DEL MAR, Calif. - John Shirreffs has taken it upon himself to launch a modest YouTube campaign to carry forth the message that horse racing is not a brutal, drug-ridden wasteland populated by cheats, liars, and squabbling factions as he sees it portrayed in the mainstream media and perceived by a worrisome percentage of the general public.

DEL MAR, Calif. - William Edward Morey is the grandson of a racehorse owner and the son of a racehorse trainer. He gets his first name from his father and his middle name from his father's friend, also a racehorse trainer. His destiny thus sealed, he took the only path possible after graduating from high school in Northern California.

He went off and got a bachelor's degree in economics from San Jose State University.

DEL MAR, Calif. - Let us rejoice, therefore, that a horse like Commentator still roams the land, or at least the Eastern time zone, running them ragged in races like Saturday's Whitney Handicap while admitting to the grand old age of 7.

Commentator is a great ad for geldings, which is why, of course, he is no longer associated with such contemporaries as Smarty Jones, Kitten's Joy, Lion Heart, Birdstone, and Rock Hard Ten, all foals of 2001. While they try to replicate themselves in the gene pool, Commentator is still putting fans in mutuel lines and paying off.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - The $500,000 Jim Dandy Stakes here Sunday drew the winners of the Belmont Stakes, Wood Memorial, Dwyer, Derby Trial, and Louisiana Derby, an impressive-sounding lineup. But someone has to win those races every year, and the question of the race remains the same one that has surrounded the 3-year-old colts of 2008 since the Triple Crown began: Other than Big Brown, is there a genuinely top-rate 3-year-old in this year's class?

DEL MAR, Calif. - There is very little doubt that the Bing Crosby Handicap, to be run again on Sunday at Del Mar, has become the gold standard among the West's best sprints. The pun is intended, and deeply regretted.

Reb's Golden Ale, a speed demon who ran like a fugitive from Los Alamitos, began the trend in 1980 for the team of Sandy Hawley and trainer Jerry Fanning. Among the horses they beat that day was defending champ Bad n' Big.

DEL MAR, Calif. - Richard Fields is just your average guy from the Bronx who wears a cowboy hat through the rainy streets of Manhattan, owns a casino and a racetrack, and spends as much time as possible with the horses on his ranch in Wyoming.

He is also the first racetrack owner to go out of his way to endorse a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to horse slaughter commerce in his own backyard, while at the same time putting teeth in a house rule that would ban any trainer caught sending a used-up racehorse to the butchers.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - On the only mildly confident assumption that Saratoga Race Track has not entirely washed away into Lake George by the time you read this, the best card of racing in New York since Belmont Stakes Day will be run here Saturday.

DEL MAR, Calif. - There is something in the air, a whiff, a hint of the beginning of a fundamental shift in the way the Thoroughbred racing industry addresses the issue of caring for its athletes when their usefulness as cogs in the parimutuel machine has ended.

In New York, last February, the New York State Task Force on Retired Race Horses was revived to pursue its legislated mandate. The 12-member task force is led by the state's Racing and Wagering Board chairman, Daniel Hogan, and its agriculture commissioner, Patrick Hooker.

TUCSON, Ariz. - In a week in which the California Horse Racing Board stiffened penalties for steroid use and then welcomed the beauteous Bo Derek as its newest member, it was understandable why a hugely significant development in the East received far less notice than it deserved.

In Maryland, the state racing commission launched American simulcasting on a new course, in an arrangement that horsemen have feared since simulcasting's inception a quarter of a century ago.

DEL MAR, Calif. - Sunday was a hard day for the hopelessly romantic. First, there was Greg Norman at the British Open, fading away at the age of 53 in the face of high winds and the younger Irish legs of Padraig Harrington. Then, in the afternoon, there was yet another loss by 7-year-old Lava Man, who ran as hard as he could and still finished last of six in the $400,000 Eddie Read Handicap at Del Mar.

Geez, can't a fairy tale get an even break?