Road to Success Reaches Milestone

It was the greatest race ever run on his race track. It was a pity Bing Crosby wasn’t around to see it. Nor were Pat O’Brien, W.C. Fields and a handful of other cronies who were in at the outset.

In 1937, when Bing Crosby and a few of his poker-playing buddies first dreamed up the idea of buying a racetrack down by San Diego, it was widely perceived that it was merely a kind of complicated hobby. Bing was buying it instead of a yacht or a string of polo ponies or maybe a prizefighter or a girls’ softball team. A diversion, not a serious business venture. A place to play, to while away the hours between tee-offs, something to do when he wasn’t on a golf course or a road to Zanzibar with Bob Hope.

No one thought of it as anything permanent. It was like the golf tournament Bing was also starting alongabout then at Rancho Santa Fe. A lark, a laugh.

It was unthinkable that it would be a sound investment. After all, the track was a solid 100 miles south of Los Angeles, and Hollywood Park was shortly to open. It was widely held to be Bing’s Folly, the road to bankruptcy, a star’s play box, nothing more.

It played initially to a few of Bing’s pals and the hard-core bettors who found it closer than Caliente. Some 4,654 a day showed up the first year. Attendance soared to 6,000, then dropped to 5,000 in succeeding years. Meanwhile, Santa Anita played to 18,554 that year. Hollywood Park played to 16,607 a day its first year.

Santa Anita’s handle was $37,889,491 that first year when Del Mar’s was $2,224,301, to give you an idea. Hollywood Park’s first year the handle was $16,494,133. Del Mar had fewer racing days initially, but its daily average was one-quarter of the major tracks’.

So, imagine who had a $1-million horse race Saturday? One million for one race--for a track whose total purse distribution for a whole meet was $110,295 in 1937. For a track that was considered wildly reckless when it put up $25,000 for a match race between Seabiscuit and Ligaroti in 1938.

Guess which track had the highest daily average mutuel handle (taking into account off-track betting) in the world last year? Santa Anita? Nah. Second. Hollywood Park? Third. Belmont? Eighth. Aqueduct? Tenth.

Guess which track had the second-most people on a daily average (including inter-track wagering) last year?

The answer is Del Mar, Bing Crosby’s funny little hobby down where--as he used to like to sing it--the turf meets the surf.

Bing Crosby’s little play toy is a full-grown conglomerate today. It was second (to Saratoga) in daily attendance (track and off-track) by a mere 268 per day. It outpulled everybody at the windows, drawing $1 million a day more than Hollywood Park and nearly $5 million a day more than Aqueduct and twice as much as either of Belmont’s meetings. The Whitneys and Vanderbilts would need smelling salts.

Del Mar is no longer a quaint little place where they ride the horses through the surf and where an average card has a whole field of graduate claimers, shadow-jumpers, spit-bitters and shin-splinted mares.

They loaded one of the best fields ever assembled into the starting gate Saturday. There was a horse who won last year’s Kentucky Derby, a horse who finished second in this year’s, and the best handicap horses in America.

It is an axiom in horse racing that an older horse will always beat a younger one. It is the horse race version of boxing’s truism that a good big man will always beat a good little one.

There were six 4-year-olds, one 5-year-old, and one 3-year-old loaded into the gate for the $1-million Pacific Classic at Del Mar Saturday.

To give you an idea how good this field was by Del Mar’s old standards, the winner broke a 41-year-old track record for the distance by almost four seconds. Now, breaking a running record by three-plus seconds is like breaking a pole vault record by 10 feet or winning an America’s Cup race by a day.

The kid won it. Best Pal is a hard-knocking bay gelding, only 3, who has run 15 times in his career, won eight times and been in the money 13 of them. He runs everywhere. He tries every time. If you think that isn’t unusual, you don’t know race horses. Most of them are first-class gold-brickers.

Best Pal was second in this year’s Kentucky Derby, fifth in the Preakness (one of the two times he was out of the money) and came back to Hollywood Park to run a smasher (2:00.3) in the Swaps Stakes.

He got an eight-pound break in the weights from the older field, but the bettors were unconvinced and let him get away at 9-2.

His race was unhurried. He trailed the leaders without panic under an unaccustomedly patient ride by jockey Patrick Valenzuela.

His trainer, Gary Jones, had some trouble getting Best Pal into form. The horse got out of control and worked too fast, then worked like a plow horse.

Farma Way, the favorite, had been giving the other entrants in this field multi-pounds in other races. He seemed to think the race was either a walkover or a late-summer sprint for older horses. Best Pal, as did the rest of the field, simply kept him in sight and waited for him to come back to them.

Farma Way couldn’t steal the race, but a speedy foreigner, stablemate Twilight Agenda, almost did. Best Pal ran him down at the wire.

It was a fitting finish for a classic event. The best part of Best Pal is that he is a gelding and will be able to run as long as he keeps his form.

Crosby could be proud of his racetrack 100 miles down the road from the klieg lights. It has become a citadel of racing. It is as much a Crosby legacy as “White Christmas” or “Going My Way”--a million-dollar idea.