DEL MAR, Calif. - The sign at the entrance of the Del Mar grandstand plaza challenged customers to "Enter San Diego's Most Haunting Experience - The Scream Zone."

Too late.

WASHINGTON - When the nation's four best horses face each other in the Breeders' Cup Classic, most bettors will have trouble mustering a strong conviction about the outcome. The horses have been beating each other, and their races have usually been decided in tight photo finishes.

NEW YORK - For the other 364 days a year, we can complain that our best horses spend so much of their brief careers ducking one another before being whisked off to the breeding shed. Saturday is the exception, a day to celebrate their finally assembling in one place for the eight Breeders' Cup races that will define the 2007 racing season and crown a Horse of the Year.

CARLSBAD, Calif. - How tough is it to get to the Breeders' Cup? Don't ask. I made it all the way to New Jersey last Monday only to find out that back home in Southern California there were guys wearing uniforms and carrying bullhorns strongly suggesting that residents of my neighborhood pack up and split, lest the flames of the unpredictable Witch Fire consume them without remorse.

That's right, in California we've got so many fires, we give them names.

NEW YORK - Friday's three new Breeders' Cup races are a nice warmup for Saturday's main events and for the horseplayers contemplating those races: Each of Friday's $1 million races is a brainteaser that poses a fundamental handicapping question without a clear answer.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Joe Talamo said that the emergence of Nashoba's Key, from an unraced 4-year-old filly in January to an undefeated Breeders' Cup favorite in October, is "unlike anything I've ever seen."

He said it with a straight face, too, but he knew it sounded funny. What he has seen, when compared to the collection of jockeys he will be riding against this week at Monmouth Park, isn't a whole lot. Then again, spending every waking moment for the past 10 years living and breathing all things Thoroughbred has to count for something.

NEW YORK - There are plenty of things one can reasonably quibble with or criticize about the Breeders' Cup, but there's one nexus of current complaint that even this inveterate complainer just doesn't get: What in the world is wrong with adding a second day of races to the event to recognize other divisions of the sport that don't have corresponding races on Breeders' Cup Day?

ARCADIA, Calif. - Once the heart is broken you tend to button up, at least for a while, until the wound heals and the worst parts of the memory mercifully fade away.

NEW YORK - Most horseplayers probably have a love/hate relationship with their local statebreds. We certainly do in New York. We dread the mind-numbing parades of hopeless maidens and 1-for-lifers who make up a sadly burgeoning share of the daily race cards, but take a little bit of extra pride and pleasure when a runner foaled on Empire State soil makes good on the national stage.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Every 50 years or so, whether racing is ready or not, the Horse of the Year title is decided over a mile and a quarter of New Jersey soil.

The crown will be on the line at Monmouth Park next Saturday, Oct. 27, in the $5 million Breeders' Cup Classic. Lawyer Ron will face Street Sense, Curlin, Hard Spun, Any Given Saturday, and Tiago, and to the winner goes the whole enchilada.