BOB-TALED WAG : Dean of Chicago Horse Racing Leads Runyonesque Life

When Dave Feldman was a teen-ager, he met Damon Runyon in the offices of the old Chicago Examiner and quickly became Runyon’s go-between with a bookmaker who took bets on horses.

Feldman didn’t spend a whole lot of time with Runyon, who was visiting from New York, but something must have rubbed off, because Feldman has grown up to be like many of those zany Broadway characters Runyon manufactured.

When Feldman says, “I bet a left lung on that horse,” he means $600.

When Feldman calls one of his horses an eating machine, he means the slow-footed animal can’t earn his keep.

Asked once what he did on a trip to Rome, Feldman said: “I saw where the Pope poped and where the pigeons flocked. Pretty interesting if you’re Catholic and like pigeons. But I’m Jewish, and I don’t have any interest in seeing old churches. I don’t even like old synagogues.”

Since he was 13, the 74-year-old Feldman has been betting horses, owning them, training them, breeding them, announcing them on the public address, and handicapping and writing about them for the readers of Chicago newspapers.

He is the king of the conflicts of interest, but his employers have never seemed to mind. “Dave is a cult figure in this town,” an editor at the Chicago Sun-Times said. “You walk with him through Arlington Park, and everybody knows him. We probably wouldn’t let anybody else on the paper get away with all the things he does, but with Dave we make the exception, because we think he does all his jobs honestly.”

Right now, Feldman is not wearing as many hats as he usually does, his usual quota being enough to accommodate an Easter parade. As an owner and trainer, his racing stable is down to one horse. For 14 years, he’s run the union that represents horse owners and trainers in Chicago, but he’s not running for president again. He was the track announcer for 32 years at Sportsman’s Park, but has no thoughts of taking that up again.

Feldman has had a quadruple heart bypass, has been hospitalized for pneumonia and he has a history of prostate trouble. Somebody called him at his office recently and asked if he could spare a few minutes. “Yeah, but hurry up,” Feldman said. “I’ve only got an hour to live.”

In Chicago, he is still the self-appointed head of the Broken Down Horseplayers, a group so well-known that they go by BDH in his column, and most of the readers know what he’s talking about.

The time he was rushed to a Miami hospital suffering from pneumonia, he found a phone in the intensive-care ward and was calling the jockeys’ room at Gulfstream Park to tell riders how he wanted his horses ridden.

Leaving the Cleveland Clinic one day after getting an injection of cortisone for his heart, Feldman told the cab driver to take him to Thistledown. He bet a couple of races at that track, then flew to Chicago, where he caught the last three races on the card at Sportsman’s Park.

Feldman has never been punched by another horseman, even though he’s made a career of bluntly telling owners how to buy horses, other trainers how to train them and jockeys how to ride them.

Feldman once wrote that the reason Earlie Fires rode so many winners in Chicago was because top jockeys such as Eddie Arcaro and Bill Shoemaker didn’t compete there anymore. For a time, Fires and several other leading Chicago jockeys refused to ride the horses Feldman trained.

At the 1980 Belmont Stakes, Feldman was carrying a lot of money from a Chicago bettor who liked favored Codex, the winner of the Preakness. The night before the race, Feldman sneaked into the stall to feel Codex’ legs while his trainer, Wayne Lukas, was distracted by several reporters.

Feldman was on his knees, checking out Codex, and afterward he said, “That horse is sore as a boil.” Feldman didn’t make the bet, and Codex finished seventh.

This year, before the Florida Derby, Feldman told Shelly Meredith, the owner of Hawkster, that he had wasted a trip from California because Dixieland Brass was going to win. There was a side bet about Hawkster outfinishing Feldman’s pick. Dixieland Brass was pulled up by his jockey on the backstretch, never to run again.

“Maybe I didn’t lose,” Feldman said to the man holding the money, “because my horse didn’t finish. How could I be outfinished if my horse doesn’t finish?” Finally, Feldman paid off.

In the 1960s, Feldman was working at the Chicago American when the newspaper across the street, the Chicago Daily News, thought he could help them build circulation.

“I’ll talk to you guys,” Feldman told one of the editors at the Daily News, “but I’m happy where I am and it’s 100-1 that I’ll come.”

In a meeting with Daily News executives, one of them said: “Let’s all put down what we think Dave’s annual salary ought to be and put the pieces of paper in an ashtray. And Dave, you fill one out, too.”

Feldman’s estimate of his worth was the lowest in the room.

“You guys just took a 100-1 shot down to even money,” Feldman said, and he made the switch.

At the Daily News, Feldman once went the first 11 months of a year without turning in an expense account. He carried his receipts for trips in a paper shopping bag inside of another paper shopping bag.

The Super Bowl that year was in Los Angeles, and the newspaper planned to send out several reporters because the sports department was well under its budget.

In early December, Feldman walked in with his 11-month expense report. “We figured to have four or five guys at the Super Bowl,” the sports editor said. “Now, we might not even be able to afford one.”

Feldman still figures he gave the paper a break. “Think of how many cab rides I forgot by waiting all that time to turn it in,” he said.

One season, the masseur for the jockeys at one of the Chicago tracks kept promising Feldman a rubdown. He showed up unexpectedly one night in the crowded newsroom and he and Feldman went back to the vacant managing editor’s desk for the treatment. Mike Royko, the columnist, had a photographer take pictures of this outlandish scene. “It really helped,” Feldman said. “I picked a bunch of winners for the next day.”

Feldman has written a book, called, “Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda,” (Bonus Books, Inc., Chicago), about his years around race tracks. Some of these stories are in it, some aren’t, but there were enough offbeat anecdotes to impress at least one reviewer, Dan Farley of the Racing Post, a European publication.

“This is an eye-opening look at how racing in America really is,” Farley said.

Feldman was surprised to hear that he had left out some good stories. “When you’ve only got an hour to live, I guess you forget more than you remember,” he said. “Maybe there’s enough for a second book.”