"Never look a gift horse in the mouth."Is it sad that this article made me tear up?
'Bye, Barbaro.
If only we'd had more time with you. You were beautiful. You were brave.
You were the best.
You enriched us all, in the nanosecond that you flashed across our universe.
You caught the magic. You shared that spell with us. Like all
superior athletes, you lifted us above the world of the mundane into
the universe of the gifted.
We soared with you.
You gave us something else to think about besides our ordinary
lives. You caught our attention, Barbaro. For all that's wrong with
sports, you stood and said with the authority that comes to a Kentucky
Derby winner, "enough" to what we do to win at any cost. Never did
gossip or suspicion mar the course of your racing career. No steroids.
No spit balls. No stealing signs.
That may have been why you were sent here: to remind us all that
winning without taint of suspicion is what sports should be about. Oh,
we'll forget your lesson soon enough. We're flawed in ways that you
were not. But your moral light at least flickered briefly in our
consciousness. Thanks for that, Barbaro.
And thanks, too, for allowing us at least to dream that we might see a Triple Crown won on your watch.
Maybe we all went off the deep end on this one, Barbaro. But you
have to understand, we all long for something that we thought we
glimpsed in you. You demonstrated that indefinable quality when winning
the Kentucky Derby. Words couldn't fully describe this moment. But our
hearts got the message. We left Churchill Downs hopeful.
That's why Preakness day dawned bigger for us than it may have
seemed even to you, Barbaro. For you, perhaps, another horse race. For
us, the next stop on the way to a Triple Crown. The day began on this
note.
We wanted in Maryland what we got from you in Kentucky. You gave us
this and much, much, more. But it took us days, weeks, months to fully
realize your gift. When you left Pimlico in the ambulance, we saw only
a stricken horse.
As we have said, Barbaro, this started out about where you were
taking us. We had hoped to go to the Triple Crown. You took us
someplace else.
Unfortunately, you could not know this.
Our immediate response you saw, of course, in the flowers, the cute
gifts, the phone calls and the emails sent to you over eight months in
the hospital.
What you did not realize, Barbaro, was that we may have received
much more back from you than we would have if you'd won the Triple
Crown.
Watching a great beast like yourself so compromised, then fighting
so hard to stay alive so long, forced us to face something inside
ourselves. You were hopeful; we were, too. You trusted; we did, too.
Could this have turned out differently? We would be unwise to spoil
our own time on this earth trying to answer this question. Rather, we
must treasure those moments of beauty you brought into our lives. The
same for those lessons you taught us which were, we really must
believe, your purpose in being here.
We know you accepted your time gratefully, Barbaro. You also faced
the end with grace. We should all be so fortunate to learn from your
time here among us.
'Bye, Barbaro. God-speed. And farewell, with thanks from all of us. | 