The discourse in sports these days? It’s a pile of horse-you-know-whatSteve Greenbergon June 21, 2020 at 10:59 pm

I’ve never been much for horse racing, but there was something about Tiz the Law’s weekend victory at the Belmont Stakes that just plain got me.

It wasn’t the way the 3-year-old colt exploded into the final turn and left the competition in the dust down the home stretch, though that was pretty cool.

It wasn’t that he proved — in the first major sporting event in New York since the coronavirus pandemic hit — that sports can get the job done even when the grandstands are a ghost town, though that he did.

It wasn’t the Triple Crown dreams he inspired or the winning tickets he punched or anything like that.

You know what it was? It was what that handsome, reddish-brown Thoroughbred sonofagun said after he won.

Nothing.

Sweet, blissful silence.

Yes, I am noting the fact that a horse didn’t speak or even look into the television cameras and mouth, “Hi, Mom.” But then, these are strange times.

Bless Tiz the Law’s big, strong heart for keeping his yap shut. It was about time something happened in sports that wasn’t laden with empty rhetoric, tedious ignorance or outright lies. Or as I like to call it, horse-you-know-what.

Man, the stuff we’ve had to listen to. Where to start?

There’ve been more weak threats and flimsy ultimatums in baseball than one could swing a stick at. There’ve been official statements from one side of the negotiating table complaining that the other side won’t respond. Statements about being “disgusted.” Statements about the futility of it all.

Perhaps only MLB commissioner Rob Manfred could summon the fecklessness to guarantee one day that a season will happen in 2020 — “100%,” he said — and then cry from the ledge a couple of days later that everything’s a “disaster.”

At last count, too, there had been approximately 8 million declarations of confidence from league commissioners, team executives, college conference commissioners, athletic directors and coaches in all sports that the games will soon go on. They shall! They must! Who would know better than these non-scientists about what’s going to happen on the ol’ global pandemic front?

Everybody’s a COVID-19 expert, no one more so than Mike Gundy, who coaches football at Oklahoma State when he isn’t wishing away infectious diseases. Gundy is a pioneer in the field of pretending to know what the hell he’s talking about when it comes to the coronavirus. Back in early April, he had May 1 circled on his calendar as the day to get football operations in Stillwater up and running again.

“That’s the plan,” he said.

And how did that work out, Doc?

Also in early April, MLB and its players’ union were focusing on a plan — reportedly with the support of federal public-health officials — to start the season as soon as May and play all games in empty stadiums in the Phoenix area. Hey, the empty-stadiums part was right on the money. The Arizona, part, not so much. These days, the state is setting record highs every day for confirmed coronavirus cases.

Which brings us to Florida, another state that’s setting daily record highs. Wouldn’t that be the perfect place for the NBA to shove all its teams and resume its season? As Gundy might say, that’s the plan.

“I have every reason to believe the setup we have in Orlando will be safer for our players and travel parties than staying in their respective cities,” Mavericks owner Mark Cuban told the New York Post this week.

Color me not quite as sold as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who recently said: “What I would tell commissioners of leagues is, if you have a team in an area where they just won’t let them operate, we’ll find a place for you here.”

Oh, boy.

Tiz the Law didn’t talk nonsense. He just put his head down, got to the finish line first and said nary a word about when and how other sports will get going, how great Mitch Trubisky’s comeback will be and whether or not a steroid wing should be built at baseball’s Hall of Fame and named for Sammy Sosa.

Indeed, the talk here in town of late on those two topics — Trubisky and Sosa — has been rather ridiculous, too. Here’s the thing about Trubisky: He’s a bad quarterback. Here’s the thing about Sosa: He’s a total cheater. Doesn’t that about cover it?

It’s bad enough to have to hear the ninnies in the no-mask brigade who, on some sick, twisted level, draw a line from not wearing one to being super tough to willing their favorite team and sports season back into action.

It’s bad enough to have to hear the indignant wails of those who believe so hard in the Land of the Free that they don’t think a player should be allowed to kneel during the national anthem (contradiction, much?) and refuse to accept that such a protest isn’t about the flag.

But add all the rest of the inane blathering — as opposed to, say, a column about a horse not speaking — and it’s getting to be too much.

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