Evidently it no longer matters how openly you violate the spirit of racing, not to mention the rules of the game. If you win enough, you will be rewarded. And at the end of the year, those who do the voting for the awards will disgrace themselves by honoring some of the game's worst offenders.

The Eclipse Awards reminded us once again that racing may no longer be the only game in town, as it was before the advent of lotteries and casinos, but by golly it remains the dirtiest game in town, with apologies to sanctioned fisticuffs and unsanctioned cock fights.

Anyone who stayed up Monday night and watched the awards show could easily have mistaken the parade to the podium for a perp walk.

For openers, the good folks who deceived the public at the Breeders' Cup were rewarded when Leroidesanimaux was named Male Turf Horse of the Year.

So what if they didn't announce that he would be wearing aluminum pads to protect his sore feet until the morning of the race, almost 24 hours after the betting had opened? If it was OK with the stewards in New York, what the hell, right? What difference does it make whether the public knows that an odds-on favorite has sore feet, right? Oops.

Sorry about that.

The trainer of Leroidesanimaux, Bobby Frankel, was one of three finalists for Trainer of the Year, along with Todd Pletcher and Steve Asmussen. What, no Rick Dutrow? That might have been a bit much since Dutrow got caught cheating and served a 60-day suspension, reduced from 120 days.

Pletcher, Frankel, Asmussen.

"What do you want?" one local owner noted wryly. "There aren't all that many hay-and-oats guys out there anymore."

Who win with any semblance of regularity, he might have added.

Not that anyone's accusing anyone of anything, mind you. But you know how they like to talk on the racetrack, how they carry on about guys who win all the time, whose horses sometimes perform unnatural acts of courage.

Dutrow was not left out in the cold altogether, naturally. He trained Saint Liam, the Horse of the Year. So there was Jolly Ricky at the end of the evening, smiling from ear to ear, looking like he'd been into the laughing gas again.

Congratulations! Man goes away for 60 days, the unknown assistant turns into a Hall of Fame trainer over the summer, winning 36 percent of the time, and the boss returns to campaign the Horse of the Year. What a country!

That's nothing, though, compared to the owner of the year thing.

Michael Gill will not have to conduct any angry letter-writing campaigns this time. They finally gave him his little statue and he finally got to go up on stage and thumb his nose at all his enemies.

For three years Gill has been a finalist for the award, but no one in their right mind thought the voters would ever allow such a thing to happen, given the man's history. Far too embarrassing, potentially speaking.

Now they bring it to a vote one more time, and the turf writers and the Daily Racing Form voters lean toward Eugene Melnyk, a solid choice. But the third party with a say, the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, turns out strong for Gill, by a 31-13 count, and the outsider finally gets his ego fed.

Take that, you haughty bluebloods.

Take that, you small-minded racetracks.

Take that, you beady-eyed columnists.

So the self-made man marches up to the podium and speaks his mind. But first he attempts to tug at the heartstrings, invoking the memory of his mother, appealing to the underdog in all of us. On and on he goes, about the many little-guy trainers he has hired over the years, about how they were finally able to make a name for themselves, because of him, Michael Gill.

He never mentioned anything about how easy it might have been for a control-freak owner to manipulate such small-time trainers, 20-year-old kids off the street, 70-year-old has-beens. Why ruin a perfectly good story?

He also forgot to tell the one about how he once sent a since-banished veterinarian out to saw off a dead horse's leg after the horse broke down at Gulfstream a couple of years ago. A real knee-slapper, that one.

He also failed to mention anything about how his aggressive claiming tactics put some small trainers out of business, and caused racetracks to wonder if this guy was worth the trouble, large stable or no large stable.

It also slipped his mind that various rescue organizations have found a number of former Gill runners at the weekly sale in New Holland, Pa., where the agents for the slaughterhouses go to buy their meat.

According to one rescue outfit, it is quite common to find Gill horses there, in the killer pen, already marked for slaughter when they arrive.

But he is an underdog, Michael Gill, and a man of the people.

His mother would have been so proud.

"I am going to miss racing," he said in parting, "and I think racing's going to miss me back."

Ladies and gentlemen, your owner of the year.

No, you can't make this stuff up.

And yes, it is a joke, no matter how you dress it up.

-Bill Handleman of the Asbury Park Press