Checkered Past

Before anything else, first and foremost we need to acknowledge the unfathomable legacy of Darling My Darling (Deputy Minister) as second dam of both colts denied in an agonizing three-way finish to the GI Kentucky Derby. The odds of that coincidence, for all her elite blood and performance, are best be left to an actuary. In the meantime, however, we should salvage the contrasting narratives aptly condensed, in what remains the definitive test of the American Thoroughbred, by her two grandsons. For our collective obsession with first place is such...

Here we are, then, in what Oliver Hardy could only call "another nice mess." But let's disentangle this flourishing sapling Messier (Empire Maker) from the tentacles that may restrain him from a timely bloom on the first Saturday in May, and take a moment to celebrate not only the storied nursery that cultivated his family but also the alert grafting that now involves another farm in his future success. For this horticultural analogy permits only one classification of the spectacular GIII Robert S. Lewis S. winner--as a young maple. Messier...