When It Comes to This Eclipse Award, No Means No

This post Eclipse Awards meeting of the Abstaining Killjoys will come to order. Thank you. We will dispense with the roll call since all 28 of us are here via Zoom. Would the member whose background is dominated by the poster from the movie "Hot to Trot" please change your camera angle. And whoever has Def Leppard cranked up to 11, can it. That's better. As you know, the 2020 Eclipse Awards program of Jan. 28 was remotely broadcast, ably hosted, and as predictable as a Saratoga Race Course sunrise. I know we all were pleased with the championships of Whitmore and Channel Maker because, as hidebound curmudgeons, we love it when the old guys stick it to the kids. Peter Blum, who gave us Authentic, should have received the award for outstanding breeder for the same reason the previous three winners were honored for the exploits of a single, superior individual. And Brad Cox was a bit of a surprise in the trainer category over Steve Asmussen and Bob Baffert, but four Breeders' Cup wins can go a long way toward a trophy, unless you are Richard Mandella. I will freely admit that I would like to have pulled back my ballot for a couple of second thoughts. Voting for Authentic for Horse of the Year required no courage, but if I had known that Swiss Skydiver would not be among the three finalists I certainly would have put her on top. As it turned out, Swiss Skydiver received six votes for Horse of the Year, one less than finalist Monomoy Girl, while finalist Improbable received none. If that makes sense, please now explain GameStop. It's no fun to hold your nose and vote, but that is what I did for Gamine as outstanding female sprinter. Two of her six post-race samples came back positive in 2020, hardly a percentage to brag about. However, the samples after her two grade 1 victories came back clean, which amounts to a pretty weak justification, especially since one of those races was called the Test. Who said irony was dead? Those members who are still subjecting themselves to social media will have noticed that our annual abstentions in the category of apprentice jockey have raised the usual firestorm of criticism. I may be exaggerating that slightly, but "firestorm" makes us feel more important. We have been called upon to defend giving the category a pass, as if we've just failed to vote for the flag, motherhood, and your favorite flavor of pie. I can't speak for the other 27 members, but it has been so long since I voted in the apprentice column that I can't recall when I went cold turkey. I'm fairly certain I voted once for Corey Nakatani, or Corey Black, or some other teenager named Corey. At some point, however, it occurred to me that singling out beginners with an award of the same size and heft as those given to grownups for doing the same work was meddling with the primal forces of nature (thank you, Paddy Chayefsky). Since nothing was going to change, abstention from participation seemed the honorable choice. The people who run the Academy Awards used to give out something they called the Juvenile Oscar to actors under 18. The statue was half the size of the traditional statuette, and the recipients included Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, and Hayley Mills. The practice ended in 1960. Two years later, Patty Duke, 16, won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in competition with nominees Thelma Ritter, Angela Lansbury, Shirley Knight, and Mary Badham, who was all of 9 when she played Scout in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Duke and Badham were "apprentice" actors judged by the same standards as their grownup peers and honored accordingly. It has been argued that young riders benefit from the incentive of winning the Eclipse. I would answer that being a successful apprentice jockey should be its own reward. They are paid to learn their trade on the job and in some cases, end up earning money in amounts they never dreamed possible. Sportswriters descend on their backstories like hounds to the hunt. Their scrapbooks fill to overflowing. And then, when they lose that magical five-pound weight break... poof. The coach turns into a pumpkin. Most of the time, anyway. We Killjoys have rejoiced in the exceptions to the rule. Winners like Steve Cauthen, Chris McCarron, Richard Migliore, Kent Desormeaux, Emma-Jayne Wilson, and Julien Leparoux would have been who they became even without their Eclipse Awards as apprentices. Too often, though, the choices amount to a roll of the dice, and the award ends up a high point in a career that still had many miles to go. As is stated in our bylaws, we do not abstain because we are too lazy to parse the differences in apprentice records, be they accomplished in Maryland, New York, or Mahoning Valley. We abstain because the category represents a dilution of the honor of being called a champion jockey, when every rider out there is faced with the same challenges and dangers each time they throw a leg over a Thoroughbred. You are either a jockey, or you're not. So, on behalf of us 28 abstainers, here's wishing 2020 Eclipse winning apprentice Alexander Crispin a successful, healthy career. You didn't need our votes. We also send out enduring congratulations to Phil Teator, Luis Ocasio, Omar Moreno, and all the other young riders who had their brief turn in the national spotlight alongside their full-fledged colleagues. They can be proud of that very special horse statue sitting on the mantel, which is one more than ever was presented to Jorge Velasquez, Eddie Delahoussaye, Alex Solis, or Joel Rosario. Meeting adjourned.