The Brash New Yorker Responds

By Jerry Brown 

(Editor’s note: There has been much back-and-forth comment since Jerry Brown’s op/ed, An Immodest Proposal, appeared in Friday’s TDN. It was quickly followed by a reply by Barry Irwin Saturday, Racing: Sport or Business. ) Today, we let Jerry have the last word.) 

Before I respond to Barry Irwin’s comments, I have to pay my respects. First, his record of outstanding accomplishments with Team Valor speaks for itself–anyone in our game who isn’t aware of them must be living under the proverbial rock. Second, and more importantly to yours truly, he’s the other guy who was fighting to rid the game of cheating using drugs way before it became fashionable to do so. So Barry has my respect–even when he’s wrong. With that said, let’s see if I can make my way through the rhetorical underbrush, avoid tripping over the straw men, and disentangle some conflated issues and tortured logic. 

From Barry: “Jerry Brown…proffered the notion that racing was a business, not a sport.” What I actually said was, “This is a business first, and a sport second.” Look–football is a sport; the NFL is a business. Baseball is a sport; MLB is a business. Golf, the PGA…you get the point. Yes, racing can be pure sport–if you want to see it pack a picnic basket and go to a hunt meet, and given Barry’s sporting outlook I look forward to seeing lots of Team Valor horses in the entries at Fair Hill. But major league racing doesn’t exist without purses, yearling sales don’t happen without purses, and purses don’t exist without betting handle, and betting customers. On the face of it, that means racing as we know it is a business first, because without betting you have…tailgating and picnic baskets. 

Next, Barry accuses me of being a New Yorker. Oh, wait, he’s right–one for Barry. But you know what? New Yorkers know how to run a business, and handle might not have gone down 10% nationally this past September if New Yorkers were running this one. It seems to this New Yorker that racing needs the centralized authority that MLB and the other major sports have, with that authority in the hands of someone with extensive experience in the pari-mutuel field, on one side of the betting windows or the other. It seems to me that since horseplayers (again, we’re not “fans”) represent maybe 90% of the people participating in the industry on a given day, and are the sole source of revenue, it would make sense to actively seek them out and bring them into the decision-making process at all levels, on all issues. But what do I know? I’m a brash New Yorker. 

Barry goes on to say my position on Lasix being allowed just for actual bleeders is wrong because racing “is survival of the fittest, not the weakest or slowest.” That is an admirable concept, but Barry is being too narrow about applying the idea of going au naturel. Throat operations? Ban them; if the horse can’t get enough air on his own he shouldn’t be racing. Chip in his knee? If it comes out, he’s barred from racing. Let him tough it out. Horse needs blinkers? Tough. If God intended a horse to wear blinkers he would have been born with them. 

Okay, let’s move on to Hong Kong–where they have historically had a gambling culture, have centralized authority which knows how to run a business, and doesn’t face competition on network television from four major pro sports (five if you count the PGA), plus college games. Barry, you think the absence of Lasix accounts for the high handle there? Seriously? Come on, man. 

But in his discussion of Hong Kong and elsewhere, Barry also does both the things I pointed out are hindering the general debate. First, he conflates the Lasix “issue” with a real one, cheating using drugs. Again, those are two distinct things, and Hong Kong takes the cheating issue maybe a thousand times more seriously than we do here–they test more horses, do it thoroughly and professionally (which is NOT being done here), and don’t allow vets to come onto the backside carrying ANY drugs–they have to buy all medications at the HKJC on-site pharmacy, as needed. As a result, another reason horseplayers pour money through the windows in Hong Kong is they’re less worried about getting screwed. And Barry also continues to present a binary (and false) choice– either everyone gets to race on Lasix, or no horse does, which position he is invested in. My “third way” proposal on Lasix can be found in my original TDN piece. 

Finally, this from Barry: “I have no fear that horseplayers will adapt to a return to the good old days pre-1970 when horses ran without Lasix”. First of all, I suggest that Barry and anyone who hasn’t read the piece Alex Harthill wrote that appeared in DRF near the end of his life do so (he reportedly treated Northern Dancer with Lasix for the Derby, and I would love to see TDN reprint that article*). What Barry really means is that he wants to see a return to the good old days when Lasix wasn’t legal, or listed in the program, not that it wasn’t being used. But more importantly, Barry, what the hell do you base that assessment of horseplayer behavior upon? Did you talk to any? Every single response I have gotten from horseplayers to my original piece here was in agreement with my position. I know that isn’t as flowery as your “full cry of valor that viscerally impacts even the hardest-hearted of professional gamblers,” but it has the alternative virtue of actually being true. 

*Editor’s note: We have asked the Keeneland Library to try to find the Alex Harthill article referenced. 

Feedback for publication? Email suefinley@thetdn.com