In Baltimore, they have a cure for the week-long stasis, the tense holding pattern that we’re all stuck in following the Kentucky Derby: The Preakness Celebration begins Saturday, and all week the streets of Baltimore are awash in crabs and beer. Fells Point will hop, bands will play, there are hot air balloons.They pull out all the stops to build up to the apex of the Maryland racing season, up on Old Hilltop, the 1 3 /16 mile Preakness Stakes. It’s a good way to go; for a lot of folks this year, thinking about the Derby and anticipating the May 20 Preakness means laying blame, making excuses, and plotting revenge.

Sweetnorthernsaint’s connections must be able to taste blood. They dropped a huge wager at the last second at the Derby, enough to drop the odds on the horse down from 7-1 to 5-1 in one click of the tote board. They’ve done it before: Back in the Illinois, the odds moved from 2-1 to 6-5 two minutes before the post. Sure, owners are accustomed to losing money, so dropping some more cake on Derby day probably isn’t the heart-wrenching experience it would be for, say, me.

Still, this one has got to sting, especially to lose it watching your horse fade away against the rail, dropping from third to seventh in the final furlong or so. He’s rubbing his hands together thinking “We’ll take him, we’ll be back, we’ll be back …”

Lawyer Ron, the much-vaunted working class hero out of Oaklawn, this year’s Smarty Jones, is crying injury. He’s in surgery this Friday morning for a bone chip. Trainer Bob Holthus was quoted in the Daily Racing Form, saying that the chip was minor: “If he was a cheap horse you wouldn’t have thought anything of it.”If, on the other hand, you had just sold him for a huge chunk of change a couple of days before the Derby and he had turned around and produced a lackluster, outof-his-league finish of 12th,you might really start looking him over closely for something that might be wrong.

Brother Derek’s camp is perhaps the loudest. From my gambling buddies out on the West coast, I hear there’s grumbling at the track: He was robbed. Jockey Alex Solis gave him a bad ride, mistimed. Just you wait. From the trainer we hear more about how this time, it’ll be truer.This time, with a smaller field and not as much speed pressure, Brother Derek’s got a shot.

Give it a rest.

The Preakness Stakes has played many roles as the second jewel of the Triple Crown.Last year,it was the setting for the racing moment of the year: Afleet Alex falling on the stretch, cut off by the freakish lunging of Scrappy T. You’ll remember, he popped back up, jockey still in the irons,and drove home as if encouraged. He’d been gutsy in the Derby, sticking for a piece of the money after all the other big horses gave up,and now he had his piece of the Crown.

The prior two years, Smarty Jones and Funny Cide had proved they were the real thing, proved that if perhaps they weren’t up there in the ranks of the best horses ever to paw the dirt, then at least they deserved classic victories – their victories in the Kentucky Derby were real.

This year, there’s something different about it again. I don’t want to discount the race – it’s horse racing after all, and anything can happen. But if something beats Barbaro, it’s not going to happen next week.

He doesn’t need to prove himself coming out of the Kentucky Derby, that’s for sure. He took his knocks, ran up in the race on a hot pace, and turned it on to shut them down on the stretch.

He’s the deserving victor.

The new horses on the Triple Crown trail are good, but none of them is going to upset a Barbaro that runs like he did in Kentucky. Even Nick Zito seemed to be saying that, when discussing his entry, Hemingway’s Key. “Barbaro was in another universe Saturday.”

The Belmont? Well, that’s another story. That’s the giant killer. Freshened stretch runners – Bluegrass Cat, Jazil, and Steppenwolfer – all waiting in the wings and a mile and a half to get over after the grueling back-to-back schedule.

In fact, I think I know what the cure to the post-Derby blues is: Belmont. It’s a wonderful spring out there, a great place to be. With every race on the card, when the winning horse is brought over to the circle to get his picture taken, I’ll be thinking about Barbaro, and what it’s going to be like to see a horse stand in that circle with the Triple Crown behind him.