This Bud's For You?

- Major league baseball could have used some Polytrack to spread around the infield and pitcher's mound in Philadelphia on Monday night. Then perhaps they could have waded through the rest of Game 5 and avoided the ongoing festering delay. (But do you think that Jimmy Rollins would like the synth?)

On the other hand, thoroughbred racing could use a commissioner like Bud Selig. OK, well, maybe not Bud Selig himself! I'm certainly not defending the dunderhead move to start the game at all, nor the puzzling decision to keep his imperial rule change a secret, nor seeing the game through as long as it went despite his secret edict.

However, Selig understood that having the World Series potentially decided in a rain shortened game could cast a cloud upon the sport's championship, and was correct in my view in insisting on a complete nine innings (and thereby having only incompetent umpiring mar the proceedings).

Racing's Horse of the Year championship is under a cloud of its own, given Curlin's defeat on a synthetic surface. His disappointing 4th was made particularly so considering his exhilarating move to the front which commenced somewhere around the turn I think, I'm not exactly sure where. (Note to ESPN: A simple track diagram with a dot marking the leader's progress would be a simple yet highly effective tool with which to accompany your unnecessarily eclectic camera angles.) (And you know, the standard pan shot has always served us all pretty well.)

Of course, who knows, maybe it had nothing to do with the Pro-Ride. I've suspected for some time that Curlin has not been at his best since Dubai, and he lost to two of Europe's best, after all. And I don't know that you can really draw any definitive conclusions as to how horses from out east handled the track based on what was a relatively limited sample. Midnight Lute won after all, and horses like Cocoa Beach and Sky Diva ran well behind monsters. Regardless, I can't help but think that this year's Breeders' Cup has served to increase not only the perception, but also the reality of the division between synthetic tracks and natural dirt. As this reader noted: Wait until next year, when no horse based east of the MS ships west to the World Championships. Really, not that many did even this year. (And I love this idea to have a Dirt Championship day at Belmont the week before.)

So what would Bud Selig, as a true commissioner of racing with real powers, do to ensure that racing's championships have true integrity? He might order the site of the 2009 Breeders' Cup moved to a dirt track. But that wouldn't make the Euros or the California horsemen happy, and such an event would likely turn into as much of a regional affair as next year's BC will be.

Or, he could issue a decree that, say within three to five years, the industry has to make a decision one way or another. Dirt? Or synthetic tracks? I've been reading this notion that the two are destined to co-exist. But as long as that's the case, we'll always have this controversy and uncertainty over championships, and the Breeders' Cup will attract mostly horses already familiar with whichever surface is in place at the host track. So I don't believe that dual main track surfaces would serve this sport any better than having a designated hitter in one league has served baseball.

There are a lot of good reasons in my mind for the industry to switch to synthetic surfaces. They can virtually eliminate track bias, particularly the dreadful speed parades we used to see at Keeneland; the days of sloppy tracks would be past; they are, I think we can say, at least not any unsafer than dirt, and the races would make far more sense from a pace standpoint. Randy Moss explained at one point on ESPN that horses in dirt races start out fast, decelerate steadily, and stagger to the finish. That's thoroughbred racing's dirty little secret as far as I'm concerned. I've never thought that's the way races should be run.

But of course, there's the tradition of dirt tracks. I've kind of glazed over that and been critical of those who have little more than that to offer in defense. However, I'm not at all insensitive to tradition either. To me, interleague play is a nightmare from which I still hope to one day awake. This year's Breeders' Cup, with the sight of Curlin fading against horses he should have been able to crush (with my $20 cold double with Conduit going down the drain), has served to highlight the differences between the two surfaces; differences which, in the fervent hope of a better sport, I heretofore cast in a minimal light. There seems less doubt to me now that the divide is rather profound.

So racing has some tough decisions ahead, and I'm glad I don't have to make them. That's what people like Bud Selig are for. (Well, maybe not Bud Selig himself....)