Triple Crown Winner.....do you have Hope?

   Yesterday at Belmont Park in New York, before a crowd of over 90,000 racing fans Bob Baffert's trained horse "American Pharoah" won the ever elusive triple crown.  In the past 147 years he is the twelfth horse to do it. TWELVFTH!!  As a comparison, in baseball you can win the triple crown for batting or pitching (which is very difficult to achieve.) In the past 136 baseball seasons there has been fifty five winners! The emphasis I am making is how difficult this is to achieve in horse racing. Yet, every trainer, every jockey and every owner dreams of winning this title.
   Hope!  That is the one emotion that leads the pack when you are involved in horse racing.  Of course, hope leads our lives everyday.  Hope that you can make it to work on time, hope that your client is happy with your work that day, hope that you can get a smile out of someone today, hope that  you can pay your bills, hope that you can find love everyday, hope that you win the lottery.  In the movie "Shawshank Redemption" Red (Morgan Freeman) says, " Hope is a dangerous thing, it can drive a man insane!" While Andy (Tim Robbins) says, "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things and no good thing ever dies!"
   Julie and I are a lot like Red and Andy.  She really doesn't believe in hope, she believes in reality.  She doesn't gamble, she never plays the lottery, she arrives 20 minutes early to everything, she spends less than she makes, she was willing to live alone the rest of her life, until I showed up one day. I gamble, I always play the lottery, I am on-time (although I am always hopeful that traffic is light,) I dreamed of being with a woman who would want to kiss me, say nice things to me, smile when we would be intimate.  Hope.  Is it hope that got us together or the fact that I worked at being with someone who I saw as kind, funny and lovable.  Maybe a little bit of both.  I hoped for it and that hope made me work on it.  Does Hope have more than one definition?
   Yesterday was Bob Bafferts day. He started his career in the Quarter Horse industry. He started in Arizona and moved his barn to Los Alamitos where he became very successful.  He could have stayed there and been the best trainer in quarter horses for the rest of his career.  Comparing Quarter Horse racing to Thoroughbred racing is very similar to comparing Arena Football to the NFL.  Bob moved to Santa Anita and began with the thoroughbreds. He had hope.  Yesterday it paid off. He has reached a milestone only twelve men have reached.
  In the picture below is "Sweet Lu."  She was born on the anniversary of the day Julie and I met. Sweet Lu's father won the Pacific Classic at Del Mar.  If you ask me today if I still have hope about my future endeavors, my answer would be, "You can bet on that!"