Late Night with Jerry Izenberg

Our Continuing Conversation: Tonight's Episode: Fetlocks, Pasterns, and Urinals

With the time difference between Las Vegas, Nevada and Coimbra, Portugal, it’s not always convenient for Jerry to bust my balls, but he still manages to do so — just not as often as when I lived in Oklahoma, which Jerry calls “Shortgrass country.” We spoke last night, though. He had spent the last few weeks writing about the Triple Crown, which he still does at the age of 143 (or whatever he is), and does so like no one else in the business:

On the morning after Sovereignty won the Kentucky Derby, his trainer, Bill Mott checked him out. It had been a grueling race over a muddy track. The trainer discovered a small scrape about six inches along his right front pastern probably when he clipped heels with another mount coming out of the gate. He said it was nothing serious, but that anything to do with a horse's legs is always serious. He called Pimlico Race Course and scratched the horse out of the upcoming Preakness. He said they were doing it for the horse’s futture. And that set off a strange gnashing of teeth among self-appointed experts, some of whom don’t know a fetlock from a pastern but clearly understand the value of their extra face time on a television screen if they shout loud enough and long enough.

He told me stories about Secretariat and its owner, Penny Chenery, whom he adored, and its jockey, Ron Turcotte, who prayed to God that he didn’t fall off the horse during that Belmont. Jerry then shared stories of the owners of thoroughbreds, the doping, the stables, the tracks, the lightning strikes, the alarm in the paddock when a horse is loose, the fans in the $2 seats in the grandstands, and the two pairs of goggles jockeys wear for the times when the outer pair gets so covered in mud they need two. “I love writing about the races, the people. I don’t really like the horses, though.”

(If I’m getting any of that wrong, I’m sure Jerry will remind me. And then I’ll remind you.)