A guy can get in trouble for forgetting an anniversary, only around this house that can mean the marking of a date entirely different from a specific Saturday in the foggy past when vows were exchanged and somebody kissed the bride.

ELMONT, N.Y. – Another Triple Crown season will come to an end Saturday with the running of the 1 1/2-mile Belmont Stakes, and so too will another season of Daily Racing Form’s Triple Crown clocker’s reports.

Many of the Belmont starters have become very familiar figures out on the racetrack each morning, having competed in all three legs of the Triple Crown. Among them is Orb, who pretty much touted his Kentucky Derby victory with the way he trained up to the race both in Florida and following his arrival at Churchill Downs.

ELMONT, N.Y. – Irsaal was an easy winner of the second start of his career last October, but was pummeled in four subsequent starts through this February. His trainer, Kiaran McLaughlin, believed he was a far better prospect than that, so he had Irsaal gelded, and began using Lasix.

ELMONT, N.Y. − The worst thing to ever happen to Freedom Child may turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to Freedom Child.

With one chance to crack the field for the Kentucky Derby, Freedom Child, coming off a maiden victory, ran in the Grade 1 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct. Well, he attempted to run in the Wood Memorial.

ELMONT, N.Y. – The story of this year’s Triple Crown opened with a rousing Kentucky Derby victory by Orb, giving rise to hope that he’d be shooting for a Triple Crown by now, but the second act had quite the plot twist, with Oxbow winning the Preakness and Orb struggling home fourth.

The final act awaits on Saturday, not far from the neon lights of Broadway, in the 145th Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park. Shug McGaughey, the trainer of Orb, is hoping for a show-stopping finish in the 1 1/2-mile race.

ELMONT, N.Y. - He was the original jet-setter in racing. “Wayne off the plane” was the cry when trainer D. Wayne Lukas would fly his horses across the country to knock off Grade 1 stakes. Now, he’s grounded, Lukas preferring to hit the road with, as he puts it, “my friends George and Willie.”

ELMONT, N.Y. - As a native New Yorker who has been attending races at Aqueduct and Belmont for nearly three decades, owner Mike Repole has made no bones about his desire to win the Belmont Stakes.

“This is the race I want to win, this is the race for 30 years I dreamt of winning,” Repole said.

I was very confident the Kentucky Derby pace would be moderate and closers would be at a disadvantage. I was equally confident that there were several legitimate speed horses in the Preakness, none of them named Oxbow.

If you are going to be wrong, you may as well be spectacularly wrong. If you are not cashing, you are not cashing.

In my defense, did anybody see Palace Malice in front and flying? Did anybody see Oxbow with an easy lead?

There is a legitimate fear that without a Triple Crown on the line the 145th Belmont Stakes will be run Saturday at Belmont Park in a spirit of such widespread ennui that the names of Derby winner Orb and Preakness winner Oxbow by now hardly ring a bell. Oh well.

The Belmont perennially wins the prize as America’s most schizophrenic horse race. It can mean so much, or so little, depending entirely upon the turn of events in two other cities – one of which does not even have a major-league sports franchise – in the month leading up to New York’s most famous horse race.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Dallas Stewart is back at the table. After a few years between proverbial drinks, Stewart is in the Triple Crown discussion again, this time with a colt he believes is coming into the Belmont Stakes in terrific shape.

Golden Soul, runner-up in the May 4 Kentucky Derby, was purposely held out of the Preakness by Stewart to await the 145th Belmont on Saturday.