News flash: Churchill Downs stewards investigating Kentucky Derby ride by winning jockey Jose Santos. The Getty photograph that appeared in the Miami Herald of a possible object in Santos' right hand is described as "very suspicious" by steward Rick Leigh.

This kind of story almost makes a former ink-stained wretch long to be back in the newspaper business. An old fashioned, headline-grabbing racing controversy is fun for everyone, unless, of course, you happen to be Santos, Funny Cide's trainer Barclay Tagg, one of the partners of Sackatoga Stable or perhaps NTRA commissioner Tim Smith.

Unfortunately -- or fortunately, depending on your perspective -- this controversy shouldn't be around long.

I'll have to admit; when I first saw the enlarged photograph of Santos' hand, I was more than a bit suspicious. My first thought, obviously, is that Santos might have been carrying a small battery-powered electrical stimulation device, strictly forbidden by racing rules.

Such "batteries" or "joints" have long been a part of horse racing lore. Jockey Billy Patin was suspended for five years when it was determined he carried such a device during the 1999 Arkansas Derby, which he won aboard another 3-year-old gelding, longshot maiden Valhol, who was later disqualified from purse winnings.

The difference is, the Valhol story had legs. Has anyone bothered to look at NBC's replay of Santos celebrating after Funny Cide crossed the finish in front? If you have a good VCR or a TiVo and can make NBC's slow motion advance frame-by-frame, the case against Santos, if one can call it that, falls apart faster than a wet tortilla.

At the finish of the Kentucky Derby, Santos had the whip in his right hand and lifted it in triumph over New York-bred gelding Funny Cide's 12-to-1 victory. Santos was gripping the whip the same way a golfer would grip a club, holding the handle as the stitched leather loop used to strike the horse was pointing straight up. After a few strides, Santos instinctively turned the whip downward in his right hand, which riders often do in the aftermath of a race. Moving the whip from upward to downward while using only one hand requires that the stick be twirled in the hand, much like a baton. In quick succession, Santos moved his index finger from one side of the whip handle to the other, then used his thumb to turn the whip downward as he looped his other three fingers across the top of the whip.

It took Santos little more than a second to twirl the whip downward in his right hand. The Getty photograph was snapped at the precise moment Santos was shifting his remaining three fingers over the whip to readjust his grip.

In frame-by-frame video advance of NBC footage, nothing other than a whip can be seen in Santos' hand.

After viewing the video and then re-examining the photograph, it becomes very obvious that what at first glance seems to be an object between Santos' index and middle finger is actually the darkness created by the underside of Santos' palm. And the small dot between the fingers that makes the so-called object appear almost three-dimensional is actually a pinhole view through Santos' fingers of the teal silks of Jerry Bailey, who is positioned directly behind Santos in the photograph.

Furthermore, after Santos turned down his whip, he then closed his right palm tightly around the whip handle. If an electrical stimulation device had been in that palm, Santos' celebratory grin would have instead been a grimace of pain.

The help that Funny Cide received from Santos in winning the Kentucky Derby was the perfect stalking trip that Santos engineered, not a jolt from a Duracell.

Ironically, it was TV that played a central role in Patin's suspension and Valhol's ultimate disqualification at Oaklawn Park in 1999.

Shortly after the Arkansas Derby, a track maintenance worker found an electrical device on the track near the inside rail on the clubhouse turn. The race was televised live by ESPN, and Oaklawn officials asked the network for all video angles of Patin and Valhol. As is usually the case, one of ESPN's rooftop cameras was assigned to zoom in on the winner and follow him as he galloped out after the finish.

What that camera saw was recorded in the ESPN production truck, and the video was damning: as Valhol was coasting to a stop after the race, Patin discreetly dropped a small black object from his left hand at precisely the point the electrical device was found on the track.

But that video evidence wasn't all. Patin had also agreed to wear a tiny wireless microphone that ESPN uses for live sound effects during a race. At several points during the Arkansas Derby, static pops were clearly heard over Patin's microphone. When the electrical device found on the track was tested in a laboratory setting for its effects on an audiotape, engineers found that the sound fingerprint it created was identical to what was found on ESPN's tape.

Old-timers willing to talk about such battery devices swear that their effects are overrated, and that their use on a horse during a race usually does more harm than good. Assuming that Patin carried and used such a device on Valhol, did it matter? Who knows? Possibly not. After all, Valhol went on to win four stakes races and nearly $450,000, ostensibly without extra help.

Patin was ruled off because of evidence that was 1-to-5 against him.

Santos is simply the victim of a photographic quirk leading to a conspiratorial assumption that has no basis in reality.

In other words, there was no funny business in Funny Cide's victory.

Before joining ESPN in 1999 as the network's chief horse-racing analyst, Randy Moss covered the sport for more than two decades for the Dallas Morning News, the Fort Worth Star Telegram and the Arkansas Democrat.