While Dortmund was propelling himself into the role of likely favorite for the 141st running of the Kentucky Derby with his 4 1/4-length victory last Saturday in the Santa Anita Derby, the second-best 3-year-old colt in California was back at the barn, blissfully ignorant of the action on the track and getting itchy for dinner. It was, after all, bearing down on 4 o’clock.

Let’s make this an annual event. I am sitting on press row at the Final Four. The Santa Anita Derby appears on my laptop during the first half of the first game of semifinals. The horse I have been touting for a month is favored. And nearly runs off my screen.

Last year, it was California Chrome; this year, Dortmund.

Tom Proctor, the latest trainer to hang his shingle at the idyllic Fair Hill Training Center in Maryland, had one serious concern.

“I was afraid it might be too quiet,” Proctor said.

This was a funny line since anyone who spends time in Proctor’s orbit knows that long, brooding silences are not exactly his game. He laughs large, tells you what he thinks, and when he wants to relax at home, he plugs in his guitar and gets his Stevie Ray Vaughan on.

At the time, it wasn’t the saddest thing in the world. A horse on the road. An empty stall.

“You going to put one in there while he’s gone?” a visitor asked, not even halfway serious.

“No way,” Art Sherman replied. “I’m superstitious, and that would be nothing but bad luck.”

It’s time to start paying attention to New York racing again. Spring has sprung, the main track at Aqueduct is open, and Saturday’s $1 million Wood Memorial will be the first Grade 1 race in New York since Private Zone won the Cigar Mile more than four months ago. Before you know it, the racing will move to Belmont and then Saratoga.

It’s all cause for hope and happiness, but if you want to stay hopeful and happy, you might not want to pay too much attention to what has been going on with the entity presenting the racing, the New York Racing Association.

It has been a bedrock contention of this corner for years that efforts to shoehorn Thoroughbred horse racing into the sporting culture as a major player have been doomed by the game’s intrinsic personality flaws.

No amount of chatter about a “league office” or an all-powerful “commissioner” or trainers called “coach” could ever cause racing to be confused with the NFL or the NBA, nor would a “national marketing strategy” inspire an onrush of new customers to a world so rife with the archaic and arcane.

Rich Tedesco bent down and grabbed a handful of the soft, reddish brown soil piled in a strip along the outside of Del Mar’s seven-furlong chute.

“It does look a little like the track we put in at Hollywood Park back then,” Tedesco said. “I can only hope it acts the same way.”

It’s off to bed early Friday night. Big day of racing on Saturday, and if DRF’s Marcus Hersh and TVG’s Simon Bray can stir themselves from their five-star digs nearly every morning this week to watch California Chrome come out in the dark, then the least I can do is open for business at 5:40 a.m. Pacific Not-Quite-Daylight Time for the $1 million Godolphin Mile from Meydan. Anyone for kippers and croissants?

There are certain Thoroughbreds who live for the spotlight of center stage, whether they know it or not. They exist outside their skin, generous to a fault, eager to please.

Seattle Slew was such an animal. So were Alysheba and Easy Goer, Cigar and Point Given, both Zenyatta and Rachel Alexandra. Affirmed and Spectacular Bid, great as they were, leaned more toward the aloof as consummate pros, while champions like Sunday Silence and Tiznow spent more time dealing with internal demons than playing to the crowd.

We are five weeks away from the Kentucky Derby, and I admit to feeling confused. You ever look at a race over and over until all the horses start to look the same? You eventually get a headache and finally just move on to the next race. I am just about there with this Derby.