Derby time (kinda)

Well, this is welcome news.

The first Saturday in May is this Saturday, and guess what, America? The Kentucky Derby is on like Donkey Kong!

Which is not the name of a 50-1 shot who once ran a very strong fifth in a claiming race. Although it could be.

And that's the exciting part of all this!

See, the Kentucky Derby is not actually on on this Saturday. The Bastard Plague took care of that. But, following auto racing's lead, there will be a virtual Derby. Churchill Downs is sponsoring a day-long remote Derby party culminating in a replay of American Pharoah's win in 2015, and a virtual Kentucky Derby featuring the 13 Triple Crown winners.

So there will be those Colonel Sanders guys and women in hats designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and that song by Dan Fogelberg, and mint juleps -- which, if you don't have the ingredients in your Plague Bunker, you can approximate by throwing a handful of Smith Brothers cough drops into a glass of bourbon.

And then, "My Old Kentucky Home"!

 Which you'll be required to sing along with, although there'll be no way of telling if you cheated and sang "Back Home Again In Indiana" instead, just to spite Moscow Mitch McConnell.

The best part of it all, of course, will be the virtual Derby pitting all those Triple Crown winners against one another. Secretariat should win again, as the greatest racehorse of all time. But you never know with computer models.

It could be Whirlaway. It could be Citation or Affirmed or Seattle Slew.  It could be My Friend Flicka.

OK. So it won't be My Friend Flicka.

But it's a virtual race, so why not?

In fact, let's really mix this up and throw 'em all in there. My Friend Flicka. Trigger. Robert E. Lee's horse Traveller. That horse from the Michael Murphy song.

Or how about Mr. Ed?

Yes, that's right, the talking horse who inspired my own ill-considered talking horse, Mr. Ted. Back in the day, Mr. Ted (who was Mr. Ed's son) appeared in a couple of my yearly tongue-in-cheek Derby columns. No, I don't know why. I was stupid and young -- like, 45 or something. And none of my editors stopped me, which they should have, even though I'm not blaming them.

Well, OK. Kind of I am.

But, hey. Water under the bridge, right? Especially because it's occurred to me that a virtual Derby might be the very occasion to resurrect Mr. Ted from his literary grave an--

OK, no. No.

But you gotta admit: He'd be a hell of a post-race interview.