This is a shared drought, a shared jinx, a shared curse, a shared dry spell. This is a losing streak we can all be miserable about.
Face it: In New York, for every three dog-eyed Jets fan still lamenting 43 years and counting, there are five Giants fans who can probably make it through every day of the month wearing a different item — hat, jersey, sweatpants, jacket — reminding the world of who the defending Super Bowl champion is.
For every Mets fan still licking their wounds from the collapses of 2006, ’07 and ’08, who wonder if the ball trickling through Bill Buckner’s legs was worth the 26 years that have followed, there are Yankees fans who will gladly remind you in an instant, in case you’ve forgotten, that the Yankees have won more championships than any team in any sport in the world.
But the Belmont?
We all share in the Belmont, and most of the hundred thousand of us who will dutifully make the trek to Long Island on Saturday will do so with the same thought in mind: We want to see I’ll Have Another cross the finish line before anyone else. Can be by a nose, by a neck, by a head. It can be by a length or by 10 lengths, it can be Mario Gutierrez channeling Ron Turcotte atop Secretariat 39 years ago, craning his neck just to see how far back the rest of the field is. Or it can be by the length of a whisker.
OK, technically, it will not be a unanimous crowd in Elmont. There will be bettors who will believe that the mile and a half will be too much for I’ll Have Another and who will plunk down a sawbuck or two on Union Rags or Dullahan, on Paynter or Street Life, and maybe a few dreamers will throw a few bucks behind Five Sixteen or Ravelo’s Boy, a couple of 50-1 shots, figuring what the hell?
But that would happen anyway, even if I’ll Have Another hadn¹t eked out the Derby and squeezed out the Preakness, even if he wouldn¹t be giving the sport’s raft of casual fans a reason to fight the weekend traffic and try to be a part of history. So instead of 50,000 people cramming the old barn, there will be twice that, as there is in those years when we have a chance to mark history in Nassau County.
A hundred thousand of us, looking to end a shared drought.
Three was no way we could have known that when Steve Cauthen and Affirmed were done holding off Alydar and the world for the third time in six weeks back in June of 1978 that they would dash off in a flamingo-pink blur into history and take the Triple Crown with them. Maybe we can blame Reggie Jackson. It was Jackson, after all, assessing the huge lead the Red Sox had on the Yankees that same summer, who decided to pay tribute to the Sox, busily building a 14-game lead.
“Not even Affirmed can catch them,” Jackson said.
Only the Yankees did catch them, and pass them, and then win by a nose at Fenway Park that October. The next year, Spectacular Bid came to the Belmont fixing to be crowned as Affirmed and Seattle Slew had the previous two Junes — ready to win a fourth Crown in six years — and finished third, behind Coastal and Golden Act.
And that, Your Honor, was that.
And across these last 32 years, we have attached our rooting interest to a rich tapestry of losers, to wonderful horses who turned out not to be quite so wonderful when asked to test themselves at a mile and a half, to Pleasant Colony and Alysheba and Sunday Silence, to Silver Charm and Real Quiet and Charismatic, to War Emblem and Big Brown.
There have been three horses who have really captured our imaginations in recent years. In 2003, Funny Cide had just about everything going for him: He was a New York horse so he had the masses on his side; he was a gelding so he had sympathy on his side; and he wrote a column for The Post, so he had the angels on his side. Wasn¹t enough. Smarty Jones was the people’s choice the next year. He was caught and passed. And mighty Barbaro, in 2006, would probably have broken every attendance and betting record in sight, but he was hurt in the Preakness.
Now we have another hopeful in I¹ll Have Another, and there will be 100,000 people out there tomorrow, looking to see if he can channel Namath, Messier, or Eli. Thirty-four years is long enough. Everybody says so.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com