A DATE WITH DESTINY

It is a long way from Chunkie Burger and Grinder Time Restaurant in Chino to the glory and glamour of a run for horse racing’s Triple Crown. Call it somewhere between 2,700 miles and light-years.

But that’s where the first real proclamation was made of what may come to pass here Saturday, when a sport in dire need of a kick start will get just that if Silver Charm completes a sweep of the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes.

“It was a few days after Silver Charm won the Del Mar Futurity last summer,” recalled Jeff Lewis, son of owners Bob and Beverly

Lewis of Newport Beach and president of the Lewis family’s beer distributorship in Pomona.

“My dad came to work about 11:30, as he always does, and after he made some calls and handled some correspondence, he took a group of us out to lunch at Chunkie’s. It’s just a casual place, and we do that a lot, just me and a few other people from work, along with dad.

“Well, this day, he was really excited and you could see he had something important to say and, just like that, he told us, ‘Silver Charm is going to win the Triple Crown.’ ”

If this historic conclusion takes place here Saturday, it will be the culmination of much more than the expert prognostication of a wealthy man with a booming voice who has managed to set the horse racing industry on its ear in only seven years of trying.

It will be the climax of a story of a silver-gray horse purchased for $85,000 by a silver-haired trainer named Bob Baffert, who thought at first that the horse was kind of fat and lazy and found instead that Silver Charm ran with the courage of a mountain climber.

It will be the climax of a story of Baffert himself, the product of a quick-witted, zany family of Arizona ranchers, who talked Bob and Beverly Lewis into buying the horse and ended up becoming a spokesman and media star for a frequently silent horse-racing industry.

It will be the climax of a season in which Gary Stevens, who won the Kentucky Derby and Belmont on Thunder Gulch in 1995, becomes the first Triple Crown jockey since Steve Cauthen in 1978.

And it will be the climax of a story of the Lewises, Bob from Glendale and Beverly from San Francisco, who took their Depression-age values off to the University of Oregon, where they met, married 50 years ago Aug. 2 and began a lifetime of creating business and family wealth that they now spread freely and graciously among charities and friends.

THE HORSE

Silver Charm is not striking. Standing there, he doesn’t take your breath away. If the Belmont were a beauty contest, another gray colt, Free House, would probably be the winner. He’s bigger, better made and has more of a personality. But the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness weren’t beauty contests, and neither is the Belmont. Free House was third in the Derby, 3 1/2 lengths behind Silver Charm, and lost by a head in the Preakness.

When Baffert, sold by some things he saw--a long, ground-chewing stride, for one thing--on a videotape of a workout, bought Silver Charm on behalf of the Lewises, he didn’t predict great things.

“If I ever said, ‘This is my Derby horse,’ then I must have been joking,” Baffert said last weekend at Churchill Downs, where Silver Charm was finishing up his serious work for the Belmont. “I thought he might be an allowance horse, or possibly win a stake or two. But what we found was a diamond in the rough.”

The first time Larry Damore galloped Silver Charm, on the training track at Santa Anita last year, the horse didn’t evoke memories of Dimaggio, Precisionist or Thirty Slews, some of the top horses he has exercised.

“He was a nice horse, you could tell that, but he wasn’t that nice,” Damore said.

Silver Charm told Baffert what he was made of on Feb. 8, in the seven-furlong San Vicente Stakes at Santa Anita. It was Silver Charm’s first start in five months, since he had won the Del Mar Futurity in his final start as a 2-year-old. An abscess and a viral infection kept him out of the Breeders’ Cup in October, and Baffert decided to bring him along slowly during the winter at Santa Anita.

Before the San Vicente, an anxious Silver Charm broke through the gate and had to be reloaded. Horses seldom run well after that.

“He really wasn’t ready to run seven-eighths [of a mile],” Baffert said. “Then, after he broke through the gate, I would have been happy just to finish third. But he finished in 1:21 and tied the stakes record. He proved he was a great horse that day. That’s when I knew. He opened my eyes.”

On Wednesday, accompanied by Baffert, Damore and a few others, Silver Charm was the only horse on a Boeing 727 that brought him from Louisville, Ky., to New York’s JFK Airport. There was a police escort leading the van from the airport to his barn at Belmont Park.

While Baffert was swallowed up by a media horde of more than 100 at the barn, his cellular phone rang. It was Billy Baffert, the trainer’s brother, calling from California.

“This is nothing like you’ve ever seen before,” Bob Baffert said into the phone.

THE OWNERS

It is just before 8 a.m. on a bright Wednesday morning at a private aviation area adjacent to LAX. A large crowd is milling around, pouring cappuccino and decaf latte from huge gold-and-silver plated containers, the kind you more often see at black-tie dinners.

Eventually, there will be 109 people in the group, most of them delivered by limo.

Bob and Beverly Lewis, host and hostess of what will quickly become, for starters, a five-hour party at 30,000 feet, drive up in their own car. While Beverly distributes carefully designed luggage tags she has brought for all the guests, Bob wades into the crowd.

“Thank you so much for being here,” he says, moving from one person to the next, beaming. “We are so happy you would take the time to be with us for this.”

The recipients, all of whom are about to board a jumbo jet outfitted with first-class seating for their comfort and taking them off on a dream weekend of fancy dinners, Broadway plays and tickets to the Belmont Stakes--a weekend in which they will be encouraged to never touch their wallets--can only smile and shake their heads in amazement. He is thanking them.

The guests are business associates and friends. The occasion is the once-in-a-lifetime run for the Triple Crown by Silver Charm. The generosity of the owners of that horse in wanting to share this special time is vintage Bob and Beverly Lewis.

“I heard somebody refer to my dad the other day as a media superstar,” says Jeff Lewis, Bob and Beverly’s son. “I kind of chuckle at that. This is my mom and dad, and I won’t say they are gracious to a fault, because being gracious isn’t a fault. They are gracious to the point of amazement.

“My dad spends lots of his life just trying to convince people that he’s a regular guy, which he is.”

The regular guy is not feeling well this day, but you’d hardly know it. After takeoff, he continues to move among the guests. He jokes with the Baffert family, who seem to be everywhere, and delights in a story of two guests who hadn’t seen each other for years until they sat across the aisle on the plane.

He is a man who, at age 9, tiptoed down the hallway of his house in Glendale, peaked through a doorway and watched and listened as his father put a few bills and a few coins on a table and told his mother that that was all that stood between the family and starvation. He remembers it vividly. “My sister, Sally, was 2 then,” he says. “She was asleep in her crib.”

It was the Depression. To help out, Bob sold Liberty magazine and Women’s Home Companion.

“Liberty sold for a nickel and I got 1 1/2 cents,” he says. “But Women’s went for 15 cents and I got five. Boy, could I sell those things.”

But he says he never wanted for anything, and his pride of family, stemming from what his father gave him, is strong today. He takes time to rest in his seat--somewhere in the middle of the plane, where he can be more of a regular guy--and reads proudly a story written by granddaughter Katy, 15. It is about Silver Charm, and ends: “The gray horse with the beautiful splash of white across his nose has proved to the world that he has the strength of steel, a heart of gold and a burning desire to be the best.”

Down the aisle comes granddaughter Chloe, pushing a walker and gurgling the language of a 1-year-old. Chloe was born on Kentucky Derby Day, 1996, and her grandparents, at Churchill Downs but without a horse in the race, left the track early and headed for the airport to try to make the impending birth in Phoenix. One suspects that, even if they had had a horse in the race, Chloe would have come first.

Finally, Lewis nods off, needing the sleep and content with the knowledge that the people who have helped him put on this party, the employees who, to a person, love to work for him, have left nothing to chance. The Silver Charm emblem was painted on the plane. The Lewis Farm green and gold colors adopted from Bob and Beverly’s days as students at the University of Oregon are everywhere, including gold roses in the restrooms. And gift bags for guests have included a special little wrapped box for each female.

In it, made of sterling, is a silver charm.

The Silver Charm Entourage Plane lands at Newark, N.J. Stretched out on the runway, almost as far as the eye can see, are limos. They are there to take the guests to their hotel near Belmont Park.

As the guests file toward the limos, Bob Lewis is overheard apologizing to somebody because the trip to the hotel will be a long one through New York rush-hour traffic.

THE TRAINER

When Silver Charm took up residence at Churchill Downs before the Kentucky Derby, he was stabled at April Mayberry’s barn. Baffert wanted to put up his sign next to Mayberry’s on the side of the barn, but when he reached into the trunk, the sign crumbled into several pieces.

“I guess termites got to it,” Baffert said.

He enjoys humor at his own expense, and he enjoys life around horses. Baffert, 44, is the son of a farmer from Nogales, Ariz., William Baffert, known back home as “the Chief,” raced cheap quarter horses, and Bob rode them for a while, before he got heavy.

Elinora Baffert, who with the Chief reared seven children, sat at Thursday’s post-position draw at Belmont Park and recalled spending her honeymoon in New York, in 1945, before World War II ended. The Chief was in the Army, in Maryland, and they took the train to New York after they were married.

Bob Baffert remembers when his father owned a chicken farm, across the border from Nogales, in Mexico.

“Did we ever have chickens,” Baffert said. “I think we were supposed to have 20,000 at one point. But something was wrong. We weren’t getting that many eggs for all the chickens we had. It turned out to be a bad deal.”

Baffert’s brother, Billy, talks about growing up in the border town of Nogales, where drug trafficking seemed to be a way of life.

“When I was in high school,” Billy said, “all the guys in the junior class drove very nice cars. Also, they all did time.”

Bob and Beverly Lewis are hosting a theater party tonight, taking about 100 people to Manhattan to see Julie Andrews in “Victor/Victoria,” and there’ll be supper at Sardi’s afterward. But for Bob and Sherry Baffert, who have their four young children in town, the Yankee-Milwaukee Brewer game is taking precedence.

During the Triple Crown campaign, Bob Baffert has become a ceremonial first-pitch star, throwing out balls in Baltimore and Anaheim, but no such occasion is planned tonight at Yankee Stadium. Is George Steinbrenner, owner of the Yankees, penalizing Baffert for beating his horse, Concerto, in the Derby and the Preakness?

“I don’t think so,” said Bill Baffert, the unofficial barn spokesman. “George called and offered us the club box.”

There was talk last week that if Silver Charm wins Saturday, an appearance on David Letterman might be forthcoming. More likely, Baffert said, is a gig Monday night with Jay Leno. Only in the event of a sweep, of course.

“That would be a good show to do,” Baffert said. “But the main show I want to do is the Belmont show.”

At Thursday’s draw, Belmont racing officials drew the numbers for Saturday’s race from the three-sided Triple Crown trophy. Richard Mandella, who trains Wild Rush, the likely pace-setter in Saturday’s race, jokingly accused Baffert of getting too chummy with the trophy.

“I’m going to file a formal complaint with the stewards,” Mandella said. “Baffert keeps handling that trophy like he’s already won it.”

THE JOCKEY

One morning recently, Baffert stood in the clockers’ stand at Churchill Downs and talked about owing Gary Stevens a favor from several years ago at Los Alamitos Race Course.

Baffert is more than even with Stevens after giving him the mount on Silver Charm three races back. Stevens, who replaced Chris McCarron, has ridden Silver Charm to victory in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, after a second-place finish in the Santa Anita Derby, and a win in the Belmont would give Stevens a personal payoff of about $650,000 from the Triple Crown races.

“When I was still training quarter horses at Los Alamitos,” Baffert said, “several of the thoroughbred jockeys came over for some kind of a promotion. I gave Gary a mount on one of my horses in the Kindergarten Stakes, and he warmed up by riding an earlier race on the card.

“He was disqualified for his ride in that first race, and then the stewards suspended him. He missed some thoroughbred races that cost him about $40,000. I felt real bad for him.”

Baffert complained to the Los Alamitos stewards.

“I told them they didn’t have to give Gary the days, they could have just fined him,” Baffert said. “They said they didn’t want those thoroughbred guys coming over and acting like they owned the track. But it didn’t make any sense, because the real reason Gary was there was to boost racing.”

On his third try in the Belmont, Stevens rode Thunder Gulch to victory in 1995. He’s also studied the history of the race.

“Notoriously, whoever is in front at the three-eighths pole is at the front at the finish,” Stevens said. “Usually, you don’t see any horses making these huge moves from the three-eighths pole home. My horse has great speed. I’ll tell you this: If the pace is slow and I’m allowed to set the pace, I’m not going to turn it down.”

Baffert’s mother, Elinora, has a sister, Evangelina Coppola, who owns the Finnesterra Hotel in Cabo San Lucas. Before the Kentucky Derby, Coppola told Stevens that if he won, she’d give him a room for a week at her hotel, which is near the cape rocks and overlooks both the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortez. Stevens won, took her up on the offer and even caught a marlin.

THE SCENE

It is shortly before 9 a.m. on Thursday, a few hours before Silver Charm will be drawn to the second post position for the Belmont. The last horse to do what Silver Charm is trying to do Saturday was Affirmed in 1978.

So the mere first appearance on the track of Silver Charm is being treated with hushed reverence.

A woman in blue jeans with a microphone announces dramatically as Silver Charm leaves the barn area and is walked, rider up but rein in hand of trainer Bob Baffert, toward the grandstand area. Nearly each step is announced. It stops just short of “one small step for man. . . .” Two women in the viewing group confess to having teared up as the horse walked past.

Eventually, Silver Charm jogs a lap and returns to the barn. Baffert, whose wry sense of humor quickly spots manufactured drama, joins Beverly Lewis, smiles and chats a bit, then says, “Well, I guess that’s it.”

Later, when surrounded by the press outside Silver Charm’s barn, the sense of humor finds another audience. When asked about his memories of Triple Crown moments, Baffert says that he has none, that the most recent Triple Crowns came when he was at the University of Arizona, “majoring in campus night life.”

A reporter asks Baffert if Silver Charm will “canter” in a workout Friday. Baffert loves this. He explains that show horses canter and thoroughbreds gallop.

Later, when another reporter asks about Friday’s workout plans, Baffert replies that Silver Charm will “canter” a mile or so.

All around the track, there are reminders of Belmont Stakes past. Trainer Woody Stephens, who won five consecutive Belmonts starting in 1982, is at his barn, where he keeps a few horses in training. Patrice Wolfson, who with her husband, Louis, raced Affirmed, attends the breakfast draw. And John Veitch, who couldn’t beat Affirmed with Alydar in any of the Triple Crown races, holds court across the street from Stephens.

“The Belmont Stakes is a difficult race to judge,” says Veitch, who has only two horses in training. “It’s a mile and a half, and there aren’t any other races on dirt at that distance, so the jockeys aren’t sure how to judge the pace. It’s like a race that’s come from a different planet. And judging the pace is so important. Silver Charm looks like he could take the hat trick. But it’s still a mile and a half, and when they run that far, horses’ legs can get rubbery.”

Stephens, 83, hasn’t seen a 3-year-old this year that he thinks could have beaten Conquistador Cielo, his first Belmont winner. But he likes Silver Charm’s chances Saturday.

“He’s a very game horse,” Stephens says, “and he’s got a top rider. I think he can win.”

*

* THE DRAW

Silver Charm will start from the No. 2 post and run against six horses in Saturday’s Belmont Stakes. C13