Rob Murphy

"It's invisible," says Rob Murphy. "And sometimes it moves. Sometimes it's an oval; sometimes an oblong with no corners." On one level, then, there's nothing there at all. Yet those, for many years, were the parameters of his working life. As a relief pitcher for eight MLB teams between 1985 and 1995, all his focus was on that void behind the batter, and the elusive margins between strike and ball. Little wonder, then, if another great passion of Murphy's life is all about giving definition to something most of us...

Slider (Jimmy Creed), third last out in the GII San Vincente S. to Nysos (Nyquist), will miss Saturday's Gotham S. at Aqueduct with a bruised left front foot, according to part-owners Rob Murphy and West Point Thoroughbreds' Terry Finley. Murphy, one of the West Point Partners, said that Slider had shipped to New York on Tuesday to prepare for the race, but came up with the issue Friday morning. Finley, a partner in the horse, said that X-rays of Slider's foot and ankle had come up negative. Slider broke his...