Flatter: The numbers game can be hard to remember

If records are made to be broken, they ought to be made for remembering, too. Alas, that is the case in far too few sports.

Quick. What was the number of career wins Steve Asmussen had a couple of summers ago when he broke the North America training record held by the late Dale Baird?

Let me guess. Dale Baird’s name was not on the tip of the tongue. Neither was his old record of 9,445.

Since he has 9,992 wins, even a math stooge like me can see Asmussen is rapidly approaching 10,000. That is easy to remember. But then he will surpass it. And the exact figure will be forgotten again until he passes the still-active South America trainer Juan Suárez Villaroel for the world record in a few years.

That sound just heard nationwide was the echoing of voices saying, “Juan Suárez who?” Just know that he has 10,317 and counting.

Racing records do not come to mind the way they do in baseball. Mention numbers like 714, 755, 762*, 60, 61*, 73**, .406, 4,256 and even that 191 that was changed from 190. A true baseball fan has a distinct vision for every one of those. Even the asterisks.

LeBron James just broke the NBA record for most points in a career. Even he said he did not memorize Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 38,387. I will remember that LBJ’s record breaker was a fallaway, foul-line jumper in Los Angeles the way Kareem’s was a sky hook in Las Vegas. Or that Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game was in Hershey, Pa. Otherwise, the new record will not be seared in my memory unless LeBron retires with exactly 40,000. Or 40,004. Or something like that.

Football numbers are just as difficult. How about 84,430? That was the number of passing yards Tom Brady had when he retired. Then he came back and raised it to 89,124. No telling where it will be after he retires again.

The only major record in football that I remember is 17-0, the Miami Dolphins’ perfecto from 50 years ago. I probably should remember the 2,105 rushing yards Eric Dickerson had in 1984, but O.J. Simpson’s 2,003 from a shorter season in 1973 feel more indelible for a variety of reasons.

Wayne Gretzky had 894 goals in his hockey career, and Alex Ovechkin probably will break that next year. By the way, did you know Ovechkin is represented by agent Stephen Screnci? That name looks familiar, because he is the same Stephen Screnci who last fall became the president of racing and business development for 1/ST Racing and Gaming.

OK, so back to horses. And it’s about time, right?

Equibase is all fine and good for what we breezily call North America records, which really comprise the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. México is not included, even though it is very much a part of this here land mass. Go figure.

For world records, the Página de Turf website is a worthy custodian. It has reliably tracked “Juan Suárez who?” and other trainers and jockeys for years.

If racing were like baseball, here are a few more numbers at la página that we fans ought to know off the tops of our heads. 650. 12,844. 13,241 and counting.

In 2009, Asmussen won 650 races, breaking his old record of 621 set the year before. Thirteen years later, that still stands as a world record.

Russell Baze retired in 2016 with 12,844 wins. Or was it 12,842? Equibase and Página de Turf beg to differ because of two victories in South America.

Baze held the world record by himself until five years ago this week, when Brazil native Jorge Ricardo tied him at 12,844. It took him another six weeks to break the record. Now 61, Ricardo upped it 13,241. At least that was what it was at last check this week.

Ricardo’s record, whatever it winds up being, is safe for a while. Counting his rides beyond “North America,” specifically in Dubai, Japan, Perú and Trinidad and Tobago, Édgar Prado, 55, was the second-leading active jockey with 7,421 wins.

Not one of these numbers is the sort of thing we will be memorizing soon.

Flightline and Frankel had handicap rankings of 140 each. We might remember those for the short term, especially since we just saw one of them for a combined nine minutes. That was the total time of Flightline’s six races.

Actually, it was 9:11.09. Or should that be 9:11 “flat”? Oh, yes. That reminds me of a debate last week that was sparked by a conversation on FanDuel TV between Todd Schrupp and Larry Collmus. Should announcers call fractions in hundredths or fifths?

Of the 500 votes that came in on Twitter, 358 said fifths, and 142 preferred hundredths.

The follow-up to that was like reading an unwinnable debate about politics, religion or the designated hitter.

“I agree with the ease of cadence (with) fifths,” one Tweep wrote. “Fast is fast. I don’t need the announcer to say a bunch of numbers to prove it. But it’s also what I grew up with and got comfortable with.”

“Hundredths,” Craig Milkowski of TimeformUS said. “This isn’t the 19th century. Why confuse new people with something not used anywhere else?”

“I’d like a word with whoever started the standard of rounding to a faster time,” one reply said. “I’ll always maintain that 22.34 is not 22 1/5. A high-jumper clearing seven feet and a half-inch would not be given credit for 7-feet-1.”

Amen to that.

“Fifths, due to familiarity,” another Tweep declared. “That is how it has always been done.”

Good gravy, Marie. “How it has always been done”? So, too, were Ptolemaic geocentrism, witch burnings and pistol duels. Inertia is a result, not a reason. At least that was gist of what I put in my Tweet.

If there is one record number that is indelibly sacrosanct in racing, it is 2:24.0. That, of course, was Secretariat’s 1 1/2-mile time in the Belmont Stakes 50 years ago this June. How convenient that it did not have any fifths. Clocks did not go to hundredths back then, so it is just the single significant digit after the decimal point.

The New York Racing Association already incorporated Big Red’s most memorable race into its 2023 logo for this year’s renewal of the Belmont. Maybe that was just another way of saying it is just fine that 2:24.0 is the only racing record worth remembering.

Speaking of numbers, who is with me taking the Eagles and laying 1 1/2 in the Super Bowl? I guess that is a number best suited for a column on another site. Página de Field Turf, anyone?