclusively why the winner won. And why he had it figured all the way.

Besides, if ancestor worship is all that infallible, did you ever stop to think why there haven’t been a whole lot of Lincolns in the White House? How come there wasn’t a Ty Cobb Jr. in the World Series? Whatever happened to guys named Napoleon? How many Einsteins were there?

One hundred and eleven horses have won the Kentucky Derby. Know how many have later sired winners of that race? Eleven.

Dosage Index as a barometer is about as useful as a “horses in trouble last out” mark on a scratch sheet.

If you think not, check the Dosage Index on the horses running on a border track any Sunday. Some of our cheapest platers have the Dosage Index of a Czar.

And one of these days, a horse with the Dosage Index of a dance-hall bouncer is going to win the Derby, and they’ll start telling you to throw out any of those whose family tree included types who wore wigs, lipped snuff or went around having people call them “M’lud.”