As commenter Geno pointed out, Scrappy T finished fourth in his start at Penn National last weekend. A reader e-mailed to say that, essentially, Scrappy never had a chance, which is what I feared. I am not one of those race fans who thinks that every older horse who runs a bad race should be immediately retired, but given this horse’s career over the last few years, maybe it’s time? Far be it from me to suggest to the horse’s connections what they should do–they know the situation and I don’t, and I have to think they’ve got his best interests at heart. I just hope that this graded stakes—classic!—placed horse gets the chance to end his career honorably and safely.

It’s official: I hate the Road to the Roses Derby fantasy game. I hate it. And I don’t hate it because I’m losing badly; in fact, I am mostly a gracious loser (except in Scrabble), and I’ve learned a lot from this first foray into racing fantasy games. I can live with being at the bottom of the league table, in all of the leagues I’m in.

But I have been annoyed from the outset that every Saturday morning, I get a text message from RttR reminding me to activate my horses by noon; I pay for individual text messages, received and sent, and frankly, it’s not a good use of my money. So I have dutifully followed the directions to “text QUIT 2 quit,” repeatedly, to no avail. I keep getting the messages. I send e-mails to the address listed on the game’s site to no avail. I keep getting the messages. I have given up. I just wish I could figure out how to retrieve my phone number from them…it seems to have been sucked into a black hole from which I will never get it back.

Adding insult to injury, I realized last Friday that I completely missed the last draft, in which I should have added two more horses to my fantasy stable. Call me crazy, but I’m not checking the RttR website daily, which apparently had any number of posted reminders about this last stage of the game. The folks who organize the game have no trouble sending me e-mails to market their stuff, or sending me text messages to activate horses, but when it comes to the really important stuff—LIKE ADDING HORSES TO ONE’S STABLE—they conveniently forget how to get in touch.

Like I said, it’s official: I hate this game.

And speaking of games, a while back I received an e-mail from Alex at Stars of the Turf. He’s started his own fantasy game with stables of two-year-olds, and we’re all invited to play. To quote him, “The basic idea is that each person will create a stable of 30 unraced two year olds, and score points based on their performance in races over the course of their career. Free to enter, but no prizes yet.” As I said to him, I don’t really start thinking two-year-olds until Saratoga, so I may join up belatedly, thereby ensuring yet another bottom-of-the-table finish in yet another game. The link will take you to the rules; click on the blog title for more recent posts.

It’s back to the Garden for game 4 tonight. Healthily superstitious fan that I am, I will say no more.