Opinion

Time to define. How will Saratoga 2015 be defined?

A lot of ways, for a lot of people – some good, some bad, some career-changing, some life-altering. We don’t look at stats about handle, attendance, fan enhancement or economic impact. We look at the human and equine impact.

Here are a few…

Edgar Prado returned to Saratoga to win the Grade 1 King’s Bishop on the Travers undercard Saturday.

The Hall of Fame jockey allowed Runhappy to gradually reach the lead from the outside post, it could have taken strides but Prado doled it out over 2 furlongs. Runhappy opened up 2 lengths on the turn, but Prado still sat like a bee was buzzing around his ear. Straightening into the stretch, Prado began to pump, rhythmical, steady, elbows low like always, weight deep in his heels, butt down, a commercial for core strength. Prado waved his whip right-handed, smacked the longshot twice and hand-rode him to the wire. At the wire, Prado stood up, no pump, no celebration, just another notch on his belt, another line on his Hall of Fame plaque.

Where will you be Monday?

Saratoga? Belmont Park? At a desk? On the lake?

Chris Humber will be at Les Landes, Jersey. Not New Jersey, the island of Jersey, in the Channel Islands, 19 miles off the French coast and 85 miles south of the English coast. Humber will become the first person to pull the Saturday/Monday-Saratoga/Jersey double. Humber came to Saratoga to cheer on his filly, New Providence, in the Ballston Spa Saturday evening. Sunday night, he will fly from New York, land at Gatwick Airport Monday morning, catch a plane to Guernsey, then fly his plane to Jersey for closing day of the season at Les Landes.

A writer asked me last week about American Pharoah coming to Saratoga, back when his appearance hinged on a breeze.

“Do you want him to come here?”

And, in one word, well two words, I had crossed over to the dark side.

“Not really,” I answered.

Last fall, I went for a ride with Divine Fortune. With Keri Brion aboard, he sauntered out of the barn, stepping with a leggy reach that said, “Hey let’s go train.” He was 11, coming off a rough fall at Belmont Park a month earlier, and it was the attitude that struck me. 

Coming home from Deadline 26 Wednesday night, I stepped onto my porch and noticed that something looked different. I thought, ‘Did they trim the bushes?’ as I stepped over a forlorn golf cart charger, it laid across the porch like an IV drip, pulled from a dead man’s arm.

My golf cart was missing.

All I hear are birds. That’s it. I don’t know what types of birds, maybe a blue jay in the tree next to me, a swallow hopping along the edge of the porch, a hummingbird, for sure, in the yellow flowers, flits. Round wooden beams, rails and posts frame my view, there is only one place for Adirondack buildings and that’s in the Adirondacks.

Kip Elser called me after watching Walter May’s production of “This was Racing: An Evening with Joe Palmer” at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame Friday.

“You’ve got to go see it,” Elser said. “It’s brilliant, the way he uses his phrases . . . the way he paints the scene . . . the way he . . .”

Over the years, I’ve read Palmer’s book, a collection of columns and features from his writing at the New York Herald Tribune between February 1946 and Oct. 31, 1952 (the day he died with an unfinished column in his typewriter), in any number of ways.

Money By Orleans, hesitated, then lunged, head up, ears back, then slammed my 14-year-old skin-and-bones body into the wall. The three-time stakes winner lived in the narrow stall, next to the firewall, halfway down the shedrow at Delaware Park. After bouncing off the wall and regaining my balance, I snatched on him, “What’s wrong with you?”

“Hey, editor. Can you get me a copy of the paper with the picture from The Chief’s day?”

Keith McFarlane met me at the Morning Line Kitchen asking for a photo of the winner’s circle tribute to Allen Jerkens. McFarlane was in the photo, holding a picture of The Chief.

Two days later, I found McFarlane at Leah Gyarmati’s barn.

“I thought you forgot about me,” McFarlane said, in between walking horses.

I asked him one question about Jerkens, the late great Hall of Fame trainer who still holds a spell over all of us.

When did you start working for him? 

McFarlane, in his deep Jamaican voice, laughed.