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“I like to have fun with naming horses, but sometimes I get a bad rap,” said Caesar Kimmel, who was on the phone from Fisher Island, Fla. “Take Bodacious Tatas (winner of the Molly Pitcher at Monmouth Park). That was my son’s (trainer John Kimmel’s) horse. John named her. I didn’t even own her.”

“There are a lot of names out there that are risque and still get past The Jockey Club,” I said. “I remember that horse in New York years ago, Cold as a Witch’s.”

“I named Cold as a Witch’s,” Caesar Kimmel said.

If The Jockey Club had red flags for owners who enjoy titillating names, Caesar Kimmel and Mike Pegram would be high on the watch list. But Rick Bailey, registrar of the Jockey Club, says that his office doesn’t even look at the owners’ names when proposed names for horses are submitted. “There’s no list of owners to watch carefully,” Bailey said. “All we look at is the horse’s name.”

Pegram, who is part owner of Lookin’ At Lucky, this year’s Preakness winner, and who won the 1998 Kentucky Derby and Preakness with Real Quiet as well as three Breeders’ Cup races, usually has a good reason for naming most of his horses, even the bawdy ones. But he won’t divulge the background on the name of the multi-stakes winner Isitingood. “There’s a statute of limitations on that one,” Pegram said. “When it’s up, I’ll tell you how that name came about.” Pegram says that I’ll be able to print the explanation, but his standards may not be as high as Daily Racing Form’s.

According to The Jockey Club, the original submission by Pegram for Silverbulletday, the Hall of Fame filly, was Button My Pants. The Jockey Club told Pegram to try again, but Pegram says, “Not so. Silverbulletday was the first choice for that horse.” Silverbulletday is named after Pegram’s favorite adult beverage--Coors Lite, which is sold in a silvery can.

Real Quiet seems like a bland name for a Pegram horse. “That’s because he was named by somebody else, before I bought him,” Pegram said.

Pegram named Captain Steve, a Dubai World Cup winner, after Steve Thompson, a Louisville police officer who came to Pegram’s aid after Pegram had been arrested for having a .357 magnum in his possession at the Louisville airport.

Thompson, who didn’t know Pegram then, believed his story about how a friend gave Pegram the firearm without telling him. Then the judge believed Thompson, who at Pegram’s behest followed his namesake horse around, including the trip to Dubai. “I’m the two-legged Captain Steve,” Thompson would say.

One of the track announcers called Caesar Kimmel after he named a horse Cunning Stunt.

“If you run that horse at my track,” the announcer said, “I’m going to do nothing but call it number five all the way around.”