Russell Baze Just Keeps on Winning : Horse racing: He has won more than 5,000 races, an achievement barely noticed outside of Northern California, where he rides most of the year at Golden Gate Fields in Albany and Bay Meadows in San Mateo.

Russell Baze is not a name that comes up at Kentucky Derby time, nor is he praised or cursed by the rail birds at Gulfstream Park or Belmont Park.

The reasons have more to do with Baze’s outlook than they do with his ability.

Baze has won more than 5,000 races, and when he booted home Royal Boutique on Nov. 19 at Golden Gate Fields he became the only jockey ever to ride 400 winners in four straight years.

“To win over 400 races for four straight years is an incredible feat and it takes a tremendous amount of work and true dedication,” said Chris McCarron, a Hall of Fame jockey. “It’s quit an achievement.’

Kent Desormeaux is the only other jockey to have three straight 400-winner years (1987-89).

Baze’s achievement, however, was barely noticed outside Northern California, where Baze rides most of the year at Golden Gate Fields in Albany and Bay Meadows in San Mateo.

He was based briefly in Chicago in the late 1970s and in Southern California from June 1988 until July 1991.

A ride in the Kentucky Derby would be nice. So would an Eclipse Award as the nation’s top jockey. Baze led the nation’s jockeys with 433 wins in 1992, 410 in 1993 and 415 in 1994, and he’s atop the standings again this year.

Now, Bay Meadows and Golden Gate Fields might not be in the national spotlight, but they certainly aren’t small potatoes, either. And, besides, a win is a win is a win.

“I guy had to take what he’s dealt,” Baze said. “It doesn’t really bother me that I haven’t been in the limelight because I’m a private person to begin with.”

A big fish in a little pond?

“I’m a big fish in a medium pond,” Baze said, laughing. “I’m not even a household name in these parts.”

He has to be known, however, in the households of Northern California horse players.

“I’m very popular at home,” Baze said.

Home is Woodside, Calif., where he lives with wife Tami, three daughters and a son.

To Russell Baze, the family circle is a winner’s circle.

Baze was born to race riding.

“My father (Jack) rode for 20 years in the Pacific Northwest and he was the leading rider at Golden Gate in 1965,” Baze said. “He got a training center in the Yakima Valley in Washington at the end of his career. I broke horses and mucked stalls. He now owns a trailer park in Montana.”

Baze, born Aug. 7, 1959, in Vancouver, British Columbia, rode competitively for the first time when he finished third in an Appaloosa race at the Walla Walla (Wash.) Fair the summer of 1974. His first win was aboard Oregon Warrior, trained by his father, Sept. 16, 1974, at Yakima Meadows.

He got his first win at Bay Meadows Oct. 4, 1979, and began his first full season at the track in February 1980. He then concentrated on riding there and at Golden Gate Fields until he decided to move to Southern California in 1988. Before going south, however, he won an eighth straight Bay Meadows riding title with 82 victories despite missing 43 days of the 89-day meet because of injuries suffered in spills in September and November 1987.

“I haven’t had anything career-threatening,” Baze said. “I had a broken pelvis, a couple of compressed fractures in the back, a fractured leg and a broken bone in my neck--nothing serious.”

Baze won several stakes in Southern California, including the 1989 Oak Tree Invitational in which Hawkster set a world world of 2:22 4-5 for 1 1/2 miles on turf Oct. 14, 1989, at Santa Anita, and the 1990 Oak Leaf Stakes on Lite Light Oct. 8, 1990.

Lite Light got Baze his only Breeders’ Cup ride, but she bled and finished 12th in the 1990 Juvenile Fillies.

Baze rode 161 winners in 1989 and 125 in 1990, and on July 10, 1991, he announced his intention to return to the San Francisco Bay area and reunite with agent Ray Harris.

“I went down there for a chance to get better horses and to ride in big stakes races,” Baze said. “I just wasn’t getting the quality to keep me there.”

Northern California horse players have to hope he doesn’t leave again.