McIntire Back on Familiar Turf

What better way to open the 61st season at Del Mar than by engaging Charlie McIntire in some storytelling about the seaside track.

As the seven-week meet opens today, McIntire will be at a familiar stand, as stable superintendent, trying to shoehorn more than 2,000 horses into Del Mar’s dusty backside.

In terms of seniority, neither McIntire nor anyone else can touch trainer Noble Threewitt, 89, who has been here every season since Bing Crosby and company opened the place in 1937. But McIntire’s 50 years with Del Mar is not a bad run, either.

Back in his salad days, somebody in the front office must have even suspected that McIntire, 69, was in for the long haul. He got his watch well ahead of his time.

Luckily for him, he didn’t get the sack.

In 1947, when he was still a teenager, McIntire worked for Del Mar’s catering company. “Slippery,” they called him then, because he carried only 140 pounds on a 6-foot frame. He would have seemed an unlikely candidate to collect a few hundred empty beer bottles, put them in cases and cart them down a sharply angled ramp.

“I wanted to impress the boss by moving all those beer bottles in one trip,” McIntire said. “But it turned out that I wasn’t driving the cart, it was driving me.”

The law of gravity had gained the upper hand when the young McIntire, in horror, saw dozens of fans, bound for the upper grandstand, walking toward him and his overloaded cart.

The cart had gathered unstoppable momentum, but the fans were paying no attention.

“True Del Mar fans don’t change,” McIntire said. “They are totally oblivious to their surroundings except when the race is being run. Between races, an earthquake could happen before they take their noses out of the Racing Form.”

From the back of the careening cart, McIntire tried to warn them.

“All that came out of my mouth was a squeak,” he said. “But a few cases fell off and crashed, and that got their attention. They plastered themselves against both walls of the ramp, trying to avoid me and the cart.”

McIntire missed everybody except a large, unsuspecting woman, who inexplicably wound up upside down on the front of the cart, desperately hanging on. At full throttle, there was a 90-degree turn to be navigated toward the bottom of the ramp.

“There was a loud crash,” McIntire said. “What seemed like 10,000 beer bottles flew in all directions. The woman flew off too.”

McIntire was sentenced to pot-and-pan detail the rest of the season, then, four or five years later, when he graduated from San Diego State, Anderson-Dunham, the catering company, gave him a wristwatch.

“I never cease to be amazed by the kindness of people,” he said. “Years later, I learned with great regret that the woman had been awarded $40,000 in damages.”

But McIntire soldiered on to a number of jobs. He jockeyed cars in valet parking, he patrolled the Solano Beach gate, one of the entrances to the track, and he worked under three stable superintendents before becoming one 15 years ago.

Tom Robbins, Del Mar’s director of racing, and his staff sift through the trainers’ requests and allocate the barn space, then McIntire presides over the horse population and the more than 1,000 people who care for the animals.

McIntire’s loyalty is uncommon. Until he signed on for a couple of days a week with a paralegal service, he had gone through most of his life with only two jobs. Since 1947, the only summers he has missed at Del Mar were his years with the Navy during the Korean War and in 1991, when he retired from his only teaching post, spending 34 years as an economics and American history instructor at San Dieguito High. Tim Read, director of operations at Del Mar, and Robert Sanchez, the plant superintendent, came from McIntire’s classrooms.

“When we were struggling,” said Connie McIntire, his wife for almost 46 years, “the racetrack saved us. That racetrack money put Charlie through school, paying for his college education. Then the extra money helped us raise our four children. And now that Charlie’s retired, it’s our traveling money.”

Trainers and horses by the thousands have come and gone, and McIntire has had his favorites. One trainer, John Canty, who won 13 stakes here in the 1960s and 1970s, was special.

“John was a true gentleman,” McIntire said. “It didn’t make any difference whether he was on top, or down to two or three horses. When John died, I wrote [his widow] that it was always a treat to take care of him.”

Among the other trainers McIntire misses are Charlie Whittingham, who won a record 74 stakes races here before his death last year; Willard Proctor, who won 17 stakes at the track, and Eddie Gregson, an apparent suicide victim last month, who saddled winning Gato Del Sol in the 1981 Del Mar Futurity eight months before that combination won the Kentucky Derby.

“Charlie Whittingham was a great guy,” McIntire said. “He always had a kind word for you, and he loved a good joke. We hit it off right away, and it might have been because of a simple thing--that we just happened to have the same first name.”

Computerized evaluations in the racing office help determine stall space, and McIntire’s office dropped cumbersome, hand-kept ledgers years ago. But he remembers when the horse-tracking methods weren’t so sophisticated.

“One day I was riding around on a golf cart with four trainers, trying to find them some tack rooms,” he said. “We had some space for one of them, but not all four. Finally, I had them guess a number I was thinking. I believe Hector Palma was the winner.”

Working one of his entry jobs and earning a dollar an hour, a teenage McIntire lost $40 betting horses one day.

“I never tried to win it back,” he said. “I guess it’s great fun trying to pick winners, but I decided then and there that it wasn’t for me.”

Horse Racing Notes

For the 12th consecutive year, the opening-day Oceanside Stakes will be run in two divisions. The field for the first half has both Duke Of Green, second in the Will Rogers Handicap and the Cinema Handicap at the Hollywood Park meet that ended Monday, and Generations, who’s on a three-race winning streak after accounting for two of trainer Wayne Lukas’ three wins at the Hollywood meet.

Ron McAnally, who trains Duke Of Green, is running Tender Offer, a minor stakes winner at Golden Gate Fields, in the second half, which also has drawn Stormy Jack, winless in five starts since he won two races at Del Mar last year. Stormy Jack is trained by Bob Baffert, who won all five Grade I races a year ago en route to his third consecutive training title. Since 1997, Baffert has won 72 races--26 of them stakes--at Del Mar.

Admission prices have increased $1--to $7 for clubhouse and $4 for grandstand--but it now includes a free program. . . . Two new video boards--21 x 36 feet in the infield and 9 1/2 x 16 feet in the paddock--have been installed.

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Del Mar Facts

* Dates: Today-Sept. 13 (43 days).

* Post times: 2 p.m. daily with the following exceptions: 12:30 p.m. Aug. 26 and Sept. 4;4 p.m. July 28, Aug. 4, Aug. 11, Aug. 18; 3:30 p.m. Aug. 25, Sept. 1 and Sept. 8.

* Key races: $400,000 Eddie Read Handicap, July 30; $250,000 San Diego Handicap, Aug. 6; $300,000 Clement L. Hirsch Handicap, Aug. 12; $150,000 Sorrento Stakes, Aug. 13; $150,000 Pat O’Brien Handicap, Aug. 20; $150,000 Best Pal Stakes, Aug. 23; $1-million Pacific Classic, Aug. 26; $250,000 Del Mar Oaks, Aug. 27; $250,000 Del Mar Debutante, Sept. 2; $250,000 Del Mar Breeders’ Cup Handicap, Sept. 3; $400,000 Ramona Handicap, Sept. 9; $300,000 Del Mar Derby, Sept. 10; $250,000 Del Mar Futurity, Sept. 13.

* Leading trainer, 1999: Bob Baffert, 27 victories.

* Leading jockey, 1999: David Flores, 38 victories.