Heck of a Horse Trainer : Huntington Beach’s Baffert Turns Passion for Racing Into Lucrative Business, and All-Around Good Time

It is early morning on the back stretch at Del Mar, the time when a racetrack is at work, not play. The coastal fog has drifted away, and the pungent odor of the barns is in the air as stalls are mucked and the sun starts to climb.

Bob Baffert is standing in the little grandstand on the backstretch with his stopwatch, checking the progress of a 2 year old named High Stakes Player, who is getting a breezy workout from exercise rider Christian Mendoza. “Don’t let him go,” Baffert orders into the two-way radio.

“You’ve got to watch those riders,” he says, smiling. “They like to get a little test drive sometimes.”

Since 1991, Baffert has become one of California’s leading thoroughbred trainers. He had trained a few thoroughbreds before but mostly concentrated on his quarter horse stable at Los Alamitos. Since he switched on a full-time basis, his horses have won more than $1 million each year, highlighted by 1992, when they won just under $1.7 million and his stable’s Thirty Slews won the prestigious Breeder’s Cup Sprint. His horses already have won almost $1.2 million this year.

On this day, Baffert looks as though he just walked in from a nearby beach.

He’s wearing sneakers, khaki shorts and a T-shirt you can buy at those eclectic specialty shops. He especially likes this one, which advertises a restaurant he insists doesn’t exist. The shirt carries a slogan: “Home of the

Original Shark Taco.” Underneath, it says: “It’s Hell In A Shell.”

Baffert laughs and says: “There are a lot of days I feel just like that, hell in a shell.”

Even on those days, Baffert enjoys being at Del Mar. He says it allows him to be himself, the casual dresser and the free spirit. When he gets dressed up, it’s in blue jeans and a bright, open-collared shirt.

You can tell he likes the constant schmoozing, in the track’s own special language, with the hot walkers, grooms and other trainers. A friendly word here, a wisecrack there.

“I don’t spend much time in the Turf Club, though,” he says, referring to the posh dining room. “But it probably hurts my business, too.”

He knows he is exaggerating a bit when he smiles and says: “A lot of people go there to talk about how much money they have. Hey, I don’t want to know how much money you have. I want to know how much you’re going to spend.”

When he’s not around the track, Baffert lives in Huntington Beach with his wife, Sherry, and their four children. The oldest is 8.

“I always said that if I moved to California I’d live by the ocean,” he says. It’s also not that far from from Santa Anita, where he normally maintains his stable, or from Hollywood Park or Del Mar. “I do most of my racing here in California now,” he says. “There’s no reason to go anywhere else except for a few of the big races.”

*

Baffert grew up on the family cattle ranch near the Mexican border in Arizona and became involved in quarter horse racing naturally. He started riding match races in high school in nearby Nogales. After high school, he tried his hand as a jockey at Los Alamitos and quickly found he was too big. He returned home, enrolled in the University of Arizona’s racetrack industry program and graduated from there.

His first job after college was as a salesman, but he found he wasn’t suited for it, and quickly gravitated to training quarter horses. He did well immediately in Arizona. But Baffert says: “The best thing that could have happened to me was when they closed the track there, and I moved to California.”

Los Alamitos was good to him as a trainer. He quickly established himself as a leader, and in 1986, he had the nation’s top quarter horse, Gold Coast Express. He also started working with thoroughbreds in the late 1980s at the encouragement of Mike Pegram, who owned thoroughbreds as well as the quarter horses Baffert trained for him and Hal Earnhardt at Los Alamitos.

The first thoroughbred Baffert bought was Thirty Slews. It was at the yearling sales at Keeneland, and Baffert spent almost twice what he had intended when he bid $30,000. But at that price, Thirty Slews turned out to be an unbelievable bargain. Not only did he win a Breeder’s Cup race at Gulfstream Park in 1992, he won more than $800,000 after Baffert sold the horse to Pegram and others.

One thing Baffert doesn’t do is buy a horse and keep it for himself. “I wouldn’t be in business very long if I did that,” he says. “The owners might think I’d be trying to keep the best ones for myself. But one thing I do is handpick most of the horses I have. That way I know what I’m getting. When you buy a horse, it’s like getting married.”

Although his style is easygoing, Baffert treats it as serious business. The owners are putting up real money, although most of them have plenty of it. They buy his skill and instincts, as much as the care the horses receive and the space they occupy. A big stable has its own big overhead, and Baffert has 32 horses at this Del Mar meeting.

When Baffert started in the quarter horse business, it was only him, a few horses and one groom. Today his payroll includes an assistant trainer, grooms, hot walkers and exercise riders, and all work for him 12 months a year. “The money I get from the owners mostly pays for the overhead,” Baffert says. “How well I do depends on how much we win.” Trainers normally get 10% of the purses.

*

It’s mid-morning now, and Baffert is in his makeshift office in a room at the corner of his barn. He’s keeping things light with those who pass by.

“My philosophy about life is that we may not be in it for a long time, but we’re in it for a good time,” he says.

Then he adds: “There’s enough stress in this business without adding more. . . . But sometimes around here it’s like it was being in a submarine during the war. You’re always checking for the damage report.”

Only two weeks ago, one of the stable’s most promising colts, Flagship, died when an intestine ruptured. A little before noon on this day, Baffert gets more bad news. He is called outside the stall of Thirty Slews, now an aging 7 year old. A veterinarian shows him the ultrasound of one of the horse’s ankles, and it confirms there is tissue damage. It is not unexpected, and Baffert is prepared.

“I guess we’ll retire him then,” Baffert says.

“He’s not lame, or anything like that,” he adds later. “We won’t drop him down in class, though, and run him in those kinds of races and take any chances on hurting him more. He’s meant too much to us to do that to him.”

Thirty Slews was entered in the Breeder’s Cup sprint again in 1993 at Santa Anita and finished fourth, but he wasn’t the same horse. “He wasn’t the same physically after that first Breeder’s Cup,” Baffert says. “But he picked the right time to run the race of his life for us. You don’t forget that, though. . . . There’s not a day goes by that I don’t walk by and pet him.”

And Baffert, questioned about his feelings about Thirty Slews going into retirement, thought for a few seconds. “Well,” he says. “I guess it’s better him than me.”

Time does not stand still in racing any more than in anything else. There always are going to be newer and younger stars in the stable.

For Baffert, they have colorful names such as Letthebighossroll, bought for $80,000 and now a winner of more than $500,000. There’s also Letthebigcajundoit, who has yet to race but has the breeding, the size and the look of a winner. “I can hardly wait for him,” Baffert says.

Both of those horses are owned by Pegram, a letthegoodtimesroll kind of owner who lives in Mt. Vernon, Wash., and owns 11 McDonald’s franchises. Pegram named one of his horses Golden Arches, another Burger and Fries. Golden Arches has won more than $400,000, but Burgers and Fries, despite an expensive price tag, turned out to be mostly hot dog and went to the claiming races.

Another horse in the stable is 4-year-old gelding Sir Hutch, owned by Bob Lewis of Newport Beach. “He’s one of the best sprinters in the country right now,” Baffert says.

Usually owners name the horses, but Baffert named Thirty Slews, a grandson of the folk hero Seattle Slew, winner of the 1977 Kentucky Derby.

When Baffert came back from Keeneland, a stable hand asked him how much he had paid for the big gray colt. “Thirty (bleeping) slews,” Baffert roared, concerned that that he paid so much money for a horse without a buyer. “So that’s what we ended up naming him. But we had to leave out the (bleeping).”

*

It is early afternoon now, and the track is starting to come alive. The cars are starting to maneuver their way between the orange pylons on Jimmy Durante Boulevard, and the racing silks are being unfurled. It is nearing post time for the first race, and Baffert settles into his clubhouse box. Pegram, along with others, will join him soon. Two of their horses are on the day’s card.

Pegram is outgoing, and he enjoys talking about racing and his association with Baffert. They have become good friends, and their friendship endures even after the days when one of their heavy favorites is beaten in the stretch.

“I met Bob when we were racing quarter horses,” Pegram says. “We both ended up in El Paso one night trying to get flights back to L.A. They were all booked and neither one of us wanted to wait it out in El Paso, so we decided we might as well fly to Las Vegas . . . I knew right then I’d found myself a trainer.

“One thing I’ve learned in this game is that you’re going to lose more than you’re going to win, so you’d better have a trainer that you can have some fun with, too.”

Baffert is 41, but some people around racing might think he’s a bit older. That’s because Peagram ran an ad in the Daily Racing Form when Baffert turned 38; Pegram congratulated him on his “40th birthday” three years ago.

Despite occasional practical jokes, Baffert says he enjoys his relationships with his owners.

“I’ve been fortunate from that standpoint,” Baffert says. “They’re good winners and good losers. Mike has been known to kick a few chairs, but it doesn’t last that long.” Pegram laughs and says: “Just through my third beer.”

Baffert’s own goals in racing are fairly simple.

“I just want to keep my owners in the business and for them to do well,” he says. “And I want to make a good living for myself. I didn’t get into this business to get rich.”

Baffert is not one to put himself on the spot, but the competitive fire flames, and he says: “I’d like to win as many Breeder’s Cup races as I can . . . and maybe at least once have a horse in the Kentucky Derby who really has a chance to win it.”

It’s about time for the fifth race, and Baffert goes to the paddock to saddle a brown mare named Common Threads. Baffert’s wife and three of the children have arrived. The kids are young, all bouncy and blond, and they look as though they have just stepped out of a cereal commercial. Baffert takes the baby, Savannah, into his arms and walks around the paddock area with her, chatting and smiling broadly.

Pegram’s final instructions to jockey Martin Pedroza: “Come back tired . . . “ Instead, she gets caught in traffic and comes back fifth. But there’s always the eighth, where Argolid is one of the betting favorites.

Argolid breaks clean in the $60,000, seven-furlong race for 3 year olds and appears to have control with Corey Nakatani, one of Baffert’s favorite jockeys. But El Alerta comes from out of nowhere down the stretch to catch Argolid and win in a photo.

“Well, second isn’t too bad,” Sherry says.

But it was a race Baffert thought the horse could win. It was not the best of days, but it certainly wasn’t one of those “hell in a shell” days either.

“Naturally, Bob’s really disappointed when he loses,” Sherry Baffert says, “but on those days when he comes home and sees his children, everything is fine.”

And there will be more races that can be won tomorrow.