TRIPLE CROWN RATINGS

The Daily Racing Form’s early line on Saturday’s Belmont Stakes lists Jacksonport at 300-1.

“I guess what they’re trying to tell me is not to waste the $10,000 (entry and starting fee),” trainer Murray Garren said.

On Monday morning at Belmont Park, the garrulous Garren explained why he will run the unaccomplished Jacksonport in the Belmont.

“You can’t win it if you’re not in it,” Garren said.

Of those who are in it--a field of 10 or 11 3-year-olds, depending on whether Berkley Fitz’s owner supplements him into the stake by paying $50,000--the co-favorites are Pine Bluff, fifth in the Kentucky Derby and winner of the Preakness; and A.P. Indy, who won the Peter Pan Stakes at Belmont after being sidelined for the Derby and Preakness because of a hoof injury. The other probables are Casual Lies, Colony Light, Al Sabin, Montreal Marty, Agincourt and two from Europe, My Memoirs and Cristofori.

“My horse ran a mile and three-eighths against older horses and didn’t do too bad,” Garren said of Jacksonport. “There aren’t many 3-year-olds that have gone that far this year, and the race showed me that he can make the Belmont distance (of 1 1/2 miles).”

What Garren doesn’t say is that Jacksonport ran sixth, finishing ahead of only three horses, in the 1 3/8-mile allowance race on grass at Belmont on May 23. He carried 110 pounds, 16 fewer than he will have on his back Saturday, and was beaten by 4 1/4 lengths.

“(Jockey Jean) Cruguet didn’t know that the horse (is a front-runner),” Garren said. “He’ll ride him better this time.”

Cruguet never rode Jacksonport before the May 23 race. Cruguet, 53, was aboard Seattle Slew when they swept the Triple Crown in 1977. In 1984, Cruguet didn’t have a mount in the Belmont, but he won three other stakes on the card that day. Cruguet’s last Belmont Stakes appearance was a third-place finish astride Baron de Vaux, a 68-1 shot, in 1990.

Garren, 72, is a real estate investor who got into racing in 1963 when a neighbor formed a syndicate to race a horse. Now Garren owns and trains his own stock.

“I don’t have to go through what a lot of trainers do,” Garren said. “They have meetings with their owners about what they’re going to do with their horses. Then they have dinner meetings to discuss the same thing. If I want to talk to my owner, all I got to do is talk to myself.

“And this game will get you talking to yourself, anyhow.”

Jacksonport is a son of Vigors, who won the Santa Anita Handicap in 1978. Jacksonport was bred by John Ed Anthony’s Loblolly Stable, which won the Preakness with Pine Bluff for trainer Tom Bohannan. Jacksonport was trained by Tony Reinstedler as a 2-year-old, when he won one of three starts, and in his 3-year-old debut, on Jan. 9 at Aqueduct, he won again and was claimed out of the race by Garren for $35,000.

“I liked the breeding--Vigors out of a Cox’s Ridge mare (On The Brink),” Garren said.

Since then, however, Jacksonport has won only one of 12 starts, and on April 18, against New York’s best 3-year-olds in the Wood Memorial, he finished ninth in a 12-horse field.

More than 10 years ago, Garren claimed a horse for about the same price as Jacksonport, and Peat Moss went on to win one Display Handicap and two Kelso Handicaps, earning about $600,000.

Peat Moss nearly beat another wrong-side-of-the-tracks gelding, John Henry, in the 1981 Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont. That was the year John Henry won his first of two horse-of-the-year titles.

“I was happy and sad at the time that day,” Garren said. “Happy that Peat Moss ran so well, and sad that he just missed beating one of the great horses of all time.”

Advisory panel for The Times’ Triple Crown Ratings: Lenny Hale, vice president for racing at Aqueduct, Belmont Park and Saratoga; Frank (Jimmy) Kilroe, director of racing emeritus at Santa Anita; and Tommy Trotter, racing secretary at Hialeah.

Horse S 1 2 3 Earnings 1.Pine Bluff 12 6 1 2 $1,164,108 2.A.P. Indy 7 6 0 0 828,935 3.Lil E. Tee 10 5 3 1 1,177,106 4.Casual Lies 11 5 1 3 665,468 5.Alydeed 5 3 1 1 269,212 6.Dance Floor 13 4 4 1 751,099 7.Arazi 10 8 1 0 1,117,608 8.Technology 8 4 1 1 464,963 9.Pistols And Roses 11 6 2 2 821,046 10.Colony Light 7 1 2 1 75,566