Column: For the love of horses and sportsball

If you know me at all, you know I'm not the savviest when it comes to sports. Not a natural-born athlete by even the stretchiest of imaginations, I was never on a team or in a sport that would teach me the rules about such things, or even stir up fond memories of the time I was all-state, or whatever athletes say when they pine for their better days. I admit I don't really understand sportsball. Sometimes I blame my hometown. Being a sports fan in Cleveland is basically like getting your hopes up and talking smack for a few months every year and then plunging into disappointment and humiliation for a time before rapidly cycling back to "you all just wait 'til you see us next year!," and honestly I found a lot of that in other avenues, like "weight-loss efforts" and "home improvement goals." There are two sports I do love, however: horse racing and baseball. But this comes with a disclaimer. I have only the most rudimentary idea of how baseball works and just a wee bit more about the ponies. In both instances, my love is based as much on the sport's accessories as it is the thrill of the win. Baseball, for instance, instantly conjures up fun times at The Jake, when it was still called The Jake. I still tell my kids with some feigned pride of the time I was kicked out of the dugout, which isn't technically true, just so they think their mom is cool. I was ejected from the press pit next to the players' dugout for trying to sneak in holding a long-lensed camera but an eagle-eyed security guard spotted my lack of the proper credential and out I went. My husband is a different story. A former baseball player in his youth, he knows all the rules and can tell me as each batter comes to the plate what they'll hit, where it will go and what will happen with a marvelous accuracy that amazes me. We also enjoy our Indians games the way the good Lord intended, by listening to them on the radio. A good season will start while we're usually still bundling up here in northern Ohio, excited to hear the golden voice of Tom Hamilton returning. We'll roll into summer, sipping lemonade or something harder on the screen porch, watching fireflies rise sleepily from our backyard. A really good season means we'll finish sitting aside a fire pit in the fall sipping hot cider, which means we've made it into the playoffs and hopefully all the way to the Big Show. And then there's the springtime gem of the Kentucky Derby. Most of the year I can feel the pull of my Kentucky roots in the distance, in ways that can be deafened by a good long sit on the shores of Lake Erie. But on the first Saturday in May, something in my soul wakes up in the bluegrass, longing to don a ridiculously large hat and sip from a silver cup. Saturday was the kickoff to the six-week season of the Triple Crown, a very old sporting tradition here in America and a throwback to a long-gone way of life, I believe. You can't separate the sport from the jaw-dropping money its fans drop on it in betting, and I am not one of them. I've bet before, and I've won, but if I'm not attending in person I've no interest in the moneymaking side of it. To me, it's the thrill of hearing those hooves pound down the dirt and the sight of those magnificent beasts flying by that chokes me up. I've been known to break into tears when "my horse" crosses the finish line by a nose, or — glory of glories! — wins the Triple Crown. Until the last few years, that hadn't happened since I was in third grade. Imagine, sportsballers, if no one won the World Series for more than 30 years. Even the most rabid of fans would probably start to lose interest. The 1970s saw a boon of three Triple Crown winners, including the immortal Secretariat. Despite several contenders, including my beloved Smarty Jones in 2004, making it through two legs of the crown just to see it all fade away at the Belmont, the "hardest achievement in sports" went unclaimed until 2015. That was the year American Pharoah clinched it after such a long drought. Three years later, Justify did the same thing. Racing fans rejoiced, hoping for a resurgence of interest to keep the sport afloat and appealing to Americans who'd long since looked at it as the sport of rich white people. There is something to that. It bills itself as "the sport of kings" and many of these contenders are sold for millions of dollars, based on nothing more than a pedigree that suggests they might be good runners. But I have a soft spot for the lowly ones, the ones that sell for the price of a used car that turn into champions. Those are the stories that will always get me in the feels, and this year didn't disappoint. I've written before about Seattle Slew, who was bought for $17,500, two years before he won the Triple Crown in 1977. And then there is the tale of Green Monkey, who sold as a 2-year-old in 2006 for $16 million — and never won a race. Even American Pharoah didn't draw one bid at a yearling sale; his owner essentially had to buy him back at the minimum price. His keepers said he was a "plain brown wrapper" of a horse. I might not know much about sports, but the ones I follow have taught me a lot about lessons far bigger than winning races or home runs. I've learned that listening brings a whole new understanding of a situation I can skip right over if I'm just observing. And I've learned not to be quick to overlook the "plain brown wrappers" in life, those people or opportunities that don't seem all that exciting on the outside. There could be gold inside. Contact Rini Jeffers @rinijeffersauthorworks, Facebook.com/RiniJeffers, @RiniJeffers on Twitter or rinijeffers@gmail.com.