Children draw crayon tributes, grandmothers bake apple fritters, grown men swallow hard, ministers preach of courage and spirit, press releases are updated with conclusions that the patient has a positive attitude.

All of this for a horse.

Take that back. None of this is for the horse. It is for us. I think we want to honor a purity in sports, a nobility of the uncorrupted, a simplicity that no longer exists, if it ever did.

We have found a place to look, a much more uncomplicated and undemanding place than a dugout or a huddle or a penalty box.

Barbaro will never disappoint us. He never can. He will either die a dignified and gallant death or he will recover to remind us that courage and a positive outlook can prevail.

Try finding that reassurance in the NFL or the NBA. Me, I'll take the not knowing, the variety, the rogue, the exception, the surprise.

If the world of sports were full of Barbaros, as is horse racing, full of athletes bred exactly and precisely to do a single thing, how dull it would be. If there was an actual recipe for the next Michael Jordan, as there might be for the next Dr. Fager, it would only matter who had the ingredients.

If rewards were as simple as an extra handful of oats, how soon the novelty of virtue would weary us. A reminder: A horse that will not mind is soon a gelding.

The beauty of sport is not to confirm the design but to violate it. The basketball player who is too short, the pitcher who is too fat, the wide receiver who is too slow, the bicycle racer who should be dead from cancer winning the Tour de France seven times in a row.

These are every bit as inspirational as the animal too dumb to know that it is hurt, that would kill itself, like the great filly Ruffian, because it has no choice.

How horrific were the replays of Barbaro's fractured leg in the Preakness, but no more so than Joe Theismann's. It might be interesting to see who got the most mail.

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