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Charlton Baker leaned down and slid a safety pin into a front bandage on a bay gelding set to train Thursday morning. Baker doesn’t look like a trainer. In a U.S. Army, Fort Knox T-shirt and doing the work of a groom, Finger Lakes’ favorite son has 10 horses stabled at Saratoga. Baker’s barn sits on a diagonal, tucked into the trees,  in the neighborhood of Dallas Stewart, Billy Badgett and Mike Trombetta. You wouldn’t know whose barn it is by looking at it. Red webbings, blue saddle towels, not a stall plaque or a name tag in sight.

The three jockeys replied with one word – “homework” – when asked what California should have done before it went about mandating synthetic racetracks.

Never tell a bald man he’s going bald. He already knows.

“If you win, act like you’ve been there before.”

Tom Ludt made a big decision. Vinery’s general manager disbanded his horses from trainer Steve Asmussen earlier this summer. Five-time winner Kodiak Kowboy transferred to trainer Larry Jones at Fair Hill Training Center and made his debut for Jones in Monday’s Amsterdam.

Kent Desormeaux did everything right in Saturday’s Diana Handicap – settled Dynaforce in a perfect spot, blew past Bayou’s Lassie to get first run on the closers and hit the eighth-pole with an insurmountable lead. Desormeaux hit Dynaforce one last time left-handed and then switched to his right. In mid-switch, Forever Together and Julien Leparoux blew past him.

Nick Zito wrapped Carlos Correa in a headlock as the two men – co-workers – bulled their way to the winner’s circle after the Whitney Handicap. It was their world – two men telling each other, ‘I told you so.’

No, Saturday’s Grade I Diana Stakes wasn’t a steeplechase, but it was two steeplechase greats, Augustin Stable’s George Strawbridge Jr. and trainer Jonathan Sheppard, who won the race with Forever Together.

With her head held high, Ginger Punch paraded around the walking ring before the Go For Wand.

Kiaran McLaughlin stood in front of the big-screen television in the Saratoga clubhouse, peering up as his charge Abraaj threatened to drift out of sight as the field for the Grade II Alfred G. Vanderbilt Handicap hit the three-eighths pole.