THOROUGHBRED RACING / BILL CHRISTINE : Race Is a Fitting Tribute to Barrera

Over the years, Hollywood Park has fiddled too much with the names of its stakes races, costing tradition considerable momentum. But there can be no quibbling about the new name for the race that the track is running Sunday, the Lazaro S. Barrera Stakes.

Even the transition is perfectly clean. For the last 10 years, the Laz Barrera has been known as the Affirmed Stakes.

Affirmed and Barrera. Barrera and Affirmed. For three glorious years, 1977 through 1979, those names shot across racing’s sky. Too bad the game couldn’t have bottled some of that excitement. There hasn’t been a Triple Crown winner--or a horse as good--since Affirmed swept the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes in 1978.

Some who visited Barrera’s barn might have had trouble understanding the native Cuban, but Affirmed, a Kentucky-bred, apparently never did. Shortly before the 1990 Derby, the one Barrera tried to win with the undefeated Mister Frisky, Barrera traveled to Lexington, Ky., with a big bag of carrots to visit Affirmed at Calumet Farm. Barrera reported that the stallion, then 15, still looked as if he could win a race.

That was Barrera’s last Derby--Mister Frisky finished eighth--and his last time with Affirmed.

Last April, Barrera, 66, died in a California hospital. He twice underwent heart surgery, and in recent years had been jolted by a frivolous state investigation into whether he raced a horse with cocaine; and by the death of his younger brother Oscar, who trained horses in New York. Friends suspected that Laz might be ailing when he unexpectedly canceled his trip East for Oscar’s funeral.

The deaths of Oscar and Laz reduced the Barrera training clan by 40%.

Frank Wright, the trainer-broadcaster, said long ago: “If anybody ever bothered to check, they’d find out that 30% of all the horses in the world are trained by a Barrera.”

None, though, was more famous than Laz, the onetime $3-a-day hotwalker, and when Dolly Green, the millionaire socialite, was asked why she had hired him as her trainer, she said: “Because he is numero uno. “ Barrera won the California Derby for Green with Paris Prince in 1983.

Next to racing, Barrera loved baseball, and his favorite team was the New York Yankees. When Affirmed was giving Alydar an inferiority complex by repeatedly beating him in most of the big races of the late 1970s, Barrera compared Affirmed to Joe DiMaggio. He saw in the colt the same effortless grace that he had seen in the center fielder.

Several years ago at Hollywood Park, Barrera’s barn was not winning many races, and the George Steinbrenner Yankees were also in a slump. To change the subject from slow-running horses, a reporter asked him what was wrong with the ballclub.

“I knew they would be in trouble this year,” Barrera said. “Because they didn’t sign Goosage in the off-season.”

He was talking, of course, about Goose Gossage, the free-agent relief pitcher who had gone to San Diego.

John Forsythe, Barrera’s good friend, was once asked how he managed to understand the trainer.

“I don’t,” Forsythe said. “But I’m good for about every fifth word, and that keeps me going.”

Barrera’s offbeat sense of humor kept him going. In the winner’s circle, he once chided a member of Santa Anita’s publicity department for hanging around his barn too much, getting in the way.

“The less time you spend over there, the more I spend here,” Barrera said.

Once at the Kentucky Derby, Barrera was sitting in the Churchill Downs executive offices when a reporter appeared, looking to get a check cashed.

Talking about the transaction as though it were a race horse, Barrera said: “Beel (Bill), will that check go the dees-tance?”

Barrera considered the Triple Crown with Affirmed his best training job, but there were horsemen who said that his 1976 campaign with Bold Forbes was even better. Bold Forbes was not a natural 1 1/4-mile horse, and Barrera not only got him to win the Derby at that distance, he also extended him to victory in the 1 1/2-mile Belmont.

Affirmed was not a push-button horse. Preparing for the Kentucky Derby in California, he was winning races convincingly but still worrying Barrera. Affirmed would take the lead in races and then lose interest.

“He saw everything around him and didn’t concentrate on what he was doing,” Barrera said.

There was only one race, the Hollywood Derby, before they would ship to Louisville.

“It’s not the time to be playing anymore,” Barrera told jockey Steve Cauthen.

In the stretch, Cauthen gave Affirmed 12 solid whacks with the whip to toughen him for Churchill Downs. Going to Kentucky, Barrera and Cauthen were convinced that Affirmed would accept the jockey’s whip.

In 1981, the first year that Hollywood Park ran the Affirmed Stakes, the winner was It’s The One, a horse saddled by Barrera. That was a perfect match. So is the one that changes the name of the Affirmed Stakes to the Laz Barrera.

Horse Racing Notes

Jockey Pat Valenzuela, who has moved into 10th place on the national money list, has been given a five-day suspension by the Hollywood Park stewards, starting Sunday. Valenzuela’s mount, El Travieso, was disqualified from first to sixth place in Wednesday’s sixth race. Before he leaves, Valenzuela will ride Luna Elegante in Saturday’s $100,000 Silver Belles Handicap for fillies and mares at 1 1/16 miles. Valenzuela has ridden five winners in the last two days and leads the Hollywood standings with 14 victories after seven days.

Gary Jones, who won the Silver Belles last year with Fantastic Look, saddles Formidable Lady on Saturday. Others entered are Damewood, Nasers Pride, Nice Assay, Nymphea and Paseana. Luna Elegante and Paseana are the high weights at 117 pounds. . . . Sea Cadet, with 122 pounds, is the high weight for Sunday’s Laz Barrera.

Gary Stevens left Thursday for Tokyo, where he’ll ride Golden Pheasant in Sunday’s Japan Cup. Stevens, who ranks third nationally with $11.6 million in purses, will resume riding at Hollywood a week from Sunday. . . . Santa Anita’s winter stakes schedule includes the Strub Stakes on Feb. 9, the Santa Anita Handicap on March 7, the Santa Anita Derby on April 4 and the San Juan Capistrano Handicap on April 26. The Big ‘Cap has a $1-million purse, the other three $500,000. The season opens on Dec. 26 and closes on April 27.