THOROUGHBRED RACING : Mediocre Race, Mediocre Field: It’s an Opportunity for Best Pal

You’re a trainer with a California-bred who hasn’t done much lately, and then you see an oasis: Hollywood Park has carded a race with conditions best suited to struggling horses. Your horse has to run only seven furlongs. All he has to do is beat other Cal-breds. It costs only $200 to enter and the purse is $60,000. How tough can it be? Wrap it up, you’ll take it.

The only hitch is that trainers with horses that have earned $4 million read the condition books too. That is why Best Pal will return to the races tonight in an unlikely spot--the third race on the program, the first running of the Answer Do Stakes. Five other horses are being led to this oasis, but none of them figure to drink.

Consider the cast. Best Pal has earned $4.8 million, more than any horse except Alysheba ($6.6 million), John Henry ($6.5 million), Sunday Silence ($4.9 million) and Easy Goer ($4.8 million). The five other starters in the Answer Do have earned $424,475. The 81 horses running in all nine races tonight have earned about $700,000 less than Best Pal.

One of the horses in the race is Years Of Dreaming, Best Pal’s entrymate, who is also owned by John and Betty Mabee. Another entrant is winless in 11 starts this year. Another is undefeated in the two races it has run. And another is one for 19, lifetime, and hasn’t raced in almost 18 months.

Best Pal hasn’t run in more than five months himself and is winless since October. In his last start, he ran seventh as the favorite in the San Antonio Handicap at Santa Anita, and a postrace examination showed he had bled from the lungs, even though he had been treated with Lasix. The 6-year-old gelding was sent to his owners’ farm near San Diego for a rest. Meantime, the Mabees and Gary Jones had a disagreement, and when Best Pal was ready to resume training, Richard Mandella was in charge.

The first goal for Mandella is to win the Pacific Classic, the $1-million race at Del Mar on Aug. 13. Under Jones, Best Pal won the inaugural Classic in 1991. Best Pal has won two other $1-million races: the Hollywood Futurity for his original trainer, Ian Jory, in 1990, and the Santa Anita Handicap under Jones in 1992. Alysheba is the only other horse to have won three races worth $1 million or more.

Mandella had been saying lately that Best Pal’s Pacific Classic prep would be the $125,000 San Diego Handicap, a 1 1/16-mile race at Del Mar on July 30. On Thursday, just back from the yearling sales in Lexington, Ky., Mandella explained the change:

“I wanted to get him ready for the Pacific Classic by running him around two turns, and he hasn’t sprinted since I don’t know when. But if he wins this race, maybe it’ll pick his head up. It should set him up good for the Classic. I haven’t had a chance to look at the other horses, and maybe there’s somebody in there who’ll be faster than us. But the way my horse has been training, he should win. Racing at night shouldn’t bother him. It might even help, because it’ll be cooler.”

Since winning the Hollywood Gold Cup a year ago, Best Pal has won only one of five starts, and that lone victory, in October, was little more than a workout accompanied by a paycheck--a 3 1/2-length canter past Cal-breds in the California Cup Classic at Santa Anita. After that, he ran 10th in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, also at Santa Anita, and his poor showing in the San Antonio followed a second-place finish in the San Pasqual Handicap. There was good reason to wonder if he was good enough to beat the best horses anymore.

Corey Black won the Hollywood Gold Cup with Best Pal and continued to ride him after that, but he is being replaced by Kent Desormeaux tonight. Desormeaux won four consecutive races with the horse in 1992, including the Strub Stakes and the Santa Anita and Oaklawn handicaps.

Best Pal has 14 victories, eight seconds and three thirds in 33 races, and the last time he ran at a distance less than a mile was when he won the Balboa Stakes at Del Mar in 1990, in his fourth start. The $80,325 Balboa was also Best Pal’s last start in a race worth less than $100,000.

He carries 117 pounds tonight, four fewer than Years Of Dreaming, the same as three of his rivals and his lightest impost since he won the Pacific Classic with 116 pounds on Aug. 10, 1991. A 3-year-old running against older horses, he got an eight-pound concession that day. Earlier in the year, he had carried 10 pounds more, finishing second to Strike The Gold in the Kentucky Derby.

Hollywood Park is where Best Pal ran his first race, on May 18, 1990, and he has won four of five starts on dirt there. His debut was against maidens, going five furlongs, and he won by a half-length for Pat Valenzuela. He wasn’t even the favorite, going off at 9-2.

That was about right for a Cal-bred gelding, a son of Habitony, from a barn that wasn’t winning many races. When he was a yearling, there was never any thought about selling him. On a good bidding day, he might have brought $10,000.

Horse Racing Notes

After Gov. Pete Wilson signed the North-South betting bill Thursday, Hollywood Park announced that it will expand Saturday’s card by offering betting on four races from the Solano County Fair. Hollywood also plans to offer full cards from the major Northern California tracks, Bay Meadows and Golden Gate Fields. Before the new bill, only races worth $20,000 or more could be imported.

After a court dismissed Kent Desormeaux’s appeal, the stewards ruled that the jockey must serve a five-day suspension, starting Sunday. The other days will be Monday, closing day at Hollywood, plus the first three days of the Del Mar meeting, which starts Wednesday. Desormeaux had appealed the suspension he was given when his mount, The Wicked North, was disqualified and dropped from first place to fourth in the Santa Anita Handicap. Under California’s designated-race rule, Desormeaux will still be able to ride Golden Klair, the high weight in Sunday’s $300,000 Vanity Handicap. . . . Desormeaux is third in the national purse standings with $6.2 million. Ahead of him are Mike Smith, with $8.3 million, and Gary Stevens, with $6.6 million.

R Friar Tuck, who was 22-1 when he won the Affirmed Handicap on July 2, is among six horses entered in Saturday’s $200,000 Swaps Stakes. The field, in post-position order: R Friar Tuck, Pollock’s Luck, Valiant Nature, Wild Invader, Dramatic Gold and Silver Music. . . . After Best Pal, the next active horse on the money list is Devil His Due, 16th with $3.3 million. . . . Glass Ceiling, who hadn’t run since November, won Thursday for her fourth victory in six starts. . . . A race later, Sikes won his third in a row on grass.