Flatter: Writer’s block vs. Pa. Derby, Ill. tedium & Ohio pacers

This written effort represents the conquering of a rare case of writer’s block. Considering that first sentence was the first one I wrote Friday at 5 a.m. EDT, it stands as a testament to some stubborn confidence.

I thought about Saturday’s Pennsylvania Derby. While I look forward to seeing if Baeza finally can make himself ineligible for a-other-thans, I also am guilty of thrusting the race into the tapestry of the Breeders’ Cup.

Never mind that it is a $1 million race with one of the most competitive fields assembled this 3-year-old season. The Pennsylvania Derby is being regarded breezily as a prep to determine the third-seeded 3-year-old behind Sovereignty and Journalism in the $7 million Classic this fall.

For years Andy Serling has used his New York Racing Association pulpit to say these races in the looming shadow of the self-styled world championships should be treated and respected on their own merit. But with the growing trend for horses like Sovereignty to train more than two months up to the Breeders’ Cup, the Grade 1s in between lose some sizzle for the drive-by player.

That fate also will befall next Saturday’s Joe Hirsch Turf Classic. The same goes for that race at Santa Anita. It is something like the Good California Awesome Wood Again Crown Stakes. Hard to keep track when it has had more names lately than a Kardashian.

Thirteen U.S. Grade 1 races happen between now and the rolling out of the purple carpet in six weeks at Del Mar. It would not be such a bad idea if they are celebrated on their own merit.

Then again, my mind also wanders back to Parx having that jacked-up 25% takeout for tris, supers, Pick 3s and Pick 4s. It is hard to be at once eager to see the Pennsylvania Derby and reluctant to bet on it.

It is 5:30 a.m. now. My flitting focus has gone back to some Thursday tedium. Ah, yes. The excitement, the color, the pageantry that is the annual date-setting meeting of the Illinois Racing Board.

Few things in life are more pedantic than public meetings. Occasionally, something happens that elicits a smile or a laugh, but that is because the bar is so low. For me it came when I found out former TV analyst Alyssa Ali, who goes by her married name Murphy, is an IRB commissioner now. Apparently has been for 2 1/2 years. I must have missed that news release.

Anyway, the meeting was moved up a couple hours, and then it started 22 minutes late. Wasn’t that the same amount of time it took for stewards to disqualify Maximum Security after the 2019 Kentucky Derby?

For the next two hours, racetrack administrators and their lieutenants and their constituent horsemen took turns talking about 12 rejected proposals to divvy up the racing calendar between Hawthorne and Fairmount Park. Funny thing, though. The public never was made aware of any of the details of any of the plans.

At one point, a 13th proposal was handed to IRB staff and then to the board, and it still was not shown to the public. Yes, like too-cool-for-the-classroom slackers, they literally were passing notes. There was a perfectly good projection screen behind the commissioners’ bench, the better to show the in-person and online audience the calendar which literally just had been proposed in the middle of an open public meeting. It stayed blank the whole day.

As antiquated as most public-meeting laws are, the IRB probably met its legal requirement by promising to hang the minutes on a Chicagoland bulletin board before the first snowfall while sending a copy to a weekly newspaper that no longer exists.

In the end everyone agreed to prolong the 2025 calendar through 2026. All finally was revealed in the motion to approve. Fairmount will continue to race Tuesdays and Saturdays. Hawthorne will stick with Thursdays and Sundays, and its track-casino project which has been kicked down the road for five years will continue to be about as real as a new baseball stadium in Oakland or Tampa Bay.

Was it really four years ago next week when Arlington Park closed?

The clock says 6:15. The Van Pelt SportsCenter is cycling through its never-ending loop again. It occurred to me that if ESPN had been around 60 years ago, the lead story might have been the running of the Little Brown Jug.

We are more about gallopers than the trotters and the pacers around here. So, too, is this country. But we as a horse-racing nation back in the day actually paid more attention to standardbreds than Thoroughbreds. Before there was Man O’ War and Babe Ruth and Jim Thorpe, there was harness hero Dan Patch, the most popular sports figure in America.

If the Hambletonian is the Kentucky Derby for 3-year-old trotters, the Little Brown Jug is the Hambletonian for 3-year-old pacers. I have fuzzy memories of seeing it as a kid on black-and-white TV. It remains on my bucket list of events I must see before I die. Better then than after.

For the record, odds-on favorite Louprint won it Thursday afternoon. The story goes that his career nearly ended in July when he suffered a scrotal hernia. He had emergency surgery and wound up on the shelf for a while. All of six weeks.

Counting Thursday’s elimination and final, Louprint has won all six of his races since he had a testicle removed. This colt has been worth $1,641,712 in earnings. Nut’s to that.

Before the Little Brown Jug fades completely into rurally local obscurity outside the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, I really should make the four-hour drive up there. Note to self, right?

It is 6:30 now. I just realized the latest episode of “Jeopardy” is waiting to be played back. Maybe watching it will crack this confounded writer’s block. If it does, maybe I will replace all this.

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