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| The San Francisco Giants look like they want to make quick work of the Texas Rangers and have a short 2010 World Series. If baseball season ends early, that will leave plenty of time on the news and in the papers for coverage of next week's Breeders Cup, and our favorite horse Zenyatta, who graced a billboard for the Dodgers in Los Angeles. She's based nearby at Hollywood Park. |
The question was: What do Zenyatta and Mister Ed have in common?
As it turns out, they both seem to have registered themselves as baseball fans. LA Dodger fans, to be exact. And as the sun sets on the 2010 MLB season, we can have some fun with the baseball exploits of Zenyatta and Ed in the midst of the World Series.
Champion Thoroughbred Zenyatta is the queen of good news, whether she's at home at Hollywood Park or mixing with the media at Churchill Downs, site of next weekend's Breeders Cup. The stories about her personality and her antics make even the most hardened racetrackers chuckle. And next week she'll be the queen of this blog, as she prepares for the Breeders Cup Classic and what we all hope will be a repeat win and her 20th consecutive lifetime victory--with never a defeat!
Zenyatta is the best thing to happen to racing since...well, for a very long time, let's just leave it at that. But how does racing take advantage of this great horse so that some of the affection for her might possibly benefit the rest of the sport? Can Zenyatta bring people back to the track? Can some of those warm and fuzzy feelings for Zenyatta transfer to other horses running in this year's Breeders Cup? Couldn't Quality Road or Blind Luck or Blame or Goldikova or even Workforce be portrayed as likable as Zenyatta?
If there was any doubt that that warm and fuzzy Zenyatta feeling was going mainstream, look back in time no further than back in July when National Public Radio aired a special interview about the supermare. And whom did they choose to interview? None other than Laura Hillenbrand, the author of the bestselling book Seabiscuit,another champion racehorse who captured imaginations and won hearts.
Take a few minutes to listen to Laura's interview and then post a link to this blog story on your Facebook page and forward this to your friends, especially if they aren't already racing fans. I bet Zenyatta will convert them.
Zenyatta is not the first horse to promote the Dodgers. Back in 1963, Mister Ed showed Leo Durocher, Sandy Koufax, Moose Skowron, Willie Davis and Johnny Roseboro how it's done. Imagine how Zenyatta could round those bases! But knowing her running style, she'd definitely win it for the team on the last out of the ninth inning...by hitting a home run!
© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing; Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. Please, no use without permission. You only need to ask. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page). To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found. Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.
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