Once Again, Carter Shows He Can Take ‘Em to School

I don’t know what sort of school the University of North Carolina is, but it appears Vince Carter has learned enough to know that everyone who is telling him to bypass his graduation today is pretty stupid.

I mean, it’s pretty well understood that Toronto is going into Philadelphia today to lose the seventh game of its NBA playoff series, which means Carter will have to fall back on his education.

Some people still seem upset. A guy on Sporting News radio was saying Saturday that Carter was missing the team’s final shoot-around for the big game--as if he won’t be able to jump higher than anyone else on the court and slam the ball through the hoop because he missed one more basketball practice.

The radio guy also suggested the graduation and all the “nonsense” that goes along with it might distract Carter when he should be sitting in his hotel room visualizing Allen Iverson’s wide range of tattoos.

Teammates Antonio Davis and Chris Childs issued “terse no comments” when asked about Carter’s plans, according to the Associated Press. There are two guys who may be looking for a job when Carter puts his education to work.

The serious sports fan, of course, cannot comprehend how something like graduation could compete with the seventh game of a playoff series. But this runs even deeper than that--Carter is not missing the seventh game of the playoffs, and in fact is scheduled to arrive more than four hours before tip-off. So what’s the ruckus?

I know everyone is dropping out of school to join the NBA or work for Sporting News radio, but here’s hoping everyone continues to make a huge ruckus about Carter returning to school, earning his degree and then completing the educational journey in cap and gown.

In fact, here’s hoping NBC captures all the pomp and circumstance and then replays it later today as it would a Vince Carter slam.

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IMAGINE SITTING with Kobe Bryant, while he was still in high school, watching the NBA finals. Or getting together with Kevin Brown . . . never mind.

Here I am sitting Saturday with the next great rider in horse racing, Tyler Baze, watching the Preakness in the jockeys’ room at Hollywood Park, the kid hunched over lunch, eating everything on his plate as a good boy should.

The horses break from the gate back in Baltimore, and Baze, the Eclipse Award apprentice jockey of the year in 2000--winning more than $400,000 as a 17-year-old--is now licking his fork like a human dishwasher, and he’s ignoring the TV. To better know the horses, I guess, he eats like one.

He’s slurping down a Cherry Coke as Richly Blended leads the Preakness, and I ask him what he sees, and he tells me, “a horse race.” You can’t say the kid doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

I ask the kid when I might see him in a Triple Crown race, and he says, “in about a year,” which is like Mark Madsen announcing he has plans to outscore Shaquille O’Neal.

His cousin, Russell Baze, is in the Hall of Fame, has been riding since 1974, is still riding and has gotten one ride in the Kentucky Derby.

Here we are already four races deep into Hollywood Park’s card for the day and Baze has won on a Bob Baffert horse, and now the announcer on TV is yelling something about two more Baffert horses--Congaree and Point Given.

“I like A P Valentine too,” the kid says. “You know, I’ll ride in one of [the Triple Crown races] before I’m done.”

Right now, as young as he looks, he couldn’t get into an R-rated movie without being accompanied by an adult.

The other jockeys in the room are crowded around another TV, screaming like everyone else who watches racing on TV and thinks the horses can hear them, exhorting Victor Espinoza to ride A P Valentine home ahead of Congaree. Espinoza had ridden Congaree in the Kentucky Derby but has been yanked in favor of Jerry Bailey, and the jocks think Espinoza was robbed.

The kid, meanwhile, is scraping his plate with a roll. He shoots a glance at the TV, and tells me, “Point Given in a gallop.”

Now he tells me. Where was he 30 minutes ago when I was in the process of throwing away some of the Tribune Co.’s money on Dollar Bill? Now I’m going to have to fill out one of those expense reports--as if four days a week of creative writing isn’t enough.

“Why would anyone bet?” the kid says, leaving before they’ve posted the Preakness payoffs. “Who knows what a horse is going to do?”

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CURTIS CRAYON does. The Times handicapper--probably better than anyone else in the nation--can tell you when a horse has no chance of winning. He puts their names right in the newspaper, and after 198 races to date, he’s been successful in predicting who will lose 189 times. Don’t try this at home--it takes a professional.

Now if you’re looking for help from the guy who rides the horses, Baze says he can’t tell you who will win, but he can tell you if he has a “live” horse. I guess that’s the difference between Baze and Crayon--Baze at least checks to see if they’re breathing.

“I study the Racing Form--I know if a horse has a chance, but I ride them all the same way,” he says, and that’s how he brought home a 50-1 shot last year that paid $106. It’s a safe bet that Crayon didn’t have it.

Every time a jockey steps on the scale before a race--whether the horse goes on to race or not--he gets $40. Baze rode 1,469 horses his first year--had they all finished last, he still earned $58,760.

On top of that, a jockey gets 10% of his horses’ earnings with the top five horses in a race making money. Baze’s horses earned $4,172,205.

How many other 17-year-old athletes in the world of sports earn that kind of money? Had he said something about the Preakness to one particular sports writer earlier in the day, I believe it could have been the start to a beautiful friendship.

At the very least, it would have kept me from picking the same horse that Crayon picked--then I would have had at least a chance to win.

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KEVIN MALONE and I are playing together in Monday’s L.A. Sports and Entertainment Commission golf tournament at Riviera. Organizers said they will not pair Malone with me because he will have clubs, but insisted I must play with CBS sideline reporter Jill Arrington, whom Playboy readers voted as the broadcaster they would most like to see unrobed.

I don’t believe any of this will affect my golf game.

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TODAY’S LAST WORD comes in an e-mail from Limoman:

“How can you sleep with the trash you write?”

I don’t. I sleep with my wife.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at his e-mail address:

t.j.simers@latimes.com