COMMENTARY : The Horses Ran for Shoemaker

They were the best of friends almost from the beginning, Eddie Arcaro, the established pro, and Willie Shoemaker, the new kid with the gifted hands on the reins. They were rivals and fierce competitors.

“Nobody was closer than Shoe and I,” Arcaro said Tuesday, his voice hushed and grim, from his home in North Miami. He had just watched the television briefing from the California hospital where Shoemaker lay partially paralyzed and in critical condition after a one-car accident. His condition was upgraded to serious Tuesday night.

Shoemaker, 59, was one of the greatest jockeys of all time. He rode for 41 years, until 1990. He won the Kentucky Derby in 1986 at the age of 54 -- older than any athlete had ever won a major championship. Horses ran for him.

“We were great friends,” Arcaro said. “We are great friends.”

Arcaro had already won the Kentucky Derby four times before their tracks crossed in 1949. “My career was already off and running,” Arcaro said. “You could see that he had great potential. He just needed a little help.”

What developed was like, in a way, the relationship of Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. “We had no jealousy of each other,” Arcaro said. “When both guys have talent, you don’t have to have jealousy.”

The legend of the Shoe has been larger than life almost from the beginning. He was so small at birth that his grandmother wrapped the 29 ounces of him in a doll’s blanket and set him on the oven door of the kerosene stove as an incubator. He never did grow much bigger than 95 pounds, which made him slight even for a jockey and fixed his riding style.

“I felt I had to make them run; horses would run for him,” Arcaro said. “He had those hands and he could handle a tough heavy-headed dude as good as I could.”

Trainer Phil Johnson, who put Shoemaker in the saddle many times, thinks Shoe’s gift for touch instead of brute force ultimately made it clear that a woman could ride successfully. “He couldn’t hurt a fly with a whip,” Johnson said.

“Oh, yeah,” responded former jockey Sammy Renick, “you should have seen Shoe hit a golf ball. He could use a whip, but he knew how and when to use it.”

Arcaro remembers how the apprentice Shoemaker always looked as if he had rode in from Texas with the clothes on his back and never changed them. “Chrissakes!’ I told him, ‘you’ve got to get some clothes; you can’t walk around like that,’ ” Arcaro said. “He had this one pair of jeans he was wearing all day. He was making money but he had no money.”

It was during the time of the Coogan Law in California, when the courts held the money of young actors and performers to protect them from their elders. “I got him a lawyer and the courts let him have some money,” Arcaro said.

And then there was the business of the teeth. Back then Shoemaker was known as Silent Shoe. Trainers would ask for information and he would give it in single syllables. “His teeth grew in wrong and he wouldn’t open his mouth,” Arcaro said. “I got him this dentist; he charged Shoe a fortune. And then around us he wouldn’t shut his mouth.”

In spite of the record 8,833 races Shoemaker’s horses won -- 1,009 stakes won, including four Kentucky Derbys -- the landmark of his career was a classic blunder at the Kentucky Derby. In 1957 he was leading with Gallant Man and stood up in the stirrups after mistaking for the finish line a pole a sixteenth of a mile from home. Iron Liege won by a nose and Shoemaker got history.

And that still makes Arcaro protective about his friend. “If anybody knew what happened, they’d understand,” Arcaro said. “What happened is that they changed the finish line that year; they lengthened the stretch by a sixteenth (of a mile). Anyhow, if you see the damn films, I’m not sure that got him beat. Shoe was up, and down the next stride.

“And after the race they did what they should have done 50 years before. They put lines on the fence to show the finish; jockeys are riding with their head behind the neck of the horse -- they aren’t riding in a chair.”

Indeed, the poles at Churchill Downs were all the same size back then, and in the aftermath they made the finish pole bigger than the others. The 80-year-old historian at Churchill Downs said, however, that the finish line was and is right where it’s been for a century. The way Arcaro remembers it tells more about their relationship than history. “I never made that mistake,” Arcaro said, “but I can see how it could happen.”

At the other extreme was the 1986 Derby on Ferdinand, which is regarded by many as the Willie Mays catch of racing. When they turned for home, Ferdinand was four wide. “He was going to lose a lot of ground,” Arcaro said. “When a hole opened up on the inside, Shoe jumped the horses’ heels and saved that ground. It was a great ride. But he did that so much in his life.”

The California Highway Patrol has placed Shoemaker under arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol. It doesn’t take much alcohol to reach a 95-pound man. “Chrissakes!” Arcaro said. “They don’t know if he’s going to live or be paralyzed or what. Couldn’t they have waited?

“He was just getting into training. He had a stable of good young horses. He was going to be a good one.

“Root for him.”

And be thankful that there was no other car involved.