NEW YORK – The 2010 World Thoroughbred Rankings, the most inclusive of the world’s racehorse ratings, will be announced on Jan. 11, with the Eclipse Award winners following six days later.

In the meantime, here is a selection of the three best horses in each age and distance category regardless of surface that eschews national and regional biases, if such a thing is humanly possible.

LAS VEGAS – A lot of people are saying this was the strangest NFL season in memory. I’m not so sure about that as every season has Cinderella stories (at least until midnight strikes) and underachieving teams.

The news that Bert Blyleven finally has been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame should be encouraging to long-suffering supporters of trainer Mel Stute. Hang tough. The day will come.

Through 22 seasons of hard work, primarily with the Minnesota Twins, Blyleven won 287 games, 60 of them shutouts, accompanied by 3,701 strikeouts. Those last two figures are among the top 10 all-time, placing Blyleven ahead of Bob Gibson, Jim Palmer, and Steve Carlton on the list of blanks and ahead of Tom Seaver, Greg Maddux, and Don Sutton in terms of K’s.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Like the taste of the crumbs from a tea-soaked madeleine cake that sent Proust’s narrator on an involuntary journey of some million and a half words in “Remembrance of Things Past,” the death of Baron Thierry van Zuylen last Sunday tripped similar chords for this reporter.

Here is one handicapper’s ballot for the 12 equine Eclipse Awards that will be announced and presented in Miami Beach on Jan. 17:

Two-year-old male

1. Uncle Mo, 2. Boys At Toscanova, 3. Comma to the Top.

The unbeaten Champagne and BC Juvenile winner was an easy choice, but things got very contentious among the other finalists. Kantharos and To Honor and Serve deserve at least honorable mention in this division.

Two-year-old filly

1. Awesome Feather, 2. R Heat Lightning, 3. Turbulent Descent

Week 17 is the NFL’s version of Bizarro World (the alternate universe in Superman comics where bad is good and good is bad), especially when it comes to point spreads on this final week of the regular season.

Legend has it that back in 1995 Bobby Frankel took offense at the rendering of his name on the traditional plaque awarded to freshly minted members of the Thoroughbred racing Hall of Fame. The inscription read “Bobby” instead of “Robert,” which was the way Frankel preferred to be honored, and nobody had bothered to ask. The Hall eventually got it right.

Count Tyler Baze among those who won’t shed a tear to see 2010 fade away Friday at midnight.

The racing season effectively ended for Baze behind the starting gate at Del Mar on the afternoon of July 24 when a horse named Night Justice threw his head and cracked the rider in the face. Baze, 28, sustained a broken nose and multiple fractures of the orbital bone around the right eye.

TUCSON, Ariz. – The circle of those who knew Evan Shipman when he was one of the premier racing writers in America is narrowing. He has been dead, after all, for 53 years, his last column appearing in this newspaper on Kentucky Derby Day of 1957.

For those who like their racing wrapped in Biblical parables, consider the main track at Santa Anita the prodigal son, now returned after three years off somewhere having a great time at the family’s expense. He’s back, in all his sandy glory, and all is forgiven. For now.

But what of the good son who never strayed? The son who toiled without particular gratitude in the fields while his brother sent X-rated postcards from Amsterdam? When the prodigal son returned, their father slew the fatted calf and threw a party. The good son was rightfully ticked.