Here are 10 things I’m wondering about as we head into summer:
1.    Isn’t it time the Louisville Bats dropped the color scheme of the Milwaukee Brewers, their former parent team, and adopted the colors of the Cincinnati Reds, their parent team now and for the foreseeable future? It also wouldn’t bother me at all to […]

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Here’s my final Preakness toteboard:
WINNER – The Preakness and the sport of racing, which got enormous national publicity because the anticipated duel between the Kentucky Derby winner, Mine That Bird, and the brilliant filly, Rachel Alexandra. The story transcended the normal news outlets, even making the nightly network news programs.
LOSER – The management of Pimlico […]

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A mug shot of David Williams should be posted at every race track and on every barn in Kentucky because the egomaniacal Republican Senate President is Enemy No. 1 to the commonwealth’s signature industry. He has repeatedly opposed any and all attempts to expand legal gaming, even though it’s abundantly clear that the horse industry […]

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Here’s my final toteboard on the 135th Kentucky Derby:
WINNER – The American racing public. Everybody agrees the sport needs heroes. If Mine That Bird, a gelding, proves that his Derby form was no fluke, he’ll be a factor on the national scene as a 4-year-old and maybe even at 5.
LOSER – The Kentucky breeding industry. […]

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It has been years, maybe since Spectacular Bid in 1979, that we’ve had a Kentucky Derby favorite as overwhelming as, say, Rachel Alexandra was in yesterday’s Kentucky Oaks. She won so easily – her final margin of 20-plus lengths doubled the Oaks record – that she brought to mind what happened exactly a decade ago, […]

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The legendary writer Damon Runyon was such a big fan of jockey Earl Sande, the nation’s best  jockey of the 1920s and ‘30s, that he often was moved to write poems about him. One of Sande’s rival jockeys commented that it was bad enough getting beaten by Sande all the time, but Runyon made it […]

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LOUISVILLE – During his brief stay at Churchill Downs, the pride of Northern California has been regarded more as a curiosity than a legitimate contender for Saturday’s 135th Kentucky Derby. Everybody thinks it’s, well, sweet that weight-loss magnate Jenny Craig is the owner of a colt named Chocolate Candy. Just the other day a tourist […]

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LOUISVILLE – America needs for General Quarters to win the Kentucky Derby. It’s simple as that. At a time when the nation is suffering in so many ways, when the future is so uncertain, the country needs an old-fashioned feel-good story to remind us that dreams can be made real if you’re willing to work […]

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Bogus headline No. 1: “Alabama’s Saban Announces 10 Per Cent Pay Cut, Promises to Give Money to General Fund.”

The nation’s economic crisis seems to have hit every area of society except the sports world. The New York Yankees, for example, recently signed a free-agent pitcher for an amount that’s only slightly below the budget for […]

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The Courier-Journal’s current series about the thoroughbred industry is a triumph of packaging over substance. It’s largely a rehashing of old material done up nicely with dramatic color photos, graphs, and charts. It will play nicely with the judges when it comes to contest time, which, of course, is the point.
But this isn’t to dismiss […]

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