Flatter: If only racing coverage were more about the racing

Between Baffert vs. Wunderler and DiCorcia in California and Simms to Nickens in Phoenix and HBPA et al. vs. Black et al. in New Orleans and HISA and HIWU everywhere, I am left to lament the idea that this and rival websites were supposed to be all about horse racing.

You remember horse racing. That sport in which horses race.

As a kid I dreamt of sitting in press boxes and covering races and games. In my little town we did not have tall buildings. The booth on top of the Erector Set-looking bleachers at Chico State University was going to be my ticket to growing up.

Now press boxes and locker rooms have been replaced by courthouses and meeting rooms. Or so it seems when the tasks of covering, ahem, racing, are at their most monotonous.

A friend in Las Vegas who is plugged into the races but not always the news of racing wondered about one of these stories. Since we are old guys, we actually were talking on the phone this week when he asked me for a snapshot of the details. When I ended it with something about “it’s in the hands of the lawyers,” I could hear the smile in his voice.

“You just don’t know when to stop being a newsman,” he said. “You always have to get back to the news angle.”

Well, no. The news angle always gets back to me. If I had chosen to keep putting my front foot in news, I still might be at 1010 WINS in New York.

Instead, I got back to my roots in sports nearly seven years ago and then specifically to racing. As I harbor a case of stomach flu this week, I long for simpler times when my PPs did not come with a more annoying task, too. I avoided using the more tempting homophone for too.

Bad boiler, court cases and commission hearings aside, I see sitting before me five Breeders’ Cup qualifiers and another 12 graded stakes between Friday and Sunday in the U.S. There also are 19 international races that are Group 1s, Breeders’ Cup win-and-you’re-ins or both.

I really want to write about looking forward to Eda going for her eighth consecutive victory Friday and how I believe Speed Boat Beach is a good value play coming back to the dirt Saturday and how I think Defunded and National Treasure are vulnerable against Stilleto Boy in the Awesome Again.

Doing all that, though, without the obligatory mention that Baffert is suing to get a couple Xwitter critics to either show all their video cards or get off his backside wallet would be seen as hiding the bigger story. On the other hand, making that mention of the visual images that, according to the new lawsuit, “they allege will ‘end’ Baffert’s career” diverts attention from the horse races that were supposed to be the object of the writing game.

Quite the career I signed up for, eh?

As the late Paul Harvey used to say, you can run, but you can’t hide. News leaches into all sports. Look at what is going on at Michigan State with so many of its athletic programs. Or how the NBA’s policy on stars sitting out is being influenced by sports betting. Or how the A’s cannot finalize whether they are coming or going with Las Vegas. Or how the NFL cannot get its act together with playing surfaces and head injuries.

Racing used to be bigger than all this drama. Hell, racing just used to be bigger. I pointed out last week how the sport is very, very good at building its stars, at least within the ever-shrinking sphere of the game itself. It also is very good at tearing them down. In Australia it is called the tall-poppy syndrome. In Hollywood, it is where they eat their young.

Way back in the ’90s, when jockey Patrick Valenzuela was in the throes of his substance-abuse trouble, it was a big talking point on its own merit. But racing was so much bigger than that. We had other things to divert our attention. Things like more horses and more races at more racetracks.

Social media were not around back then, but let’s be real here. We are talking about a small pond full of big fish now.

The defendants in the new Baffert case have 12,914 and 15,820 Xwitter followers. In contrast, Adam Schefter has 10.5 million followers, Adrian Wojnarowski 6.1 million, Ken Rosenthal 1.4 million, Bob McKenzie 1.5 million. Don’t know that last one? He is hockey’s answer to the other three. That’s right. Hockey. Fifth of the four major sports.

The closest I found in our game was 99,000 for TVG, the name FanDuel cannot squelch. In short, the expressions of wrath on racing’s social media are tempests in a teapot.

We might say the same about the drama playing out in Arizona, where last week it was declared that Turf Paradise was closing forever. Then it was declared this week Turf Paradise was reopening in January. Both declarations came from, wait for it, Turf Paradise.

A cloak and a dagger come with the reluctant divulging of Frank Nickens as a potential buyer who is kicking the tires of Jerry Simms’s racetrack. Let’s just see if that car is still on the lot in another week.

In the end, what is the care factor? Think about how much money you bet on Turf Paradise in the past year or five years or 20 years. Did it exceed $0.00?

We spend a lot of time on social media and on this and other racing-news websites discussing and ruing the demise of racecourses like Hollywood and Calder and Arlington and Golden Gate and maybe Turf Paradise, but how much have we followed that modern-day talk with a dollar-spending walk?

When Thoroughbred Times folded 11 years ago, there were more than a few souls who went on social media to express their sorrow and how they would miss seeing it. At the same time the publisher’s 733-page bankruptcy filing was posted publicly, complete with the names and addresses of the 9,892 paying subscribers like me.

“It’s too bad that so many people paying tribute to Thoroughbred Times were not paying subscribers,” I posted in response. “Names are on bankruptcy petition.”

My favorite excuse for that was, “Oh, I read the copy we get at the office.” Yeah. Right.

In short we do make a lot of noise, and all news sharks have an insatiable appetite for the chum of negativity. If a plane lands successfully, it is not news, but ...

Nevertheless, if things are looking better personally from the inside out, I look forward to going to the races Saturday at Churchill Downs and getting back to that old dream of working from the press box, even if there is no actual press box anymore.

Win or lose, thinking about Warrant upsetting Rattle N Roll and finding a value play against Zozos is a lot more satisfying than the paper chase created by lawyers and bureaucrats.

By any measure, Churchill Downs racetrack in Louisville beats the Edward J. Schwartz federal courthouse in San Diego any day.