Horseplay

Say this about the can of Alpo the Blob touted in the Kentucky Derby: He might have finished last, but at least he did it clean.

Or so one must assume given that Soup and Sandwich, the Blob's parimutuel poodle, was such a pronounced slowpoke. If he was juiced, it must have been with Juicy Juice.

Not so your Derby winner, Medina Spirit, who tested positive for twice the legal level of a certain anti-inflammatory corticosteroid. If a second test comes back with the same result, he'll be stripped of the roses.

His trainer, That Guy With The White Hair (Bob Baffert), has already been kicked out of Churchill Downs for this offense, not to say others. Baffert's horses, it seems, have an odd habit of turning up with hinky stuff in their bloodstreams; this marks the fifth time in the last year one of his horses has tested positive. 

Baffert, of course, don't know nothin' 'bout all that. His denials are a spot-on parody of the faintly paranoid lack of accountability popularized by our former Only Available Impeached Whiny-Ass President, and basically amount to a timeworn dodge.

Honest, officer, I don't know how those drugs got in my car ...

"We didn't have anything to do with this," Baffert told the Washington Post, while hinting vaguely that it must have been someone who doesn't like Bob Baffert. "I don't know how it got into his system, if it was in his system, or a mistake. But we're gonna get to the bottom of it.

"You know, there's problems in racing, but it's not Bob Baffert."

Honest, officer ...

So it goes. And in the meantime, in between his not-very-credible denials, Baffert might at least want to rethink his erstwhile Derby winner's name.

Medina Spirit?

More like Medina Spirits.