Not Just Another Tale of Whoa
You know what Coronado’s Quest is? A bad actor. A naughty boy. An outlaw. What we used to call a juvenile delinquent. If he were human, he’d be sticking up banks.
But he’s also an athlete. He has speed to burn. No dichotomy there. Bad actor-great athlete is a combination we’ve grown accustomed to.
But wait a minute! Coronado’s Quest is being singled out. He’s not going to get to run in the Kentucky Derby next month because of his antisocial behavior. Even though he won the Wood Memorial on Saturday, a traditional steppingstone to the Derby, he’s being kept out of it by his connections. They don’t think he deserves to be there.
He should sue. Get a union to go to bat for him. Write his congressman. Go on Oprah. He’s being picked on. Made an example of.
Why? He didn’t choke his trainer. Threaten to kill him. He didn’t kick a photographer, throw a fan through a plate-glass window. He didn’t spit on an umpire, get picked up for drunk driving, get sued for spousal abuse or criminal assault, get arrested for illegal possession. He didn’t bite an opponent’s ear off or call the people who run his sport “the pits. “
Oh, he acted up in the paddock in some races down in Florida, bucked at post parades. He didn’t care much for authority and didn’t seem to think he should have a guy with a whip on his back telling him where to go and what to do.
But at the Wood, he seemed above all that. He was on his best behavior. But his trainer, Shug McGaughey, was not impressed. He’s not going to take him to Kentucky and “that carnival atmosphere,” he said.
Where has McGaughey been? He read too many chapters of “My Friend Flicka?” “Black Beauty?”
Doesn’t he know that today’s mentor is supposed to tut-tut such peccadilloes on the part of his charges? You forgive a guy anything today if he can perform. You confront a coach with a prospect’s arrest report and the coach groans “I know, I know. But he runs the 40 in 4.3!”
Coronado’s Quest ran 1 1/8 miles in the Wood in 1:47 2/5, the second-fastest of all time. So what if he’s an equine Jack the Ripper? That’s a plus today. Jesse James wouldn’t have to rob trains today. He could be a cornerback.
The evidence is all around you. The Philadelphia 76ers have a point guard with talent to burn. So, he’s burning it.
The D.C. basketball team changes its name from Bullets to Wizards because they think a bullet is an inappropriate association for a place that’s the per capita murder capital of the world--this side of Bosnia. But two of their top stars only the other day were accused of criminal assault on a young woman at 4:30 in the morning. And they had earlier been charged with a variety of offenses, among them drunken driving, marijuana possession, speeding, resisting arrest, driving without a license.
Coronado’s Quest do any of those things?
You see, athletes are the high priests of our civilization today, royalty if you will, above the law. Judges assigned to try them ask for their autographs. Excuses are made for them all the way up to the time they lose the hop on the fastball or a step in the 40. Then they’re on their own.
Help may be on the way. A story out of the East the other day noted that the distinguished economist, a Nobel Prize winner, Milton Friedman, took an ad in the student newspaper of his alma mater, Rutgers, to note, among other things, that a university “does not exist to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.”
Friedman wants to put a stop to this glorification of thuggery at its roots, where it all starts, at the collegiate athletic level. Friedman told sports columnist Robert Lipsyte that “so long as athletes are admitted under lower [academic] standards than other students, sports is a corruptive influence on higher education.”
Of course, Friedman’s credentials may be a somewhat suspect. You see, he comes from the University of Chicago, where the teams were so bad they gave up football. And history shows they used the athletic field, Stagg Field, for the relative inconsequentiality of splitting the atom and ushering in the nuclear age. Enrico Fermi did that there in 1945. But don’t look for him on any bubble gum cards or in Nike ads.
Lipsyte’s story noted that classrooms at Friedman’s alma mater had “broken windows, holes in the ceiling and toilet smells,” whereas the basketball coach there earned a $700,000 salary. A New York Times story described athletes’ locker rooms as having “spacious dressing areas, custom-designed handmade cherrywood lockers, seven television sets hooked up to two satellite dishes, five videocassette recorders and 23 giant leather sofas for the team.”
You can see where Coronado’s Quest needs a good lawyer. Or a bad one. They don’t seem to understand how necessary he is to the economy and how a few instances of sociopathic behavior on his part should not be unfairly penalized when it is grandly overlooked in every other sport. As proof the fan couldn’t care less, note that the racetrackers at the winner’s circle at the Wood were chanting “Derby! Derby!” at his connections.
Look! Rogue males, scofflaws, regularly get in Super Bowls, Rose Bowls, Final Fours, World Series and even Wimbledon finals. Why not a Kentucky Derby? I bet he’d say he’s sorry if he could. They all do.