Baltimore ? There was nothing up his sleeve this time, either.

But the showman in jockey Jose Santos wouldn’t let the moment go without a flourish.

And so the second he crossed the finish line aboard Funny Cide after a near-record Preakness win, Santos made a fist with his right hand, thrust it into the sky and then waved with the open palm toward the grandstand where his wife and children cheered, laughed and cried all at once.

But the jockey and the unlikely chestnut that have ripped the first two jewels from the Triple Crown were a long way from finished.

Santos then flashed a “V” for victory — or maybe it was two down, one to go — and said through a widening grin, “The only machine carrying me was the red horse.”

If there was a more appropriate end for one of the nuttiest two-week stretches in thoroughbred racing, somebody better get to work on it.

On the first Saturday in May, Funny Cide showed up in Louisville to take a swing at the Kentucky Derby with three strikes seemingly against him.

He was a New York-bred and none had ever won the Derby. He was a gelding and the last time a gelding had won the race was 1929.

And on his back was Santos, a jockey whose salad days were almost 15 years behind him.

As unlikely as the resulting win by the 12-1 shot in the Derby seemed, stranger still was what followed. A week later, a photograph and story in the Miami Herald raised questions about what Santos carried in his right hand beside a whip and though Santos was one of the most honorable riders in the business, that hardly placed him above suspicion.

Four years earlier, a jockey won the Arkansas Derby while concealing a battery-powered device to shock the horse, but was subsequently caught and suspended. When Santos tried, in heavily accented English, to answer questions about the photograph, his explanation caused even more confusion.

Jockey Jose Santos signals after winning the second leg of the Triple Crown. Funny Cide won the Preakness Stakes Saturday at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore.

But then three jockeys from the Derby stepped forward to try to clear his name and a day later, the Churchill Downs stewards followed suit.

Santos said he was grateful for the support and eager to get back to work. Though he vowed to win the Preakness, it was hardly the ideal way to prepare for the second-biggest race of his career. One of his children heard the accusations and left school in tears and some in Funny Cide’s camp knew all the reassurances in the world wouldn’t be enough for some people.

“The first day, we didn’t really think it would turn into the kind of fiasco it did,” said his wife, Rita. “But it started to take its toll.”

Everybody in Funny Cide’s corner took their lead from Santos and pretended otherwise. Jack Knowlton, who heads up the chestnut’s wacky ownership group, refused to call it a distraction. Trainer Barclay Tagg, a pessimist on good days, said he had plenty of other things to worry about.

But there was no denying the depth of their satisfaction when they crossed the oval on their way to the winner’s circle, stopping briefly to answer the same question.

Asked whether he could imagine a better ride than Santos had just made, Knowlton grinned and said, “He rode with a vengeance.”

Tagg simply beamed.

“He must have had a battery in each hand,” the trainer said, raising both palms with a flourish of his own.

Then he put a hand on his questioner’s arm and flashed another of those rare smiles. “Don’t write that,” Tagg said.

Too late — just as it might be too late for their rivals to stop Santos and Funny Cide, who is 3-for-3 at Belmont, from completing the first Triple Crown since Affirmed turned the trick in 1978.

“He just keeps on cruising,” said trainer Bob Baffert, who had won the last two Preakness Stakes.

Baffert sent out Indian Express against Funny Cide at the Derby and had no better luck Saturday with Senor Swinger.

“I’m getting off the bus at this stop,” he said. “I’ll watch the Belmont on TV.”

Before the race, Baffert sought out Santos.

“I can’t think of a guy who’s any more above suspicion than Jose. So I told him, cold as it is, he should have come out wearing black gloves. That would have given the conspiracy people even more to worry about.”

Lord knows, Funny Cide’s doubters will need some ammo. Knocking this horse is getting harder by the minute.

He’s overcome a commoner’s pedigree, a grouchy trainer, not-quite-rich owners and reached an understanding with the man in the saddle that both of them will work hard enough so that batteries need not be included.