LOUISVILLE – As I was hanging around Barn 37, waiting for Tom McCarthy to finish grooming General Quarters, Bob Baffert came driving along in a huge SUV. Some of my colleagues waved at him to stop and Baffert obliged. I used the opportunity to walk over and congratulate him for being voted in the Racing Hall of Fame.

“I’m glad the filly got in, too,” he said, referring to 1999 Kentucky Oaks winner Silverbulletday. “You were hard on me that year. You thought I should have run her in the Derby. I don’t regret that. The mistake I made was running her in the Belmont.”

Like coaches and athletics directors, horse trainers have long memories when it comes to criticism. They rarely acknowledge the positive stuff written about them because, well, that’s their due, right? But the critical pieces tend to linger in their memories, perhaps because there are so few of them.

Baffert was right, though. The morning after Charismatic won the 1999 Kentucky Derby, the headline on my column in The Lexington Herald-Leader said, “Baffert’s failure to win 3 is his own fault.” He ran a filly in that year’s Derby, Excellent Meeting, and she finished a creditable fifth.

But I still say he should have run Silverbulletday in the Derby because she was simply the fastest horse and most talented horse on the backstretch that spring. “Of this 3-year-old crop,” I wrote the day after the Derby, “she’s the only one that has demonstrated signs of greatness.”

I must humbly point out that history has proven me out. None of the 19 horses who ran in the 1999 Derby have made the Hall of Fame – and it’s likely that none ever will. But Silverbulletday will be inducted with her white-haired, wise-cracking trainer on August in Saratoga.

I’ve always liked Baffert, who was a breath of fresh – and sometimes hot – air when he first hit the Churchill Downs backstretch in 1996 with a gelding named Cavonnier, winner of the Santa Anita Derby.

The media and the public weren’t sure what to make of the laid-back Baffert, mainly because he was such a welcome contrast to the typical tight-lipped Derby trainer (D. Wayne Lukas and Nick Zito excepted, of course). How seriously should he be taken? Nobody knew. But the general feeling seemed to be that he had a better chance of being a one-hit wonder than a Hall of Famer.

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On Derby Day, Cavonnier got nipped at the wire by Grindstone. The photo finish was so close that William T. Young, the owner of Grindstone, superstitiously refused to move toward the winner’s circle until the result was official. When Grindstone’s number was posted at the winner, the crowd emitted a huge roar because Young was a beloved Kentucky elder statesman.

Nobody knew it at the time, but Baffert was the real deal. He proved it the next year, returning to Churchill and wining the Derby with Silver Charm. Then, in 1998, the overlooked Real Quiet made him the first trainer to win the Derby back-to-back since Lucien Laurin (1972 with Riva Ridge, 1973 with Secretariat).

In 1999, Baffert went for three in a row with three horses – the filly Excellent Meeting, the colt Prime Timber, and the gelding General Challenge. After Silverbulletday blew away her field in the Oaks, he seemed poised to win the Oaks-Derby double.

But that was the day that Charismatic, who had once run for a claiming tag, ran the race of his life to give Lukas his fourth – and most recent – Derby victory. Charismatic went on to win the Preakness and was making a late charge in the Belmont Stakes when he suffered a leg injury and was saved when his jockey, the late Chris Antley, jumped out of his saddle and held his injured leg off the ground until help could arrive.

The Belmont is where Baffert decided to try the boys with Silverbulletday, and I applauded his decision. I still do, for that matter. But what happened was something nobody anticipated. There was nothing in Charismatic’s past performances to indicate he would press the front-running Silverbulletday on the lead. But that’s what he did, hounding the filly into setting torrid fractions as she led for the first mile of the mile-and-a-half classic.

Antley’s strategy compromised the chances of both Charismatic and Silverbulletday. “Our only shot,” Baffert said, “was to go get out there and dictate the pace. I thought Chris would be the last one up there pressing the pace. They would not let her take a breather. They just gave her too much respect.”

The duel on the front end set up the race for Lemon Drop Kid, a pedestrian sort of colt who had finished fifth in the Blue Grass at Keeneland and ninth in the Kentucky Derby. “He was very underestimated and proved that he belonged with these,” said jockey Jose Santos. “He was dead game in the stretch and showed a lot of heart.”

The champion 2-year-old filly of 1998, Silverbulletday was even better at 3, winning another Eclipse as division champions. During a stretch of 11 wins in 12 starts, she posted Grade I victories in the Breeders Cup Juvenile Fillies, Ashland Stakes, Kentucky Oaks, Alabama Stakes, and Gazelle Handicap.

Her owner, Mike Pegram, also campaigned Real Quiet. He was instrumental in talking Baffert into switching from quarter horses to thoroughbreds in the late 1980s. Or, as Baffert put it, “Mike Pegram put me on scholarship to get into this business so it’s certainly fitting that I get in (the Hall of Fame) with one of Mike’s horses.”

Since this is only the 13th years that Baffert has been on the national scene, his election to the Hall makes him something of a phenom. But nobody can argue with his credentials. He won a third Derby with War Emblem in 2002 and is the only trainer ever to sweep the Derby and Preakness with three horses.

After a couple of years off the Derby Trail, Baffert seemed to climb back on last year when he won the Breeders Cup Juvenile with the Darley Stud’s Midshipman. However, the colt’s owner, Sheik Mohmmed of Dubai, took him away from Baffert and shipped him back to Dubai to train for the Derby.

But almost before anybody had time to offer condolences to Baffert, he popped up with Pioneerof The Nile, who swept the major Kentucky Derby preps in California, including the Santa Anita Derby. Meanwhile, in Dubai, Midshipman injured his right front leg in a training accident and will miss the Triple Crown races.

But Sheik Mohammed is just as resilient as Baffert. He’ll be represented in the Kentucky Derby by Regal Ransom and Desert Party, who finished 1-2, respectively, in the United Arab Emitres Derby. It would be some kind of poetic justice, not to mention a terrific story, if Pioneerof The Nile nipped one of the Darley Stud runners in a photo finish as close as the one Cavonnier lost to Grindstone.

After chatting with the media for a moments, Baffert pulled away. I’m delighted that he’s going into the Hall of Fame. And I hope he’ll forgive me for still thinking that Silverbulletday would have won the 1999 Kentucky Derby.