The Red Smith Reader Read online

  In the royal box at the front of the members’ stand were Queen Elizabeth in pink and the Queen Mother. Meandering about on the clipped green turf near the walking ring were Princess Margaret in blue and her squire, Antony Armstrong-Jones, sans camera. There was no sign of the Queen’s consort, Prince Philip, who leaves the family gambling to his womenfolk.

  A slightly bewildered Yank plodded among innumerable brick structures asking gate guards in iron hats hard questions like how to get to the press room. “Afraid I don’t quite know, sir,” was the standard reply. “Suppose you try that chap over there.”

  Memory recaptured a day at Belmont when Alfred Vanderbilt was encountered frowning over the page in the program giving location of change and information windows. There was a list of windows providing both change and information, then at the bottom: “For change only, window 22, ground floor, clubhouse.”

  “What do you make of this guy in 22?” Alfred asked. “Do you suppose he is just an ignorant slob?”

  Ultimately the Yank found himself at the rail in front of the members’ stand, where he didn’t belong. To his right were the shouting bookmakers in front of crowded stands extending down to the “silver ring,” where the costers get in for $1.40 instead of $5.60, the grandstand price. To the left and behind were the paddock and level green walking ring with mutuel windows taking bets of fifty-six cents.

  The main event, third in a program of six races, was the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, for entire horses and mares of three and older at a mile and a half, worth $65,366 to the winner. This is one of England’s great races, which frequently produces a candidate for the Washington, D.C. International at Laurel. Everybody knew it would go to Petite Etoile, the young Aga Khan’s four-year-old, who has been regarded as the finest of her sex in this land since Pretty Polly, winner of the Oaks in 1904.

  “It must be Petite Etoile,” read the headline in one morning newspaper. “Petite Etoile can set seal on great career,” declared the conservative Daily Telegraph. “Big Ascot prize should go to Petite Etoile,” announced the Times. Forty of forty-two handicappers published in the Sporting Chronicle picked Petite Etoile. She had won nine races in a row, including the 1,000 Guineas, the Oaks, the Champion Stakes, and the Coronation Cup, and today’s prize would give her a bankroll of $230,642, a record for the English turf.

  Petite Etoile is a handsome Amazon with the iron-gray coat of Native Dancer, a silver face, and silvery tail. Sir Harold Wernher’s Aggressor was in a nervous lather. He is a big bay five-year-old that trounced Parthia, last year’s Epsom Derby winner, in the Hardwicke Stakes here last month, but he carried only 130 pounds then against Parthia’s 136. Today both would have 133 like the other males of four or older. Petite Etoile had a three-pound sex allowance, and the three-year-olds Flores III, His Story, and Kythnos had 119.

  The field started in front of a background of trees and ran clockwise, the wrong way for American tracks. De Voos, a speed horse from France, rushed away in front as expected, with Flores III second and Parthia next. Petite Etoile and Kythnos brought up the rear.

  They flashed into view on the backstretch, disappeared, and the public address caller said De Voos led for a mile, then was caught by Flores III. Parthia was still third, Petite Etoile and Kythnos still seventh and eighth.

  Coming down the green homestretch, Jimmy Lindley moved Aggressor to the front, but with 200 yards to go Lester Piggott had Petite Etoile coming hard at him on the outside. The filly didn’t get there. “That’s the boy, Jimmy,” a man at the rail said, and his voice sounded loud in the hushed English crowd as Aggressor flashed in with Petite Etoile second and Kythnos third.

  Lindley rode back to unsaddle, slapping his mount affectionately on the stern, grinning back at the polite applause. Piggott was solemnly expressionless on the beaten favorite.

  Some horse players started home, down a roofed walk to the railway station. Somebody had been ahead of them with a piece of chalk. Scrawled on the wall of the tunnel was a name: ELVIS PRESLEY.

  NAMESAKE IN THE RAIN

  1968

  W. W. Smith is a dark bay gelding with one white hind foot, a long, plain face, and a name of rare distinction.

  “Kind of a rangy dude,” said his trainer, Steve Demas. “Not much to look at, as horses go.”

  “Oh, well,” somebody said, “neither is his namesake, even as horses go.”

  This was a rainy evening at Roosevelt Raceway, a night for planting mud-spattered shoes under a table in the clubhouse dining room, for prodding sluggish corpuscles into action with a touch of the cray-thur, for a whirl of lighthearted gambling over the chicken chow mein. Perhaps there are pleasanter ways to spend a rainy evening in New York, but they are not recommended by the clergy.

  The rain had held off until about seven o’clock and when it did start, it was hesitant, almost apologetic, so that by the time it began to fall in earnest about 27,000 horse players were safely under cover within point-blank range of the mutuel windows. Down on the floodlit track, horses had water in their ears and the climate dripped clammily down drivers’ necks, but all was cozy up where the glassed-in sinful dwell.

  Chief purpose of the visit was to meet W. W. Smith face to face, an encounter that had been too long delayed. Five years had passed since Delvin Miller named the horse, believing that this yearling son of Thorpe Hanover and Beatrice Adios, a daughter of Del’s great stallion Adios, would prove worthy of the distinction.

  To Del’s aching embarrassment, this beautifully bred pacer flatly refused to pace. After everything else had failed, Miller had the colt gelded, though he hated to do it because complete horses named Smith are so rare. Even that did no good, and in desperation Del sold him.

  W. W. Smith was two or three then. Not until he was four did he show any evidence of quality. His owners had him up at Saratoga in the summer of 1966 when—whoosh—he started going in world record time.

  He had a smashing season as a four-year-old. He tapered off last year when he won only three of twenty starts, but one of these three was a mile in 1:58 1/5 at Vernon Downs.

  This year, with Steve Demas training him for Alice and Herman Picard of Voorheesville, New York, W. W. Smith has been pacing and winning. On several occasions Roosevelt’s Joey Goldstein called to say, “W. W. Smith is going tomorrow night, can you come out?” But something always got in the way until the other evening. By that time the horse’s record for the year was eight victories, two seconds, and two thirds—twelve times in the money in twenty-two races for earnings of $47,525.

  Now he was going in a $15,000 open handicap, and in the judgment of Roosevelt’s racing secretary he was only fourth-best in the field of seven. Rated ahead of him were Romulus Hanover, winner of the first Adios Pace at The Meadows near Washington, Pennsylvania; Hodgen Special, another member of the Demas stable who would be coupled with W. W. Smith as a betting entry; and the five-year-old Deputy Hanover.

  Romulus Hanover was everybody’s best bet, not without reason. A four-year-old, he has won just short of half a million in spite of a gimpy leg that took him out of training for six months this year. This was to be the second race of his comeback; in his first a week earlier, he’d been beaten only three quarters of a length as Overcall won by a head with W. W. Smith and Meadow Paige in a dead heat for second.

  This time Meadow Paige, coupled with Romulus in the betting, went right to the front, led the first time around and was still on top entering the homestretch. Usually Lucien Fontaine drives W. W. Smith, but Lucien owns Hodgen Special, so he had the reins on that one and was keeping him just off the pace, within striking distance.

  W. W. Smith, with Carmine Abbatiello in the sulky, was sixth into the stretch, leading only the odds-on favorite, Romulus. At the finish Romulus was sixth and W. W. Smith last.

  Witnesses who had invested their savings on W.W. for what might be termed sentimental reasons, watched with quivering lip as Abbatiello’s red and gold silks receded. Then, out of the corner of the eye, they
spotted the number on the winner. He was Hodgen Special, stablemate of W.W., scoring for the entry at $11.80 for $2.00—and how sweet that is.

  But why, Steve Demas was asked in the moist paddock while W.W. cooled out under a red blanket, why had the old boy finished last? Steve smiled fondly.

  “He’s never been sound,” he said. “He’s temperamental. He’s kind of homely, and when one drop of rain falls he can’t handle the wet track. The rest of the time he’s beautiful.”

  WILLIE SHOEMAKER

  1970

  It was March of 1952 and a couple of guys in the walking ring at Santa Anita bumped into their equestrian friend, Eddie Arcaro, accompanied by a bat-eared wisp of a kid in silks.

  “Meet the new champ,” Eddie said, and William Lee Shoemaker acknowledged the introduction with a tiny, twisted grin.

  In 1952 Arcaro had been riding races for more than twenty years. Only two men in the world—Sir Gordon Richards and Johnny Long-den—had brought home more winners. In about six weeks he would ride his fifth Kentucky Derby winner. He was rich and famous and destined to go on as top man in his field for another decade, yet he was cheerfully abdicating his title to a twenty-year-old only recently sprung from apprentice ranks.

  Gifted with the class of the true champion himself, Arcaro could recognize class in another. Before he was through, Eddie would ride winners of $30 million, but if somebody had asked him to name the jockey likeliest to break that and all other records for success on horseback, he would without hesitation have named the painfully bashful, almost wordless Shoe.

  Last Monday Bill Shoemaker won the fourth race at Del Mar aboard a horse named Dares J. It was Shoe’s 6,033rd visit to the winner’s circle, an all-time record. Characteristically, he explained that he had profited from opportunities that weren’t enjoyed by Johnny Longden, whose record he had broken.

  “I had a lot more mounts early in my career than Longden did,” he said. “He didn’t ride many horses in his first ten years. When I came along there were more racetracks and more racing.”

  That is true, but it took Longden forty years and more than 32,000 races to get 6,032 winners. Shoe did it with 25,000 in twenty-two seasons.

  Opportunity has no great value without the talent to capitalize on it. When Shoe was a sixteen-year-old working horses for a man in California, his boss told him he’d never make a race rider and turned him loose, keeping another exercise boy whom he deemed more promising. The other boy hasn’t won a race yet, though once he came close. Put up on a horse that was pounds the best, he came into the homestretch leading by six lengths, turned to look back, and fell off*.

  At seventeen Shoe was a winner. At eighteen he tied Joe Culmone for the national championship with 388 winning rides. At nineteen he led the country with purses of $1,329,890. At twenty-one he rode 485 winners for a world record.

  His mounts have brought back $41 million. If he receives only the standard fee of 10 percent, he has earned more than $4 million in the saddle. No other performer in any sport ever collected that much directly out of competition.

  And that isn’t counting what the little bandit takes from large, muscular golfers who simply will not believe that this imperturbable scamp can go on scoring in the early 70’s round after round and even outhit them from the tee when he’s in the mood.

  If Bill Shoemaker were six feet tall and weighed 200 pounds he could beat anybody in any sport. Standing less than five feet and weighing around 100, he beats everybody at what he does. Pound for pound, he’s got to be the greatest living athlete.

  He hadn’t been around long before horsemen had to discard a belief that had been handed down for generations. It was an article of faith that “live” weight was easier on a horse than “dead” weight; a man whose horse had drawn a heavy load from the handicappers shopped around for a big jockey who needed no ballast.

  Then along came Shoe weighing well under 100 pounds with all his tack. With enough lead in the saddle pockets to sink a battleship, he won every stake in sight, and that took care of that old husband’s tale.

  Not that Shoe was out to prove anything. That isn’t his style. He goes along quietly doing his thing and if he kicks one for an error, as we all do, he cops no plea. It can’t give him any pleasure to remember the 1957 Kentucky Derby that he lost with Gallant Man because he misjudged the finish line and eased his horse too soon. Yet because Ralph Lowe, who owned Gallant Man, took defeat like a gentleman, Shoe endowed a Ralph Lowe Trophy to be presented annually to a racing man distinguished for sportsmanship.

  Instead of hiding out and hoping people would forget his mistake, Shoe puts up his own money to remind people of it every year. The word for that is class.

  3.

  Football

  VINCE LOMBARDI

  FORT LAUDERDALE, 1968

  After lunch the players lounged about the hotel patio watching the surf fling white plumes high against the darkening sky. Clouds were piling up in the west, moving against the wind which came whipping in from the Gulf Stream. Vince Lombardi frowned.

  “Could be a nor’easter,” he said, “and that’s trouble. When you’ve lived on the coast as many years as I did, you know. This wind could be worse than the cold.”

  The coach of the Green Bay Packers is a stout fellow who insists that humans can play outdoor games competently in weather as frightful as the 13 below zero which punished the Packers and Cowboys in Wisconsin December 31. In fact he wanted a spot of winter for the National Football League championship game, reasoning that his troops were better acclimated than the Dallas delegation.

  “I figure Lombardi got on his knees to pray for cold weather,” said Henry Jordan, the tackle, after the Green Bay game, “and stayed down too long.”

  But Vince fears high winds make every forward pass a gamble. To Vincent T. Lombardi gambling on a football field is a crime against nature.

  “Everybody loves a gambler,” he has said, “until he loses.”

  Jerry Kramer, the indestructible guard, strolled by. “I feel fine,” he said. “Just getting out of that cold makes everything fine.”

  “Did you come up with frostbite like Ray Nitschke?” The Green Bay linebacker is still limping on his frozen toes.

  “I got a pretty uncomfortable chest congestion,” Kramer said. “It’s just clearing up.”

  The defending champions of the universe seem relaxed and confident about Sunday’s Stupor Bowl rumble with the Oakland Raiders, champions of the American Football League. Lombardi says it’s hard to judge a team’s frame of mind, but he’ll be watching his mercenaries sharply in their final full dress workout, and if he spots any traces of complacency they’ll hear about it.

  A winner’s purse of $15,000 a man is wonderfully relaxing. Don Chandler, the place-kicker, says his $23,000 loot from last year’s league championship and Stupor Bowl exceeded his post-season total for seven preceding seasons with the Packers and Giants.

  The coach respects the Raiders. At least he says he does. He has a set pattern which he employs in his daily press conferences. It begins with praise of Daryle Lamonica, the Oakland quarterback, and it’s all honeyed applause of the pass receivers, the defense, the runners, the American League as a whole.

  Last year he was accused of low-rating the Kansas City Chiefs after the Packers squashed them. Now he says they brought that on themselves by saying some pretty brash things before the game.

  “They do more things defensively,” he was saying about the Raiders, “than a lot of teams in our league.” Asked to elaborate, he explained: “They use three variations of the odd defense. Most of us use the even defense—that is, with men head-on against the guards. But they’ll space linemen in the gaps and they do a lot of stunting. They’ll slant the linemen one way and the linebackers the other way, all three linebackers. The Bears do a lot of that sort of thing. The Oakland defense is a good deal like the Bears’.”

  “So it’s up to Bart Starr to catch ‘em slanting or stunting the wrong way?”

&nb
sp; “Right. But if they guess right against you, you’re in for a very bad day, coach.”

  When they had to play the Los Angeles Rams for the Western Conference championship two weeks after the Rams beat ‘em, the Packers felt the pressure keenly and rose to the challenge like kamikaze pilots. They were cooler about the Dallas game and wondered whether they were “high” enough. They were.

  “I never go into any game,” the coach said, “without feeling we can win. And I go into every one scared. I’ll go into this one scared.”

  “But,” he was asked, “have you ever played against mustaches?” (The Raiders’ Ben Davidson springs from ambush behind shrubbery that could house a whole colony of starlings.)

  “The last mustache I ever had to deal with was my father’s,” Vince said. “He’s eighty-one and I still can’t beat him.”

  THE GUY WHO STARTED IT ALL

  NOTRE DAME, INDIANA, 1947

  The guy who started the fight thirty-four years ago is around here today to see it finished. He is a big, twinkling old free-style cusser with a plainsman’s face, weathered to a bright terra-cotta shade, under a cattleman’s soft gray hat. His name is Jesse Harper, and it was he who united Notre Dame and Army in the holy bonds of football, which will be put asunder here day after tomorrow.

  Jesse Harper is, as he has been for a good many years, a cattle baron operating out of a ranch in southwestern Kansas. In 1913 he was coach of a lot of guys named Knute Rockne and Gus Dorais and Ray Eichenlaub and Fred Gushurst here at Notre Dame. There’ve been some towering yarns spun about the origin of the series with the Army, but the way Harper told it today was just simple enough to be the real story.