Brooks is punchy about partying over at the Playboy Mansion tonight.

• Is Ron Artest willing to give up a few bucks so he can gain an NBA title? “Not in a million years.”

• A modeling agency wants to turn seven LPGAers into real lookers.

• Would it have been too much trouble for Mark Buehrle to pony up for Dad’s plane ticket so he could see his son’s 1,000th MLB career strikeout?

• Jonathan Papelbon briefs us about the state of his stinky underwear.

• Michael Strahan starts his network analyzing early, saying that ex-Giants teammate Jeremy Shockey has got to go.

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Awhile back, we made a fabulously naïve comment about Rick Dutrow, Jr., offering a fresh and interesting (if rather braying) voice to the sports community that was entertaining and should be embraced. We’re kind of an idiot.

Dutrow can’t stop injecting himself into the news for all the wrong reasons. Now it’s because he can’t stop himself from injecting too many drugs into horses. The NEW YORK TIMES is now reporting that the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority caught him injecting too much clenbuterol into one of his horses a day before the Kentucky Derby for a stakes race.
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Rick Dutrow, Jr., trainer of Big Brown and known sufferer of Verbal Diarrhea Disorder (VDD), took his last opportunity in the limelight before horse racing gets tossed back into the media hamper for another nine months to blame someone else for Big Brown’s lost Triple Crown package delivery Saturday.

Since the owners pay his salary and the tracks let him train and could offer him paydays down the road, he lashed out at the only safe target: the jockey. Jockey Kent Desormeaux pulled Big Brown up to avoid hurting the horse after finding no final kick in the beast. After the race, Desormeaux said, “I had no horse. He was empty.”

Dutrow’s response? “I don’t see the horse with a problem, so I have to direct my attention toward the ride. That’s all I can come up with.”

We’ll take “the horse didn’t work out for three weeks before the longest race of its life” for $100,000, Alex.

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Rick Dutrow, Jr. has had a hard life. Nearly all his struggles in life, he’ll tell you, came from himself. The son of a successful horse trainer, he grew up to be a high school dropout, drug addict, and ne’er-do-well living in one of the barns at Aqueduct as recently as a decade ago. His girlfriend (and fellow addict) had been murdered in a robbery, leaving him with their young child.

Now he’s known as a wildly successful horse trainer, guiding Big Brown to the Belmont Stakes with the chance to secure the first Triple Crown in what seems like umpteen years. He’s independently wealthy and has come to relish the fame that comes from being on top again.

The hard livin’ man never fully left the savvy professional, though. That’s why we get colorful stories about him laying $100,000 of his own money on Big Brown in the Belmont and his recent comment that no one would dare intentionally block Big Brown from winning the Triple Crown because “… if someone did something like that they might get assassinated after the race.”

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Big Brown is one Belmont Stakes win away from capturing horse racing’s elusive Triple Crown. And trainer Rick Dutrow Jr. sounds very confident in his steed. In fact, he’s down right arrogant.

ESPN looks a gift horse trainer in the mouth, as Dutrow took a swipe at the competition Wednesday. Casino Drive is being talked about as the best bet to beat Big Brown at the Belmont. But Dutrow isn’t buying it:

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