By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
June 6, 2014
I was six when I fell in love with the sport/gamble of horse racing. My grandfather was a handicapper and an owner of thoroughbreds, so I was obviously genetically predisposed to develop an obsession for the “Sport of Kings.”
When I was still in kindergarten, I started reading the Daily Racing Form, which is the bible of horse racing except it actually includes factual data unlike the other holy book. I would peruse past performances for hours trying to figure out the puzzle of various races.
Coincidentally, the year I became cognizant of this great game was also the last year a horse won the Triple Crown. In 1978, Affirmed vanquished Alydar in the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes. Unfortunately, I have no recollection of that great rivalry. My baptism into the sport was giving my grandpa one pick a day and him wagering $5 on some cheap nag at Hazel Park Raceway or Detroit Race Course. And I usually lost.
An 8-year-old Jiff Myst wearing the turquoise
Polo shirt in the winner’s circle at DRC.
In the long 36-year drought since the last Triple Crown winner, I have desperately wanted to witness the next Secretariat or Seattle Slew, but have stubbornly never actually rooted for it to happen when it could have occurred.
I was too young to have an opinion of Spectacular Bid (1979) or Pleasant Colony’s (1981) attempts but starting in 1987, when Alysheba lost to Risen Star in the final leg, I have always been cheering against history for one reason or another.
In 1989, I was sure Easy Goer was going to win the Triple Crown. The son of Alydar was the greatest specimen I had ever witnessed on a dirt oval. When he ran second to Sunday Silence in the Derby and Preakness I was devastated. I recouped some of my Easy Goer losses when he romped in the Belmont that year, denying Sunday Silence the twelfth Crown.
(By that point, I was in high school and the sports editor of the Spectrum newspaper. I wrote an article about Easy Goer that actually got published. I am pretty sure it was the last horse racing piece West Bloomfield High School ever ran, as the principal contacted my journalism advisor and told her the school paper wasn’t the proper venue for a gambling column.)
In 1997, I was against Silver Charm because he had defeated my favorite horse of all time in the Derby — a story I will get to momentarily.
The following year I opposed Real Quiet because I didn’t think he was worthy of the Triple Crown and I was sick and tired of Bob Wojnowski yelling “REAL QUIET!!!!” at the top of his lungs on the WDFN airwaves.
The year after Real Quiet’s loss to Victory Gallop, I wanted to see Charismatic fail because the horse was a former claimer only weeks before he won the Kentucky Derby, and I didn’t think a horse with a for sale sign of $50,000 during his three-year-old season should be mentioned in the same breath as Citation or War Admiral.
In 2002, War Emblem seemed like some sort of fluke so I bet heavily against him.
I needed Empire Maker to defeat Funny Cide in 2003 to help pay off a bookie debt. True story.
In 2004, I was the horse racing “expert” on WDFN and kept picking against Smarty Jones, which led to my nickname of the “Horse’s Ass,” so I wasn’t about to root for him to accomplish the incredibly tough feat.
And in 2008 it was an easy decision to support ANYONE instead of Big Brown at the Belmont because his owners made their money the same way Jordan Belfort did in “The Wolf of Wall Street” (hell, I am not entirely sure the scumbags from IEAH didn’t have cameos in the Scorsese film) and his trainer was a thieving cheat who is currently serving out a 10-year suspension.
FINALLY, in 2012 I was all-in on a potential Triple Crown winner. I loved the horse and cashed on him in the Derby. His owner (Paul Reddam) was a Windsor, Ontario native and DIEHARD Red Wings fan who had named horses after Nick Lidstrom, Henrik Zetterberg, Jiri Hudler and EVEN goofy super fan “Mo Cheese.”
I didn’t think I’ll Have Another could lose. And then he was scratched and retired the day BEFORE the Belmont because of a relatively minor leg injury.
All of this leads us to tomorrow and California Chrome’s date with destiny. I love this horse and have ever since he won me a couple grand back in December on the final day of racing ever at Hollywood Park. At that point in time, Chrome was just another California-bred dominating the restricted King Glorious Stakes and NOBODY would ever have predicted then that he’d be hours away from potential immortality.
There has been a lot of talk about California Chrome’s humble breeding over the last few months, but that is exactly why I paid extra attention to him as early as September of last year.
You see, Chrome was sired by Lucky Pulpit, who, in turn, was an offspring of Pulpit — my absolute favorite horse ever. 19 years after learning the sport from my grandfather, the two of us watched Pulpit break his maiden in his first career start at Gulfstream Park in awe-inspiring fashion.
Pulpit’s final time was unheard of for a debuting colt, and I instantly fell in love with the son of AP Indy (who, coincidentally, was Seattle Slew’s greatest offspring). Pulpit was my equine Sergei Fedorov or Barry Sanders. He was 1,500 pounds of raw talent and I was convinced that he would win the 1997 Kentucky Derby even though he never raced at the age of two and no horse to THIS DAY has won the Derby without at least one race as a two-year-old since the late 1800s.
While Pulpit went onto win the Fountain of Youth Stakes and the Bluegrass Stakes he failed to win the Derby, finishing fourth behind Silver Charm. Unfortunately, Pulpit got injured during the Derby while on the lead and his jockey Shane Sellers still insists to this day that Pulpit would have won the “Run for the Roses” if not for that piece of bad luck.
Pulpit would never race again.
For years I devoutly followed every offspring of Pulpit hoping he would pass his freakish talent and speed on to his progeny and one of his sons would win the Derby; he didn’t.
And one of those colts was Lucky Pulpit. That horse ran 22 times and I probably wagered on him each and every time. But while Pulpit has sired tons of great horses (Sky Mesa, Tapit, Corinthian, etc.), Lucky Pulpit was not one of them.
A small section of the Pulpit offspring
Hall of Fame in my Great Room.
Not So Lucky Pulpit only won 3 of those 22 starts and was basically considered a flop on the track. Maybe the only thing more surprising than Lucky Pulpit potentially siring a Triple Crown winner is the fact he ended up as a stallion in the first place.
Usually you have to win a graded race of some sort to end up as a sex machine in a breeding shed, but Lucky Pulpit didn’t even accomplish that. Because of a breathing problem, he never won more than a $47 stakes race at 5 furlongs. To put that in context, the Belmont tomorrow is TWELVE FURLONGS.
But because of his breeding (Pulpit out of a Cozzene mare), Lucky Pulpit got a shot at stud.
Lucky Pulpit had probably already achieved more than anyone could have expected when he sired Rousing Sermon, a Kentucky Derby also-ran in 2012; what California Chrome has done for his gene pool is basically unheard of.
No horse with such modest beginnings has ever won the Triple Crown, and it isn’t even close. His owners (Dumb-Ass Partners) paid only $1,500.00 to breed their $8,000 mare to Lucky Pulpit. In other words, I will probably wager more tomorrow on the Belmont card than Steve Coburn and Perry Martin paid for Lucky Pulpit’s stud fee!!!!
If you aren’t a horse racing expert, and I am guessing you aren’t, this is basically the equivalent of Cooper Manning having a boy with Isha Price (Serena and Venus Williams’ sister) and that kid ending up as the next LeBron James.
So, after 36 years, I am hoping the wait ends tomorrow. I actually think it is going to occur. Even though no horse has ever won the Triple Crown with a Belmont field as large as Saturday’s, Chrome figures to get another perfect trip due to his tactical speed.
There isn’t much speed in the race and there is absolutely nobody on the inside or outside of him in gate two that will pressure him for the lead. Either some other horse will take the initiative and set a slow pace with Chrome sitting chilly right off that horse’s flank or the Derby and Preakness winner will lead them all on a merry chase for the mile-and-a-half distance.
If you are looking for a cold exacta wager, I can only offer one alternative: Peter Pan winner Tonalist. In my opinion, he is the only one who can stop California Chrome from the inevitable.
While Chrome’s dad only wanted to run for about 5/8ths of a mile, Tonalist is bred to run in the New York Marathon.
Coincidentally, Tonalist is also a grandson of Pulpit, but he is by North America’s greatest active sire, Tapit. And while the “dumbasses” only paid $1,500 for Lucky Pulpit’s sperm, Tapit has a stallion fee of $150,000!!!!!!
Yes, you read that right. 100 times the cost of Chrome’s stud rate. But in the last sixteenth of a mile at “Big Sandy,” when California Chrome has a three -length lead on a closing Tonalist, nobody is going to care about Chrome’s birth state, impregnation charge or blue-collar owners.
The question will be can he do what Spectacular Bid, Pleasant Colony (Tonalist’s dam sire), Alysheba, Sunday Silence, Silver Charm, REAL QUIET!!!!, Charismatic, War Emblem, Funny Cide, Smarty Jones and Big Brown failed to do.
Become the 12th member of thoroughbred horse racing immortality.
He will.
But at odds of close to 1 to 2, you probably won’t get rich on him. I can’t say the same thing for those two dumbasses though, who have faithfully believed in this awesome animal from day one.
(Pulpit passed away in December of 2012 and you would have thought one of my family members had died. I received condolence calls from across the country, but my favorite text came from my MOM. “Sorry to hear about Pulpit.”)