Flatter: It is long past time to televise U.S. stewards’ inquiries

I saw the video clip of the hockey referee who got downright honest Thursday night. He cracked open his microphone after a replay review and broke some bad news to the crowd in St. Louis.

“You’re not going to like it, but the call on the ice was correct,” Garrett Rank said. “No goal.”

What the hell. It was midway through the third period, and the Blues were up 4-0 on the Islanders. Unless they bet the over on the 6 1/2-goal total, the fans at the Enterprise Scottrade Savvis Kiel Center might have snarled, but they were in a good mood.

Right away, I thought about what would happen if we had the same thing in horse racing.

“If you had the 6-5 favorite, you’re not going to like this,” some steward could pronounce while standing with a microphone in the middle of the homestretch. “The horse that veered in for the 10-1 upset was going to win anyway. No change.”

Dare to dream. This is not a new cry, not even from me. Not only would it be great if racing offered this sort of forthright expression from its answer to referees, it should be required.

Note to the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority: Put this on the to-do list. Especially for that integrity part.

The list of sports that do not have their referees and umpires and stewards announcing their decisions to a waiting public has dwindled. Even baseball, our stodgiest of sports, got its umpires to do more than just bark a third strike. It would be nice if Ángel Hernández were compelled to explain more of his calls, but at least there have been baby steps in that direction.

Racing, however, has not budged from its sacrosanct process for reviewing fouls and protests. At least it has not in this part of the world. About the only thing more mysterious than our stewards’ decisions is the wait for white smoke from the Sistine Chapel.

It is quite the opposite in England and Australia. I have painful memories of my winning bet on a 15-1 long shot at Caulfield being wiped out by a loud horn, the announcement of a protest and the eventual decision that my bomber was ruled to have caused interference within the decreed limit of 500 meters from the winning post.

The bigger surprise for me that day about 20 years ago in suburban Melbourne was the fact that all the track TV screens suddenly switched to a room where two jockeys and two trainers were quizzed by a panel of stewards. They were seen. They were heard. The race video was wound back and forth. Everyone made his case. The stewards deliberated out loud. The result was explained. The winner was disqualified, and the favorite was promoted to victory.

And I lost my bet.

Upset as I was with what I believe to this day to have been a bad, borderline call 501 meters from the finish line, I could not quarrel with the process. There it was, laid bare for all to see and hear. It was live not only inside the track but also for TV and radio audiences across Australia.

Living in down there at the time, I asked myself why we did not have that back in America. You know America. That is where Silicon Valley designed so much of the technology that has made it even cheaper to put cameras and microphones everywhere.

I heard the other day that Fox Sports had more than 100 cameras showing the Daytona 500. Each car had at least one and sometimes two. That sport has come a long way from 1959, when the first running of the 500 could not be decided for three days after it ran, because the finish-line photo had to come back from a lab before it was determined Lee Petty had beaten Johnny Beauchamp.

Horse racing here between the ponds is mired in that primitive process. I know. Put that on the long list of things the sport is too stubborn to change.

But if, as the late TV producer Don Ohlmeyer told Tony Kornheiser, “the answer to all your questions is money,” there is no longer any excuse for horse racing to continue with its clandestine means of officiating. Is there any state steward who does not have a laptop with a built-in camera and microphone and access to Zoom?

There should be a louder clamor for this simple advancement. The most recent best chance we as horseplayers had to make this demand with some serious gusto was Dec. 16. That was the day Antonio of Venice, ridden by Manny Franco, somehow avoided disqualification from victory in the New York Stallion Series Great White Way at Aqueduct.

It took two days for stewards to uncork their explanation in a poorly written statement. Poor because they somehow left Antonio of Venice out of their verbiage. That was despite the fact Antonio of Venice’s number was flashing on the toteboard to indicate he was involved in the inquiry, which those same stewards said they initiated independent of any protest. It looked and smelled like they flat out misidentified the offending party.

The hue and cry on social media lasted for days, especially after the New York State Gaming Commission said it could not hear any appeal, because it was a judgment call. That, too, was two days after the race, and the commission’s non-ruling was confined to a written statement.

One would think a lesson would have been learned after the Maximum Security mess that happened nearly five years ago at a rather large horse race in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

Remember that night? It was 2 1/2 hours after the race when the stewards, two working for the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission and one for Churchill Downs, appeared in front of reporters. Chief steward Barbara Borden read a 59-second statement, and no questions were taken.

To plagiarize a column I wrote that night for VSiN, it took longer to get that unsatisfactory explanation than the 1759 battle on the Plains of Abraham for control of Québec. Longer than the tape Rose Mary Woods erased during Watergate. Longer than it took to realize “La La Land” did not win the Oscar.

NBC tried to poke a camera into the stewards’ room that night, but it was so far back in the dimmed surroundings that it might as well have been a satellite photo of the dark side of the moon.

If only Borden and her colleagues would have been allowed by the KHRC to grant NBC and we viewers a closer look not to mention an earful via live microphones. The result might not have been any more satisfying to losing bettors, but at least it would have sated the public’s right to know what was going on.

With every objection and inquiry that flashes onto the toteboard, we are left like passengers waiting for an airline to concoct another excuse for a delayed flight. Racing should be better than that, but yes, I know. Just put that on the pile that includes a truly common set of medication rules, meaningful punishments that are not slaps on the wrist and a coordination of race times so stakes at two tracks do not start simultaneously.

What our sport needs right now is Frank Pulli. He was the umpire who used a TV replay in 1999 to decide whether a ball hit in Miami cleared the wall for a home run. The only problem was replay reviews were not authorized to be used by umpires for another nine years.

Pulli’s move was controversial. It was ballsy. And it was right. God forbid common sense should carry the day.

Unfortunately, Pulli died more than 10 years ago. Perhaps spiritually, he could be channeled to empower some rogue steward to activate a webcam, launch a Zoom call and make an inquiry public as it happens.

“Was that wrong? Should I have not done that?”

Now that I have invoked the George Costanza solution to this problem, let me try and tackle the whole thing with sticks and a chain deciding first downs in football.

Ron Flatter’s column appears Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.