Bob Neumeier

While baseball fans salivate over the white-hot pennant races, devotees of the Sport of Kings are also basking in the glory of the buildup to their World Series — the Breeders’ Cup World Thoroughbred Championships.

Held this season at Belmont Park in New York on Oct. 29, divisional Eclipse Award winners and Horse-of-the-Year honors are basically decided on this important date on the racing calendar.

A number of important “prep” races for the Cup were last weekend from coast to coast, many with expensive purses and built-in prestige. If you were on the bubble and ran well, chances are you’ll punch a ticket to Belmont. Run poorly and maybe its wait until next year, if you’re lucky.

Of all the dress rehearsals, Saturday’s Bay Meadows Speed Handicap was probably last in the pecking order of run-up races. But that is where we saw the most exciting horse in racing strut his stuff.

If you are a casual racing fan and your interest begins and ends with the Triple Crown, you may never have heard of Lost in the Fog.

My advice — please start paying attention.

In a world where nobody is perfect, the Fog is 10 for 10 in his young career, having devastated his foes at eight different tracks on both coasts. But the main reason he has slipped through the cracks of the publicity drum-beaters is that he is a sprinter, racing’s version of the girl that wore The Scarlet Letter.

These short distance specialists are scoffed at by the growing legion of the snobby cognoscenti of the sport. They would rather vacation in Siberia than acknowledge the virtues of the sprinters.

Poppycock.

Should Lost in the Fog go on to win the Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Belmont, he would finish the season at an unblemished 11 for 11.

If justice is then served, he should also be named Horse of the Year.

This notion will not sit well with many traditionalists who believe the award should go to the “best” horse in training. But what defines “best”? Best distance horse? Should that be the only category to be considered?

This narrow-minded approach will also be in evidence in the baseball balloting for Most Valuable Player in the American League, where deserving candidates like David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox and Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees will suffer from similar prejudice.

Ortiz is a DH, doesn’t play the field — can’t vote for him, they’ll say. Rivera is a pitcher and is eligible for a Cy Young Award — can’t cast my ballot to him, they’ll reason.

Lost in the Fog will suffer at the ballot box for the same reason.

But the hypocrisy of it all!

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These same doubters that will hold it against him at voting time are the same people that heap praise on owner Harry Aleo and trainer Greg Gilchrist for NOT throwing him into distance races like those in the Triple Crown, where he is simply not genetically capable of success. Not only that, these  nay-sayers will mock trainers like D. Wayne Lukas for occasionally putting undeserving horses in important distance races, a temptation the shrewd Aleo and Gilchrist avoided.

Fact is, they have managed the horse superbly.

In the run-up to the Breeders’ Cup, you can bet the house that Lost in the Fog will be dissed by a never-satisfied segment of racing analysts. You’ll hear the following:

1. he hasn’t beaten anybody
2. can’t possibly whip older horses
3. will get chewed up in early pace duel
4. Gilchrist and rider Russell Baze lack BC experience.

Bring it on.

If the gambling public listens to the knocks, the believers like me will get a better price at the windows.

I’ll take 3-1 anyday on a Horse-of-the-Year.