Sellers and Oxley Try to Land a 1-2 Punch

The boys, sixth-graders at the Bryant School in Tulsa, Okla., walked to school together every day. One of them was Johnny Sellers, who was a year old when his father, struggling to support a family in the aftermath of the Depression, moved the family from Los Angeles to Oklahoma. The other boy was John Oxley, whose father owned polo ponies.

By the time Sellers and Oxley were juniors at Will Rogers High, Oxley was thinking about studying geology at the University of Oklahoma, the better to get into the family oil business.

With the permission of his parents, who insisted that he get his high school diploma, the 16-year-old Sellers left Tulsa for Kentucky, where he hoped to become a jockey.

Sellers became more than just a jockey. He rode the winners of 2,787 races, among them 1961 Kentucky Derby winner Carry Back.

Oxley got his geology degree, then became president of Oxley Petroleum.

More than 40 years later, they met again at Gulfstream Park. Oxley, a few years away from winning the 2001 Derby with Monarchos, assumed--incorrectly--that Shane Sellers, a leading jockey, was Johnny Sellers’ son, and they got a big laugh out of that. Sellers, who had become a bloodstock agent--first in Southern California, more recently in Florida--suggested that he might one day sell Oxley a good horse.

That day came last December. A smallish but intriguing colt had won all but one of his five starts, and Sellers learned the colt was for sale. Sellers had seen the horse, Booklet, win by 41/2 lengths in a two-turn race at Calder Race Course in Miami. He called Booklet’s trainer, Steve Klesaris, who also owned a piece of the horse, with a preliminary inquiry. Then Sellers faxed Oxley: “I have a colt that might be your next Derby horse.”

Soon after, they talked.

“I told Jack that the colt didn’t have tremendous size, but he had a lot of stamina and could get a distance,” Sellers said.

Oxley, who had bought an unraced 2-year-old Monarchos for $170,000, inspected the pedigree on Booklet. Represented in the bloodlines were some Hall of Fame horses, among them Triple Crown winners War Admiral and Count Fleet.

On New Year’s Day, Oxley wrote a check for $1 million and Booklet was his. The son of Notebook and Crafty Bobbie could give his owner a rare second consecutive Derby victory, but first the colt must get past the $750,000 Toyota Blue Grass on Saturday at Keeneland, where his rivalry with Harlan’s Holiday continues. Only four other horses--Azillion, Bob’s Image, Ocean Sound and Straight Gin--are entered in the 11/8-mile race.

Booklet and Harlan’s Holiday have raced three times this year at Gulfstream. Booklet won two stakes at shorter distances before Harlan’s Holiday won the 11/8-mile Florida Derby. Booklet, caught in an early speed duel, finished fourth.

The Harlan’s Holiday-Booklet rivalry is reminiscent of another series, between Jack Price’s Carry Back and Fred Hooper’s Crozier, which bubbled over at the 1961 Kentucky Derby. Crozier and Braulio Baeza led Carry Back by 41/2 lengths with an eighth of a mile left, but Sellers’ cheaply bred colt rallied past his nemesis for a three-quarter-length victory.

“That was the greatest race of my life,” Sellers said.

John Oxley, watching on TV, was excited for his schoolboy friend.

“I was just a dreamer when it came to the Kentucky Derby then,” said Oxley, who bought his first horse 11 years later.

His father, Thomas Oxley, had given Sellers a job at the polo stable, which was the future jockey’s introduction to horses. Sellers also won the Preakness with Carry Back, but they finished seventh in the Belmont and missed the Triple Crown.

Jack Price, who bred, owned and trained Carry Back, used Sellers 25 times on his colt and they won 13 of those races.

Sellers and that earlier Jack in his life, Oxley, were a team before Booklet. In Tulsa, Sellers remembered, they were featured in a school play.

“I sang a song,” Sellers said. “I was terrible. But Jack--he was very intelligent, always very articulate--he read a poem and he was very good.”

Oxley was flattered that Sellers remembered. “Yes, it was a poem,” Oxley said. “I ... think it was called ‘I Am Old Glory.’”

The walk to school, however, is a bone of contention.

“Jack’s younger sister, Mary Jane, walked with us,” Sellers said. “I guess it was about a mile.”

Oxley thought for a moment.

“More like two miles is the way I remember it,” he said.

The Derby, of course, is a mile and a quarter. Should Booklet win May 4 in Louisville, there’ll be complete agreement over that distance.