In the days of Pittsburgh Phil and Buffalo Bill, the No. 1 summer attraction for the country's richest stables was the American Derby at Chicago's Washington Park. Started in 1884 to show snooty Easterners that Chicago was no longer a frontier town, the American Derby offered an inaugural purse of $10,000, more than double what the older, tonier Kentucky Derby offered. By 1893, its purse was $50,000, more than ten times Kentucky's. But, when panic hit its Pit, Chicago gave no thought to thoroughbreds, abandoned its Derby in 1905.
Last week, after taking it...
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