He’s Back in Saddle--Again : Stallings Finds That Being Steward Isn’t the Same

Bill Stallings is a jockey like any other jockey except that he has a college degree in microbiology and chemistry and he’s back riding after three years in the stewards’ stand.

Many jockeys who had ridden against Stallings during his 20-year career smiled when the 41-year-old rider started officiating the sport in Arizona, New Mexico and Washington State in 1982.

It was as though Leo Durocher had become an umpire, because although one of Stallings’ nicknames is Bullring Bill, for his many years of riding on the California fair circuit, Brawling Bill would be just as apt.

“I did a lot of fighting in my day,” Stallings said during an interview in the jockeys’ room at the Los Angeles County Fair at Fairplex

Park in Pomona. “And I served a lot of days (suspensions) because of it.”

A jockeys’ valet, tending to his business nearby, remembered some of Stallings’ fights with other riders and said: “I saw a lot of guys finish second.”

Stallings, who estimates that he has ridden to 1,500 wins on thoroughbreds, 1,200 on quarter horses and 800 on Appaloosas since he won his first race at 15, was forced into considering a career other than riding. In 1980, Stallings was riding Our Lucky Pete, a 5-year-old gelding who had given him several stakes wins, in a race at the Sonoma County Fair in Santa Rosa.

In front at the three-eighths pole, Our Lucky Pete broke both front legs and sent Stallings flying. The horse had to be destroyed, and Stallings suffered seven broken vertebrae, besides other injuries.

Stallings didn’t want to quit riding, but when the back was slow to heal, he decided to take the state stewards’ test in California. Although he passed the test, Stallings wasn’t hired because he had no experience, but he became a steward in other states and by January of 1985 was named the Arizona state steward at Turf Paradise.

Even for a jockey, Stallings was small, having ridden at 4-foot-9. By comparison, Bill Shoemaker, one of the smallest major riders, is 4-11. Stallings said that the crushed vertebrae shrank his height to 4-7, costing him inches he’ll never regain, but last year at least his back started feeling better.

Stallings would like to eventually become a steward again, but he missed riding. He describes the nirvana of competing in a race as though he were quoting from one of his old college textbooks at Adams State in Alamosa, Colo.

“There’s nothing in the world like it, being on top of a thousand pounds of live energy,” Stallings said. “And you’re part of it. You try to collect it and dispense it, this gripping force of energy mass.”

Stallings first discovered this sensation as a teen-ager, growing up in Yuma, Colo. His father was a farmer-rancher, but it was a fifth-grade teacher, whose husband trained and whose son rode horses, who sparked his interest in riding.

Five years later, at 15, Stallings was riding, to his parents’ chagrin, in a quarter horse match race in Dighton, Kan. It was winner take all, and Stallings brought his horse home in front, giving the owner possession of the other horse and his rival’s horse trailer and pickup truck.

Stallings got $100. “I put most of it in the bank and bought myself a cow,” he said.

A state wrestling champion in high school as a 95-pounder, Stallings also competed in college at 115 pounds, but he wanted no part of a sport that would make him too heavy to ride after graduation, or of an education that might take him away from the track. Stallings’ brother has become a chemist, now working in Houston.

“What does a teacher, or a chemist, make in a year?” Stallings said. “If I can’t make what they make in one summer, I’ll kick myself. Besides, I like the part about working in a sport that isn’t controlled by other industries, or the stock market. The only way I can be out of a job is if the race tracks close up.”

Stallings won the Phoenix Futurity, when it was a $75,000 race, with a thoroughbred named Mint Set at Turf Paradise in 1980. Fifteen years before, just out of college, he had won a $100,000 race that won’t be found in any record book. It was another of those my-horse-against-yours quarter horse affairs, held in West Frankfort, Ill., and the winner’s name was Myrt Reed.

At Pomona, where Stallings won for the 75th time the other day, he rode an Appaloosa called Nellies Girl in a record-setting time of 1:11 4/5 for six furlongs.

“I grew up riding all different breeds,” Stallings said. “It helps when you come to a mixed meeting like this one.”

Stallings wasn’t always wedded to the fairs, which are called bullrings because of the tracks’ sharp turns. In the early 1970s, he was riding at Arlington Park and Sportsman’s Park near Chicago.

“I had three good horses and they broke down in about two weeks’ time,” Stallings said. “I didn’t want to have to go into the Arlington season with no good horses to ride. So I called Richard Lockwood, a trainer that I had ridden for in Arizona and got to know real well.

“He was at the fairs in Northern California and told me to come on out. The next year, we were together at Louisiana Downs and in Omaha (Ak-Sar-Ben). I’ve been known as a fair rider ever since, but the truth be known, I would have gone wherever Lockwood was at the time. It just happened to be that he was in Northern California.”

Stallings has reunited with his former agent, Ron Wasserman. He was an usher in Wasserman’s wedding about five years ago. Some of Stallings’ rides are on the quarter horses that Robin, his second wife, trains. Devil Chips, a Robin Stallings entry last Saturday at Pomona, still hasn’t won a race in two years, but Bill did ride the 4-year-old gelding to a second-place finish.

Sometimes, though, Stallings says he has been guilty of going too far with his connubial obligations. Last year, working a horse for Robin out of the starting gate, Stallings was thrown and suffered several broken bones. A rod was inserted into his thumb and extended all the way up into his arm. A bump on Stallings’ right hand is not a pretty sight.

“It was stupid and dumb, what I let that horse do to me,” Stallings said.

Stallings said he feels that there’s a place for former jockeys in the stewards’ stand.

“Out of the three stewards, at least one should be an ex-jockey at all times,” he said. “We’ve been in the trenches. If there’s a possible mistake made by a rider, we’ve been there and should be best qualified to judge whether there’s a foul.”

Stallings points to Walter Blum, in Florida, and Herb Arroyo, in Chicago, as former riders who have made good stewards.

“In California, it was good that Alfred Shelhamer and Hubert Jones, who used to ride, became stewards,” he said. “And I think Bill Hartack will make a good steward when he gets the chance.”

When Pomona’s season ends Sept. 28, Stallings will head for Phoenix and Turf Paradise, where he will be trying to please the stewards rather than working in their stand, judging the riders. The Turf Paradise season, unlike the short fair meetings, will run into next May.

“One of the reasons I’ve survived at the fairs is that I don’t mind moving on every two weeks,” Stallings said. “I’m a vagabond by nature, anyway.”