Proctor Joins Two Legends With Memorial Day Races

It’s impossible to travel along the Triple Crown trail and not be reminded of Charlie Whittingham and Laz Barrera.

At Churchill Downs this month, one trainer who won the Kentucky Derby (Neil Drysdale with Fusaichi Pegasus) and one who didn’t (Jenine Sahadi with The Deputy, who ran 14th) were stirred by memories of Whittingham. The salty ex-Marine horseman, once a mentor for Drysdale and always a role model for Sahadi, had treaded precisely where they were this May. Fusaichi Pegasus and The Deputy were stabled at opposite ends of the same Churchill Downs barn where Whittingham had prepared Ferdinand for his Derby victory in 1986 and Sunday Silence for his conquest in 1989.

At that barn, Sahadi talked one day about how close Whittingham got to his many horses, every last one of them. They got to know him too, starting with the crinkling of the cellophane that told them that a morning treat of peppermint wasn’t far away.

Drysdale, who worked under Whittingham for four years in the early 1970s, spoke about his learned teacher’s patience. Whittingham, Drysdale said, had a patience with the horse and a patience for those who worked around him. One mistake wouldn’t mean the unemployment line. Whittingham couldn’t be that harsh. In his callow years, he had made mistakes himself, and later on, closer to the end than the beginning, he even took some delight in hooting about them.

One year in the 1940s, still working as an assistant trainer for Horatio Luro, Whittingham was based at Saratoga for the summer. Leaving the barn one day for the races, Luro told Whittingham that two horses would be arriving soon, one a hot prospect from South America and the other a mere pony. “Tie the pony to the tree and I will tend to him later,” Luro said. “Do up the other horse and put him in a stall.”

In fairness to Whittingham, the Argentine-bred was not much to look at, a lean colt with an unattractive head. At any rate, when Luro returned, accompanied by John Ryan, the owner of the South American horse, he was horrified to find the pony nicely bandaged, and enjoying a hearty dinner in a choice stall. Outside, tied to the tree, was Ryan’s horse. A horse, by the way, whose name was Talon, an eventual winner of the Santa Anita Handicap.

At Pimlico last week, a few days before the Preakness, Leon Blusewiecz, the veteran Maryland trainer, took up the lore that goes with Barrera, who was inducted into the Racing Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in 1979, five years after Whittingham. Barrera may have swept the 1978 Triple Crown with Affirmed, who is still the last horse to win the Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes, but among his peers the Cuban-born conditioner was more revered for his 1976 training marvel, winning the 1 1/4-mile Derby and the 1 1/2-mile Belmont with Bold Forbes, a blur out of Puerto Rico who was a router in sprinter’s clothing.

“Laz was such an interesting guy, on or off the track,” Blusewiecz said. “He could talk with you about a lot of things besides racing.”

Indeed, other than George Steinbrenner, Barrera may have been the No. 1 New York Yankee fan in all of racing. Barrera followed the Yankees closely, his fervid opinions about the club sometimes clouded by a malaprop or two.

In 1984, with the Yankees in an early-season funk, the bullpen was said to be the culprit. “I knew they’d be in trouble,” said a forlorn Barrera, as the losses in May and June continued to pile up. “When they let Goosage go to San Diego, I knew it was going to be tough.”

More accurately, that would be Goose Gossage, the reliever who helped the Padres win the pennant while the Yankees, in their league, finished up the track.

On Monday, Memorial Day, Hollywood Park is doing a splendid thing, running together two of its best-named fixtures, the Charlie Whittingham Memorial Handicap and the Laz Barrera Memorial Stakes. On the same card, through the ingenuity of General Manager Eual Wyatt Jr. and racing secretary Martin Panza, the track will introduce a race named on behalf of Willard Proctor, another distinguished trainer.

The first running of the Willard L. Proctor Memorial for 2-year-olds is actually the 36th year for what has variously been called the First Act or the Westchester Stakes, but no matter. What counts is that Proctor, 82 when he collapsed at his Santa Anita barn--while feeding his horses--and died in October 1998, has been given a proper niche alongside Whittingham and Barrera. Whittingham was barely past his 86th birthday when he died, battling leukemia, last April, and Barrera, ill from pneumonia and heartbroken that his brother Oscar, another trainer, had passed on weeks before, died in 1991.

Barrera, Whittingham and Proctor were three old-school horsemen, cut from the same cloth, and why Proctor hasn’t followed his two contemporaries into the shrine at Saratoga Springs is for the electorate to explain. They’ve snubbed him at least nine times. Proctor had been winning stakes all over the map for 36 years when he saddled his first added-money winner at Hollywood Park in 1969.