Bill Lyon: Classy Rags, antiques, really cheap

I got the horse right here, The name is Paul Revere . . . Can do, can do

- From "Guys and Dolls"

 Your first thought is, Lord but he's big.

Freight train big. And that white blaze that runs down his forehead, it reminds you of a lightning bolt. Could it be an omen? Is this, at long last, The One?

Steady there, Pilgrim. Throttle back. We know you're ready to fall in love all over again, that you've been standing out here in the rain waiting forlornly and forever and a day for the next Big Red.

But it's not fair, and you ought not to be saddling this one with all your Secretariat expectations. Bad enough he's already been anointed as the Next Great Horse from these parts.

We've had a pretty nice run here with the thoroughbreds. The roll call: Smarty Jones. Afleet Alex. And Barbaro.

Comes now Union Rags. In basketball, he'd be a power forward, and no one would be in a hurry to step in front of him and take a charge.

He is a massive 3-year-old bay colt owned by Phyllis Wyeth, wife of renowned Chester County painter Jamie Wyeth, and now is rated the consensus favorite to win the Kentucky Derby. But they have done him no favors, because odds-on in this race has a history of falling on its sweaty muzzle.

And of course in this sport there is always a holding of breath when they come back to the barn for the vet's once-over. They are magnificent machines, and you marvel at their gallant hearts, but it is a potentially hazardous proposition - half a ton is balanced on legs as fragile as matchsticks.

In his last outing at a Derby prep race, last Sunday's Fountain of Youth, Union Rags was on cruise control in an effortless, smashing four-length victory. The jockey, the veteran Julien Leparoux, never touched him. There was no need. He was flying - like Pegasus.

Easy, Pilgrim, easy . . .

Don't look back - some- thing might be gaining on you.
- Satchel Paige

From out in the Arizona desert there comes a mirage. A man who is almost half a century old is pitching to major-league batters, and it all looks so familiar, how the balls flutter and swoop like drunken butterflies, and how the hitters lunge and flail, flummoxed and fooled. And the more you squint, the more that mirage looks real, looks like . . .

. . . Jamie Moyer?

The Forgotten Man.

Long time, no see.

He wears No. 50. And in eight months, he will be wearing his age.

He is a non-roster invitee to the spring training camp of the Colorado Rockies. Jamie Moyer has been pitching in the bigs longer than the Rockies have been in existence. This is his 27th season in the majors, and the numbers suggest you should never underestimate him. He has pitched in 686 games, he has 267 wins, and he has pitched shutouts in four decades, including for the Phillies, for whom he was 56-40.

Now he is back auditioning - and surely someone, sometime, somewhere is going to give him a shot - after having taken a one-year hiatus in which he underwent, successfully, Tommy John surgery.

He feels, he said, like a rookie.

So you root for him.

Because if he didn't try this, then he would be nagged by regret, and wonder the rest of his life what might have been.

This sentiment is wasted on the young. Because you have to have accumulated scars and wrinkles, you have to wear your life on your face to appreciate where he is coming from. He has something to prove to himself, and, triumph or failure, he is entitled to the attempt. We all are.

Once upon a time, when I was young and certain that anything I didn't know wasn't worth knowing, I was advised by a wise man: Always root for the old guy.

When I wasn't looking I became one.

So then: Go get 'em, Jamie. Sic 'em.

If it's not right, then no matter how you slice it, it's wrong.

- Logic 101

A word about bounty, in case you just missed it: It's wrong.

Flat wrong.

Indefensibly wrong.

Paying someone to splatter someone else, to ambush them with intent to cripple, to ambush them with extreme prejudice, is wrong. Well, unless you're in a cage. Or perhaps the odd hockey game.

Laying on a slobber-knocker hit is within the normal boundaries of football. Purposely putting them in a wheelchair is not.

Bounties encourage cheap shots, which are supposed to be considered acts of cowardice, and a reckless disregard of what is the ordinary part of the game.

Bounties are wrong. And those who encourage them and finance them should be made to stand on the receiving end of them.

Wearing a bull's-eye.