I am a sorry handicapper all-around, and in particular regarding the Racing Hall of Fame. Jack Westrope is one jockey whom I never thought would be enshrined. He died from injuries in a spill at Hollywood Park in 1958, and by the time his name starting coming up on the Hall of Fame ballot, most voters had never seen him ride. His 2,467-win total might seem insignificant by contemporary standards, but at the time of his death, Westrope ranked eighth on the all-time list. Moreover, Bill Shoemaker rated Westrope as one of the toughest jockeys he ever rode against.

Somehow, Westrope was elected in 2002, close to what would have been his 84th birthday. Good for him. But that left at least two more California horsemen on the outside looking in, jockey Don Pierce and trainer Buster Millerick, and I thought that their chances for enshrinement, like Westrope's, were wafer-thin. Pierce was long retired, and Millerick had died in 1986. Both had been on the ballot, Pierce a few times and Millerick often, and neither had mustered enough votes to get in. Neither had the lapel-grabbing statistics that immediately hit a voter between the eyes.


But sometimes the Hall of Fame's Historic Review Committee, which considers candidates who might have been overlooked by the regular ballot, can work in wondrous ways. This August, Pierce and Millerick will both be enshrined at Saratoga Springs. Millerick, who would have been 104 years old, apparently has no living survivors and the Hall of Fame people could find no family member who could represent him on a teleconference that Pierce participated in. In baseball, when an oldtimers' committee sends players into the Hall of Fame, the pejorative that comes up is that "they were back-doored." Front door, back door, no apologies are required for Millerick and Pierce.

About the Millerick touch with horses, Pierce might be as good a spokesman as there is. "He was a super horseman," Pierce said., "Going in with him makes me very happy. He was the most well-thought-of trainer that I ever rode for. When you rode for Buster, you knew you had a live horse under you."

Twice, out of 81 races, Pierce rode Millerick's most renowned horse, Native Diver, who beat his trainer into the Hall of Fame by more than half a century. Most of the saddlesmithing on Native Diver went to Ralph Neves and Jerry Lambert. Native Diver's three straight Hollywood Gold Cup wins, in 1965-67, were with Lambert on his back. "All a jockey had to do was just take the slack out of the reins and let him rate himself," Millerick said of the near-black gelding. "Never move, just sit on him. Lambert did that better than anybody."

Early during Neves' 2 1/2-year run with Native Diver, he tried to hit the horse with his whip, which was a no-no. Millerick took away the whip and said: "You Portuguese s.o.b. Just keep this horse between the fences and he'll run."

Pierce said that salty language from Millerick could come any place, any time. "He didn't care who was around," Pierce said. "That lady who owned Royal Orbit (Helina Gregory Braunstein). Buster burned her ears."

At the time of his retirement, in 1984, Millerick ranked second in career wins at Del Mar, fourth at Hollywood Park and fifth at Santa Anita. In 1935, when he was 29, Dame Fortune almost tapped Millerick on the shoulder. "Millerick was a very good young trainer," wrote Laura Hillenbrand, one of Seabiscuit's biographers. "But for his new yearlings and the hundred-grander-caliber horses (Charles Howard) planned to have soon, (he) wanted the best."

That would have been Silent Tom Smith, who came Howard's way by accident. Before Seabiscuit, Smith was training horses at Agua Caliente for George Giannini, one of Howard's close friends. Giannini told Howard that he ought to hire Smith and bring him to California. "(Howard) took one look at Smith and instincts rang in his head," Hillenbrand wrote. "He drove Smith to his barn and introduced his horses to their new trainer."

That meant a demotion for Buster Millerick, as he became Smith's assistant for a time. Smith was another of those trainers from a different era, whose accomplishments beyond Seabiscuit had perhaps never been fully articulated to Hall of Fame voters. In 2002, posthumously, the Hall of Fame's Historic Review Committee tapped Smith for enshrinement. Back-doored him, if you will. But enshrined him just the same.