Saddling Losers

Sticking with one jockey through the entire race, horse and people Owner George Steinbrenner saw his Eternal Prince come in twelfth at Churchill Downs. To be precise, Steinbrenner holds the deed on 37 1/2% of the colt, presumably the part that favors him. At one time he owned the whole animal--fetlock, stock and barrel--but auctioned it off for $17,500 to a used-car dealer from Richmond. For $750,000, George bought back in when his designated Derby horse, Image of Greatness, faltered. You might say, he fired the one and rehired the other. Or, put another way, when his image of greatness declined, the eternal prince ponied up some more cash and still finished next to last.

Needless to say, this is an allegory for Steinbrenner's New York Yankees, once the proudest team in baseball, now merely the highest paid. Bringing back that "reformed" fist baller and dehydrated bibber Billy Martin for a fourth term as mismanager, Steinbrenner has taxed the credibility of even the New York Post. Sometimes it seems that this former anonymous shipbuilder from Cleveland owns more than 37 1/2% of the Manhattan tabloids. He hovers over the + city like the Hindenburg. In quivering type befitting a disaster, his name is a standard headline: GEORGE EXPLODES. NO SURVIVORS.

"Yogi will be the manager this year," he promised in the spring. "A bad start will not affect Yogi's status." Looking as he has always looked, like a taxicab with the doors open, Berra took his leave after 16 games with an old Yankee grace. He has never been able to sustain a grudge against baseball. In 1975, when Berra was discharged as manager of the New York Mets, he spoke of needing to distance himself from the game. "I'm going to take my family on a trip," he said, "and get as far away from baseball as I can." When he reappeared the next year at spring training as a Yankee coach, Berra told where he had gone without any sense of irony or humor: "The Hall of Fame." T.C.

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