INGLEWOOD, Calif. Before letting Russell Baze ride off into the northern California sunset, with dead aim on 10,000 winners and beyond, there are a couple of thoughts that linger.
First, shed no tears for Laffit Pincay, displaced by Baze and now merely second on the list of all the thousands of men and women who have pulled on those strange white pants for a living. Laffit will be just fine.
SAN MATEO, Calif. - It was a simple question, and Gary Stevens figured to have the answer. After all, he was once married to a member of the Baze clan, now arrayed before him among the more than 50 people filling in the Bay Meadows winner's circle to celebrate the proudest moment in family history.
"How many of those folks are actually Bazes?" Stevens was asked.
Stevens flashed his baby blues, suppressed a playful grin and, with perfect TV timing, replied, "It'd be easier to tell you how many aren't."
NEW YORK - Two years into the battle to determine who will run New York racing going forward, something almost entirely absent from the process finally happened last week: Believe it or not, someone actually unveiled some actual, specific proposals.
TUCSON, Ariz. - In horse racing, as in all other activities, there are those who talk the talk and those who walk the walk.
There will be plenty of talkers here in Tucson next week, when the University of Arizona Race Track Industry Program presents its annual non-stop talkfest, the Racing Symposium.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - The schizophrenic Hollywood Derby has displayed more personalities than Sybil. They just can't leave the race alone.
When Busher beat the boys in 1945, it was a nine-furlong, early summer main-track event.
When Round Table won it in 1958, it had stretched to 1 1/4 miles, and for some reason it had been renamed the Westerner.
In 1972, when Riva Ridge packed 129 to win just three weeks after taking the Belmont, it was the Hollywood Derby again, and one of the best runnings anyone has ever seen.
NEW YORK - Excelsior - 94.5, Empire - 93, NYRA - 76. Those were the ratings released last week by a state panel charged with soliciting and judging bids for the New York racing franchise beginning in 2008. Rather than marking the end of the franchise process, however, these supposedly decisive numbers are barely first-quarter scores in a game that is really only beginning.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Barclay Tagg is not easily impressed, nor is he moved by public sentiment. After all, this is the same guy who took one look at the hype engulfing the week leading up to the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs and said no thanks, waiting until the day before the race to bring his contender to town. Funny Cide won, then was on a plane for home early the next morning.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - The question lingers, like a nagging cough or an unwelcomed guest. Russell Baze is about to erase Laffit Pincay's name from the record books. What sacrilege. What gall. How dare he?
Clearly, goes the line of thought, Baze and his record should not be held in the same regard as Pincay's remarkable achievement. At the moment it happens, and Baze stands alone at the top, there should be a public address announcement to that effect. Excessive displays of respect and affection should be toned down. And if he wouldn't mind, Baze should apologize.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Rick Mettee, who will be saddling Ashkal Way in Friday's $400,000 Citation Handicap at Hollywood Park, emerged from his cross-country plane flight to LAX earlier this week and immediately began to shed layers of clothing. First to go was his cozy blue jacket with the Godolphin stable logo.
"Eighty degrees," Mettee said with a shake of his head, having just come from a cold and rainy New York. "I know it's been only two years since I left, but now I remember why I enjoyed living out here so much."
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - It is abundantly clear that dreams die hard in New Orleans, where more than 1,500 people lost their lives and half the city was flooded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the antiquated levee system holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain in late August 2005.
For the past year, staggering forward in fits and starts, the traumatized people of New Orleans have been drying up and digging out, dealing with insurance adjusters and faceless bureaucracies while trying hard to imagine what their city could ever become again.