Think of Stan Hochman when Dortmund wins the Kentucky Derby

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Everybody at the Daily News has Stan Hochman stories. Mine, naturally, involves the racetrack.

I met Stan at the 1984 Preakness at Pimlico. I was covering horse racing for an eight-month-old all-sports paper in Baltimore, my hometown. I had no idea what I was doing, but it was the perfect place to learn and make mistakes because nobody noticed for a very simple reason: Nobody was buying the paper.

It was right after the Preakness post-position draw. I was asking questions/making suggestions to John Parisella, who trained a longshot named Fight Over. Stan was standing right next to me.

I had not missed a day at Pimlico in 7 years, so I knew the track way better than Parisella. The questions were for a story, the suggestions were for a bet I planned to make.

Inside speed had been winning the races at Pimlico for years. Fight Over was the inside speed. The horse had a chance if Parisella told his jockey what I was telling him - send the horse to the front and tell the rider to keep the horse next to the rail.

Kentucky Derby winner Swale, who was going to be the odds-on favorite, had no chance. He was going to be stuck wide, running against the inherent bias of the track. I was right about Swale and not totally wrong about Fight Over. Unfortunately, Angel Cordero, one of the smartest jockeys who ever lived, understood the Pimlico bias, put Gate Dancer on the rail and won the race. Fight Over was where I wanted him to be, but just was not good enough, eventually finishing third. Swale was seventh.

My memory is that Stan was seated a few rows behind me in the press box that week, apparently watching me type for hours, seemingly working harder than anybody there. In reality, I was just slow because I had no idea what I was doing.

The sports paper was gone by the fall. The first call I got when it went bad was from then-DN executive sports editor Mike Rathet. We had met that summer when he was in Baltimore visiting a friend in a hospital. He was thinking about hiring a full-time horse-racing writer/handicapper the next year when the new Garden State Park opened in 1985. Two longtime friends, who worked at the DN, Caesar Alsop and Jack Gibbons, had suggested Mike talk to me. I found out later he got a third push - from Stan Hochman.

By the following February, I was at the DN as the horse-racing handicapper. Rathet (and everybody else) thought Garden State was going to be big, so he wanted one of his best writers, somebody who also knew and loved horse racing, to write about it all the time. That would be Stan Hochman.

So there Stan and I were on April 1, 1985, opening night at Garden State while the rest of the staff was in Lexington, Ky., watching Villanova beat Georgetown to win the national championship. Stan wrote about Bob Brennan and Spend A Buck and the $2 million Jersey Derby, went to all the big races, spent time in August at Saratoga, found stories nobody else considered, wrote as only he could. He absolutely loved it. And so did I, because I got to spend time around Stan and with Stan.

Midway through 1986, when it had become obvious that Garden State was more bunt single than home run, Rathet called Stan back home, said he needed him to write about all the sports as he had done so passionately for so long, and did right up until he got sick 3 months ago.

This week especially, I have been thinking about Stan, knowing how much he loved the Kentucky Derby. He would have especially loved this Derby, with so many talented horses and the stories that go with them.

Sometime today, Stan would have been accessing his Parx Racing phone-bet account after deciding how he was going to bet his money. Stan touted Dortmund right before he went into the hospital. I knew how Stan bet, so today I will be making his final bet for him. There will be a win bet. There will be exactas. They might even be trifectas. All bets will be framed around Dortmund. So if the massive son of 2008 Derby winner Big Brown is making a move to the lead in the stretch, think of Stan Hochman and get Dortmund to the finish line in front.