Along The Rails

Triple Crown? Done and done , sayeth Rick:

“I feel that he will do it. It’s actually a foregone conclusion for me… I see the horses in with him and I see our horse, and I expect him to win it…I can’t imagine what I’m going to feel like when they turn for home. I know it’s going to be a beautiful picture for us,” he said. “I know when we turn for home something is going to come over the crowd.”

Like maybe, “Awesome, my $4 on Big Brown to Not Win is looking mighty sweet!”

The last time I heard anybody this serenely confident, Hillary Clinton was on the CBS News late last year, discussing how she plans to conduct her life once she was the Democratic nominee. “It will be me,” she said cheerfully when the interviewer gently indicated that she kinda sorta maybe had to, you know, go through the actual nomination procedure first.

As I’ve mentioned, I enjoy this little corner of Rick’s personality, the one that decidedly does not care about you, me, or world in general. Man, it’s refreshing. This is a breathtaking statement, not due to the confidence, but the jinxatious nature of the whole thing. Good sir, have you never been to a racetrack? The track is the most superstitious place on Earth after your local Bingo hall, replete with little old ladies pulling tiny saint statues and lucky troll dolls from knit-block bags, carefully arranging them in specific order around the cover-all card. Rick has, in effect, just flushed his troll doll right down the toilet. If Big Brown bursts into flames somewhere between the stall and the starting gate, we all know who to blame.