The Inside Rail

The car is half packed. Ran out of daylight yesterday, so now an Espresso machine, two bags of shirts and a Saratoga Special jacket sit in the hallway while my Subaru Outback waits in the driveway.

The wave is about to crash. Saratoga has started to consume us. I wrote this for the Irish Field last week. 

Barclay Tagg called. The Kentucky Derby trainer doesn’t call often, actually, ever. We made small talk, he eventually got to his point, correcting a story that I (luckily) didn’t write and then we made more small talk.

“You ready for Saratoga?” Tagg asked.

I hesitated, really, didn’t say anything, just let it hang there, a throwaway line that wouldn’t go away.

“Yeah, I guess none of us are ever ready for Saratoga…” said Tagg, answering his own question. “It just happens, no matter if you’re ready or not.”

It was 1999 and I trapped Russell Baze in a clubhouse box at Saratoga. The 41-year-old jockey had been inducted into the Hall of Fame that morning, presented a trophy that afternoon and was flying back to northern California in the morning. If people are down to Earth, Baze is the Earth, humble, low-key, just a regular guy wondering why he was being interviewed.

Monmouth Park is in hard times. Handle’s down, fighting politicians, competition everywhere, down to three days a week, a track from a bygone era needing a lifeline.

Or, so I hear.

Royal Ascot in the morning. Parx Racing in the afternoon. Now, that’s a doubleheader.

I’ll watch the opening day at Royal Ascot from my parents’ couch and then hop in the car and hit the Pennsylvania Turnpike for a jaunt to Parx, in time to catch the seventh, no need for my top hat.

Belmont Stakes Day – 70 degrees, partly cloudy. A chance of rain increasing from 30 percent to 60 percent later this afternoon. 

“Do you still write?”

That’s what I was asked after the announcement of my brother’s recent Joe Hirsch Award for the best article on American Pharoah’s Belmont Stakes (if you’re keeping score, that’s two in a row for www.thisishorseracing.com).

Miles waved his mother’s white scarf and danced in the aisle. He belted out “Dear Abby, Dear Abby” as loud as he could. He curled up in his mother’s arms when Prine slowed it down with “Souvenirs.” He yelled “Prison in Christmas” as Prine strummed the first few notes of a song Miles still can’t quite figure out. He stood and clapped for an encore and then sang along with “Muhlenberg County.”

I have to admit, I don’t get a lot of work done on race days. Alcatraz runs this morning, well, he runs this afternoon in England, morning here. The Investec Mile. At Epsom. On Oaks Day. Big Day.

The rain came down. The screens went up.

Homeboykris lay behind the screens, the winner of the first, dead before the second.