The day Bob Baffert stops joking will be the day he stops breathing. He’s always ready with a quip — some of them hilarious, some straying toward questionable taste. That’s just how he rolls, in good times and in bad.
So America’s foremost thoroughbred racing trainer was eager to relate the line someone recently dropped on him: “Your barn looks like Nieman-Marcus after it was looted.”
In what is arguably the worst month of his spectacularly successful career, the analogy is both cringeworthy and accurate. The fancy merch is suddenly gone from the high-end Baffert barn.
His undefeated 3-year-old colts have both been injured: one, Nadal, with a career-ending leg fracture; the other, Charlatan, with a lesser ankle issue that will keep him out of the Belmont Stakes on Saturday and the Kentucky Derby in September.