The roses won't smell so sweet as this 50-year Derby streak ends
On May 2, 2020, I would have extended a streak of attending every Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday in May since 1970.
Other than breathing, I have done nothing 50 years in row.
I can think of hundreds of reasons why I should never have made the Derby 50 years in a row. But a rogue virus emanating out of China? Well, that’s beyond the odds of the 1913 Derby winner Donerail, a 91-1 shot.
Much has changed since my first Derby at age 17 as a senior at Marian Catholic High School in Chicago Heights, Illinois.
That year, my best pal and I parked in the yard of a home next to Churchill Downs and paid $5 for Thursday through Saturday. Admission to the track was not much more than that. A beer was a couple bucks.
Beers are in the $12 range now, and admission last years was $90, I think. We routinely pay $25 a day to park in a yard on a street that sits a couple streets over from the track stable gate.
Most of our time in the early years was spent in the track’s infield, described alternately as the world’s biggest party or a war zone — a place made famous in one of Hunter Thompson’s works, “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved.”
I cannot recall the last time I visited the infield. (I cannot recall a lot of things about the first Saturday in May at Churchill Downs since 1970.)
But some things have not changed.
For all those years except two, my best friend, Capt. Michael J. Durkin (retired), Chicago Heights, Illinois, Fire Department, joined me at the Derby.
Each year, an odd assortment of buddies, mostly high school mates and co-workers, have made the trip to join us. I decided a few years back that the 2020 Derby would be my last. I wanted to end the run on my terms, and 50 years seemed like an appropriate place to stop. Some of those pals who dropped in here and there through the years planned to attend this year in my honor.
I have bet my share of Derby losers, including My Dad George, who ran second to Dust Commander, an Illinois bred, in 1970. (How could someone from Illinois not put a few bucks on an Illinois-bred in the Derby?)
Add to the loser list the likes of Demons Be Gone (bled and did not finish the race), Empire Maker (second), Unconscious (fifth), Flying Paster (fifth), Plugged Nickel (seventh), Pine Circle (sixth), Chief’s Crown (third) and Snow Chief (11th), among others.
I have encountered odd people with Derby horse tips.
In 1970, while in line at a White Castle in Louisville, a very drunk guy — who if he lived long enough surely bet I’ll Have Another in 2012 — boldly announced that Corn On The Cobb would win the Derby in 1970.
“He’s the best mudder that ever lived,” he proclaimed.
Corn Off the Cobb ran seventh with Angel Cordero aboard.
Quickly after the 2009 Derby ended, my nephew — very familiar with my proclivity for beer drinking on Derby weekend — sent a text about the winner, I’ll Have Another, stating, “You must have bet that horse!”
Nope.
In 1983, I told all my pals early on that Sunny’s Halo was a cinch to win the Derby. The Canadian-bred had won the Arkansas Derby a month or so earlier.
On Derby eve that year on our way into a Chinese restaurant in the Louisville area, some Arkansas boys, well oiled, stood behind us in line.
“Ya’ll want the Derby winner?” one of them shouted. “It’s Sunny’s Hello.”
My buddies burst out laughing and told me I was cursed.
Hello, Sunny’s Halo, the winner who paid $7 (and Capt. Durkin snuck into the winner’s circle photo and appeared in the BloodHorse and Sports Illustrated).
In fact, in reviewing all the Derby winners since 1970, I am hitting about 33 percent.
Yeah, the usual suspects got my money: Secretariat (Triple Crown winner), Foolish Pleasure, Bold Forbes, and Seattle Slew and Affirmed (Triple Crown winners).
Can you imagine getting to see so many Triple Crown winners? (I did not bet American Pharoah or Justify.)
But I have brought home some runners who flew under the odds radar: Sea Hero ($27.80), Go for Gin ($20.20), Real Quiet ($18.80), Monarchos ($23), Smarty Jones ($10.20), Street Sense ($11.80), Animal Kingdom ($43.80) and Country House ($132.40, yeah, with an asterisk, since the disqualification of Maximum Security earned him the win in 2019).
You cannot package a half century of memories easily into words.
And the sadness and oddness that comes with the news that the Derby will not be run on the first Saturday in May in 2020 might not have really hit me yet.
But on May 2, 2020, I suspect it will feel like the death of a loved one to a certain degree.
“What will you do that weekend?” a friend asked me.
“Mourn,” I said.
Gordon “Mac” McKerral is a professor and the Journalism Major coordinator in the School of Media at Western Kentucky University. He is a lifelong racing fan and has worked as a standardbred groom and on the track maintenance crews at Hialeah Race Course in Florida and Balmoral Park in Illinois. His work has appeared in the BloodHorse magazine and newspapers throughout the United States. His blog, “The Road Less Traveled,” can be found at gmckerral.wordpress.com.