This Colt Could Be the Next Man o’ War

Oh, boy! Ole! Wow!

Have I got a horse for you!

Look, I wasn’t around to see Man o’ War. Count Fleet. Seabiscuit. Twenty Grand. Equipoise.

But I saw Swaps. Affirmed. Sunday Silence. Citation.

And Saturday I saw Mister Frisky. If this isn’t a horse for the ages, you could fool me.

Of course, you never can be sure about a 3-year-old horse. They are like teen-agers. You never can be sure whether they’re going to run a bank--or rob it.

But this gorgeous burnished copper runner out of Florida by way of Puerto Rico toyed with the best 3-year-old colts this side of the Mississippi in a horse race Saturday. It was like a Joe Louis fight. Over just as soon as the puncher got in range.

The greatest record in sports, by common consent, is Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak.

Doing a thing over and over is the mark of greatness.

Well, Mister Frisky in Saturday’s Santa Anita Derby tied a record that had been held by--are you ready for this?--Citation. He won his 16th consecutive race. He has never been beaten.

Who knows what kind of a runner this is? He just skims along the ground as if he were on roller skates. All the jockey has to do is stay awake. A carousel horse couldn’t be less trouble.

You listen to trainer Laz Barrera and you come away convinced the horse will be able to talk--in two languages--by the time he’s full grown. He already understands Laz, which impresses a lot of scholars right there.

He’s not a big horse, barely over 15 hands. But he would be a weightlifter if he were human. “There’s not five pounds of fat on him and he weighs 1,100 pounds,” boasts trainer Barrera.

If Man o’ War was Big Red, this replica might be Little Red. He’s solid copper from head to fetlock. He looks as if he was minted, not foaled.

Like all the great ones, he does what he has to do. You put a horse in front of him, he runs him down. You put a horse behind him, he keeps him there.

He won the Santa Anita Derby Saturday under a hand ride. The jockey doesn’t need a whip, just a stirrup. It wasn’t only what he won, it was how.

He’s going to go in the Kentucky Derby next month the way no horse has since Seattle Slew and the way only a few in history have--undefeated. Even the great Secretariat had gone in blemished. Even Citation lost a race as a 2-year-old.

His time Saturday was a respectable 1:49 considering he had shown the field who was boss by the head of the stretch. It’s hard to keep from throwing your hat in the air when you review the race.

Something like 69 horses have gone from the Santa Anita Derby to the Kentucky Derby. Only 10 have won it. Eight winners of the Santa Anita have won the Kentucky Derby. Ferdinand, who was third in the Santa Anita, won at Kentucky.

But only one Santa Anita Derby winner--Affirmed--has won the Triple Crown.

Horses who go into the Kentucky Derby as favorites are supposed to have prepped in races such as the Hopeful, the Champagne, the Belmont Futurity, the Gotham and the Wood, the high society gambols of the East, not the rodeos of the West.

Mister Frisky learned to race in Puerto Rico. This was widely considered to be like setting home run records in Albuquerque or Salt Lake City where the air was thin and the pitches fat. Before you get excited, you have to find out who was pitching.

But Mister Frisky not only won races in Puerto Rico, he broke clocks and set records.

Some women, when they want a birthday present from the husband, put in for a mink coat or a new Mercedes or maybe a trip to Monte Carlo. Mrs. Marta Fernandez told husband Jose, a construction magnate, she wanted a horse. Not some bridle-path pony or hedge-jumper but a real papered thoroughbred. She didn’t want to chase foxes, she wanted to chase Derbies.

For $15,000, Jose got a bargain. Mister Frisky, unlike a new car or an ocean voyage, not only doesn’t depreciate, he has shown a profit to date of $526 085, the difference between the $15,000 he cost and the $541,085 he has now won. If he continues through the Triple Crown he may command fees that will make even Man o’ War look like a dud at stud.

Marta Fernandez picked him for the most feminine of reasons--she liked his looks. His conformation. “He looked like a square horse, he looked like a fighter,” she explains. He looked like a good guy to have in a foxhole.

The breeding was not all that undistinguished. Grandfather was Damascus, a horse Bill Shoemaker, no less, always said should have won the Triple Crown. He did win the Preakness and the Belmont. He finished third in the Kentucky Derby. Shoemaker took the blame.

Horses have won the Santa Anita Derby before and have gone to Kentucky to be exposed as what the hardboots liked to refer to as “nice little California sprinters.” Silky Sullivan looked like a plow horse in ‘58, beating only two horses at Churchill at odds of 2-1. Your Host set the precedent in 1950. He finished ninth as the darling of the Hollywood crowd, owned by Mogul William Goetz and bred by Goetz’ father-in-law, Louis B. Mayer. “Movie horses!” sneered the Establishment. They won only on sound stages, in John Wayne westerns.

The trend began to reverse about a decade ago. The facts of the matter are, three of the last four Kentucky Derbies have been won by Santa Anita Derby entrants.

But, the proposition is not whether Mister Frisky belongs in the field at Churchill May 5, it’s whether he belongs with the legends of the track.

Laz Barrera, who trained the last Triple Crown winner (Affirmed, 1978) and who trained the Puerto Rican horse (Bold Forbes) who won the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont (and finished third with a cut hoof in the Preakness) thinks Mister Frisky should be even money against Man o’ War. When he first saw tapes of the horse, Laz recalls he felt his scalp prickle. “I noticed the jockey had a bad habit of pulling the horse when he got to the lead. I got on the phone and said, ‘Don’t let that jockey do that! He’ll get the horse in bad habits! He’ll think he’s supposed to stop!’ ”

Since Laz has had the horse, there’s been no stopping him. “They said he could only win in Puerto Rico--so he won in California. They said he could only win at seven furlongs--so he wins at a mile. They said he could only go a mile--so he goes a mile and an eighth. Now, I suppose they’ll say he can’t go a mile and a quarter. “

Not likely. The only question now is whether Mister Frisky can do card tricks. Or save the hero from the rustlers. Or sing Carmen.

As his co-owner, Jose Fernandez was to say, “He’s the hero of 3 million Puerto Ricans. The governor said he could win the election if he could get Mister Frisky to appear on the platform with him. “

The only problem is, if Mister Frisky continues to make money, he will turn Republican.