The Kentucky Derby is a silly event and got the sad ending that it deserved

This year's race had the perfect mix of chaos, disbelief, and sadness.

This is the online version of our morning newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning. Ted Berg usually writes this but he’s on vacation this week (probably eating extravagant sandwiches on his yacht somewhere) so Andy Nesbitt will be filling in. Ted asked that we include this mention so that you don’t go after him about this week’s takes.

By now you know that this past Saturday’s running of the Kentucky Derby was a total mess.

First, Maximum Security was ruled the winner after doing what a winner should do – be the first to cross the finish line.

Then somebody raised a protest, three review officials named “stewards” sat in a room and looked at replays of the final turn for what felt like 47 hours before making a shocking and historic ruling that Maximum Security had been disqualified for interference and that a long shot, Country House, was named the winner.

It was all so embarrassing.

President Donald Trump even took some time on Sunday to tweet about it. He put the blame on… political correctness. Shocker, I know.

But any sporting event that involves human beings riding large animals should end with the perfect mixture of chaos, heartbreak, disbelief, and more sadness.

And that’s exactly how this year’s ended.

Which was great!

(Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images)

When you stop and think about it, horse racing in general is pretty silly. Here we are in the year 2019 and people are still climbing onto large animals and racing around a track on said animals while bourbon-fueled gamblers yell at those horses – who they just learned about 20 minutes before the race began – to run faster than they already are already running. As if horses can understand our language, let alone the collected slurred speech of thousands of people who have been day drinking.

It just all feels so… desperate.

Also, look at the top 5 finishers from this year’s race: Country House, Code of Honor, Tacitus, Improbable, Game Winner.

How are we supposed to take an event seriously when those are the names of the participants? They sound like names of boats thought of by depressed single fathers who are going through a bit of a midlife crisis.

None of these horses ever dreamed of being in the Kentucky Derby because horses don’t know about the Kentucky Derby. Because they’re horses.

Though we could have all learned something from Maximum Security – did you see how well he handled having that win so rudely stripped from him?

Now that’s something you should show your kids. Respect.

This event should never end with any sense of feeling of normality. And thankfully it didn’t on Saturday.

Sunday’s big winner: Bryce Harper’s wife

Kayla Harper was most likely mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, just as we all do, when she saw that she had a message pending from someone. So she clicked on the the little button in the upper righthand corner of the screen and… saw a message from a woman who wanted to relieve some stress from Bryce Harper. Yup, the woman sent the thirsty DM to the wrong Harper. Kayla Harper put her on blast, too, which was perfect. Hopefully she flipped a bat after doing it.

Quick Hits: Tom Brady’s casual $100K bet, Reds go back-to-back-to-back in 3 pitches, & more

(Photo by Robin Marchant/Getty Images for Churchill Downs)

– Tom Brady, the GOAT, went to the silly Kentucky Derby again this year and hours after the race he and his buddy, former teammate Danny Amendola, made a very casual $100K bet about throwing a steak over a mountain or something. It’s a great video that shows us rich GOATs do silly things too after what was probably a long day of drinking.

– The Cincinnati Reds hit back-to-back-to-back home runs on three straight pitches on Sunday. I have no idea what the odds are of that happening, mostly because I’m not “into” math, but I’m guessing it’s a thing that’s not likely to happen.

– Danica Patrick had to clarify Sunday that she is not pregnant after some thought she said she was in an Instagram post. What a wacky world we live in.

– The NHL refs made another questionable no-call Sunday when Dallas’ goalie, Ben Bishop, took a puck to the collarbone and writhed around in pain. the Blues, meanwhile, took that time to put the puck in the net as play wasn’t stopped. It was a big goal that helped force a Game 7 and one that angered fans.

– Did you see how Draymond Green used some fancy footwork to get through the Houston Rockets cheerleaders on his way to the bench in Game 4? It was pretty good.

– Finally, I think I have to bring up Game of Thrones in a Monday newsletter. Ted called me on the phone about this the other day. He screamed at me about the importance of talking about GOT on Mondays, saying something about getting paid under the table by HBO for bringing it up and to send the cash to him. It all seemed pretty shady, which some might call “Ted’s Brand,” and I wasn’t a fan of all the yelling but here’s the thing – I started GOT three weeks ago and am only at season 3, episode 4. So I have no idea what happened Sunday night. But I hope you enjoyed it. Here’s a bunch of our great GOT content, BTW.

See you tomorrow.

(Follow Andy Nesbitt on Twitter at @anezbitt. It might change your life.)