Belmont Availability

Has any horse been dissed as much as Mine That Bird? Now comes reports that not only did Calvin Borel decide to run another horse in the Preakness, but his jockey in the Preakness 'has other plans' and won't ride him in the Belmont. So, I'm officially volunteering to ride Mine that Bird in the Belmont. I won't take a salary or anything, I just want 15% of the winnings and 5% of the stud fees earned over the next 10 years. Not too much to ask, I don't think. At least I'm willing to ride him, no one else seems to be. Do these jockey's know that Mine that Bird won the Derby and came in second in the Preakness? Had it not been for that "lady of the night" Rachel Alexandra ruining everything, we'd have ourselves a Triple Crown contender. In fact, it should be illegal to run a horse in the Preakness that didn't even run in the Derby. Where are Pat Day and Gary Stevens at? This type of nonsense would never happen if they were still riding. I know my last post was about how baseball lacked integrity and I'm pretty sure that horse racing is by no means even close to being better than baseball in that area, but come on. In this economy you gotta at least try to get fans interested.
Anyway, regardless, just wanted to put it out there, I'm available to ride Mine That Bird in the Belmont since no one else apparantly is willing to ride a Derby winner in a Triple Crown race that he's likely to win.

Steroids / Baseball Integrity

With Manny Ramirez recently getting a 50 game suspension for using a banned substance, the talk has been stirred up again about how substance abuse and steroids ruins the integrity of the game. The obvious answer is yes, of course it does. However, this is baseball we are talking about. There is no other major league sport that I can think of that has less integrity that baseball over the course of it's history. This is a sport where not just one player has been banned for life for betting on the game and point shaving, but an entire team was convicted of it (the 1919 "Black" sox). We are currently in the steroid era, but we've certainly had other dubious era's in baseball. Corked bats, spit balls. Teams have staff who are specifically assigned to spy on the opposing manager and try to steal their signs and crack them.
Cheating has always been a part of baseball and it always will be. With all this cheating ingrained into the history of the game, I just can't see how steroids violates the integrity of the game. It merely confirms that it is still a game without integrity. So next time another player gets a case of the mascot head and gets sat down for steroids and has their "legacy" ruined, don't think of it as destroying the integrity of the game, think of it as them continuing the cheating subculture that has plagued this game throughout its history.