Last of an Era : The Shoe Still Has the Ride Stuff, So He Won’t Retire Just Yet

It was 10 days ago at Santa Anita. Bill Shoemaker had just returned from New Orleans, where he had finished second on a 3-year-old for an old trainer/friend from Chicago. He didn’t have any mounts at Santa Anita that day because Ferdinand, the horse he was to have ridden in the San Felipe Handicap, wasn’t running because of the muddy track.

Shoemaker, neatly dressed in a checked, black-and-white sport jacket and slacks, made his way from the jockeys’ room to join his wife, Cindy, in the turf club.

Getting from one place to the other was an obstacle course, as crowded as riding in a 20-horse Kentucky Derby. Some young fans recognized Shoemaker and rushed over with their programs, asking for autographs. Shoemaker signed them “Willie Shoemaker,” even though few people have called him that for some time.

A few steps later, Shoemaker was stopped by an older fan who said: “Shoe, I want to shake your hand. I haven’t seen you in 20 years, and you’re lookin’ better today than you did back then.”

When the man had gone, Shoemaker smiled and said: “I think that maybe he needs glasses.”

Quite obviously, this is not the same Bill Shoemaker as 1966, when he was leading the country in stakes victories and winning major races with horses such as Bold Bidder, Lucky Debonair, Buckpasser and Tom Rolfe.

Those were the days when Harry Silbert, Shoemaker’s first and only agent, had calls from two or three trainers in many of the races--when Shoemaker’s mere presence on a horse would drive the odds lower than they had a right to be.

Now, as one trainer at Santa Anita says: “Harry has to go fishin’ for some of Shoe’s mounts. The triple calls aren’t there anymore.”

Actually, they haven’t been there for several years. Shoemaker hasn’t taken a thousand or more mounts in a year since 1980, and last year he rode in just 721 races, the third time in the last four years that he’s been under 800. His 1985 win total of 80 was the lowest in his 37-year career, other than 1968, when a fall at Santa Anita resulted in a fractured thigh bone that sidelined him for about a year.

Of last year’s 80 wins, however, more than a fourth were in stakes races, and top horses such as Lord at War and Estrapade helped Shoemaker total $4.4 million in purses, which ranked him 17th nationally.

Bill Shoemaker is 54 years old. He’s closer to the end of his career than the beginning. Still, Shoemaker has no trepidations about the future, and the other day he talked about life when he leaves the saddle.

“In a year or so, I’ll give serious thought to quitting,” Shoemaker said. “I might try to train horses. I’ve always liked it around the race track in the mornings, and it’s something I wouldn’t want to leave completely.”

Johnny Longden, whose record of 6,032 career wins was broken by Shoemaker at Del Mar in 1970, was always talking about retiring. He finally did, at 59, in 1966, and three years later he was the trainer of Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Majestic Prince. Early last year, Don Pierce, who was a pinochle-playing crony of Shoemaker’s in the jockeys’ room, retired from riding at 47 to train horses. Shoemaker can visualize being comfortable with such a life.

Dan Smith, Shoemaker’s biographer, said that this is the first he’s ever heard of the jockey talking about retiring.

“If he’s talking about it, he’ll do it,” Smith says. “The question has been asked of him a lot in recent years, and you almost hated to hear it, because it was as though the questioners were hoping that he’d say yes. But he’s never even hinted at it. He’ll be the last of an era when he goes. The era of the riders who started with nothing and made something out of themselves. The era of the guys who could and would do anything--like locking legs with another jockey--to win races, because there were no films for the stewards to catch them.”

Shoemaker’s retirement thoughts are slightly incongruous now, because he seems to be in the midst of a comeback. He won the Santa Anita Oaks with Hidden Light Sunday for his fourth stakes victory of the season. That was also his 22nd win of the meeting, which lifted him into a tie for ninth in the Santa Anita riding standings, even though he averages just over two mounts a day. Most of the jockeys ahead of him average four to seven mounts daily.

“I think Shoemaker’s riding better now than he did five years ago,” says Wayne Lukas, who is the nation’s leading trainer for the fourth straight year. “When I put him on horses of mine that are 12-1 or 15-1, I feel embarrassed. You have so much respect for Shoe that you always want to give him a 3-2 shot.”

Although Shoemaker has ridden for more than 40 trainers at Santa Anita this season, about half of his business is with Charlie Whittingham’s bulging stable of stakes horses. Shoemaker and the 72-year-old Whittingham don’t go back to Pegasus, but they are two of the game’s genuine stayers, having teamed up for more than 100 stake wins at Santa Anita, the first in 1957 and the most recent with Hidden Light on Sunday.

“If Shoe’s lost anything, he’s compensated with cunningness,” Whittingham said. “I wouldn’t ride him if I didn’t think he could do it, because the people I train for wouldn’t put up with it.”

A couple of years ago, Nelson Bunker Hunt, one of Whittingham’s clients, didn’t like the way Shoemaker was riding. Another of Hunt’s trainers, Maurice Zilber, was critical of Shoemaker as long ago as 1973, after he rode Trillion to a second-place finish in the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Zilber felt Trillion might have won with a stronger ride. At 16-1, Trillion finished closer than the bettors at Longchamp figured her to.

A jockey who’s ridden in more than 38,300 races, Shoemaker realistically knows that he can’t please everybody, even if he’s won 8,527 of those races. The trainer he’s most concerned about currently pleasing is Whittingham, who with Hidden Light, Ferdinand, Estrapade and Will Dancer has enough stakes’ caliber horses to give the 4-11 , 95-pound rider a running start at another vintage year.

Shoemaker is at Whittingham’s barn--either at Santa Anita or Hollywood Park--any morning the trainer wants him to work some horses.

Asked about the possibility of Shoemaker retiring, Whittingham said: “He’ll just get old laying in bed. The only people that make money in bed are the girls of ill repute. How could Shoe quit? With all his wives, I wouldn’t think he’d be able to afford to.”

Shoemaker, who’s been married twice before, just laughs at Whittingham’s reference to his financial needs. Bill and Cindy are the parents of a 5-year-old daughter, Amanda; Shoemaker’s two adopted children while he was married the first time are 29 and 32.

Whittingham could send Shoemaker to the Kentucky Derby with a legitimate contender if the trainer decides to run Ferdinand at Churchill Downs on May 3. Shoemaker has won the Derby three times, with Swaps, Tomy Lee and Lucky Debonair, but the last victory was 21 years ago.

Shoemaker, who has won two Preaknesses and five Belmonts, hasn’t had a win in a Triple Crown race since he was aboard Avatar at the Belmont in 1975. In the last 24 Triple Crown races, Shoemaker has ridden in only seven, his best finish being a second aboard Linkage in the ’82 Preakness. One of Shoemaker’s career disappointments is that he’s never ridden a horse that has swept the Triple Crown.

While his confidence on the track is being questioned in some quarters, in public the graying Shoemaker has adjusted to his celebrity with an increasing savoir-faire . Whittingham recalls a young Shoemaker as “a kid with bad teeth who’d never open his mouth.”

The other night, when Shoemaker was honored by the Southern California Multiple Sclerosis Society for his role as a national honorary program chairman, Shoemaker got up before about 600 people at the Beverly Hilton Hotel and pushed aside his written speech to speak extemporaneously.

Later, four jockeys--Laffit Pincay, Chris McCarron, Eddie Delahoussaye and Sandy Hawley--sang about Shoemaker’s lack of singing and dancing ability, to the tune of “Fugue for Tinhorns” from “Guys and Dolls.”

When they were finished, Shoemaker, sitting near the stage, shouted up to toastmaster Merlin Olsen:

“It’s a good thing those guys can ride horses.”

It was like the old days without the film patrol. Shoemaker was locking legs with his fellow jockeys again.