I was six months old and about eight stops down the Green Line from Len Bias when he died of a cocaine overdose in his College Park, Md., dorm room.
I couldn't read the obituaries, or understand the newscasts, that mourned the loss of the preternaturally talented basketball player. I couldn't comprehend the tragedy-didn't understand that, fewer than 48 hours after the Boston Celtics selected him second overall in the 1986 NBA draft, my fellow surburban Washingtonian became townsman of a stiller town.
But by the time I was plugging along in public school drug education classes, I'd heard plenty about Len Bias. Nothing seemed to rattle 12-year-olds more than a tale of one of their own achieving the ultimate dream-getting paid handsomely and elevated royally to play a game-and throwing it all away.
I was most recently reminded of Len Bias not this past summer, the 20th anniversary of his death. Rather, I recalled it this past Tuesday night, sitting in my own dorm room watching Larry King Live-and earlier the same day, while reading The New York Times, The Chronicle, cnn.com and Slate.
"Barbaro's death was tragic not because it was measured against the races he might have won or even against the effort to save his life," the editorial board of The New York Times wrote Jan. 30. "It was tragic because of what every horse is. You would have to look a long, long time to find a dishonest or cruel horse. And the odds are that if you did find one, it was made cruel or dishonest by the company it kept with humans."
Ignoring (if you can) the editorial board's puzzling assertion that horses can actually be dishonest-or, more puzzling still, that they can become dishonest by hanging around people-the piece is astoundingly similar to the ink devoted to Bias in 1986. Barbaro, the Times staff writes, was special not only because he displayed immense talent and potential, but also because he possessed a "vivid presence that was so much more visible to us because it happened to belong to a winner."
These florid obituary passages, standard fare when describing the early departure of an athlete, seem offensive and almost satirical when applied to a horse. Can it be that America so lavishly honors an animal-one in essence prodded to its own demise with a leather crop-in the same manner as we did an extremely troubled and yet extraordinarily able young man?
In the days after Bias' death, Washington Post sports writer Tony Kornheiser wrote a stirring color piece about Bias, one that wrenchingly recounted a gathering in Cole Field House. I read it once in school, and I looked it up again this week. Substituting "Barbaro" and racing terms for "Len Bias" and "jamming" in the text, it is barely distinguishable from the media's above-the-fold treatment of the horse.
"The [track] was closed to [spectators], as it usually is after [racing] season; a sign said to keep off. The lights were out, and on so blindingly bright a day as yesterday, the still darkness inside gave [Pimlico] a holy feeling.
Here and there, scattered about the top rows of yellow seats like candles, [people] sat quietly, alone or in groups of two or three. Some stared down at the [track] wide-eyed. Others leaned back, eyes closed. After a while, some would lay their heads in their hands and sigh. When they spoke, their first words were either 'Why?' and 'How?' He had such a strong, powerful body, it made no sense at all.
They wandered through the hallways and sat in the stands. They reminisced about his great [runs], his [Derby win that thrilled the nation]. They stood outside [jockey Edgar Prado's] office, where a [Derby] gym bag with a BWI airport tag and [Barbaro's] name written on a strip of white tape sat unopened in a corner near a table. They walked past the glass trophy case where there were pictures of [Barbaro]-a still of him posed in a thickly braided [garland of flowers], another of him [gunning toward the finish line]-and lingered for minutes, taking a last, long look as if trying to memorize them."
Perhaps I'm wrong in feeling indignant. Perhaps it's fair to eulogize a precocious horse, compared to the great Secretariat, in the same manner that we eulogized a precocious 22-year-old basketball player, compared to the great Michael Jordan. Perhaps an athlete dying young is simply an athlete dying young, irrespective of species.
But is it fair to eulogize a horse with more grandeur and pomp than any of the thousands who've died in combat since 2001? Those men and women get the back pages of the Times, of People. They get 9-point font. They rarely get pictures, and if they do, they're thumbnails.
Barbaro, meanwhile, gets the cover. He gets the centerspread. He gets a veterinary scholarship established in his honor, a race renamed for him. He'll likely get a plush Churchill Downs burial.
Then again, he always was an honest horse.
Sarah Ball is a Trinity junior and former editorial page editor of The Chronicle. Her column runs every Thursday.
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