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Sean Clancy A writer asked me last week about American Pharoah coming to Saratoga, back when his appearance hinged on a breeze.
“Do you want him to come here?”
And, in one word, well two words, I had crossed over to the dark side.
“Not really,” I answered.
Coming home from Deadline 26 Wednesday night, I stepped onto my porch and noticed that something looked different. I thought, ‘Did they trim the bushes?’ as I stepped over a forlorn golf cart charger, it laid across the porch like an IV drip, pulled from a dead man’s arm.
My golf cart was missing.
All I hear are birds. That’s it. I don’t know what types of birds, maybe a blue jay in the tree next to me, a swallow hopping along the edge of the porch, a hummingbird, for sure, in the yellow flowers, flits. Round wooden beams, rails and posts frame my view, there is only one place for Adirondack buildings and that’s in the Adirondacks.
George Weaver eats a clementine, pats his dog on the head and begins to walk down his shedrow in Horse Haven.
Weaver trained his first winner in 2001, his stable has earned at least $1 million every year since. With 38 winners this year, he has already gone past $2 million in earnings and has a chance to eclipse his best season, when he won 50 races for $2.6 million in 2014.
Kip Elser called me after watching Walter May’s production of “This was Racing: An Evening with Joe Palmer” at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame Friday.
“You’ve got to go see it,” Elser said. “It’s brilliant, the way he uses his phrases . . . the way he paints the scene . . . the way he . . .”
Over the years, I’ve read Palmer’s book, a collection of columns and features from his writing at the New York Herald Tribune between February 1946 and Oct. 31, 1952 (the day he died with an unfinished column in his typewriter), in any number of ways.
Money By Orleans, hesitated, then lunged, head up, ears back, then slammed my 14-year-old skin-and-bones body into the wall. The three-time stakes winner lived in the narrow stall, next to the firewall, halfway down the shedrow at Delaware Park. After bouncing off the wall and regaining my balance, I snatched on him, “What’s wrong with you?”
“Hey, editor. Can you get me a copy of the paper with the picture from The Chief’s day?”
Keith McFarlane met me at the Morning Line Kitchen asking for a photo of the winner’s circle tribute to Allen Jerkens. McFarlane was in the photo, holding a picture of The Chief.
Two days later, I found McFarlane at Leah Gyarmati’s barn.
“I thought you forgot about me,” McFarlane said, in between walking horses.
I asked him one question about Jerkens, the late great Hall of Fame trainer who still holds a spell over all of us.
When did you start working for him?
McFarlane, in his deep Jamaican voice, laughed.
Asked to do a Stable Tour, Rick Schosberg, didn’t hesitate, turning at his tack room door and walking, “Let’s do that.”
Schosberg started at the first stall and walked the length of the shedrow, talking about his Saratoga string and a few horses at Belmont Park.
“We have to hire her.”
That was my response to Tom Law, after we talked about Annise Montplaisir in May. Montplaisir, 19, found us somewhere and emailed us, looking for a spot at The Special this summer. She sent her resume, which included the lines, “official clocker, North Dakota Horse Park 2014 race meet,” and “journalism intern at Canterbury Park.”
See why we had to hire her?
It’s the rhythm of the backstretch.
Rob and Phyllis Griffo took their annual tour of the Saratoga backside Tuesday morning. Rob is a war veteran, Phyllis used to ride horses before a couple of hip replacements, they own a few retired horses, near Finger Lakes. Rob works on a crisis hotline, he had a guy on the line for two hours last week, pills and alcohol supposed to ease the pain but causing more. I’ve written about them before.
