Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Code Name:  Pebgate

En Route To Princeton, New Jersey, January 6, 2009--I am airborne as I write this. The chief, who called after I wrote about Peb being sacked after a 54-year career as cartoonist for the Daily Racing Form, is dispatching me to Princeton, where Peb lives and where he learned that with a free lunch come walking papers. After talking to the chief, I immediately packed a trenchcoat and a snap-brim fedora. They were left over from Halloween about 10 years ago, when I went to a party in Malibu as Philip Marlowe. At least I thought I was Marlowe, but at the end of the evening they gave me third prize in the Buster Keaton look-alike contest.

After packing, I called Phone Book Universal and they Fedexed me the Princeton Yellow Pages. They weren't much help. There are 136 restaurants in Princeton, and Peb could have eaten in any one of them. I need an eavesdropping waiter to put the case on ice. I have the time to eat my way through all of the eateries, but not the expense account. I got permission from the chief to hire a local shamus for a few days, and went to the Yellow Pages again. Under "Plumbers" I found a firm called Gumshoe, Gumshoe & Gumshoe, P.I. They had a toll-free number, but on my first call I misdialed, reached a 900 number and got for free a recording with two horses to bet in the last-race superfecta at Philadelphia Park. They offered me two other horses for $1,200.

The number for Gumshoe, etc., was busy for half an hour, so I decided that I'd sign on one of their ops after I got to Princeton. Since it was chilly in Los Angeles, in the low 50s, I wore the hat and coat to the airport. At the curbside check-in, there was trouble. A skycap looked at me queerly and said in a demanding tone, "What's your business back East?"

"What business is it of yours?" I said. "You're a skycap."

"I might look like a skycap, but I really work for that guy over there." He pointed to something in the shadows, next to the building.

"That's a golf bag," I said, but before I could get the last word out of my mouth, the golf bag began to move in my direction.

In the bright sunlight, as the bag got closer, I could see that it was a clever disguise. A man popped out, dressed in a trenchcoat and snap-brim fedora. He bore a striking resemblance to Buster Keaton. He threw down a niblick and a 3-wood, reached into his coat pocket and produced a badge, which identified him as a federal marshal. "Now," he said, "what's your business back there?"

I thought about blowing my cover, telling him about the Peb lunch and questions it left unanswered, but all that might have caused me to miss the flight. Instead I lied through my teeth and told him I was going back to bet the last-race superfecta at Philadelphia Park. He nodded knowingly, told one of the real skycaps to check my bag and pointed me in the direction of the gate.

My seatmate on the plane is a stranger, and a few minutes after we were airborne he offered a business card that read: "Esadaf Amine."

"This is really unusual," I said. "Last month, someone with your name invaded my checking account and illegally withdrew $514."

"Not so strange," he said. "You can't imagine how many Esadaf Amines there are in the Istanbul telephone book. By the way, got any pictures of your kids in your wallet?"

The stewardesses have been moving up and down the aisle, taking orders for box lunches. One of them came up to me and Amine and said, "There's a choice between blood tongue and headcheese. We might also have one or two fried yeasts left. We have a special today. They're $19.95."

"Maybe I'll have the tongue. . . " I said.

"Sure you wouldn't prefer the headcheese?" the stewardess said. There was a prolonged wink coming from her right eye.

"Make it the headcheese," I said. The ins and outs of Pebgate work in strange ways.

Minutes later, I opened my box, trying to avoid the stealthy glances of Esadaf Amine, who was struggling with his tightly wrapped box of yeast. Inside my box, besides the headcheese, pumpernickel and imported hummus, was a fortune cookie. I trembled as I removed the cellophane, crushed the cookie with my thumb and index finger and salvaged the little slip of paper inside. On one side were four numbers. On the other side, it read: "Last-race Superfecta: Philadelphia Park."

The stewardess was back, asking for our drink orders. She was now wearing a smart silver patch over her right eye. So that wasn't a prolonged wink after all.

An hour or two before I boarded this plane, Peb had reached me, and while he generally approved of most of what I wrote about his dismissal by the Racing Form, he also said: "I would like to clear up something important which may have been misleading, probably by my fault." He went on to say that none of the new owners of the Form were at the lunch, just two good friends from the paper, Rich Rosenbush, the editor-in-chief, and Mandy Minger, vice president for marketing. "What I found so ludicrous was that two of my favorite people were delegated by the new owners to give me the bad news," Peb said. "It was awkward, but I'm not bitter, and above it. I want Rich and Mandy to know that I still cherish their friendship."

Pebgate has taken on a life of its own (I did not coin the word; Peter Berry, the track announcer at Mountaneer Park, should get credit).

Our plane is descending now, and as I look down on Greater Philadelphia, I'm trying to remember the last time I was in Princeton. It was almost 25 years ago, when I covered the Olympic rowing trials for the U.S. team. This was during the days when the Los Angeles Times was plying me with one major assignment after another.

There was this coxswain from Erie, Pennsylvania, who introduced me to one of the finest restaurants in Princeton. The maitre'd's name was Claude, and if Claude was still around, he might help me cut through the 135 remaining restaurants in town and solve Pebgate.

Claude would surely remember me. When the coxswain and I arrived, he said: "I'm your host."

"Your Host, of course," I said. "The sire of Kelso, right?"

After we ordered, the coxswain looked at me and said: "Wonder why we got the table next to the toilets?"

Continuation from Bill Christine's Lines in the Sand blog post on Jan.2nd

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

No. 149

Los Angeles, December 30, 2008--The last thing I wanted to do was get out The List on Christmas day. The List is a grim compilation of the jockey deaths in North America since 1940. When he was running the Jockeys' Guild, John Giovanni kept a copy of The List on the corner of his desk every day. No sadist, Giovanni needed a ready reminder that jockey safety was paramount.

In the early hours of Christmas day, Sam Thompson Jr., one of the most competent quarter horse jockeys to ever ride at Los Alamitos, became No. 149 on The List. Five nights before, Thompson, pulling up a seventh-place finisher in an eight-horse dash worth $7,830, went down when his mount broke a knee. The accident, on the turn and about 200 yards past the wire, was seen by hardly anybody. The ill-fated filly apparently rolled over on Thompson, who sustained upper-body injuries that proved to be fatal. Sam Thompson was 36, and had ridden more than 600 winners at the Orange County track, 55 of them in stakes races.

According to The List, there have been three jockey fatalities at Los Alamitos, the last before Thompson's the death of Juan Limon in 1994. The last horse Limon rode was supposed to be Ramon Figueroa's mount, but Figueroa had trouble getting from Prescott Downs, in Arizona, where he had ridden in the afternoon. Figueroa's cab from the Long Beach airport was pulling up in front of Los Alamitos at the same time that Limon's catch ride was in the post parade for the tragic race.

In a less dramatic way, Thompson might not have been at Los Alamitos for his last ride, either. There were some horses at Sunland Park, in New Mexico, that he could have ridden, but he told friends, including his long-time love, Kristen Watanabe, that there was this promising 2-year-old in the eighth race that was a must ride. It is essential for jockeys to pledge allegiance to young horses with talent, to sew them up should they develop for the potential big races down the road. Thompson surmised that Harems Dynasty fit this mold. She had never run, but her breeding forecast greatness, and he had been on her back several times for morning workouts. Her dam, the thoroughbred Harems Choice, had already thrown an All-American Futurity winner, and her sire, First Down Dash, is a horse of the year who's sired five winners of the million-dollar race. It would have been impossible for Thompson to ride at Sunland while another jockey handled Harems Dynasty's debut. Watanabe, his girlfriend of 11 years, ponied Harems Dynasty and her jockey to the gate.

In order to ride, the 36-year-old Thompson went against his family's wishes right from the start. After high school in North Carolina, they urged him to attend college. He broke his foot early in 2008, missed most of the year and resisted suggestions that he retire. Eerily, he told his father that even if he died riding a horse, he would die happily.

No. 141 on The List is J.C. Gonzalez, killed in a spill at Fairplex Park in 1999. I hadn't covered a Fairplex opener in years, but I was there that day. Ingrained in my mind is the sight of another rider, Danny Sorenson, returning in dishabille to the jockeys' room after he had been treated for minor injuries at first-aid.

"(Gonzalez) didn't make it," Sorenson had heard a doctor say.

"I don't think I heard you right," Sorenson said.

"I won't lie to you," the doctor said. "He didn't make it."

No. 126 was Mike Venezia, killed when a trailing horse crushed him at Belmont Park in 1988. I was off that day, lunching with some old friends from Japan at a restaurant in Beverly Hills. In the middle of a second manhattan, I made a courtesy call to the office. "Venezia's been killed at Belmont, and we want you to write it," somebody said. They wanted the Halloween angle. My twin girls, growing up on Long Island years before, went trick-or-treating as jockeys, and the thoughtful Venezia had reached into his trunk at the track and come up with two complete riding outfits, including the dickeys. The twins were 10 years old and Venezia's loaners fit perfectly. Years later, Robbie Davis, the powerless rider of the trailing horse, described the accident in great detail before I could stop him. Davis gave me more gruesome particulars than I really wanted to hear.

Gonzalez was a thoroughbred rider, but his death still hit close to home at Los Alamitos. His fiancee, Elena Aquino, ponied quarter horses, like Sam Thompson's girl, at the track. Gonzalez and Elena were to be married a week after the spill. A few years later, Elena Aquino became Mrs. Oscar Andrade, the wife of a quarter horse jockey who once won seven races on one card. I met Elena in a Long Beach hospital, where her husband was bed-ridden. He had been left paralyzed from the waist down as the result of a spill several days before. Their son was at the hospital, too. Oscar Andrade Jr. was 10 days old.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

By Any Name, He Wins Often

Los Angeles, December 23, 2008--Before the year ends, and before Santa Anita begins, Rafael Bejarano deserves a nickname. "Peruvian Pepperpot" is alliterative enough, only it's derivative (the late Ralph Neves was the "Portuguese Pepperpot"), and Bejarano isn't a firebrand (although there was that skirmish with Victor Espinoza that caught the stewards' attention at Del Mar). "The Wild Bull of the Pampas" popped into my head, but the heirs of the old heavyweight brawler, Luis Firpo, might complain, and that, too, would require a personality change on the part of Bejarano. "The South American Spitfire" was another idle thought that's also out of place. There would have to be a rematch with Espinoza before that fits.

If Lorenz Hart, the witty lyricist, were still with us, he might resort to "Give 'em hell, Rafael." No, I think the sensible thing is to set aside the nicknames. Chris McCarron rode 7,141 winners without really acquiring one. Vince DeGregory, one of McCarron's early agents, called him "Macaroon," but the moniker lacked legs.

McCarron's name came up in connection with Bejarano's the other day. In the what-else-is-new category, the headline said that Bejarano, with 52 wins, led the jockey standings for the Hollywood Park fall meet. That meant that Bejarano, at age 26, had run the table in Southern California for 2008. He won the titles at all five major meets--Santa Anita, Hollywood Park spring/summer, Del Mar, Oak Tree at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park fall. Since Southern California went to virtual year-round racing in the late 1960s, the only other jockeys to score such a five-bagger have been McCarron, in 1983, and Pat Valenzuela, in another of his reincarnations, in 2003.

McCarron's five-meet sweep, achieved when he was 28, is still the benchmark, because he won 379 races, 129 more than Bejarano this year, and to boot McCarron was competing in a cauldron that included Laffit Pincay, Eddie Delahoussaye, an aging but still formidable Bill Shoemaker, Sandy Hawley, Valenzuela and a whippersnapper from Washington State named Gary Stevens.

Valenzuela turned 41 before he won his fifth straight title in 2003. Just for the hell of it, here's the breakdown by wins for those three signal years:

	McCarron	Valenzuela	Bejarano
Santa Anita	135	94	67
Hollywood	76	81	56
Del Mar	63	52	45
Oak Tree	50	34	30
Hollywood	55	27	52
Totals	379	288	250

At the time, McCarron was relentless. From 1980 through 1984, there were nine meets, spring and fall, at Hollywood Park, and he won them all. During the middle of that incredible run, he won the 1982 fall title, which together with his 5-for-5 in 1983, gave him a string of six championships. That's something Bejarano will be able to shoot for when Santa Anita's 2008-09 meet opens on December 26.

Talking about Bejarano in a recent Blood-Horse interview, the retired McCarron said: "He must have incredible balance, because horses don't tire on him. (Many of) his horses close strongly, and he wins a lot of photos."

Bejarano gave California horseplayers a preview of future attractions on Santa Anita Derby day in 2006, when he dropped in from the East to become only the ninth jockey to win six or more races on one card at the historic track. That day, Bejarano finishing second with Point Determined in the big race was beside the point. When Bejarano finally made his West Coast move, at the behest of the bi-coastal trainer Bobby Frankel, in the fall of 2007, Californians kind of knew what to expect.

"He's light (105 pounds on a 5-foot-2 frame), he's eager, he rides good and he wins, that's the main thing," Frankel said. Eager? Bejarano confessed to The Blood-Horse that he once drove 110 miles an hour down U.S. 64, trying to get from Louisville to Keeneland in time to honor a call in the first race. Working some late trainees that day at Churchill Downs had threatened to keep him from the rest of his appointed rounds.

Bejarano began catching Frankel's attention about 2005, three years after he left Peru, and in the fall of that year he won the Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf with the Frankel-trained Intercontinental, a mare who supposedly had no business running against England's Ouija Board in the million-dollar race. In 2006 and 2007, Bejarano was entrusted with a couple of other Frankel evergreens, Precious Kitten and Ginger Punch, and last year, in the bog at Monmouth Park, he won the Breeders' Cup Distaff with Ginger Punch. Second by a neck was Hystericalady, in another of those photo finishes that McCarron talked about.

In 2008, Bejarano's mounts have earned more than $16 million, but in the Eclipse Awards voting he is expected to finish no better than second to Garrett Gomez, whose mounts have earned an obscene $23 million. In Grade I races, the jockeys' equivalent of home runs, the two riders are actually even at nine apiece, but in total graded races it's no contest. Gomez has Bejarano almost doubled.

On launch day at Santa Anita, in the Malibu Stakes, Gomez will be reunited with an old friend, Colonel John. Bejarano draws the assignment on Guns on the Table, a longshot who'll be less of an overlay because of who's on his back.