Flatter: This column really ought to come with a warning label

Lexington, Ky.

“Heaven must be a Kentucky kind of place.”

Daniel Boone said that before he died, of course. Afterward really would have been news, even two centuries ago.

The thought came to mind again driving from Louisville to Lexington. From the home office of racing to what really looks like horse heaven, even on a dreary, rainy day. It should be nicer Friday for opening day.

Seeing as how I took a perfectly good quote from one of U.S. history’s early horse traders, I really should have been writing this column from the sales ring a few hundred yards from me. Instead, I tap away on a laptop keyboard in the Keeneland press box, surrounded by appointments that have not changed much in recent years. Amen to that.

Back home a little more than an hour to the west, Churchill Downs is undergoing yet another facelift, this time centered on a big, new, oval-shaped paddock. Too bad the construction crews there do not work on roads. Then again, neither does anyone else around Louisville.

Here at Keeneland, they may as well adopt another famous saying from a Southerner. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” It took until 1977 for Jimmy Carter’s budget man Bert Lance to come up with that one. Bert died a few years ago. Otherwise, he could uncork that wisdom for horse racing.

Two activities associated with our sport were not broke. Growing grass and timing races.

Fingers are crossed that by the time the spring meet in the ’Ville opens the week before Kentucky Derby 2023, the Downs will have a lush, green carpet the likes of which it used to have before modern agronomy came along to screw it up last year.

That congers another old saying. “You can run, but you can’t hide.” That paraphrases yesteryear boxing champion Joe Louis, who said that about his old rival Billy Conn. He could have said that now about certain turf courses.

Fair Grounds had a mushy lawn this winter, when we were told the Gulf of Mexico and its attendant salinity dared to intrude on the course’s freshwater. At Gulfstream Park it was more routine. It has become a sure sign of spring when the turf there resembles the tee boxes at a municipal golf course. We just don’t remember the greens of the Bayou and South Florida looking so threadbare back in racing’s heyday.

Maybe this does come back to the pervasiveness of bad science. In the ’90s it seemed like every grass expert was telling us how we would not need artificial turf in other sports. They figured out how to make grass that could withstand anything. Apparently, that did not include bad weather and competitors weighing hundreds of pounds. Back we went to new-fangled rugs. A quarter century later, it is as big a metronomic mess as ever.

Funny, though, how Aqueduct opens its turf course, and it looks fantastic. All they do is cover it up with big, gray tarps all winter. Lather, rinse, repeat. Come spring, it looks as lush as can be. Too bad we may not enjoy it past this time next year, what with Belmont Park being turned into a 12-month racing facility.

But back to Gulfstream, where the grass may not always be greener, and a Florida minute might not have 60 seconds.

“Time only matters for those in prison.” No, not a Southerner. At least not from America. At least one source credits trainer Philip Feanny with saying that down in Jamaica. I swear a jockey up here said it first, but maybe that does not matter, either.

It did not seem like it meant much last weekend at Gulfstream, where Forte’s original winning time for the Florida Derby was nearly five lengths off. David Aragona and the Beyer Speed Figure team at Daily Racing Form spotted the error. By the time it was corrected, it was blamed on a bird who tripped the beam that should not have stopped the clock before Forte did. Funny how that bird shows up at so many racetracks.

Trakus, may it rest in peace, and Gmax, may it soon follow, were supposed to fix all that. But it seems like the timing of horse races is worse than ever. Talk about fixing something that isn’t broken. How tough is this? Watch horse pass the post. Start stopwatch. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Watch horse pass the post. Stop stopwatch. Read the time.

This nonsense has spread to other sports. When San Diego State beat Creighton in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, one of the endless video reviews revealed the clock did not start on time for the last inbound pass with 1.2 seconds left. The officials actually watched the video after the fact and hand-timed it. Sound familiar?

It was only appropriate the San Diego State-Creighton game was played in Louisville.

Someone will come up with some new tracking device to put in a horse’s bridle or saddle cloth. Maybe lip tattoos will have microchips that can be tracked by drones launched like buzzing gnats over every finish line. In the end, watch and click will remain more reliable.

The charts that chronicle all these times, accurate or not, should come with a warning label. Speaking of which …

“For 24-7 help with a gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER.”

We all have seen that, right? Here in Kentucky, that or something like it will be showing up a lot more. Our state legislature surprisingly passed a bill to launch sports betting by the end of the year. At last.

Pretty soon this commonwealth will reap the benefits of another one of life’s great warning labels. Think about it. Just about every perceived vice known to man comes with government’s version of a hectoring parent.

Even before TV commercials came along to hawk cures for bald heads and faulty orifices, there was fine print on medication, no doubt generated by that axis of attorneys and actuaries.

Think about alcohol, now in only its 90th consecutive year of legality. How long after Prohibition ended were we warned about the evils of the fermented nectar? “Excessive consumption limits your capacity to drive and operate machinery and can cause harm to your health and family.”

Let’s not forget cigarettes, the OGs of warning labels. Smoke ’em if you got ’em used to be the old line. Then came someone called a surgeon general. Salute.

And so we come to sports gambling, which is soon to be available at racetracks near the collective y’all in Kentucky. I have not read the fine print of the new law here, but I do know regulators get to lay their grimy mitts on it for up to six months.

If this is like the other 37 states that already have sports betting, there will be a requirement for that “1-800-GAMBLER” disclaimer on every commercial for DraftKings and Fan Duel and Caesars and whomever else comes in here like carpetbaggers eager to own their share of the vig.

How is it in horse racing that have we been able to avoid such a warning label? Is it because we learned a long time ago about the evils of excessive betting? Or is it because, labels or not, we refuse to learn?

No matter. Like filling out paperwork at the doctor’s office and reading the fine print in a rental-car agreement, these labels have become the visual equivalent of white noise.

As we gradually have become more permissive as a society, we have seen warning labels placed on vials of pills, on bottles of booze, on packs of cigarettes and now on introductions to sports betting. All this begs one question from here. What happens if prostitution is ever legalized?

One more old saying

“Get off my lawn.”