BALTIMORE – The talent Departing has shown in winning 4 of 5 career starts figures to make him the shortest price among the three newcomers joining the Triple Crown fray Saturday in the Grade  1, $1 million Preakness Stakes at Pimlico. ­Govenor Charlie and Titletown Five are the only other members of the projected field of nine who did not run in the Kentucky Derby.

Beware how you treat the classics. When it comes to outsiders tilting at the cathedrals of culture, true believers can go medieval in a heartbeat.

Film director Baz Luhrmann has learned this through the critical lashings applied to his amped-up version of “The Great Gatsby” (Salon’s Michael O’Hehir placed it with other “baroque, overblown, megalomaniacal spectacles”), and on a very different canvas NBC’s Rob Hyland is treading an invisible line between invention and heresy with his production of the Triple Crown events.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – His image is not difficult to find in his hometown. There are the bigger-than-life statue, the stories-high wall mural, the encased jerseys with his signature, and so much more.

But Paul Hornung is not just a living legend in Louisville. As the 1956 Heisman Trophy winner from Notre Dame and a Pro Football Hall of Famer with the Green Bay Packers, he is a national treasure, a worldly man as familiar with the streets of New York or Baltimore as his birthplace in the hardscrabble Louisville neighborhood of Portland.

BALTIMORE - There were no surprises at entry time at Pimlico on Wednesday, when nine were entered in Saturday's 138th Preakness Stakes, in which Kentucky Derby winner Orb will try to keep his Triple Crown hopes alive.

In addition to Orb, others in the Preakness are Departing, Goldencents, Govenor Charlie, Itsmyluckyday, Mylute, Oxbow, Titletown Five, and Will Take Charge.

The draw for the 1 3/16-mile race is scheduled for 6 p.m., and will be shown live on HRTV.

After spending the last 25 years as a jockey agent, Ron Ebanks said Joel Rosario was going to be his last client.

“Whether it was him or I who walked away, he was going to be my last rider,” Ebanks said.

The split came abruptly last August at Saratoga, about six weeks after Ebanks brought Rosario to the East Coast from Southern California. While Rosario basks in the glow of victories in this year’s Kentucky Derby and Dubai World Cup, Ebanks is no longer in racing, having started two new business ventures.

Joel Rosario had returned to the jockeys’ room at Pimlico after riding one of the undercard races on Preakness Day last May and noticed he had several missed calls from his brother Danny.

Without listening to any of the messages, Joel called his older brother, who picked up the phone, crying.

Danny Rosario stopped crying long enough to tell Joel that their older brother Marino had been killed in a motorcycle accident. Marino, a police officer in the Dominican Republic and one of 12 of Rosario’s siblings, had been struck by a truck on his way to work.

BALTIMORE – Orb’s triumph in the Kentucky Derby was viewed by some as a victory for the old-school training methods of Shug McGaughey.

When it comes to Goldencents, trainer Doug O’Neill – who won last year’s Derby and Preakness with I’ll Have Another – is employing some old-school methods of his own. As in two months old.

The most famous names in American Thoroughbred racing used to be those of dynasties possessing fabulous wealth – the Phipps family, the Vanderbilts, the Whitneys, the Wideners, and others. They owned the best stallions and mares, bred and campaigned the best racehorses. They did not merely participate in the sport; they ran it. The elites were members of the Jockey Club, the organization that ruled racing, often in a high-handed fashion.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - At Churchill Downs, no fewer than five Preakness hopefuls had their final pre-race workouts Monday morning over a fast track.

Mylute, with Rosie Napravnik up, was among the first on the track before 6 a.m., breezing a half-mile in 49.60 seconds. The gray colt was fifth in the Kentucky Derby and therefore will be the rival who finished closest to Orb in the Derby to return to challenge him again in the Preakness. (None of the respective 2-3-4 finishers – Golden Soul, Revolutionary, and Normandy Invasion – are running Saturday.)

[bc_video_id:292118:]ELMONT, N.Y. – Shug McGaughey is not known for hyperbole. But in assessing Orb’s final workout for Saturday’s 138th Preakness Stakes, the Hall of Fame trainer was not afraid to toss around works like “freaky,” “breathtaking,” and “spectacular.”

Nine days after winning the Kentucky Derby and five days before he looks to add the Preakness to his résumé, Orb worked four furlongs in 47.18 seconds Monday morning over the Belmont Park main track.