Whicker: Tiz the Law keeps giving orders, runs away with Travers Stakes

Uncle Chuck, the latest to emerge from Bob Baffert’s speed factory, put together a solid mile at the Travers Stakes on Saturday.

However, the race was scheduled for a mile and a quarter.

By the time it dawned on Uncle Chuck, Tiz the Law demonstrated why it’s foolish to put a quarter, or a dime, on anybody else’s chances to win the Kentucky Derby.

As Luis Saez desperately whipped Uncle Chuck like Keith Moon whacking the drums on “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” Manny Franco looked so comfortable that you swore Tiz the Law was made of fine Corinthian leather.

Franco only held up the whip to celebrate this 5 1/2-length victory, then rose up and pointed to Tiz the Law’s head after his trip was accomplished in 2:00.95.

“I thought we were going to get away from him after a half mile,” Saez said, “but then he just kept on going.”

If this keeps on going, you can keep your asterisks in the drawer.

No matter when they run this Triple Crown or how long the interval is between the Derby (Sept. 5) and the Preakness (Oct. 3)  it will take a special circumstance to derail Tiz the Law, who finished 26 ½ lengths ahead of sixth-place Uncle Chuck, who beat one horse.

“This just blows me away,” said Jack Knowlton, president of Sackatoga Stables and the Pied Piper of the shareholders who rode school buses to watch Funny Cide win the Kentucky Derby in 2003.

“We had Funny Cide mania. We had a Funny Cide store. It’s taken Tiz more time to get to that point, but I really think he’ll be adopted not only by New York but the whole country. We have a Tiz mask and we’re getting calls about that.”

Uncle Chuck was 5-to-2 and Tiz The Law 1-to-5, and it was that close only because of Baffert’s persona. Sure, Uncle Chuck had raced only twice and was facing a coast-to-coast trip and the best 3-year-old in the country.

But Baffert is the Stable Genius of the sport, and Arrogate set a Travers record for him in 2016, and Uncle Chuck’s long stride revived those memories.

Where else would Baffert discover if Uncle Chuck was ready for Churchill Downs? In learning about his own horse, he inadvertently taught us more about the winner.

If anything, this blowout will, or should, discourage other horsemen from trying the Run For The Roll-On, or whatever you call a horse race in Louisville on a steamy Labor Day weekend. A smaller-than-usual field would nearly inoculate Tiz the Law from a traffic-jam upset.

Tiz the Law won the Belmont Stakes, shortened to a mile and an eighth. Before that, he flattened the contenders in Florida.

Only Honor A.P and Thousand Words can bring the seeds of a East-West confrontation, a major horse racing subtext for years.

The best bicoastal showdown in recent years was Sunday Silence vs. Easy Goer in 1988. Sunday Silence was trained by Charlie Whittingham and, compared to the regal Easy Goer, appeared a scrappy impostor to the silk-stocking crowd.

Sunday Silence beat Easy Goer in blustery conditions at the Kentucky Derby, nipped him in a classic Preakness, and then lost by eight lengths in the Belmont. The emotion was summed up in the voice of Marshall Cassidy, the supposedly impartial race caller, who yelled, “New York’s Easy Goer has won the Belmont.”

Then Sunday Silence adjourned the debate by trouncing Easy Goer at the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Each coast has its own jockeys and trainers, and in the old days there was little overlap. The Breeders’ Cup helped bring resolution. Heavy-money events, like the Pegasus at Gulfstream and the Dubai World Cup, have also blurred the lines.

“In the East, they always thought it was tougher to ship to the West than vice versa,” Baffert said Tuesday, “but now they’re winning more of those races. At the end of the day, I don’t put much stock in that stuff. They’re all born in Kentucky, after all.”

Nashua won a $100,000, winner take all match race with Swaps in 1955, after Swaps came out of the West to win the Derby, and Nashua took the Preakness and Belmont.

But it’s hard to imagine the frenzy of 1938, when FDR himself took a break from monitoring economic excavation and the Nazi threat to listen to Seabiscuit’s win over War Admiral at Pimlico.

“He did what I thought he’d do – make a rear admiral out of him,” said trainer Red Pollard after the Californian came in first.

Now Tiz the Law makes uncles into nephews, and masks into keepsakes.