Big Brown speaks

(Kentucky Derby winner Big Brown has agreed to blog for newsday.com during the Triple Crown series. After tense negotiations in stall 12, Barn 22 on the Churchill Downs backstretch, the charismatic colt accepted Newsday’s offer of 40 peppermints a week to share his thoughts with Ed McNamara.)

I hope I can trust this writer, because he seems to be a bit odd. He told me he has made bets at 75 tracks on four continents, as if I’m supposed to be impressed. That’s a real lifetime achievement, Eddie boy, something to carve on your tombstone. I reminded him of what W.C. Fields said: “Horse sense is what keeps a horse from betting on people.”

Speaking of people, at 8 o’clock Saturday morning, 10 hours before the biggest race of my life, about 200 of them stood there gawking while my groom gave me a bath. “Ooooh, look at the soap bubbles getting rinsed off the handsome brown horse.” Kind of freaky, and no, I wasn’t real comfortable with it. Do you think 100 horses would stand around and watch a human being take a bath? Sometimes I think the wrong species is running this world.

(Tomorrow: Big Brown starts a friendly feud with 2007 Horse of the Year Curlin.)