LOS ALAMITOS : Parker Has Known Good and Bad

Success at the race track came easily for Jack Parker Jr. in the early 1980s. As one of the top drivers at the New Jersey Meadowlands, Parker trained and drove a small stable that pushed him over the $1-million earnings mark each year from 1980 through ’83.

The third-generation horseman drove several prominent stakes winners in the early ‘80s, among them Highland Bridget, Slapstick, Computer and Elitist. Elitist, in fact, won the 1982 Battle of Saratoga with Parker’s father, Jack, and grandfather, Howard, in the stands. Jack Sr. trained the horse and Howard, who has since died, is a member of Saratoga’s Harness Hall of Fame. In 1983, Parker’s horses earned a career-high $1,653,772.

The next season was tragically different.

Parker was nearly killed in a spill at the Meadowlands in March of 1984. He led the field past the quarter pole when his horse went off-stride and dumped him from the sulky. The first horse that reached him kicked his helmet off. Others ran over him, causing multiple injuries that left Parker in a coma for 19 days.

After several months of recovery, Parker returned to the track, however, and drove his first horse to the winner’s circle. For the next few years, even though he failed to reach the million-dollar mark in earnings, he still had successful years. He won 102 races in 1985, the fourth time he had reached the 100-victory plateau.

But from 1986 until the fall of 1990, Parker slumped. He won 179 races and just more than $2 million in that 4 1/2-year period. For Parker, harness races in New Jersey, once so easy, had become so difficult that he shifted his operation to California last fall for a change of scenery.

“I just can’t do any good back there anymore,” he said. “I don’t know what the reason is.”

Parker crashed the local scene last fall for the summer-fall meeting and was the fourth-leading driver of the 10-week stand with 30 victories, just three fewer than his total for all of 1989.

“I started off slow, driving just one or two a night,” said Parker, 36. “Then it was five or six a night. I had some people pretty satisfied last fall.”

Parker returned to New Jersey over the winter and tried the Garden State Park and Meadowlands circuit again, but had little luck. He was back at Los Alamitos in February for the current meet and is now fifth in the drivers’ standings. With 65 victories through last Saturday, he is on pace for a 100-win season, but doesn’t have any specific goals.

“I’m just doing the best I can and trying to make a living,” he said. “I like to keep my bills paid, keep my family healthy and happy--things like that.”

Parker drives Magic Moose, the best older trotter on the grounds; Mighty Trouble, a stakes-winning 3-year-old trotting colt, and Perede, a regular in the filly and mare invitational pace. Dime A Dip, one of the few horses he has trained this year, was recently retired because of a leg injury. The mare was a stakes winner at the Meadowlands last year for Parker and earned $74,482 in her career.

“She was my moneymaker,” he said.

Parker made two previous forays into California, in 1978-’79 and again in 1982-’83. He trained 15 horses at Hollywood Park one season and drove Vereen, a 1:53 miler, in the 1983 fall season at Hollywood.

Before his 1984 accident, Parker had trained 22 horses and is hoping to rebuild his stable. He also plans to drive at Chicago’s Sportsman’s Park after the meeting ends here in late July, but his long-range plans include moving his family to California if a year-round harness circuit develops.

“I’ve got to work more than six months a year to make a living,” he said.

Harness racing is in his blood, though, and has been since he jogged one of his father’s horses in his native Delaware when he was only 8.

“I was hooked,” he said.

At 19, he broke out on his own and began to train and drive his own horses on the Brandywine-Liberty Bell circuit, then moved to the Meadowlands in the late ‘70s. There he experienced the success, the injury, the slump. And now, he is tasting success again. Last Friday night with Miss Boom Boom, he won his 1,200th race.

“I don’t know if it’s because of the accident, but I’m becoming more mellow,” he says. “Maybe it’s old age.”

Driver Robert Sleeth, sixth in the track standings with 56 victories, has been suspended for failing to appear before the stewards after failing a breath analyzer test last Friday.

Sleeth had been ordered to meet with the stewards on Saturday after failing the test, required of all drivers before an evening’s races. He must meet with them before he can be reinstated.

Leading driver Joe Anderson and horse owner Frank Ranaldi recently imported several horses from New Zealand that have made an immediate impact at Los Alamitos.

King Strike, Noble Hero, Easy Guess and Mount Cargill have all won prominent races here in the last few weeks. King Strike won a conditioned race on May 25 and was second last Saturday in the Invitational Handicap pace to Storm Prince. The race time of 1:53 1/5 is the fastest pace of the season.

Thirty minutes earlier, another record had fallen when the Anderson-trained and driven Noble Hero won the $30,000 Fireball Series Final in 1:53 3/5, knocking a full second off the old mark for 4-year-old geldings. It was Noble Hero’s second North American victory in three starts.

Easy Guess won her first two American starts, but was scratched from last Friday’s invitational pace for fillies and mares.

Perhaps most impressive, however, has been Mount Gargill, a 7-year-old gelding who won his first two American races, by nine and two lengths, respectively, both at very short odds.

“This horse will get better with time,” Anderson said. “I still think he’s a couple of weeks away from being able to perform optimally.”

The frightening aspect of the Anderson-Ranaldi imports, at least for other drivers and trainers, is that Ranaldi is going back to New Zealand later this week to look at more racing stock.

“Frank and I have been real successful with the horses we’ve brought over here,” said Anderson, who trains 32. “Every one of them has performed up to, if not above, expectations.”