Andy Beyer officially stepped down a couple of weeks ago as the Washington Post's horse racing writer, opting to accept a lucrative buy-out package from the paper that had been his employer since 1978. The scoundrels, juicers, inept racing executives and ne'er do wells that had been targets of his insightful, probing and often biting columns might have cheered the news, but no one else did.

For the better part of three decades, nobody has churned out more entertaining and astute racing coverage than Beyer. From him, you never got mawkish prose about the sun rising over the twin spires or features about Barney the stable goat and his friendship with the 100-1 shot in the Derby. Instead, he tackled tough and important subjects and wrote about them intelligently.

As it turns out, he's not going to go away. The thought of packing away his laptop and retiring to Florida for the rest of his life holds no appeal to him. Beyer, 60, has agreed to write 26 racing columns a year for the Post on a contractual basis and hopes to contribute a few additional columns to the Daily Racing Form. He will also, of course, continue to produce the Beyer speed figures that have become, to so many, an indispensable handicapping tool.

That's a good thing. This game needs someone out there saying, "Hey, this isn't right." And Andy Beyer needs an outlet.

"Anybody who cares about racing regularly sees so many things that are outrageous or annoying," he said. "If I had no journalistic outlet I would find it very frustrating."

He hasn't worked out any kind of set schedule yet, though he's sure he'll be writing more during the exciting times of year (Triple Crown season, Saratoga) than during the dullest racing months on the calender. Mainly, he just wants a chance to be heard when he has something to say.

"I will still be very much involved in racing," Beyer said. "I am always playing close attention to it. There'll always be stuff that I see where I'll say to myself something like, 'This is stupid. Doesn't anyone else see that this guy is juicing his horses.' There aren't a lot of people in racing journalism who are able or willing to speak out on certain subjects that I regularly speak out on. I certainly want to keep popping off."

Beyer had no intention of "retiring" from the Post, where he had the best job in racing journalism. The paper let him do whatever he wanted and go wherever he wanted and he hadn't been burdened in years with the grind of covering the sport as a daily beat. But the package offered Beyer and dozens of other veteran Post staffers was one he couldn't possibly pass up.

"The thought of not working for them anymore had never crossed my mind," he said. "I love what I do. But the Post's offer was so good that the difference between working for them and not working for them over the next five years was, financially, negligible. It was an offer no one could have refused."

By stepping down at the Post, he'll no longer have to deal with the few negative aspects of his job. One was having to spend one week every year in Louisville, Kentucky for the Kentucky Derby, never exactly Beyer's idea of paradise on earth.

"I'm really looking forward to being absent from Louisville," he said. "People who don't go there think that's heresy. But after covering the Derby for 33 years (he also covered Derbies for the Washington Star and the Washington Daily News), I don't think I'm going to see anything new. I suppose if the reincarnation of Secretariat showed up for the race I could always go back. It's a real grind there."

He also won't have to worry about producing a column on a regular basis. Every columnist goes through it; sometimes there just isn't anything interesting that needs to be said.

One thing that won't change is Beyer's gambling prowess. He has his bags packed for his annual trip to Gulfstream and he's developed a passion for the product at Tampa Bay Downs, as cheap as it is. He says he's spend as many as 12 hours a day preparing to tackle the meets at the two Florida tracks this year. He probably gets more excitement out of snuffing out the $36.80 winner in a $4,000 claimer at Tampa that had a horrible trip last time out than writing a really good column. But it is that sort of contagious enthusiasm for the gambling aspects of the sport that has endeared him to so many horseplayers over the years, all of whom are chasing the dream, to score out at the windows.

He'll be busier than ever over the next couple of months, handicapping, making his speed figures and writing the occasional column. Without Beyer writing regularly at the Post, it won't be quite the same, but he makes this promise: "I'm not going to be lying around spending my days in a hammock."