Even as a bum or a slicker, a railbird of knowledge, or a Bardstown bookie, you can’t watch a Kentucky Derby and not have a pick. Even if it is out of a hat, or a paper bag at the office. Even if your middle name is Sam so in this great Kentucky Derby you’re stuck with by Sam P. the 20-1 shot in the 13th slot, even if you are from Africa, you gotta go with Bwana Bull, 50 to 1. I feel the same way and so, tah-dah, Street Sense, right now a favorite.

Best reason: How About this Headline Sunday:

“Tampa Derby winner wins Kentucky Derby!”

Now does that have a ring. Does that not grab you?

Yes, sir, Carl Nafzger’s Street Sense won Stella Thayer’s Florida Derby at Oldsmar — booming these days — and the Juvenile Breeders’s Cup.

But good gosh does his horse have competition. It should be a memorable one, this Run for the Roses, which I covered for so many years.

Street Sense has beaten Nobiz Like Shobiz, (great, eh?), Tiago, and more than a dozen more, including one of another great name: Any Given Saturday,

The Sun-Sentinel’s Dave Joseph had a wonderful story in Friday’s sports section on young Michael J. O’Farrell, son of the late squire of Ocala Stud, Joe, and how he worked among others Street Sense and Nobiz at his hallowed horse place north of us. Frankly, I had thought Ocala Stud, once so big and powerful in the Florida Thoroughbred Breeding Programs, had been sold and subdivided.

Young O’Farrell said Ocala Stud was broke in 1971, but pulled out of it and now Stud trains about 200 yearlings a year, stands eight stallions and 45 mares. No, Stud doesn’t race, but Joseph said O’Farrell has every recollection of working with two of the headliners of today—Street Sense and Nobiz. 

O’Farrell had them both and likes them both. He said when Elizabeth Valando, the owner, came to see Nobiz for the first time, she said he was the most beautiful horse in the world. If he wins today, he surely will be. He was early forming and developing.

O’Farrell said “Street Sense was a late bloomer. He wasn’t big and strong from Day One. He got it later with training and time.”

If it rains in Louisville today, most bets are off.

But this is a big and a spectacular field, and it will indeed be one of the great moments in sports. I know one of my greatest moments was there when a Tampa horse, Spend A Buck, who won the Derby for Dennis Diaz and us all.

Now, we need a Tampa Derby Winner to Win a Kentucky Derby, to complete the circle.