May is the spaghetti junction of the sports calendar. Baseball is in full swing. The playoffs that someday will determine an NBA and NHL champion are meandering toward a field of survivors numbering in the single digits. (By June, we might even have an idea who advances to the semifinals.)
The NFL, which used to suspend operations in the spring, now demands coverage of minicamps that showcase the players selected during last week?s Buzz Lightyear draft. (The first round went to infinity, and beyond.)
Meanwhile, there?s always golf, all the time, and rare is the day that NASCAR isn?t making headlines with an accusation, a fine or a firing. And don?t forget tennis, rowing, track and field and soccer.
But for a few hours Saturday, the dizzying convergence of games associated with the winter, spring, summer and fall will be a mere background prop for horse racing and boxing ? two sports that would?ve dominated office water-cooler discussions in those days before offices were equipped with water coolers.
On Saturday afternoon, 20 thoroughbreds will compete in the Kentucky Derby. The Churchill Downs audience usually boasts some star power ? previous guests have included everybody from Babe Ruth to Walter Cronkite ? and the 133rd Derby is no exception, as Queen Elizabeth II will be seated in a luxury box with all the royal amenities but a throne.
A few hours later, and a few thousand miles away, Oscar ?The Golden Boy? De La Hoya will take on Floyd ?Pretty Boy? Mayweather in what pay-per-view ads are touting as the most significant fight of the decade. The Queen won?t travel to Las Vegas, but there?ll be plenty of ringside celebrities introduced beforehand.
This shouldn?t obscure the fact the most prominent celebrity visitor will be De La Hoya himself. The Golden, uh, Almost Middle Aged Man steps into a ring slightly less frequently nowadays than Henry Kissinger laces up in-line skates.
Horse racing and boxing once were anchor tenants of daily sports sections. No athletic prize ? not the Heisman Trophy, not the Sullivan Award, not the Cy Young or Lady Byng awards, nothing ? carried as much prestige as the heavyweight championship belt.
And yet there was a time, as author Laura Hillenbrand pointed out in her biography of Seabiscuit, when American?s most recognized athlete was a horse.
?In 1938, near the end of a decade of monumental turmoil, the year?s number-one newsmaker was not Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hitler, or Mussolini,? Hillenbrand wrote in the preface. ?It wasn?t Pope Pius XI, nor was it Lou Gehrig, Howard Hughes, or Clark Gable. The subject of the most newspaper column inches in 1938 wasn?t even a person. It was an undersized, crooked-legged racehorse named Seabiscuit.?
In the summer of that same year, 1938, Joe Louis avenged his defeat to Max Schmeling with a first-round knockout at Yankee Stadium. Not even the ads exhorting fans to invest $54.95 for the privilege of watching De La Hoya-Mayweather at home would dare suggest this super welterweight bout contains the geopolitical ramifications of Louis-Schmeling on the eve of World War II.
But without household names and unified champions, De La Hoya-Mayweather is as good as it gets, even if the hype seems artificially enhanced.
Appearing on Jim Rome?s TV show the other day, De La Hoya was thrown a pitch to trash talk.
Rome: ?You really don?t like him, do you, Oscar??
De La Hoya: ?That?s right, I don?t like him.?
Rome: ?So, Oscar, what you?re saying is, it?s personal.?
De La Hoya: ?It?s personal. Yes.?
Them?s fightin? words!
After Louis pummeled Schmeling in the rematch, fans who listened on radios held impromptu street parties in New York, Detroit and Chicago. No such reaction outside Las Vegas is expected Saturday, but if pay-per-view customers conclude their $54.95 was worth it, boxing will be revived, if only briefly, from the moribund sport whose most beloved personality is a fictional ex-club pug named Rocky. And Rocky is now past 60.
Horse racing?s fall hasn?t been as sudden or startling, but the thoroughbred industry shares with boxing a desperation for a new generation of fans. Put simply, horse racing needs a superstar.
In a USA Today interview published Thursday, former jockey Gary Stevens offered his take on horse racing?s long-term future.
?I?d try to get every organization, every leader of every racetrack, all the jockeys, trainers and owners on the same page, with the same goal,? Stevens said. ?Everybody has a different agenda; it?s been like that for a long time.?
Substitute ?jockeys, trainers and owners? with ?fighters, promoters and managers? and Stevens? words fit nicely into a boxing conversation.
Horse racing and boxing never will regain their place atop the spectator-sports food chain; the culture has changed too much. But for one day, the world will be energized by a blast from the past. For those tuning in at home, light up a cigar and savor the sheer simplicity of sports before ESPN, fantasy leagues and draftniks.
Amid an entertainment landscape cluttered with diversions more appealing to those too young to the recall the last Triple Crown winner or the last boxing match between fighters with marquee names, American sports fans will have a chance to experience the way we were, and ? for better or worse ? never will be again.
