Brooklyn Backstretch

Nearly every day, I evaluate quality.  As a high school English teacher, I collect work from my students, I decide how good it is, and I grade it.  The worthiness of the work is, unfortunately and too often, inextricably linked to the grade it receives.
And a long time ago, I learned that it’s a pretty [...]

If you were paying attention to racing a hundred years ago this month, some things would look familiar:  racing in New York shifted from Aqueduct to Belmont; the Metropolitan Handicap was run at Belmont Park; a former racehorse met a sad end in his post-racing life.
The details, of course, were different.  Aqueduct ran its last [...]

Checking in here with our regular look at charities and other public services/events.
First up, the Northeast Equine Expo, taking place this Saturday and Sunday at Belmont Park.  The equine stars of the movies Hidalgo and soon-to-be released Secretariat will perform.  Harbor Mist, who plays Secretariat, will appear with his trainer—not his racing trainer, but, of course, his acting [...]

I headed out to Belmont early on Saturday morning, to visit the children at Anna House before watching workouts and visiting the backstretch.  As always, Belmont felt like a little city:  at Anna House, a half dozen or more teachers worked with children of varying ages as they played, learned, read, built, created; at the [...]

Today at Belmont, eight fillies and mares will take to the turf for the 57th renewal of the Sheepshead Bay (GII). Sheepshead Bay is a small body of water in the southernmost part of Brooklyn, between the “mainland” and the long, slim jut of land on which Coney Island sits to the west and Brighton [...]

Last Saturday, the eyes of the racing world were turned towards Baltimore, where Bob Baffert’s Lookin at Lucky reversed his racing fortunes with a Preakness win.
About 600 miles to the west, another Lucky was hanging out in a paddock, eating peppermints, and reveling in retirement.
Lucky to Cope is an 8-year-old bay gelding; by Lucky Lionel [...]

I approached my first Preakness with trepidation:  I’m not a Big Event kind of person (with the exception of this kind of Big Event) and I hate crowds.  But this year’s Preakness presented some opportunities too good to pass up, and so on, Friday afternoon, I set off down the Northeast corridor to Charm [...]

We’d waited two weeks to see what would happen next.  We wondered whether, after waiting so long for his first Kentucky Derby win, Todd Pletcher would find himself in the enviable position of bringing a Triple Crown candidate to his home track.  We sat through seven and a half hours and 11 races…and then it [...]

One down, two to go. Super Saver relished the slop and the rail-and Calvin Borel-and dominated what was thought to be a wide-open Kentucky Derby. Can he do it again two weeks later in Baltimore, under what figure to be vastly different circumstances? In his path are four also-rans in the Derby and seven new [...]

Over the last couple of years, the Shuvee Handicap at Belmont has offered the occasion to consider the magnificent horse who, en route to winning handicap mare honors in 1970 and 1971, twice won the Jockey Club Gold Cup, back when it was a two-mile race.  In 2008, we could talk about Shuvee in the [...]