Tax Credit didn’t Run for the Roses at Churchill Downs, or even for the Hambletonian.

My dear friend was the first person I knew that actually owned a horse that ran in pursuit of prize money.

The animal had the catchy name of Tax Credit. Taxi, as I came to call the beautiful beast from afar, didn’t run for the roses. No, this horse wasn’t a thoroughbred. Tax Credit was a trotter. Or maybe a pacer. It was a quarter-century ago when I had a few T-shirts made up. Brian’s said “Tax Credit Owner.” Mine and a couple of others read “Tax Credit Pit Crew.”

I knew enough about harness racing, what with Vernon Downs a short drive to the east and my position as assistant sports editor at the Syracuse daily, to realize that cars had pit crews, not horses.

No matter. The shirts made us laugh.

I think back to that night when Brian and I, accompanied by my sisters, went to Yonkers to actually watch Tax Credit run.

The horse didn’t win, but the night, as I recall it, was a blast.

You could say that Brian Held was my partner in fun.

We both grew up on Long Island. His downstate accent was one of the earliest to greet me when I walked into the Syracuse daily’s newsroom.

We talked about the newspaper business even when we weren’t on the clock. We drank plenty of beer. He met my family, and they loved him. I met his family, and struck friendships. We took memorable road trips. One December, we jumped into the new and little Chevy Spectrum of his girlfriend, Janet Gramza, and four of us took off for Detroit to watch the football team from my alma mater, Maryland, play our new hometown team, Syracuse, in the Cherry Bowl. Jannie wasn’t thrilled when I started calling her car Foggie — the defroster definitely couldn’t keep up with four bodies in the dead of winter — but I can still clearly see in my mind that the trip was outstanding.

Then Brian moved to Maryland. In fact, coincidentally, he took the job of city editor at the Prince George’s Journal, the paper where I’d been sports editor before my move to Syracuse.

He returned to stand up for me at my first wedding. I went down to visit him in his new hometown of Annapolis. I went down again when he moved to the city of Cumberland, in Western Maryland. Diane, our friend Margaret McCormick and I were invited to a weekend stay at a western Maryland lodge to celebrate his wedding, to Robin. Brian came back north for a weekend stay to help me talk through my troubles in the early days of my divorce.

But as a decade went by in the blink of an eye, our long-distance friendship shifted to the occasional phone call and letter.

We talked about the Mets and Maryland sports and work and life. Even if a year went by between phone calls, we’d jump right back in the middle of our conversation, like easy friends can and do.

Those life discussions took on the seriousness of middle age. Brian suffered devastating family news; both his sisters, Dena and Pam, fell after courageous battles against cancer.

Brian didn’t get a promotion he thought he deserved, so he moved to Kentucky. He subsequently had some troubles at a job there. Nevertheless, his voice still rang with resolve. He’d decided to move back to Cumberland to follow Robin, who’d had enough of Kentucky and returned months previous.

I didn’t get a new phone number.

And then I didn’t get an answer from emails or social media messages. A year went by. Gaps like this weren’t uncommon, I rationalized.

Last summer, I was blindsided when Jannie got me on the phone.

Brian Held had died, of a heart attack, on July 14, 2011, a month after his 55th birthday. He passed away in Glasgow, Kentucky, before he had a chance to move back to Cumberland.

Robin had found some unanswered emails in an old account of Brian’s. She asked Jannie to tell Margaret and I the bad news.

I cried on the phone with Jannie. She and Maggie and I grieved with Facebook messages, too. Then I shoved the awful news back in my emotional vault, to be reckoned with later.

Like on this beautiful Kentucky Derby day.

Brian Held and his love of horses will be on my mind as I watch the NBC broadcast with my dear wife, Karen. I will raise a bottle of Bud Light Lime in memory of my old partner in fun.