Flatter: Churchill sways court of public opinion toward Baffert

The court of public opinion is fickle. Like summer weather in the Midwest, it can turn in less than the twinkle of an eye.

It happened this week. Bob Baffert went from scoundrel to victim, all in the flash of a pre-holiday news dump that took the form of a 214-word statement posted Monday by Churchill Downs Inc.

“The company is extending the suspension of Bob Baffert through calendar year 2024,” was the key passage.

Move the goal posts. Kick the can down the road. Declare a brain delay. Choose a cliché. Any cliché. What CDI did to BB this week was petty, stubborn and vindictive. Based on the comments beneath the story originally posted Monday on this website and the musings of fellow writers with fellow feelings, I feel far from alone in the back of the queue formed by that opinion.

Now, four days later, how does this story get advanced? I could add to the litany of words about how the man did his time and paid his debt to society. But that is just more of the same ol’, same ol’. Yada, yada, yada, Baffert is getting screwed.

Speaking of “Seinfeld,” I thought about busting out some old sitcom scripts where the husband and wife get in a squabble and refuse to apologize to one another before some third-party neighbor played by a forgettable character actor rings the doorbell before sounding the voice of reason. Then I realized those stories were musty, often misogynist and required some bogus laugh track.

I considered writing a treatment for a stage production featuring Churchill and Baffert and lawyers and boardroom denizens. But I think I have done that already in this column. Twice. That show closed and moved out of town.

I dug out my old Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations to find what I thought would be pertinent statements

“Public opinion in this country is everything,” Abraham Lincoln said in Ohio in 1859, presumably not on a trip to bet the trotters in Forest City.

I wandered down the road to Aristophanes and Shakespeare before I realized I was just trying to show off phony knowledge that would vanish with the opening of the weekend wine.

In a eureka moment – Archimedes, right? – I thought about the arc of this whole story. It began so long ago we still were sporting masks and vaccination cards, Jack Dorsey was taken for granted, and Flightline had just run his debut race. That had me going back to examine the timeline.

It was June 2, 2021, at 4:02 p.m. EDT, when a news release dropped saying, “Churchill Downs Inc. announced today the suspension of Bob Baffert for two years effective immediately through the conclusion of the 2023 spring meet at Churchill Downs racetrack.”

Wait. Stop right there. It said “two years.” No “at least two years.” No “indefinite for at least two years.” Just “two years.” It also referred to “the conclusion of the 2023 spring meet at Churchill Downs racetrack.” Well, that was not where the last month of the meet happened, but I will let lawyers and trivialists quibble over that.

That same news release said, “CDI reserves the right to extend Baffert’s suspension if there are additional violations in any racing jurisdiction.”

OK, stop right there again. “If there are additional violations.” Please remind me of any rule or regulation Baffert violated in any racing jurisdiction since the suspension began. I will hang up and listen.

Monday’s renewal of the Baffert ban was not just some garden-variety extension. The original stay-away declaration lasted 761 days. By extending it through the end of 2024 to cover Churchill Downs and Ellis Park and Turfway Park and Presque Isle Downs and, not insignificantly, Fair Grounds, 547 more days were added. That was an additional 72 percent. This was the big-boy version of “go to your room, and if I hear one word out of you, you’ll be grounded even longer.”

Contrast this with what other sports have done to their worst offenders. Micheal Ray Richardson and O.J. Mayo got two years for drug violations in the NBA. Michael Vick was forced out of the NFL for two years because of dogfighting. Billy Coutu got a lifetime ban for assaulting a referee during the 1927 Stanley Cup Final, but his penance was reduced to 1 1/2 years.

Oh, right. The 1919 Black Sox were given more than just life sentences by Major League Baseball. They are still persona non grata, so Eddie Ciccotte’s heirs are into a second century waiting for an invitation to Cooperstown. Will history look compassionately on conflating the fixing of World Series games with a disputed micro-overage of a legal medication?

Actually, there might be a parallel here. Pete Rose was given a lifetime ban for gambling on baseball. Conventional wisdom suggests if he had been contrite right away, he might have been forgiven and found his place in the Hall of Fame. Sound familiar?

“Mr. Baffert continues to peddle a false narrative concerning the failed drug test of Medina Spirit at the 147th Kentucky Derby from which his horse was disqualified by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission in accordance with Kentucky law and regulations,” CDI said this week.

Well, duh. He is standing his ground. Baffert has been consistent in maintaining his innocence. Is that not his right? If this really is all about something he said, how petty does that make the judge, jury and executioner look?

More to the point, the keepers of the Kentucky Derby flame were emboldened by Kentucky federal judge Rebecca Grady Jennings, who ruled against Baffert six weeks ago in his bid to wipe out the suspension. An appeal was considered, but Baffert’s attorney Clark Brewster said, “We let that case lapse and didn’t file the appeal out of a sense of goodwill and cooperation and with a forgiving attitude.” That was met with a hearty pffft from CDI.

In essence, Churchill and its battery of attorneys are doing a sideline strut over their record in court on this matter. It would be wise to remind them, though, that opponents of sports gambling were on a judicial winning streak before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against them five years ago.

“Mr. Baffert will remain suspended from entering horses at all racetracks owned by CDI through 2024,” the corporation’s news release concluded this week. “After such time, we will re-evaluate his status.” So 3 1/2 years may not be the end of it. Check back after the ball drops in New York a couple more times.

What’s more, the gathering tide of bureaucratic suspensions, er, “provisional suspensions” by the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit on behalf of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority and the Federal Trade Commission smacks of presumed guilt. The danger of a government-mandated body practicing this sort of “prove that you’re not” code of enforcement is daunting on so many levels. For now, though, it is the trendy thing to do.

Oh, one more thing. If, as the late TV executive Don Ohlmeyer famously told Tony Kornheiser, “the answer to all your questions is money,” then take a glance at NASDAQ.

CHDN, the stock symbol for Churchill, was quoted at $136.72 when the suspension extension was announced. It closed Wednesday at $131.45. Yes, the downtrend actually began Friday, so who knows how much or how little the Baffert case influenced the market bears. Yet a 4 percent drop is a 4 percent drop, for whatever reason.

If we don’t follow public opinion, we may as well follow the money.