enjoying trackside traditions at the Preakness -- Maryland Life, May/June 2006

"It makes you feel better," says the little man seated before the cameras. "I see everybody here. I know everybody here."

As WJZ-TV morning show guys Marty Bass and Don Scott interview the jockey, it occurs to me that the racetrack may be the only place in the sports world, if not in the entire universe, where such short guys stand 10 feet tall...

Anywhere you go at Pimlico Race Course in northweet Baltimore in the days preceding the Preakness Stakes, which lasts a mere two minutes, "there is a constant danger of stumbling over tradition, no matter in which direction one turns." So says the 1972 Preakness media guide, but it's as true now as then.