On the official document announcing the birth of His Royal Highness Prince George Alexander Louis of Cambridge, his mother’s occupation was listed as “Princess of the United Kingdom.” Do you blame so many Scots for wanting to split?

Nevertheless, all the world loves a princeling. Britain’s baby George has been the apple of many eyes for the past year, with rapt attention paid to his first words, his first steps, and eventually, as he matures, to his first drunken foray into an after-hours London nightclub with roadies from a One Direction cover band.

Before you go betting the ranch on California Chrome on Saturday in the Pennsylvania Derby, you might want to consider some cautionary recent history: Since 1980, six of the eight horses in his exact position – returning to the races after winning the Derby and Preakness and losing the Belmont – have lost their comeback race, most of them at short odds. Had you wagered a deuce on each of them over the last 34 years, you’d have ventured $16 and received a gross return of $5, for a loss of 69 percent of your investment.

There are any number of reasons to celebrate Pennsylvania as a place where Thoroughbred history has been made. Bill Hartack, a five-time winner of the Kentucky Derby, was born there. So was Sam Riddle, Man o’ War’s owner, and George Smith, aka Pittsburgh Phil, the famous horseplayer who was known by a nickname that combined the state’s two most notable towns.

Barbaro died there, but not before the veterinary angels at the University of Pennsylvania’s world-renowned New Bolton Center did everything in their power to save his life.

Beginning on Saturday, with the appearance of California Chrome in the $1 million Pennsylvania Derby, every 3-year-old who matters will be running somewhere in something important over the next two weekends. For once, the glamour division has risen from the rubble of the Triple Crown to stand tall in the fall, and thank goodness.

What looked like a muscular bunch of older horses that included Palace Malice, Will Take Charge, Game On Dude and Mucho Macho Man has been winnowed to a rivalry between Moreno and Itsmyluckyday. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Six weeks after I arrived in Philadelphia to cover the new Garden State Park, the track opened on Monday, April 1, 1985. There were 30,000 people there that night. Given the millions of dollars in television ads leading up to the opening, it might have been 50,000 if Villanova had not been playing Georgetown for the NCAA men’s college basketball championship.

After Atreides dominated the Monarchos Stakes at Gulfstream Park on Aug. 30 and the Beyer figure was posted, trainer Marty Wolfson wondered how many horses had gotten triple-digit Beyers in the first three starts of their careers.

So far, we have only been able to find two – Atreides and Lite the Fuse.

Michael Ritvo, the top apprentice rider at Gulfstream Park, has come to the Mid-Atlantic looking to get mounts at the recently opened Laurel Park meet, Delaware Park, Parx, and Penn National.

“The big boys are returning to Gulfstream, and there is so much more opportunity up here to ride six or seven days and nights,” Ritvo said. “I am excited to show everyone what I got. The plan is to ride mostly at Delaware until the meet ends [Oct. 22] to get my name out there and then focus on Laurel.”

In what turned out to be the final post on her Facebook page, Sandy Lovato was moved for no apparent reason to remind her friends of the Lennon-McCartney lyric, “And in the end/the love you take/is equal to the love you make.”

No one realized she had written her own epitaph.

Victor Espinoza was sitting quietly aboard 2-year-old Visitation in the Del Mar gate last Wednesday afternoon, awaiting the start of the Oak Tree Juvenile Turf, when Increase, in the next stall, reared, twisted, and began to flail after launching his rider, Fernando Perez, out the back.

Was the Saratoga meeting, which ended Monday, a successful one? That depends on your definition of a successful Saratoga.

If it’s all about the pari-mutuel activity, the 2.5 percent decline in total handle was a small disappointment, though a 1.7 percent reduction in races run accounts for most of that falloff. If you still believe in turnstiles, an alleged 12 percent jump in attendance would have been huge news if it were more than an accounting trick.