The ANNOTICO Report

Leonard Riggio, the Barnes & Noble chairman,entering his 1st Kentucky Derby
with "Noble Causeway"  grew up in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, 84th
St. and 16th Ave., rooting not for the Dodgers but for the Yankees, owned
by George Steinbrenner, also the owner of the favorite today 'Bellamy Road".

Nick Zito is the Trainer for 5 of the 20 horses in todays Kentucky Derby,
including Reggio's "Noble Causeway", Steinbrenner's " Bellamy Road", and
Andromeda's Hero, Sun King, and High Fly,

Riggio, Zito, and Steinbrenner all got shut out today.

New York Times
By Harvey Araton
May 6, 2005

Louisville, Ky.---In the conspicuously puzzling absence of George
Steinbrenner, may we present another prominent New York Boss, who also has
an entry in tomorrow's Kentucky Derby, employs Nick Zito as his trainer and
counts himself among the legions of Yankees fans wondering if his team is
turning into an old plow horse before his eyes.

The book on Leonard Riggio, the Barnes & Noble chairman, is that he grew up
in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, 84th St. and 16th Ave., rooting not
for the Dodgers but for Mickey, Whitey and especially Yogi after sitting in
Ebbets Field the day Berra clouted a pair of two-run home runs off Don
Newcombe in Game 7 of the 1956 World Series.

Riggio was 15 at the time, a boy with his dad, Italian-Americans bursting
with pride. "I met Yogi years later and I asked him about those home runs,"
Riggio said. "Yogi said, 'The ball looked like a grapefruit that day,' and
I told him, 'You sure hit it like it was.' "

Riggio is the owner of Noble Causeway, one of the five Zito-trained Derby
horses but part of the group Zito innocently referred to yesterday as "my
other four" after concluding his daily briefing on Steinbrenner's would-be
wonder horse, the favored Bellamy Road.

Riggio happened to be standing a few feet away from Zito, behind the white
fence constructed to corral the herd of news media this week at Barn 36,
listening in but apparently taking no offense. They have run the Derby 130
times without Riggio, and he said he is just happy to be here at Churchill
Downs for Number 131. "My first day here and I can see it building already,
I can feel it, like it's going to be bigger than the Super Bowl," Riggio
said.

Isn't that why the superrich race their four-legged toys, to engage in the
hyperbole and feel less like successful salesmen, more like serious
sportsmen, even if all they really do is plunk down the dough and pay for
advice?

As Riggio said, referring to Zito, "He lets me make decisions but has to
kind of tell me what to decide." No matter. In the unlikely event that
Noble Causeway, second in the Florida Derby, does something wonderful this
Triple Crown season, the hundreds of megastores under Riggio's control will
be dressing their windows with books autographed by the company chairman
himself.

"If you're privileged to have the wealth, this is a great sport, an
incredible thing, to be involved in," Zito said.

In all, Riggio owns five companies and has been listed in the Forbes 400 of
the richest Americans. Even if it's too soon to cast the Orioles as more
than the rabbit in the American League East race, Riggio easily outranks
Steinbrenner in self-made net worth and could surely afford to plug the
gaping holes in his favorite baseball team before it becomes a textbook
case on how to squander $200 million.

In the thoroughbred racing business for five years, Riggio said he knew
many of the owners, although he has never met Steinbrenner, the Yankees'
principal owner. Is it the pressure of finally running a favorite here
after compiling a Derby record - zero for five - that reads like a daily
line from a Yankees box score?...

Asked to compare his management style with Steinbrenner's, Riggio said,
"I'm laid-back." He was talking about his thoroughbred interests, not
Barnes & Noble, which has been to the mom-and-pop bookselling outlet what
the Yankees have been to the small baseball market. "You can't be laid-back
in retail," he admitted. "Everything is detail, detail, detail."

At Churchill Downs, that's Zito's responsibility, multiplied by five. All
Riggio has to do is breathe in the blue grass, make the rounds, talk the
talk. "I hope these five minutes of fame will turn into an hour," said the
Boss who has come to the Derby to play it by the book.

E-mail: hjaraton@nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/06/
sports/sportsspecial/06araton.html