Yoda With A Form

Ah… Belmont week. The final jewel. The last stand. A time not just for handicapping, but for introspection—like tax season for the soul. We watch replays like they’re hostage tapes, analyzing workouts like we’re decoding Cold War radio chatter. It’s the week for sharpening your opinions and dulling your tolerance for nonsense.

And oh, the inquisitors.They arrive like cicadas—biannual, persistent, and utterly oblivious to the concept of timing or boundaries. These are not friends. These are seasonal opportunists. Ghosts who disappear for 362 days a year, only to resurface with a chipper “Hey buddy, just checkin’ on ya…”—as sincere as a mafia apology over a closed casket.

It’s not a social call. It never is. It’s a fishing expedition, draped in faux-concern. They don’t ask how you’re doing, not really. They don’t know your dog’s name. They don’t even know you hate eggplant, even though I love it. But they do know it’s Belmont week, and in their tiny, transactional brains, that means it’s time to dial up Uncle Racingwithbruno for the annual “free scoop.”

I need a Ruby. A no-nonsense, steely-voiced gatekeeper with a vintage headset and zero tolerance for deadbeats. “Mr. De Julio is not available for Belmont consultation at this time. If you’d like professional analysis, please visit the website. If you’d like to wish him a Happy Birthday, Christmas, or acknowledge he’s a living, breathing human being the other 51 weeks of the year, that window has long since closed.”

These are the same people, mind you, whose arms are so short you'd think they were auditioning to be the next Jurassic Park attraction. Their wallets haven’t been opened since Reagan left office. Yet they feel entitled to a winner. Not a kind word. Not an offer to invest in the time and craft it takes to do this properly. But they’ll happily forward your text with the name circled to eight other degenerates in their fantasy football group chat.

One of them, bless his shameless little heart, hit for six figures on a pick 6. Off our recommendations. Said, and I quote, “I’ll buy you a drink.”A drink.

Another? Cashed for over $150K across two tickets and still told you, “I don’t buy picks.”No, of course not. That would require self-awareness and decency.

But let Belmont roll around? Suddenly you're Yoda with a Form. The Guru of Gate 6. Their personal oracle, just waiting for their annual pilgrimage of audacity and entitlement.

So yes, it’s that time of year again. "The 6 horse win he does"

Ah… Yoda with a Form—how delightfully flattering, how poetically absurd, and yet… somehow accurate. Yes, the force is indeed strong with me—or perhaps more precisely, the force is persistent, insistent, whispering through the lines of past performances, coursing through the gallop-outs, the second quarter splits, the subtle drop in class like a Jedi cloak gently brushing the floor.

You see, horse racing—real racing, not the carnival barking of touts or the paint-by-numbers spreadsheet wizards—is a living thing. A galaxy of muscle and motion, of rhythm and instinct. An energy field, if you will. Created by all living things—horses, horsemen, and those mad enough to study them.

And those of us who live in that force?We feel it.We use it, but without wielding a light sabre in aggressive negotations.

We don’t just scan PPs—we move mountains within them. We see through synthetic smokescreens, false figs, and the dark side’s favorite weapon: hype. We wield the force and the light sabre, not for power, but for clarity. The real edge, the real insight—it’s not found in angles invented over a bottle of bottom-shelf bourbon at the OTB in 1986. It’s in observation. In nuance. In failure.

Ah yes… “The greatest teacher, failure is.”

Because you don’t find the truth in a 3/5 favorite who wins by open lengths. You find it in the 17/1 filly who gets buried on the rail, re-rallies, and gallops out like a freight train. You find it in the subtle shift in a jockey’s hand motion, a trainer’s pattern, a work tab that whispers, “She’s back.”

And yet… they call. Oh, how they call.

These padawans of parasitism.These Sith Lords of Selfishness.“Hey buddy, who do you like in the Belmont?” they say, as if we’re bound by blood or brotherhood. As if knowing someone who once picked a winner grants eternal access to the Jedi Council of Handicapping.

They haven’t watched a race since the Derby. They couldn’t tell a gallop-out from a garage sale. But here they are, full of hope and empty of shame, reaching out not for wisdom, but for a shortcut.

\Well… here’s the truth.

There is no shortcut.

There is study. There is intuition. There is obsession. There is unlearning. Because most handicappers have been taught wrong. Fed myths like children expecting the Tooth Fairy to leave a double-digit longshot under their pillow. “Speed kills.” “Bounce theory.” “Second off the layoff.” Legends handed down like bedtime stories, repeated without question. But the galaxy is more complicated than that.

So yes, think before you dial. Consider the hours, the replays, the notebooks scribbled in the dark.Consider the respect due to those who hear the Force where others hear static.

Because those who live by the Force…They don’t just pick winners.They see the game itself.

And if you can’t offer commitment, or courtesy…Then you’re not the chosen one.

You're just more… noise in the Force.