Casting Their Fate, Dollars to the Wind

For four months, they have been trimming spinnakers and backwinding the jib off the coast of San Diego.

For 100 hours of daytime programming normally devoted to “Body By Jake” and the Milwaukee Pro Beach Volleyball Open, ESPN has been SailTracking and ScubaCamming.

And for what?

To see who wins an eight-pound silver beer mug a couple of drunken sailors dubbed “America’s Cup” back in 1851?

In 30 seconds, you can decide the same thing by standing Bill Koch and Raul Gardini at the water’s edge and having them pitch their wallets into the drink.

Wallet that sinks the fastest wins.

I can tell you who’s going to win this America’s Cup right now, and I can’t tell a leech from a roach, although a can of Raid, probably, would do the trick on both.

Gardini, owner of the Italian Il Moro di Venezia, has spent more than $100 million on this race.

Koch, owner of America 3, has spent $65 million.

Il Moro in six.

In yachting, it was considered a big deal last month when Koch defeated Dennis Conner, the best-known sailor in the world, in the defender finals. Oh, really? Look at the numbers: Koch had four boats, Conner has one. Koch spent $65 million, Conner spent $15 million.

And that was after Conner was subsidized $3 million by Pepsi.

In this test, Koch beat Pepsi by a margin of 7 to 4.

But then, the America’s Cup is no longer about real sailing. It’s about real spending--richest rich man wins--which at least qualifies the activity as aptly named.

Are the Italians, after a 500-year slump, suddenly the best sailors in the Old World? Not when their skipper, Paul Cayard, is a highly paid free agent from San Francisco. The Italians’ boat isn’t even an Italian boat, if the charges from Koch’s camp are to be believed.

Il Moro’s sails were borrowed from France, America 3 contends.

Il Moro’s mast was designed by a New Zealander and built by Americans, America 3maintains.

America 3, of course, isn’t above the underhanded, either. America’s Cup, thy name is scullduggery. Two million of Koch’s budget has been requisitioned for “spy helicopters,” which Koch readily acknowledges. He wishes they weren’t necessary, but that’s the state of the Cup, he shrugs.

Australia II is to blame for all this. That was the boat, skippered by John Bertrand, that upset Conner in 1983, a result so entirely unexpected that before then, the Cup had been bolted to a table inside the New York Yacht Club.

Out came the screws . . . and a sport became unscrewed.

Americans never notice trophies until they lose them, but once we lost this one, getting it back was the only thing that mattered.

Faster keels. Sleeker sails. Better lawyers. We needed them all, so we paid for them all. So did the Australians. So did the Kiwis. The Italians learned quickly.

Winning the Cup back in 1987 was a temporary kick, but since then, the lawsuits, the pettiness and the unanchored greed have turned the races into an out-of-touch, out-of-time annoyance.

Has a sporting event ever seemed so removed from the context of current affairs than the 1992 America’s Cup, less than two weeks removed from the Los Angeles riots?

Could $65 million be put to better use than acting out the high-seas fantasies of middle-aged men more Thurston Howell III (Thurston Howell 3?) than John Paul Jones?

Do we really need an America’s Cup Foundation?

Even Koch blanches at the amount of zeros behind the America 3 and Il Moro financial pushes. “Obscene,” he calls the figures. He has recommended a cost ceiling for America’s Cup syndicates--to be implemented, of course, after he’s through with this one.

And what says Conner, the vanquished but not yet finished yachting legend?

No limits, no ceilings, no caps. “This is a rich man’s sport,” Conner says. He was outspent in ‘92, but ’95 is three years off--and that’s a lot of time to corporate-schmooze.

It’s thinking like this that’s taken the America’s Cup to where it is today.

It’s not the skill of the crew that wins.

It’s the bills in the wallet.

Sixty-five million for an America’s Cup?

One-hundred million?

Two-hundred million?

And baseball is the game where the money is supposed to be out of control.

Compared to America 3, Ken Griffey 2 is a pauper.