NO PETT

By Jude T. Feld

No pickets this time?

No People for the Ethical Treatment of Tigers?

The pundits kind of side-stepped the medication issue too.

“It’s just over-the-counter medication he’s taking. The kind you can buy in any pharmacy.”

What a performance. Tiger Woods, noticeably in tremendous pain, hobbling around Torrey Pines after popping some Bayer and using his driver as a cane, goes out to win the U.S. Open.

Too bad Jim McKay is dead.

He could have talked about Tiger’s “agony of victory” and Rocco’s “thrill of defeat.”

Isn’t that why we love sports?

To see the improbable and sometimes impossible actually happen.

People will tell you that Tiger had a choice. That Curt Schilling could have sat on the bench instead of pitching with blood seeping from his ankle. That Kirk Gibson could have declined Tommy Lasorda’s offer to pinch hit and not limp up to the plate on his crumpled knee.

“Horses don’t have a choice,” they say. “They are forced to go out and run with jockeys beating on them to do more.”

I say, “Bullshit.”

Everyone in the Red Sox Nation knew Schilling was hurt. They expected him to pitch. The World Series was on the line. Lasorda knew Gibson couldn’t walk to the men’s room…but if he could get just one more good swing out of him. Tiger may have wanted to withdraw on Friday, and surely on Saturday as his knee continued to swell…if he could just make it through Sunday.

Then, he had to make through Monday.

“I couldn’t quit on these people,” he said after his victory.

Thoroughbred racehorses are bred to run. They expect to run. They deserve to run.

As a rule, they are handled with much more care and compassion than their human counterparts – scratched for fevers and being off their feed much more often than because they are injured.

I can’t remember LaDanian Tomlinson ever sitting out a Chargers game because he left a Snickers in his locker.

When an injury does occur, Thoroughbreds are taken care of better than any top pitching prospect – rested, coddled, and gingerly rehabilitated.

But if they are “racing sound,” as the antiquated term implies, horses can’t quit on their people either. They’ll give you everything they’ve got and that is why I love them so.

If you think Eight Belles would have rather stayed in her stall than run in the Kentucky Derby, you don’t know a thing about racehorses. There is no way Big Brown would have preferred a pasture over Churchill, Pimlico or Belmont and Tiger would have finished the Open if he had to crawl from hole to hole.

That is the defining moment for every athlete – giving more when there is no more to give.

It impresses us. It lifts our spirits. It gives us hope. It is why we love sports.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 10:15 am and is filed under Featured Articles. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.