Post Script

We ended this story about a year ago and when I made the last post I honestly thought it was the end.  Not the end of Danny and I owning racehorses, but the end of our story with In Over My Head.  Since the last entry, I can confirm that Danny and I did not have any luck with the yearling we purchased and have already sold him at a sale this fall.  However, we are not horseless…

About the same time we realized our yearling had turned into a not a very good two year old, Danny received a text message with a photo of a horse.  Her name was Crystal Slipper…neither of us knew who she was.  Her owner, Lesa Peters, was the person we sold Mo to last fall and she planned on selling Crystal in a sale later in the summer.  Before committing to the sale she wanted to offer Crystal to us first.  Crystal was not a racehorse, she was a broodmare.  Her racing days ended many years ago.  Why would we have any interest in a horse that doesn’t race?  Well, this mare had one unique characteristic.  Crystal was pregnant and Lesa had a sneaking suspicion that Danny and I would be pretty interested given who the father was.  You can probably guess the answer.  The father is In Over My Head.

After much back and forth we made the somewhat illogical decision to buy her based on the even more illogical idea that her offspring will be just like its daddy.  It was kind of a last second Hail Mary hoping that we could extend the story of In Over My Head.  Time will tell if the decision was a good one, but for now it certainly feels good to know there is a chance was could add a sequel to our little adventure.

Danny and I came up with excellent justification for our decision.  We decided that buying a yearling who wasn’t any good was a sign that we should give up on yearlings for a while and invest our money into something that rekindled the emotional tie to racing (how’s that for spin…).  We were also treated to some interesting ‘coincidences’ involving the old In Over My Head t-shirts we had made back in 2012.  Those coincidences brought us back to the strange occurrences that seemed to happen during the “glory days” of Mo. 

The first occurred the day that Danny got the text from Lesa.  My laws were watching the kids that day and I was really excited to tell them about our plan to buy this mare who was carrying Mo’s baby.  They have always been so interested and supportive in our horse racing endeavors I knew they’d love the story.  When I opened the door and saw my mother in law, I stopped dead in my tracks.  She was wearing her In Over My Head t-shirt.  Said she couldn’t remember the last time she wore it.  “Why today?” I asked.  No reason, she said, just felt like putting it on. 

The second involved our friends the Wheelers.  The Saturday after I send the check down to Lesa to purchase Crystal Slipper, I was at the Madison Zoo with my son Jordan.  We don’t see the Wheelers much anymore since we moved from Madison, but they were down at Balmoral Park the night Mo had his five race win streak snapped by injury back in 2012.  I bumped into Sacia Wheeler first and after some small talk I asked where her husband Brett was.  She said he’s over looking at the polar bears and just then he turned around:

“Hey Swenny!  What are the odds seeing you here today???  What do you think of my shirt???”

He, of course, was wearing his In Over My Head shirt.  I stared at him speechless for a second and he asked what was wrong.  After I explained the background on Crystal Slipper being in foal to Mo and that I just mailed the check to buy her the day before he was the one who was speechless.  “Wow…that’s crazy.  I never wear this shirt anymore…not sure why I put it on today.” 

Do two random t-shirt flashback experiences mean that Crystal Slipper will have a colt this spring that will turn out to be just like In Over My Head?  Of course it does!  That’s what we are going with anyway.  We may end be being proven wrong, but the nice thing about the breeding business is that we have a long runway to dream big dreams.  The colt or filly won’t even be able to race for about two and a half years.   That’s plenty of time for Danny and I to build up a very realistic scenario that this horse will be just like Mo, but not suffer any of the career altering injuries that he had to deal with.  Like Mo, this horse will take us on a journey that we can share with our kids, just like Greg got to share Mo with us. 

Seems feasible, doesn’t it?  Maybe it’s in the cards, maybe its not, but it feels good to be back in the game.  I’ve seen more than one Hail Mary work.  Maybe this one will too.