There are more than a few reminders sprinkled around the Southern California racing landscape that Charlie Whittingham once was king. Hollywood Park, for as long as it lasts, has an accommodating eatery called Whittingham’s Pub and Deli overlooking the track. Del Mar offers the Whittingham Sports Pub, chock full of Charlie memorabilia.

If the measure of a person’s worth can be taken in those moments of darkest fortune, then put a star by Joy Scott’s name. Last weekend, her room in the rehab wing of Pasadena’s Huntington Memorial Hospital was filled to near overflowing with flowers, plants, balloons, cards, and a virtual menagerie of stuffed animals, tokens of tribute from the worried members of the racetrack community.

The truly dedicated horseplayer will be up early Saturday morning to have a stab at the John Smith’s Grand National at England’s storied Aintree Racecourse near Liverpool, home of the Beatles, who played a number of gigs just down the road at the Aintree Institute, behind what used to be the Black Bull Club, in 1961 and ’62.

The decision to bet with or against Verrazano as the 4-5 favorite in the Wood Memorial Saturday is less of a pure handicapping choice than an internal struggle between two voices that emerge in many a horseplayer’s mind this time of year.

LAS VEGAS – Rick Pitino has the horses, but will his Louisville men’s basketball team end up in the winner’s circle?

The Cardinals are the odds-on 10-14 favorite (–140 expressed as a money line after being as high as –150, or odds of 2-3) to cut down the nets Monday night in the Georgia Dome, according to the LVH SuperBook. Michigan is the second choice at 7-2, with Syracuse at 9-2 and Wichita State at 12-1. Odds vary by sports book, of course, but Louisville has been considered the front-runner the past month and has so far backed up its overall No. 1 seed.

Ted Aroney likes to think he’s learned the secret of winning the Kentucky Derby, although it’s not much of a secret. More like fortune-cookie wisdom, so obvious that to deny its truth is nothing more than a waste of time.

Anybody can win.

His first lesson came in 1971, when Canonero II, the colt from Venezuela, came from out of the clouds – and the mutuel field – to win the 97th Kentucky Derby by 3 3/4 lengths despite a nightmarish experience in quarantine and a jockey-trainer combination that needed a guide and translator just to find Louisville, Ky.

Horseplayers from coast to coast circled Friday, April 5, on their calendars many months ago. That is the final day of the racing season at Gulfstream Park and the day that the track must pay out the money that has accumulated in its pick-six jackpot. It will be a day of gambling frenzy.

During a span of five weeks this winter, 10 horses were euthanized after breaking down at Laurel Park, and the racing community was understandably alarmed. Why were these catastrophic events happening at a track with a previously good safety record?

People in the sport had reason to worry about its public image, too. In recent years, similar epidemics of breakdowns have occurred at Aqueduct, Del Mar, and Arlington Park, and the tracks all received blistering coverage by the media. Aqueduct’s problems wound up on page one of the New York Times.

In a recent development, the Kentucky Derby Museum has invited 2008 Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird to be its iconic Thoroughbred in residence this year as tourists descend upon Churchill Downs.

Since his retirement in 2010, which was marked by a farewell ceremony at Churchill, Mine That Bird has had the run of his grassy paddock in New Mexico at the Double Eagle Ranch of co-owner Mark Allen, enjoying life as a local celebrity. His return to Churchill Downs will allow fans who did not play him in the Derby at 50-1 to take a good look at him and wonder once again, “Huh?”

Ten years ago Barclay Tagg was accused of showing dangerous signs of Kentucky Derby fever for having the gall to publicly suggest that a New York-bred gelding who had never won in open company and had lost every start as a 3-year-old still had the right stuff to be a contender on the first Saturday in May.

That Barclay, what a kidder.