Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Blather and Billingsgate
LOS ANGELES, March 9, 2010--Frank Stronach has his good points and his bad points, although most of the time I find too much of one and not enough of the other. Satish Sanan is a much easier listen, as potty-mouthed as he sometimes becomes during his courageous regular appearances on Steve Byk's satellite radio show. I wonder whether Byk would allow less prestigious guests--and callers--to get away with the salty language that Sanan occasionally resorts to, but then I remind myself: This is the network that gives us a daily diet of Howard Stern, at approximately, what would you say?, $5,000 an f-bomb.
Maybe I'm a prude. During many of the years I worked for the Los Angeles Times, there was a corps of political-correctness police who were so rigid that we couldn't use the word "alien" unless it was someone from outer space; "Dutch treat" was verboten because it might insult the Dutch; and "paddywagon" was a no-no for fear those thin-skinned Irish would be offended. The late George Carlin talked about the 10 words you couldn't say on TV, but at The Times, there were hundreds of words, while acceptable in polite conversation, that couldn't be used in the newspaper. They even gave us updates--never subtracting words, but always adding--from time to time, and maybe, while I wasn't looking, I became a prude by osmosis.
An ideal would be a conversational cross between Stronach and Sanan. Stronach would be allowed to borrow a few of Sanan's four-letter words, but also make sense. Sanan would continue furnishing us tidbits about how various members of the racing establishment really feel about one another, but sound like an Austrian archduke instead of a Bowery bartender.
My guess, after last week's round with Byk, is that Sanan might muzzle himself on future shows, just when he was becoming the conscience that racing has so sadly lacked. In case you haven't been paying attention, in less than an hour Sanan trashed Churchill Downs, Monmouth Park, Lone Star Park and the New York Racing Association, and he also said something about Stronach changing his mind about every two weeks. Stronach might have even taken that last crack as a compliment. Sanan's fellow members on the Breeders' Cup board of directors didn't seem that disturbed about the Stronach reference, but the next day they pushed Sanan into making a public mea culpa about the other guys, and made him stand in the corner for a few hours.
Not everything Sanan says can be taken to the bank. In wholeheartedly defending Ahmed Zayat during his financial calamity, Sanan either knows something most of the rest of us don't know, or is simply helping a fellow bigshot horse owner circle the wagons. Arguing that the Breeders' Cup races should be held at the same track year after year, Sanan draws comparisons with the Melbourne Cup, the Indianapolis 500, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open tennis tournament, but gives short shrift to the fact that the Super Bowl and the World Series are wildly successful portable events. Equating horse racing with other sports is tantamount to skating on the thin ice; unlike the others, horse racing is a gambling game first, a sport second, and the imminent decision about the future of the Breeders' Cup might be the final straw if it goes the wrong way. If I have it right, the Breeders' Cup may care less about Churchill Downs after it hosts the races this year, but the day will come when the Breeders' Cup will need Churchill Downs, at any price. The list of tracks that are in a position to take on the Breeders' Cup is no longer a long one.
In supporting Santa Anita as the Breeders' Cup site, ad infinitum, Sanan overlooks most of the obvious drawbacks: Stronach, if he's still around, really does change his mind every two weeks; nothing's forever, not even the Oak Tree Racing Association's autumn lease with Stronach and Santa Anita; and wouldn't the Breeders' Cup need a dirt-track commitment from Santa Anita before it signs its life away?
When Stronach did his usual zigging and zagging during a recent visit to Santa Anita, he used the California Horse Racing Board as a whipping boy, suggesting that there are too many rules, especially about racing dates. Free enterprise, one of Stronach's favorite buzz phrases, and horse racing have never been good bedfellows. Look at Florida, where Stronach has a stake. Even before he got there, the racing commission turned the warring tracks loose, and there was chaos.
In California, waiting for Hollywood Park to close is like waiting for Godot. When that does happen, presumably in Stronach's lifetime, he might all but get his wish, if only by default. There will be only two tracks left in Southern California, Santa Anita and Del Mar, and more than enough dates to go around. But by then, will there be enough horses to go around? That's another story.
Written by Bill Christine
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
A Winter’s Tale
LOS ANGELES, March 2, 2010--A visit to Santa Anita on a dank Wednesday reminded me of a hoary show-biz joke. The one in which a patron calls the theater box office to buy a couple of tickets for a turkey. "What time is the show?" the customer asks. "What time can you get here?" the guy in the box office says.
My wife Pat and I head for the Turf Club, and there's hardly anybody there, save Jimmy O'Hara, the faithful maitre d'. Business is so slow that the personable O'Hara, who never seems to age, has time to chit-chat. He would also have time for a few hands of gin rummy.
"A lot of our best customers are leaving us," says O'Hara, who also works Hollywood Park and Del Mar on the Southern California circuit.
Between us, we name Ed Gann, Mary Jones Bradley and Betty Mabee, just in recent weeks. Not only were they Turf Club regulars, you knew the table where you could find them. Mary Jones Bradley, who raced Cougar II and Greinton, to name two, was always camped out at the first table at the top of the spiral staircase that led downstairs to Santa Anita's Chandelier Room.
O'Hara takes us to a table in the first row, with a perfect view of the finish line. At the table next to us, by himself, is Dick Van Patten, who started playing the horses while growing up in New York and has never quit. But for Van Patten, who is 81 and recently published a memoir, and our table, no one would be sitting in the first row. There's only a scattering of die-hards sitting in any of the rows. Van Patten is wearing a natty black Windbreaker that says "Hard Rock Cafe - Nashville" on the back.
"I found something in a used-book store that reminded me of you," I say to Van Patten. "It was a review of all the Broadway shows from 1938."
"I know what you're going to say," Van Patten said. "I was Dickie Van Patten then."
In January, Van Patten was driving from the San Fernando Valley to Santa Anita and got into an accident with another car. The other driver disappeared, perhaps to make a phone call, so Van Patten, afraid that he might miss a race, got back into his car and drove off. Later, one of Van Patten's sons appeared at the scene and assured the police that his father wasn't a hit-and-run artist, he just had a sure thing at Santa Anita. These were our kind of cops. They understood perfectly.
It is more stimulating talking to O'Hara and Van Patten, because the fields are doo-doo. First race, five horses. Second race, six horses. Fourth race, four horses. All told, after scratches on the so-called all-weather surface, 52 runners in the eight races. I look at the next day's overnight and there are 55 horses entered. Horsemen might say otherwise, but if this isn't an argument for fewer racing days, I don't know what is.
Those of us in the outdoor Turf Club are shivering, but this is the best place to watch the races live. Frank Stronach spent a bundle to build the FrontRunner, but it is a claustrophobic room that's never worked for me. Give me that old-time religion.
Despite the temperature, I'm very thirsty and order a carafe of ice tea. That's five bucks, not a bad price considering. You gotta know the territory. If you order by the glass in the Turf Club, your tea bill will be more than your food check by the end of the day.
I go into the Chandelier Room to thaw out. At a table in one of the alcoves is Samantha Siegel, waiting for her horse to run in the feature race. There is nothing but snow on the TV screen in front of her. Either she is trying to watch a race from Aqueduct or there is something wrong with the set.
You could buy the bar a drink and still have change from a twenty. Every time I look at that staircase, the one that used to lead up to Mary Bradley's table, I think of the day Mickey Rooney came bounding down to make a bet. Right out of "Babes on Broadway."
Also in the Chandelier Room is Phil Daniels, who owns horses. Daniels ran one of them in the first race, a race he sponsored by the way, but the filly finished third. Daniels still believes in the game, and there are eight-million stories in the Naked City. He has a horse with the trainer Ray Bell who's named Padre Jon. The horse has had bucked shins, but if he ever gets to the races, 25% of his purses will go to a priest who's a friend of Daniels. Daniels tells me that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles was troubled by the priest's connection with the horse--ergo, gambling. Yes, you gotta know the territory. When Louie Roussel raced Risen Star and part of his purses went to the nuns in New Orleans, I don't recall the Church complaining.
"Maybe I shouldn't write about this," I say to Daniels.
"Go ahead," Daniels says. "The guy's retired. What can they do to him?"
The last race of the day is dedicated to Larry Bortstein, the turf writer for the Orange County Register, who died recently. It is won by a Roger Stein trainee, who survives an inquiry, and suddenly there are more turf writers, and ex-turf writers, in the winner's circle than you'll see on a Santa Anita Derby day. Afterwards, there is a reception in the FrontRunner, and they give Larry a fine sendoff. Santa Anita throws in an open bar and a buffet. I'd say about 200 of us attended. The next day, in the paper, I see that Santa Anita hangs up an on-track attendance of 2,348. Hey, Larry: I'm expecting you to take full credit for about 10% of 'em.
Written by Bill Christine
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
For Want of a Name, a Derby’s Been Lost
LOS ANGELES, February 23, 2010--I had a dream that I ran into Andy Rooney in a bar. Don't know why, but the conversation got around to the Kentucky Derby.
"I have a theory about the Derby," Rooney said. He had ordered a double mint julep to jog his memory. "It's usually won by a horse with a good name. Seattle Slew comes to mind. Spectacular Bid. War Admiral. Assault. You see what I mean? Good strong names. Names that put hair on your chest.
"I had some friends out in St. Louis who bought into an Illinois-bred and named him Oui Hank because the sire's name was Oui Henry. Look, I told them, if this horse ever runs in the Arc, the French will be delighted and will bet him with both hands, but it's dollars to doughnuts that a horse with a wimpy name like Oui Hank will never win the Kentucky Derby. I can't imagine the announcer at Churchill Downs shouting in the stretch, '. . . and here comes Oui Hank, closing like gangbusters.'
"Oui Hank, as everybody should know, didn't win the Derby. Nor did he win anything else, including maiden races at Fairmount Park. After a few well-fed years, he was turned over to the Boy Scouts.
"The year Assault won the Derby, the horse who finished next to last was called Wee Admiral. Probably related to War Admiral, but with a name like that, give me a break. Oui Hank came out of the Wee Admiral school of naming horses.
"Owners should know that they are cutting their Derby chances in half, or worse, by giving their horses silly names, effete names, names that don't suggest dominance. When those Irish guys, after paying $16 million for a colt, named him The Green Monkey, they lost all chance of having a horse. When John Nerud suffered that bad head injury on the track, that Boston surgeon, Charles Fager, operated on him. When Nerud had recovered, he promised Fager that he'd name one of his horses after him. He waited until the horse that would be known as Dr. Fager came along, and of course you know the rest of the story. 'Good horses need good names,' Nerud said. 'A horse wouldn't have a chance if you called him Alfredo.'
"There are some exceptions in the Kentucky Derby, but not many. They tell me that a horse named Manuel won the Derby way back when. As Casey Stengel would say, you can look it up. There's no documentation, but I understand that everybody referred to Manuel as Manny around the barn. A horse called Manny, even though his real name's Manuel, can overcome the name thing.
"I heard that a horse named Elwood also won the Derby, which to me is almost as bad as Alfredo. Needles was a popular Derby winner, but I never liked the name. I was driving through Needles, California, once, on my way to nowhere, when I decided to conduct an experiment. I stood on a corner of the main drag, asking passers-by if they had ever heard of Needles, the Kentucky Derby winner. Most of them had never heard of the Derby. Of course I found out later that Needles wasn't named after the town--the wife of the breeder was a nurse.
"How Ponder and Pensive won the Derby is beyond the pale. Those aren't exactly action words. They connote tentativeness. I was in the press box at Belmont Park once, and I asked the question, 'What's the worst-named horse to ever win the Derby?' Not a scientific poll, mind you, the margin of error was 87 per cent, but the winner was Lil E. Tee by a wide margin. Great movie, not much of a name for a horse. What helped was that the rest of the field included horses called Dance Floor, Technology, Sir Pinder and Disposal. With names like that, even a horse named Lil E. Tee was able to win.
"I look at this year's crop of Derby eligibles and I don't see a name that reminds me of, say, Black Gold, Cannonade or Gallant Fox. I don't know whether this bunch can run very fast, but in my opinion it's the worst-named group in many a year.
"Lookin At Lucky's all right, but then it drops down to a bunch of names that are hard to spell. A rule of thumb is that if you can't spell a horse's name, it's a bad name. I give you as Exhibit A, Eskendereya, which is both hard to spell and pronounce. I don't go to the Derby for a history lesson, which is that Alexandria, one of the largest cities in Egypt, has the Arabic name of Eskendereya. Interactif is another of those names that would go over with the French, but since when has the Derby had anything to do with the French? With Connemara and Dublin, it looks like it'll have something to do with the Irish. I know horses like Omaha, Johnstown, Spokane and Seattle Slew have won the Derby, but in general I detest horses named after towns. Remember Houston? He was one of the favorites in his year, but he finished so far back they were thinking about changing his name to Galveston.
"This year there is both a dearth of imagination and dignity. Rule? What happened, did they run out of ink? Dryfly? There's a bawdy joke in there somewhere. Coracortado sounds like a romantic name, and actually rolls off the tongue nicely if you pay attention to each syllable, but what would Coracortado think if he ever found out that his name means "Scarface" in Spanish? If only they can keep this from him till after the Derby. Of all the 3-year-olds in 2010, American Lion comes closest to a classic name, but where are horses' names like Macbeth II and Omar Khayyam when we need them? I'd like to issue citations for clever, but I haven't seen any. If Blind Luck, the filly, runs in the Derby, that would help some. She's by Pollard's Vision, who is missing an eye, and her dam is Lucky One. That's cute, not quite clever. Clever is Stage Door Johnny--by Prince John out of Peroxide Blonde. Stage Door Johnny didn't win the Derby--he didn't even run--but that name carried him all the way to the wire in the Belmont. By the way, is there a toilet in here?"
(Editor's note: The dream ended with Mr. Rooney returning from the men's room, chug-a-lugging what was left of his mint julep, and leaving these lists: Best-named Derby winners: War Admiral, Seattle Slew, Assault, Spectacular Bid, Affirmed, Black Gold, Gallant Fox, Whirlaway, Cannonade, Thunder Gulch. Worst-named Derby winners: Elwood, Pensive, Ponder, Vagrant, Lil E. Tee, Real Quiet, Fonso, Halma, Manuel, Donau).
Written by Bill Christine
