Dan Rodricks: Don’t sweat the Preakness snub; the Triple Crown will endure

Nobody asked me, but I doubt Major League Baseball will replace the World Series with something else. The National Football League will never drop the Super Bowl. The National Hockey League has the Stanley Cup.

And thoroughbred horse racing has the Triple Crown.

So Churchill Downs and the New York Racing Association can announce a new championship racing series for three-year-olds, leaving the Preakness out, but they’ll never eliminate the Triple Crown in the minds of the millions of Americans who pay attention but once a year.

We are fans of horse racing between May and June. We care about the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness and, if some horse wins the first two, even the Belmont. The rare horse that can win all three — they’re the ones we remember: Secretariat, Seattle Slew, Affirmed, American Pharoah and the one from 2018, what’s his name?. . .  Justify!

The trainers, owners and jockeys all know that winning the Triple Crown — even winning one or two of the races — is the most prestigious accomplishment in their sport.

So, when we received news of Churchill Downs’ snub of the Preakness — leaving Baltimore and Pimlico out of the new race series — I did not panic as some did. I did not assume, as some did, that Maryland’s political and racing leaders had been asleep at the wheel.

“They were playing chess while Maryland was playing checkers,” a guy wrote on Facebook, attributing to Churchill Downs and the NYRA a level of executive genius that, at this point, remains to be seen. (It’s very hard to establish something new in the public consciousness when there’s already been something in place for more than a century.)

Besides, when you get just a little bit of the back story, the whole thing looks less like smart business and more like Trumpish vindictiveness — Churchill Downs dissing Maryland because the company lost the rights to the Preakness brand when the state exercised its right to match the bid for it.

So Maryland gets to own the brand.

Meanwhile, Gov. Wes Moore and NBC rolled out a six-year extension of network coverage of the Preakness on a revised calendar, placing our storied stakes race on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend starting in 2028. By then, we should have a new Pimlico Race Course.

That all sounds pretty good to me. 

Plus, Pimlico will have the majority of the state’s racing dates; there will be more horses galloping around the new track in Baltimore throughout the year. That should build more local excitement for the sport and help the thoroughbred industry in Maryland.

But, aside from all the actual horse stuff, there’s an opportunity for Baltimore to throw a huge party. The Preakness Festival should be a sprawling event — bigger than ever — with concerts and soirees over several days and at multiple locations, ending with a championship weekend. 

The Black-Eyed Susan Stakes should get more television exposure and public attention. 

Buoyed by big crowds out for a good time, the Preakness could leap several pegs up the prestige meter and the festival should become, with promotion by the Maryland Stadium Authority and NBC and Peacock, a real destination for tourists. 

There’s all kinds of potential. 

Pardon my enthusiasm. I still like horse racing. I like a lot of the people I’ve met in the industry here. Under the right conditions, properly and humanely managed, it’s a beautiful sport. 

And Preakness Week has renewed potential as a big city holiday.

If we get a fresh start at the new Pimlico, and the track’s redevelopment helps the people of Park Heights, it will mark another bold step toward Baltimore’s next renaissance. 

I have not used that term in years, but things are trending well in the city, despite the rough national economy, and we’ve seen stunning progress in reducing violent crime and the number of vacant houses. There are several new developments across the city, more on the verge. 

Baltimore’s second renaissance, long overdue, might be what’s happening around us right now.

Of course, if you live here long enough, you learn to be cautious about predicting steady and durable civic improvement. But my sense is that things have been moving in the right direction for a while now, and it will be a great thing if we do not blow it.

In our favor are all the people who really care about this city. They get things done at the neighborhood level. 

This weekend in Little Italy brings the promise of union between old and new Baltimore — a revival of a tradition mixed with the establishment of a new one.

The Feast of St. Gabriel, on hiatus since the pandemic, returns to the streets but with a much larger footprint, enhanced by its merger with the Light Up Little Italy festival. The three-day event will take up additional blocks and offer more food, drink and music. 

Nobody asked me, but the merger of those two festivals looks like the kind of smart idea that lasts. To the organizers we say: “In bocca a lupo.”

I just listened to a new song, a country-style piece written and performed by Tom Meltzer. It’s called “Don’t S— on Baltimore!,” a native son’s plea that people here and out there — out there being anywhere from just outside the Beltway to central Pennsylvania (“Pennsyltucky”) — stop ridiculing the city and taking glee in its long struggles:

The fault’s not just with Pennsyltucky

Would that we could be so lucky

It also is a problem much closer to home

Just get just outside the Beltway

And hear what people say

About the town they claim to call their own

Meltzer wants us to take pride in Baltimore and, as in the case of the so-called “Preakness snub,” not assume that we can’t have — don’t have already — nice things.

Dan Rodricks writes weekly for Baltimore Fishbowl. The song, “Don’t S— on Baltimore!” is the advance single from Tom Meltzer’s upcoming album, “Nice Things (Tailor’s Version),“ arriving September 4.