A racing fan, or a guy at the races anyway, approached Todd Pletcher in the upstairs seating area at Aqueduct Racetrack with a pen, a copy of the Daily Racing Form and a question.
“Will you sign my Form?” the guy asked.
“Sure,” replied Pletcher, who signed his name and handed back the paper. The man took it, ripped it in half, dropped it on the ground and walked away.
“What did I do to you?” Pletcher remembers thinking.
Nothing. Everything. Who really knows when horses, bettors, money, a gritty racetrack and sour grapes are concerned?
That’s an Aqueduct memory the Hall of Fame trainer won’t necessarily look back on fondly, but the New York City racetrack – which closes for good at the end of June – will forever be part of Pletcher’s career. He figures he went for the first time in November 1989, five months after taking a job with trainer Wayne Lukas.
It was an education.
“I remember putting vet wraps on horses and seeing the straw move,” Pletcher said. “There were rats under there.”
First used in 1894, the old track near a conduit of the Brooklyn Waterworks isn’t all insults and vermin, though.
“You think about the Wood Memorial, the spring meet, the historical significance of that,” Pletcher said this week outside his Saratoga Race Course barn. “The races that used to be Thanksgiving Weekend that have now shifted to the beginning of December – the Remsen, Demoiselle, Cigar Mile, all those are always great races.”
Pletcher won them all – seven Woods, three Remsens, 10 Demoiselles and seven Cigar Miles. The Aqueduct fixtures move to the new Belmont Park, along with everything else about downstate Thoroughbred racing and an era ends.
Hopefully autograph guy leaves the attitude behind.
Retired jockey Richard Migliore didn’t necessarily meet that man, but heard plenty – good and bad – from the denizens. Memories come easily for Migliore, who went to Aqueduct as a child and declared on a train ride home with his father, “I am going to be a jockey,” he said. Nicholas Migliore told the youngster if he worked hard and really wanted it that he had a chance at success.
“And then I told him I was going to win the Toboggan Handicap,” Migliore said this week.
He won the winter fixture six times in a 30-year career that included 4,450 wins. His 3,000th win came at Aqueduct, so did his 4,000th. He won the Wood Memorial with Eternal Prince in 1985, ensuring a spot on the wall of photos he’d stared at since he was a child.
“I could tell you every owner, trainer, jockey, horse that won it, and I remember having that realization on the way into the winner’s circle that I was going to be on the wall, and I actually got very emotional about it,” said Migliore, who grew up in the Sheepshead Bay and Bay Shore communities. “Aqueduct was the first place I ever went to the races. It was the portal into the world I wanted to be a part of.”
Like Pletcher, Migliore acknowledged Aqueduct’s “New York personality.” Aqueduct racing fans are as much a part of the show as horses, trainers and jockeys.
“People make a lot of the fans that heckle jockeys and jump on you, but they’re the most knowledgeable fans,” Migliore said. “They may not be nice in how they say it, but usually they’re right in what they say, you know?”
Definitely.
Beyond advice, criticisms and (yes) compliments, Aqueduct’s Jamaican fans even bestowed nicknames on jockeys. As part of a recent television package paying tribute to the track and its people, Migliore recalled a couple of his – “Chicken Soup” and “Stepfather.” The jockey made bettors “healthy” like chicken soup with a timely win or, at the very least, a winning effort. And he bailed bettors out of jams the way a kindly stepfather might.
A regular on NYRA’s Fox Sports broadcasts, Migliore misses the nicknames and he’ll definitely miss the track.
Trainer Dave Duggan probably never got a nickname, but he won’t forget his moments.
“Aqueduct has been an amazing place for me,” said the Irishman. “How would you describe it? It’s been kind of the blue-collar place. It’s got its own unique way. It’s more of a feel that you get from the place.”
Duggan didn’t blink, once, when asked for an Aqueduct moment. His began and ended with Drafted, whose 2022 season included victories in the Toboggan in February and Gravesend in December. In the first one, he rallied from last of five early to take a 4-length lead into the stretch and kept on going.
“I remember saying, ‘What is Jose Ortiz doing?’ and then he just went down and won,” Duggan said. “That was the Toboggan, but I’ve won 12-5 claimers there that I was just as happy about.”
Pletcher, Migliore, Duggan and anyone else practical enough to think about it for a minute understand the racetrack’s end. Everything changes. If the old Yankee Stadium is gone, Aqueduct was probably destined to go too.
“It’s like upgrading the computer, you know?” said Duggan. “You’re going to miss it, even if it’s progress. With Aqueduct it’s hard. It’s more the stories and the people that meshed in together because you’d never put all those people in the same place like that. They made it special.”
• • •
Racing returns to Aqueduct June 11 – racing Thursday-Sunday for three weeks. Closing weekend is June 27 and 28.
You should go.
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