Shoemaker Left Partially Paralyzed : All That Matters Is That He Recover

You never picture Willie Shoemaker in an automobile.

In your mind’s eye, you see him only on a horse. You never imagine Bill Shoemaker behind the wheel of some car, any more than you would John Wayne. You envision him in silky shirts and on leather saddles, astride magnificent stallions, tugging their reins or manes, riding high.

Being 59, though, Shoe surely has been licensed to drive since the highways were populated by Packards and Studebakers, and he was the only occupant of a four-wheeled vehicle Monday when something terrible happened. The Ford Bronco flipped and crashed, leaving the greatest jockey who ever lived lying in a California hospital, fighting for his life.

A Bronco.

Damn.

Bill Shoemaker nearly killed alone with a Bronco.

Although the circumstances will be fully investigated, including whether the driver was in fit condition to drive, none of this matters for now. What matters now is that Shoemaker could be facing paralysis or worse, and our prayers should be with him.

We don’t care how it happened, why it happened. Not today. Tomorrow, maybe. Next week, definitely. Just not today. Today, we are thinking only of Shoe.

They were supposed to play a baseball game here Tuesday night, the first one of the season for the Dodgers, the baseball team Bill Shoemaker likes best. No game was played. It rained and rained. And the darker the Georgia sky got, and the harder the rain fell, the more difficult it became not to just sit here chin in hand and stare out at the bleakness and think about Shoe.

Think about 40-odd years and 40,000-odd races aboard speeding, snorting thoroughbreds that responded to his command. Think about “The Legend’s Last Ride” last February at Santa Anita, a sunny afternoon at Santa Anita when the colleagues of Bill Shoemaker stood behind him in respectful formation and watched him wipe a teardrop from his cheek.

Shoe meant so much to so many people--means so much still. He retired, but not from racing, only from riding. If he couldn’t race a horse, he would exercise one, talk to one, train one, clock one, rub its legs, rub its nose. A stable was his office, a paddock his passion. Willie Shoemaker never met a horse he didn’t like, which was appropriate, since it also worked the other way around.

Horses wouldn’t hurt him. Never deliberately, anyway. Shoe busted his ankle once, missed most of the next year. Fractured his pelvis, too. Suffered heaven knows how many bumps and bruises, aches and pains, arduous rides that made him feel like the one who had just been put under the whip.

Yet on and on he rode, unstoppable, indestructible, the best. King of the sport of kings.

This was a man 4 feet 11 who stood head and shoulders above any crowd.

It can all be taken away from anybody in a flash, the way it was for a young professional football player for the Raiders who drank too much and drove his BMW into a tree, the way it was for a young professional hockey goalie who drank too much and sped his Porsche into a wall of concrete, the way it has been for thousands and thousands of people who climbed into their cars and thought they knew where they were going, but never got there.

The word, the horrifying word, on Bill Shoemaker as of Tuesday evening was that there was damage to the spine, lack of feeling in all four limbs, perhaps internal injury as well. The closest thing to good news was that the patient was able to be transferred from one hospital to another, but that could hardly be described as encouraging.

Police filled out an arrest report, yes--driving under the influence. One friend of Shoe’s promptly said if he has seen this man consume too much alcohol at any time over the 30 years they have been acquainted, he cannot remember the occasion.

As we said, though, such concern should be saved for later. All we want for now is for Shoe to get well.

After all of the years of watching him, of cheering for him, of wagering on him, of seeing Bill Shoemaker place his diminutive body at risk more than 40,000 times for the public’s entertainment, it is the least we can do.

Ride this one through, Shoe.

Ride this one through.