Given our city’s longtime fascination with all things brown, it was inevitable the day would come when we would have a Kentucky Derby horse named Big Brown. This animal is named for UPS, our city’s leading employer, and will take an unbeaten record – three wins in three starts – into the 133rd Derby on Saturday May 3.

I guess his credentials are good enough to get him an invitation to the ultra-snooty Barnstable-Brown Party, although he might need a good word from Owsley Brown, Phyllis George Brown or Bad, Bad Leroy Brown to merit a canter down the red carpet. (Red? How in the hell did red get in here?)

I’d recommend that his owners stay at the Brown Hotel, which was built and operated by the philanthropist and horse owner J. Graham Brown, a statue of whom is right outside the hotel’s entrance. He ran two utterly unremarkable horses in the Derby, Snuzzle finishing 15th to Count Turf in 1951 and On the Metal struggling home 10th to Carry Back a decade later.

Over the years many horsemen and sports writers have stayed at the Brown, including Ralph Lowe, who dreamed the night before the 1957 that jockey Bill Shoemaker would cost his Gallant Man the Derby by misjudging the finish line. The next day, that’s exactly what happened.

If the owners don’t fancy the Brown, perhaps they have the connections to get into that relatively new avant-garde joint on Main Street that’s owned by Laura Lee Brown and her husband, Drew “Bundini” Brown.

Wait a minute. That’s not right. Bundini was Muhammad Ali’s sidekick, and he’s one of the featured attractions at the museum on Main Street that houses Owsley Brown Frazier’s weapons and armor collection.

Ooops! Wrong again. Getting our Browns mixed up here. Thank heavens the baseball player who used the first bat manufactured by Hillerich & Bradsby was Pete Browning. Had he been Pete Brown, we’d be in even more do-doo than we already are.

You get the point. Louisville is Brown Town, U.S.A. If cities could be identified by color, New York might be a bold blue, Miami a hot pink, Atlanta a sizzling red, Chicago an iron gray, and Los Angeles a rainbow coalition. But Louisville is brown. Good, old solid brown. Not too bold, not too dull. Just brown.

Everywhere you go in Louisville, you bump into brown. There’s Brownsboro Road and Browns Lane. If you win big on Derby Day, Brown Brothers Cadillac will sell you a nice ride and Brown Waterhouse Kaiser will be happy to meet your jewelry needs. And, of course, you can’t come to Louisville without sampling a Hot Brown, our city’s main contribution to Southern cuisine unless you want to count the cheeseburger, which supposedly was invented at Kaelin’s.

Brown, as in John Y. Jr., is the man who talked Col. Harland Sanders into letting him market his fried-chicken recipe and later hired Hubie Brown to coach the Kentucky Colonels, the pro basketball team that won the 1975 ABA championship.

And speaking of Browns in hoops, don’t forget that Louisville’s first NCAA champion in 1980 had a center named Wiley Brown and beat a UCLA team coached by Larry Brown in the final game. I don’t think the Cards had a cheerleader named Sweet Georgia Brown, but I could be wrong.

You want brown? We’ve got brown

The Brown & Williamson Club at Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium was donated by the tobacco company before it pulled up stakes and moved to North Carolina, at least partly because too many of its customers where ending up at the Brown Cancer Center.

And while we’re on the subject of vices, it should be pointed out that the bourbon whisky used to make the mint juleps sold at Churchill Downs is produced by Brown-Forman, which George Garvin Brown founded in 1870. Today Brown-Forman is best known as the owner of Jack Daniel’s, the biggest selling distilled spirit in the world. (Surely a brown-label version of Jack is coming soon to a liquor store near you.)

One of the Brown-Forman Browns, W.L. Lyons Brown, entered a colt named Fathom in the 1970 Derby and hired a female jockey, Diane Crump, to ride him This almost caused a, ah, brown-out in the uptight racing establishment. Poor Fathom acquitted himself well until fading in the stretch, finishing 15th in the 17-horse field.

Until now, the only Derby starter with Brown in his or her name was Brown Rambler, who finished 15th in 1952. However, of the 132 Derby winners, all but 13 have been brown or a shade of it (bay, chestnut, or dark bay).

Now comes Big Brown, and thank heavens he doesn’t have an opponent named FedEx or Snail Mail. He won the Florida Derby in such impressive fashion that he was certain to be one of the favorites at Churchill regardless of his name.

However, consider this: If all the UPS employees bet on him, along with everybody in Louisville named Brown or who has some kind of Brown connection, his odds will be skewed beyond recognition.

So I’m going to take a big pass on Big Brown. My color scheme will be gray (the horse’s color) and green (the shade of U.S. currency). If I’m wrong, I’ll be brown-bagging it until the grass around here turns, well, you know.