I was absolutely giddy when I saw the headline in our local Gannett Profit Center, also known as The Courier-Journal:

“Churchill Downs Inc. to eliminate jobs.”

I thought, “Hot dog!” Or, more to the point, “Hot sausage!” I was certain the story would tell me the track’s board of directors had finally put Bob Evans through the meat grinder. The only question was, patties or links?

Well, silly me. I should have known better. I should have known that in modern corporate America, it’s never the sausage-makers – ah, decision-makers – who take the fall when business goes bad and the stockholders get restless. It’s the little guys who are guilty of nothing except showing up for work every day and doing their best.

The sad news was delivered by a corporate suit named Kevin Flanery, who will never be confused with Brownie Leach, Edgar Allen, Tony Terry and some of Churchill’s distinguished past spokesman.

He said, and I quote, “It’s unfortunate. It’s always difficult when you have to say goodbye to co-workers.”

Obviously, Mr. Flanery knows that he will not be among those getting the pink slips. Unfortunate? Difficult? How about tragic? Especially when Mr. Flanery freely admits, in a moment of candor, that the dismissals are not a reflection of performance, which is an interesting thing to say considering that Churchill didn’t specify what jobs will be eliminated or consolidated.

Speaking eloquent corporatespeak, Mr. Flanery continued:

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In a stunningly short period, we have lost Edgar Allen, Elmer “Tiger” Hall, Luke Kruytbosch, Tony Snow, and Lee Wagner. All were friends except Snow, whom I had come to admire for his work – first on the Fox News Channel, then as President George Bush’s press secretary.

They were kindred spirits in that they were gentlemen, first and foremost, who made the world a better place. They cared. They helped. They used their God-given talents less for personal gain and more to enrich the lives of others.

I met Edgar Allen in the early 1960s, when I was a young sports writer for The Lexington Herald-Leader and he was part of an excellent group of Nashville writers that included Fred Russell, John Bibb, Jimmy Davy, and Dudley “Waxo” Green.

When I became sports editor of The Courier-Journal in 1977, Edgar was sports editor of the now-defunct Nashville Banner. He left that job in 1979 to become publicity director at Churchill Downs, replacing Raymond Johnson, another former Nashville sports editor who was as surly as Edgar was pleasant.

Despite his impressive career credentials, Edgar threw himself into a new job with the enthusiasm of a rookie. He always was eager to please no matter how difficult the request. He worked so hard, and was so kind and decent to everyone, that I hated it when people would treat him rudely or try to take advantage of him.

He was a mentor and father-figure to all the young people who worked for him, most notably Tony Terry, who succeeded him when Edgar retired in the early 1990s and returned to Nashville to live out his days with his wife, Ruth.

Sometimes Edgar and I would meet for lunch at Wagner’s Pharmacy, just across from the track at the corner of Fourth and Central. There we would usually run into the proprietor, Lee Wagner, who inherited the business from his father and built it into a semi-famous racetrack institution and must-visit stop for tourists.

Under Lee, Wagner’s became what surely is the only pharmacy in the nation that sells as many Daily Racing Forms as bottles of aspirin. It also has always had an old-fashioned lunch counter where customers can read the Form over coffee and eggs.

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On the day CBS announced that Billy Packer’s 34-year run as lead network analyst at the NCAA Final Four was over, Packer appeared on his son Mark’s syndicated radio talk show. He seemed upbeat. He said it was a mutual agreement that had been worked out well before the 2008 Final Four in San Antonio. And, intriguingly, he intimated that his future might include some business deals with Bob Knight.

If any two people deserve each other, it’s Knight and Packer – and I say that with high regard for both. They share many of the same values, opinions, and ideals. And right before our eyes, both changed from cutting-edge leaders in their professions to dinosaurs committed to a way of life, and playing hoops, that American will never see again.

As far as anyone knows, Packer and Knight first crossed paths on the night of March 23, 1962, when Knight’s Ohio State Buckeyes defeated Packer’s Wake Forest Demon Deacons, 84-68, in the semifinals of the NCAA tournament in Louisville’s Freedom Hall.

As Wake Forest’s playmaking guard – the term “point guard” hadn’t been invented then – Packer scored 17 points, second to All-American Len Chappell’s 27. Knight came off the Ohio State bench to grab two rebounds, commit two fouls, and miss both his shots from the floor.

During his career at Wake Forest, Packer did something that would have gotten him arrested had it become public at the time in the Deep South: Without the knowledge of his coach, Horace “Bones” McKinney, he and Cleo Hill, a black player at Winston-Salem State Teachers College, began scheduling scrimmages between their teams.

“Dozens of these unauthorized scrimmages occurred in the early-to-mid ‘60s, thanks to Billy Packer, who started them as a player and continued them when he graduated and returned a few years later as a Wake Forest assistant coach,” wrote Gaines in his autobiography. “What Billy and his teammates and Cleo and his teammates did was unofficially integrate Winston-Salem.”

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The one team that has done more than any other to promote basketball internationally has never been invited to compete for a spot in the Olympic Games. That should be corrected. Can somebody out there give me a good reason why the Harlem Globetrotters shouldn’t be invited to try out for the 2012 Games as an at-large team? Take your time. I’ll whistle Sweet Georgia Brown while you’re thinking.

At a time when the U.S. team consists of NBA megastars who are playing for Nike Glory as much as Old Glory, when teams from various parts of the world are built around American college players, and when the NBA relies heavily on players from Europe, Asia, and Africa, why not give a shot to a team that has played more than 20,000 games in 118 countries?

It wouldn’t be the first time the Globetrotters were asked to put aside their comedy act to play serious hoops. In February, 1948, the Globies hung a 61-59 upset on the best team in the fledgling NBA, the Minneapolis Lakers of George Mikan, the 6-foot-10 star who was the game’s dominant player at the time.

As recently as this decade, the Globetrotters have played serious exhibitions against college teams such as Michigan State (a 72-68 loss on Nov. 13, 2000) and Texas-El Paso (an 89-88 loss on Nov. 15, 2003). On March 31, 2006, they lost to the NABC College All-Stars.

Those defeats prove that the Globies are vulnerable, indeed, when they have to play somebody other than the Washington Generals. But they also beg the question of why the organizations that run international basketball wouldn’t recognize their contributions to sport and society by giving them a crack at Olympic gold.

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I’ve hit on a brilliant idea to combine my love of politics and thoroughbred racing. I want to be Ron Geary’s campaign manager. Oh, I know that right now he’s interested only in making a go of it at Ellis Park. But he has demonstrated such leadership since buying the little track in Henderson, Ky., that the sport desperately needs him in a much more powerful job.

He would be such a huge improvement at Churchill Downs that Bob Evans could go back to making sausage or whatever he was doing before his godfather, Richard Duchossosis, foisted him upon the track’s inept board of directors.

Or how about the presidency of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, the organization that exercises about as much leadership as a radish. Under Geary, the NTRA might actually do something meaningful to help the sport build up its fan base and bring the various factions together.

Why, heck, if the U.S. Congress gets involved to the point of forcing the industry to name a national commissioner to take care of business that the industry has been ignoring for years, Geary should get serious consideration.

He’s a radical, I admit. Instead of shutting down Ellis Park, as he had announced he must do, Geary actually sat down, listened to the horsemen, and – get this! – agreed to their demands. You read that correctly. It was right there in The Courier-Journal last Sunday: “Owner yields to horsemen; short-term agreement signed.”

When The Sausage Man read that, he had to barf up his breakfast because, you see, compromise is not in Churchill’s vocabulary, much less the concept of actually giving up your position for the long-term, common good.

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My favorite memory of the Rev. Louis Coleman was sitting with him at the funeral of Pee Wee Reese, the Kentuckian who was captain and shortstop of the immortal Brooklyn Dodgers “Boys of Summer” teams from the late 1940s and early ‘50s.

To his eternal credit, Reese befriended Jackie Robinson when Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947. This was a much bigger deal then than it might seem now, because in those days racial segregation was a way of life throughout the U.S., and not just the Deep South.

The rednecks among Robinson’s teammates didn’t want to play with him and threatened to boycott. But their respect for Reese was even greater than their distaste of Robinson. So when Pee Wee embraced Jackie, everyone else fell into line, sooner or later.

It was ugly on the road, though. Whenever the Dodgers ventured outside the New York City area, Robinson was subjected to taunts and threats by both the fans and opposing players. In one memorable instance in Cincinnati’s Crosley Field, the booing became so vicious that Reese walked over and put his arm around Robinson, a simple act with enormous implications.

After Pee Wee retired and settled down in Louisville, I had the privilege of getting to know him as a friend. So did Louis Coleman, who played baseball as a youngster with Pee Wee’s son, Mark.

Pee Wee died on Aug. 14, 1999, and on the day of his funeral at Southeast Christian Church, I ran into Louis in the parking lot. We were both alone. “Come on,” Louis,” I said. “Let’s sit together. I think Pee Wee and Jackie would like the idea of a black man and a white man sitting together.”

And so we did. We nudged each other whenever we’d see one of Pee Wee’s former teammates. Sandy Koufax was there. So were Duke Snider, Don Newcombe, Carl Erskine, Don Zimmer, and Tommy Lasorda.

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If you believe Seth Hancock quit the Churchill Downs board of directors simply to “move on and embrace new challenges,” as his official statement said, then you don’t know much about Hancock’s values, his family’s history, or the bottom-line mentality of the track’s current administration.

Hancock, president of the world-famous Claiborne Farm and a Churchill director for 35 years, believes that racing is a sport more than a business. He’s the son and grandson of horsemen who had much to do with building and creating Kentucky’s signature industry, thoroughbred racing and breeding.

The suspicion here is that he quit the board as a form of protest against the current administration’s cold and heartless pursuit of the almighty dollar. He probably got tired of going to board meetings and never hearing a word about horses. He probably got sick of empty suits who view Churchill as a profit center more than a hallowed place where humans and horses fulfill their destinies.

This isn’t to say that Seth is some kind of starry-eyed romantic. He’s always been a no-nonsense guy who understands the need to balance the sporting side and the business side of a unique industry. But beginning with the Tom Meeker regime in 1984, that balance has grown steadily out of whack.

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At a time when respect for journalists ranks somewhere between televangelists and politicians, the outpouring of respect and affection for Tim Russert was something of a phenomenon. The main reason so many people liked him was that he was the antithesis of the hatemongers and charlatans – yes, this means you, Limbaugh and Michael Savage – who pollute today’s airwaves.

As moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press” for 17 years, Russert was a dogged seeker of the truth. Whatever his personal views, he hid them well. He never lobbed softballs. He grilled Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, blacks and whites, with equal fervor. He was a terrific interviewer because he was prepared and persistent.

Nobody ever accused Russert of being just another pretty face. His hair often looked as if he just climbed out of bed and he seemed to hunch in his chair, twiddling a pencil, instead of sitting ramrod straight. His guests always outdressed him. Russert seemed to wear the same blue blazer and rep tie every week.

He wasn’t as intellectual as, say, William F. Buckley or George Will, and he lacked the gravitas of David Broder or Bill Safire. But Russert was plenty shrewd, make no mistake. Like a good prosecutor, he would probe and poke, asking the same question in different ways, until he finally got an answer.

But Russert wore well. He was aggressive without being confrontational and direct without being rude. He actually listened to his guests’ answers instead of trying to shout them down. And when things got too tense, he had a marvelous way of breaking it with a big Irish grin or a quip.

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If you read David Hawpe’s column in today’s Courier-Journal, you may have been surprised to learn that he received an inscribed football from the members of the 1961-’62 freshman football team at the University of Kentucky. Why the surprise? Well, suffice it to say that in his long and distinguished editorial career, David has exhibited a far deeper affinity for politics, the arts, and history than for sports.

Knowing David, I know that he doesn’t dislike sports. In fact, going back to the days of Adolph Rupp, he has long been an avid UK basketball fan. It’s just, like me, he’s uncomfortable with how big college sports have become relative to the university as a whole. The tail often wags the dog. A large segment of society seems to believe that universities exist mainly to sponsor sports teams – and that’s disturbing.

So why would Hawpe be getting an award from a bunch of old football players?

Because, as a callow young journalist, he demonstrated courage and wisdom beyond his years by exposing and criticizing the brutality that existed in UK football coach Charlie Bradshaw’s program, but that was largely ignored – even condoned – by the state’s largest newspapers.

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When I was sports editor of The Courier-Journal, I tried to cover the U.S. Open golf tournament every year. I did it mainly because I believe Louisville and southern Indiana is a golf hotbed. Of course, it helped that I loved to play the game, one of Dan Jenkins “dogged victims of inexorable fate.”

So I was at Pebble Beach in 1982 when Tom Watson holed it out of a sand trap on No. 17 to steal the title from Jack Nicklaus. I was there in 1984 when Fuzzy Zoeller and Greg Norman executed their little pas de deux at Winged Foot. And I was there in 1986 when Raymond Floyd overcame the dunes and marshes at Shinnecock to win his first Open at 43.

If the Binghams still owned The Courier-Journal, and if I were still in my former job, I promise you I would have been at Torrey Pines to see Rocco Mediate push Tiger Woods to the limit – and 19 holes past it — to win this year’s Open. It was riveting sports theater, played before records crowds and a huge national TV audience.

Only three months from now, after all, Louisville will become the world capital of golf when it plays host to the Ryder Cup. It will be the biggest international sporting event ever held in Kentucky – bigger than the Derby, the Final Four, the PGA Championship, and the Breeders Cup.

So somebody will have to explain to me why the Courier-Journal didn’t send a soul to cover the Open. I honestly can’t think of a good reason. It couldn’t have been money, even though the sports department’s budget took a big hit by over-covering Big Brown’s ill-fated Triple Crown bid in the Belmont Stakes.

A top-flight newspaper doesn’t pinch pennies or count beans when it comes to covering the events most important to its readers – and even a Big Brown Triple Crown wouldn’t have been as huge as the Ryder Cup will be. At least, that’s the way it was before Gannett bought the C-J in 1986 and began jacking up the annual profit margin at the expense of staff and coverage.

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