Excerpt from the Spring 2009 program;
The career of Joe Hirsch was closely intertwined with the history of Keeneland's Toyota Blue Grass Stakes (G1). The renowned Daily Racing Form reporter and columnist, who died on January 9th, began covering the Blue Grass Stakes in 1957. That was the same year Hirsch launched his Derby doings, a daily Form update of which horses were being considered for the Kentucky Derby (G1), where and how they were training and what were the plans to get them to the promised land of the Roses.
It would be the only two years before Tomy Lee became the first of seven colts within 14 years to parlay his Blue Grass Stakes triumph into a Derby victory and raise the Keeneland race to the upper strata of Derby preps.
In his first reportage of the Blue Grass, Hirsch was not covering the Derby winner of 1957, but the race was won by the Round Table, a promising little colt emerging to greatness. In his advance piece on the day of the Blue Grass, upcoming Blue Grass, Hirsch invoked colorful imagery.