THOROUGHBRED RACING : Can’t Sweep Everett Under Rug

In a court deposition, the subject drifted to Oriental rugs.

“No Oriental rugs,” said Marje Everett, the chief executive officer of Hollywood Park. “There will be a day they will pay for these allegations, let me tell you.”

Everett, battling to save her job in a proxy battle initiated by R.D. Hubbard, has been investigated by Hollywood Park’s audit committee about using company funds for private use.

“I take it you have Oriental rugs at your house and you have paid for them personally,” the lawyer questioning Everett said.

Snapped Everett: “You take it wrong. I don’t happen to like Oriental rugs. I had three residences, and I don’t need any rugs given to me or to take any rugs from someone.”

“So we are clear on the record,” the lawyer said. “You own or have never owned any Oriental rugs?”

Said Everett: “I hate Oriental rugs. And I hate them even more right now.”

Everett’s deposition ran 303 pages, plus dozens of pages of exhibits. Hubbard’s deposition ran a mere 256 pages. The record in these proceedings may belong to Tom Gamel, the anti-Everett Hollywood Park stockholder who had a 315-page deposition.

This paper parade seemed to bother a federal judge last week when he ruled that Hubbard prematurely tooted his horn, advertising that he won a consent solicitation when, in fact, he fell less than a percentage point short.

In the courtroom were almost as many lawyers as spectators.

“Don’t file any more boxes of papers,” the judge said. “It took us half a day to sort out all these papers. Filing all these papers is really not helping me.”

Everett doesn’t talk much to the press anymore--a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal being an exception--and perhaps this is because she is hoarse from giving depositions.

Her spokesmen live in New York and work for something like $350 an hour, just another of the mushrooming expenses that the stockholders of Hollywood Park and Hubbard must bear in this lengthy battle.

The tab is already in the millions, with the proxy count at the annual shareholders’ meeting still more than a month away. Should Hubbard win, Hollywood Park is responsible for his expenses. In 1989, long before Hubbard’s intrusion started, the track’s legal bills were well over $1 million.

Hubbard, rebuked by the judge for talking too much, has quit talking. His silence can’t be mistaken, however, for a loss of confidence. One newspaper headline referred to the consent count as a “reprieve” for Everett, and that’s the way Hubbard’s followers assessed it. One of them, using round numbers, volunteered this scenario:

“There are about four million shares in the company. Traditionally, 80% of the shares are voted at annual meetings. That means about 3.2 million shares. The winner needs half of what’s voted, which would amount to around 1.6 million shares. Hubbard had more than 1.9 million consents. So he’s already over what he needs.”

What’s wrong with this speed math, of course, is that last week’s consents can’t necessarily be equated with next month’s proxies. Shareholders can change their minds. Hubbard’s people don’t believe they will.

In court last week, baseball terms were bouncing off the walls, even in the off-season.

“It’s ain’t over till it’s over,” said one of Everett’s attorneys, borrowing from Yogi Berra.

And the judge said, “No matter what I rule today, both sides have the right to go to each other and say, ‘Say it ain’t so, Joe.’ ”

In case his audience didn’t know where that expression came from, the judge quickly added: “That’s what the kid outside the courthouse said to the famous Shoeless Joe Jackson (in the Chicago Black Sox scandal).”

While waiting for the proxy count, those with access to the mounds of depositions can re-read them and smile. One attorney, apparently fishing to see if important documents were being destroyed at Hollywood Park, questioned Everett about a paper shredder.

“There is an itty-bitty little shredder inside a closet (at the track), and I mean itty-bitty,” Everett said.

The attorney did several minutes of rhetorical footwork, forcing Everett to say: “I didn’t do any shredding, so why don’t you ask me the question? I didn’t shred anything.”

The questions persisted about the size of the shredder. “It’s a very small machine,” Everett repeated.

Finally, Bob Forgnone, one of Hollywood Park’s attorneys, answered the question in a way that shouldn’t have been misunderstood.

“It’s not an Ollie North model,” Forgnone said.

David Shell, an attorney representing some of the harness trainers whose horses have tested positive for cocaine, said that the urine was independently tested from one horse three times, producing three different results.

All three tests were negative for cocaine, Shell said. Two tests were negative for one of the two major metabolites. One test was negative for the other metabolite.

There is disagreement among racing chemists whether both metabolites need to be present in a test for it to be called a positive.

“These positive tests they’ve been getting are a sham,” Shell said. “What the (California Horse) Racing Board won’t admit is that this is a people problem, not a trainer or a horse problem. The real problem is the amount of cocaine that’s being used by the employees on the backstretch. In connection with the cocained horses, there’s never been an accusation made against the people who handle the horses.”

Horse Racing Notes

Brought to Mind, winner of the La Brea Stakes at Santa Anita two weeks ago, will try to win the El Encino Stakes Saturday. A Wild Rice, second by 5 1/2 lengths in the La Brea, will try again, and other starters are Chandelier, Dead Heat, Highland Tide, Somethingmerry and Spanish Dior. The third race in the series for fillies foaled in 1987 is the La Canada Stakes on Jan. 26. . . . Santa Anita has changed its position on intertrack betting, saying that it will participate in legislation that may lead to betting on Santa Anita races at Hollywood Park and vice versa.

The toughest group to handicap is the committee that annually picks the Eclipse Award for best racing photography. This year, photographers around the country were saying that the cinch winner was the shot of a horse throwing its jockey and going over the fence at Ak-Sar-Ben. That photo got an honorable mention. The winning picture was a shot of actor Jack Klugman and one of his horses appearing to compare their prominent noses. Michael Cartee, an advertising man who is also good with a camera, took the picture for The Thoroughbred of California magazine.

This week at Aqueduct, about 15 minutes before a race, a horse to be ridden by Julie Krone was scratched. The owner of another horse removed Abbe Weinberg and replaced her with Krone, one of the top riders in the country. Odds on the horse went from 3-1 to 13-10, and he won in a gallop. Question: Was it fair to the bettors to be changing jockeys on such short notice? Answer: Probably not, and the chief steward at Aqueduct said later that he, not one of his associates, should have been asked before the change was made. Because of racing custom, the owner had to pay both jockeys.