Frankel Believes Empire Can Strike Back

Bobby Frankel, when he was growing up in Brooklyn, used to come to Belmont Park with his mother, who liked to bet. He liked the track so much that he made a career of it, starting as a hot walker and moving up the barn hierarchy until he became a trainer.

He was known at one time as the “king of the claimers,” buying cheap horses, winning a race or two, then selling for profit. He took the title from mentor Buddy Jacobson, who relinquished it when convicted of murdering his girlfriend’s lover.

Jacobson was pretty sure prison life wouldn’t be for him -- he was eventually proved correct when he died of cancer at Attica while his appeal was pending -- and broke out of the Brooklyn House of Detention. He went to Southern California, where police captured him because he went to the same restaurant in Manhattan Beach every day. He said he liked the fried zucchini.

Before that, he called Frankel, who by then was training at Santa Anita. The next morning, police were waiting for him when he arrived at his barn. They had tapped his phone, figuring his old friend from New York would call. But Frankel didn’t know where Jacobson was. Maybe Frankel didn’t know about the fried zucchini.

Such was life in the shadows of the backstretch, away from the madding crowds of the Triple Crown races, before Prince Khalid Abdullah called. His people at Juddmonte Farms had done a computer analysis of California trainers and determined that Frankel would be the best fit for the Saudi Arabian prince’s precocious stable.

Frankel said he would have to think about it.

He did, for 24 hours, before he said yes.

That was about $100 million in purses ago. His horses earned a near-record $17,784,340 last year, when he won 43 graded stakes races and the Eclipse Award as the country’s best trainer for the third consecutive time, the fourth time in his career.

Barclay Tagg is the trainer du jour, with his Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Funny Cide trying to become the first horse in 25 years to win the Triple Crown on Saturday at Belmont Park. But Tagg knows what he’s up against, besides history. He said flatly the other day that Frankel, who will saddle second-favorite Empire Maker, is “the best trainer in the world.”

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Frankel, who, at 62, still has some brash Brooklyn boy in him, wouldn’t try to talk anyone out of that opinion, even if he might not say it himself. But he hasn’t been feeling lately like the world’s best trainer.

He has an almost impeccable record. The lone void, the one that leaves him out of the conversation when casual followers of the sport debate Baffert vs. Lukas, is that he hasn’t won a Triple Crown race.

“I’m the king of getting beat by longshots,” he lamented while standing outside his barn on the Belmont Park backstretch Wednesday. Almost everyone remembers the Breeders’ Cup Classic last year, when his Medaglia d’Oro finished second to 43-1 shot Volponi, but he also was referring to a couple of upsets in the race he’d like to win more than any other, the Belmont Stakes.

Those disappointments, though, pale in comparison to the one he felt after the Kentucky Derby five weeks ago, when heavily favored Empire Maker lost by a head to Funny Cide, who went off at 12-1.

Frankel doesn’t suffer fools well, especially the second-guessers who follow the Triple Crown campaign and then disappear from the backstretch until the next May. But, in this case, he agreed with the critics who said the trainer was at fault.

He admitted Wednesday that he was overconfident about Empire Maker’s ability to win the Kentucky Derby and devised a strategy that he believed would give Prince Abdullah’s horse the best chance to win the Triple Crown.

“Instead of looking to one race, I was concentrating on the other two,” he said.

That began with the Wood Memorial three weeks before the Derby, when he instructed jockey Jerry Bailey to ride Empire Maker just hard enough to win in order to conserve energy. Meantime, Funny Cide was going all out and still finished second by half a length.

That convinced Frankel that he could ease Empire Maker through the Kentucky Derby. But he didn’t foresee the foot injury that caused the horse to miss an important workout the week of the race. As a result, Frankel said Empire Maker wasn’t 100% fit.

If it hadn’t been the Kentucky Derby, if there hadn’t been so many people betting on his horse, thinking that he was going to become the sport’s next Triple Crown winner, Frankel said he would have scratched Empire Maker.

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Frankel also failed to foresee the greatness in Funny Cide, something that he’s almost ready to concede.

“If I lose here, maybe that’s it, maybe that’s him,” he said, meaning that it might be time to acknowledge that Empire Maker is second best. “If Funny Cide wins, he’s a great horse.”

The best indication that others think he might already be there is that he has only five challengers. Recent Triple Crown contenders, such as Pleasant Colony, Alysheba, Sunday Silence, Real Quiet, Charismatic and War Emblem, weren’t as highly regarded. They had between nine and 12.

Funny Cide is even in the early line.

But a healthy Empire Maker lurks. Linemaker Donnie LaPlace had little choice but to make Funny Cide the favorite because of his anticipated popularity at the windows, but indicated his respect for Empire Maker by listing him at 6-5.

It’s also probable that the horsemen who have decided to forgo the Belmont are avoiding not only Funny Cide but also Empire Maker.

“My horse is perfect,” Frankel said. “If he doesn’t win, no excuses. I don’t think I could have done anything different. It’s unusual you can say that any time before a race. Things happened before the Derby. But I’ve got my confidence up.”

Besides, he said, he wants the next horse to win the Triple Crown to be trained by him, the old king of the claimers.

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Randy Harvey can be reached at randy.harvey@latimes.com