In Barry Bonds' shadow, another tainted record?
Any sports fan can relate to the mixed emotions in a horse-racing story gathering pace at Bay Meadows in San Mateo.
Just down Highway 101 from where Barry Bonds has been chasing baseball’s most famous record, Russell Baze is riding for thoroughbred racing’s equivalent. After winning three races Sunday afternoon, Baze is 11 wins from Laffit Pincay’s 9,530, the record for the world’s jockeys. Pincay took the record from Bill Shoemaker, who took it from Johnny Longden.
That Pincay, Shoemaker and Longden are among their game’s beloved legends, and Baze is not, gives this race its weird drama.
The comparison to Bonds is imperfect but unavoidable: Bonds is a surly accused steroids abuser, and so a lot of baseball fans think he’d be an undeserving breaker of Henry Aaron’s career home-runs record. Baze is a gentleman and no cheater but has ridden most of his career at San Francisco Bay Area’s second-rate tracks, so a lot of racing fans think he’s the wrong guy to succeed Pincay.
Though Baze, 48 years old and a member of a West Coast family of horsemen, was elected to the racing Hall of Fame in 1999, his name shows up nowhere alongside his record-setting predecessors’ on the lists of Kentucky Derby and Breeders’ Cup winners and major-track champions.
In another baseball allusion, it’s often said that recognizing Baze as jockeydom’s ultimate record-holder would be like saying some minor-leaguer with huge statistics is the greatest home-run hitter of all time.
Yet horse racing will recognize Baze as the record-holder, possibly in the next week or two, given how fast he piles up wins at Bay Meadows.
And then what? Can we all remember that a record is just a number, not a certificate of greatness? That no record is meant to be taken at face value? That there are circumstances and stories behind every big stat?
Since deciding to retire at age 56 after a neck injury in 2003, Pincay has been thoroughly classy when talking about Baze's climb through the top 10, noting that it takes no less courage and commitment to ride winners in cheaper races.
True. But the rest of us might find it hard to match Pincay’s grace. We’ll note that while it might take no less courage and commitment, it has required less talent to do what Baze has done where he has chosen to compete.
The conversation heats up this week. It will be interesting to hear how Pincay and Baze describe the significance of 9,531. After Bay Meadows takes a break Monday and Tuesday, Baze resumes his chase Wednesday, scheduled to ride six horses.