The First Saturday in May

I picked my first Kentucky Derby winner in 1986. His name was Ferdinand, and old Bill Shoemaker guided him to one of the most perfect rides I've ever seen. The colt was an 18-1 shot, and I picked him out of sheer luck.

It wasn't until a few years later that I cracked the pages of "America's Turf Authority Since 1894" and actually attempted to handicap a race — an intricate science that requires endless time, analysis, snake oil, and bourbon. I was heading into my senior year of college, and I had the constitution for those sorts of things then. I lived that summer only a mile or two from the grande dame of race tracks, and so I studied the dense, coded charts of the Daily Racing Form, trying to make sense of them.

I did just that the night of August 13, 1989, knowing I'd be at the track to catch the first few races before work the next day. I picked a horse I liked in each of the first two races. I hadn't gotten to the third race, but as it turned out, I didn't need to.

I'm not into exotic wagers, but Saratoga had an early double, and I bet it. My horse in the first went off at 7-2, and won, beating the favorite by a half length, and I had the front end of my double, as well as $5 win and show tickets to cash. My pick — for reasons that completely elude me now, looking over the folded, yellowed pages of that day's Form — in the second race was named Cavanagh's Beau, and was ridden by Karen Rogers. He went off as nearly a 28-1 longshot, dead last by far in the betting pool. What happened next is the things Hollywood dreams are made of.

In a photo finish — while I stood sweating and hooting at the rail — my nag won the race by a nose hair, and I walked away from the pari-mutuel window with $1,200 in my pocket.

I've never had the stomach for gambling much. I bet no more than I'm willing to lose, and I walk when I'm ahead. If that means never winning a life-changing amount, so be it. I'm not the guy to parlay $1,200 into $20,000. I had placed $22 worth of bets on two horses, I'd gotten lucky, and they paid off well.

I was alone that day — no one to even buy a drink for — so I ran (literally, ran) from the track back to my car, and drove directly home. I had a couple hundred bucks already in my apartment from bartending tips and being paid the night before, and so I sorted my cash, rolled it into a fat pimp wad, put a rubberband around it, and drove it all down to the bank.

Then I went to work, as I did every other night that summer. Maybe smiling a bit more than usual and bragging on my double.

I have since had decent days at the track (and once or twice at casinos), but more often than not I lose what I consider to be a fee for the privilege of simply watching thoroughbreds run all out.

I can watch just about any race any time and enjoy it. But the Derby is special. Sure, it's a bloated, booze-soaked affair, steeped in southern aristocracy; the race itself, a crowded fire-drill. But in its way, it signals the start of springtime, and more importantly, it begins a new quest for the Triple Crown — one of the most difficult accomplishments in all of sport (there have been only 11 winners in history, and none since Affirmed in 1978). So with each year's quest, comes the tantalizing prospect that we may once again witness greatness. And so each year, without fail, I watch.

Because — though I'm not susceptible to the wiles of gambling — perfection is a drug I cannot pass up. I'll argue forever that Secretariat was hands-down the greatest athlete of the 20th century. He combined the athletic grace of Walter Payton with the confident swagger of Michael Jordan with Wayne Gretzky's omniscient economy of motion. Watching him win his Triple Crown races is quite simply the single most perfect thing I have ever seen. And in a small way, I live every day for even the possibility of seeing similar.

That said, I don't know that this is the year. Right now, all I know (just like every Phillies or Cubs fan) is that it could be, and so I watch. And I have become fairly good at handicapping the Derby. So come on back next week for this year's predictions. And turn on NBC by 6:00 pm EDT on Saturday, May 3 to watch 20 horses do what they were born to do.