Philadelphia Park Loves Jones

I’d go to hell for ya,

Or even Philadelphia.

-- Lorenz Hart lyric

*

BENSALEM, Pa. -- A horse-van driver walked into the security office at suburban Philadelphia Park, where Smarty Jones, the Kentucky Derby winner, is bedded down when he isn’t trying to win Triple Crown races.

“I’m delivering a horse from Delaware,” he said. “For Smiley Jones.”

“Smokey Jones?” the tongue-in-cheek guy behind the desk said, and this was starting to sound like Abbott and Costello doing “Who’s on first?”

“No, Smiley Jones,” the driver said again.

Thinking the driver had meant Smarty Jones, the desk guy looked up the location of John Servis, the colt’s trainer.

“Here it is, John Servis, Barn 11,” he said.

But the joke was on everybody. The horse from Delaware was actually expected at the barn of Jon Smylie, another Philadelphia Park trainer. If you’re at home scoring, he’s in Barn 15.

Philadelphia Park, which was bought by a couple of British bookmakers for $67 million in 1990, can be excused for its temporary disarray these days. Usually preoccupied with low-level claiming races during its year-round operation, the track was suddenly thrust into national prominence when the undefeated Smarty Jones won the Derby on May 1.

Since then, Smarty Jones’ barn here has been inundated with reporters, other Philadelphia Park backstretchers and those wily enough to slip through the track’s stepped-up security force.

“We’ve never had anything like this,” said Sal Sinatra Jr., Philadelphia Park’s racing secretary. “It’s been just overwhelming.”

Servis, one of Philadelphia Park’s leading trainers, will gallop Smarty Jones one more time today, then take him by van 100 miles south to Baltimore, where nine opponents -- four of them holdovers from the Derby -- will test him at Pimlico in Saturday’s Preakness, the second leg of the Triple Crown.

Besides the $854,800 Derby purse, Smarty Jones earned a $5-million Oaklawn Park bonus for sweeping two of the Arkansas track’s races and the Kentucky Derby, and he could win another $5-million bonus, sponsored by Visa, by winning the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes, the Triple Crown finale, on June 5. That would break Cigar’s earnings record of $9,999,815.

All this after such humble beginnings. Smarty Jones’ career began here Nov. 9, 2003, when he beat maidens by 7 3/4 lengths.

“Isn’t this horse ready for New York now?” asked Roy Chapman, who bred and co-owns the Pennsylvania-bred colt with his wife, Pat.

Servis, taking a more conservative approach, kept the Smarty one here, and two weeks later the colt, running in a $56,000 stakes race against state-breds, won by 15 lengths.

“Now,” Chapman said to Servis, “you still can’t tell me that this isn’t a very good horse, can you?”

On Jan. 3, Servis at last took Chapman’s advice and ran their horse in the Count Fleet Stakes at Aqueduct, where he won by five lengths.

Then they launched Smarty Jones’ campaign in Arkansas, where he won the Southwest and Rebel Stakes and the Arkansas Derby.

Kentucky Derby bettors made him the favorite, although he paid a healthy $10.20 at Churchill Downs as he won for the seventh time in a row.

And now, suddenly, Philadelphia Park has an honest-to-John Henry celebrity horse.

Since the track opened in 1974, a few good horses have come Philadelphia Park’s way. Deputed Testamony won here, when the track was called Keystone, in his Preakness prep in 1983, but he was Maryland-based.

Smarty Jones is Pennsylvania all the way.

The highly successful Servis -- winning at a formidable 28% clip in the current meet here -- and his wife, Sherry, live near the track and have resisted moving to a larger circuit because they are raising two sons here.

The Chapmans, whose pre-Smarty Jones wealth stemmed from Roy’s Ford dealerships, used to own a 100-acre farm in Pennsylvania and still have a home about an hour’s drive from Philadelphia Park.

And jockey Stewart Elliott, who has ridden Smarty Jones in all of his races, has been the leading rider at Philly for the last four years.

The track has spotted blue-and-white billboards -- the colors of the Chapmans’ racing silks -- in the area, congratulating Smarty Jones on his Derby win. About 5,000 people, more than the track would draw for an afternoon of racing, showed up last Saturday morning to enjoy free coffee and doughnuts as they watched the Derby winner gallop around the track.

“When he first came out, it was eerie,” Sinatra said. “You could have heard a pin drop. They seemed to have a reverence for the horse, and weren’t sure whether to applaud or not. But then when Smarty took off on his gallop, they really got into it.”

After the races Tuesday, Philadelphia Park threw a barbecue for its backstretch employees not far from Smarty Jones’ barn. Under a big tent, there was an ice sculpture of the horse, surrounded by roses, and from his stall Smarty Jones probably could hear grooms and hotwalkers karaoke-singing into the hot, humid night.

Expecting a huge turnout of Pennsylvanians on Saturday, Pimlico officials are saying that the Preakness attendance record could be broken. The highest attendance in track history was 104,454 when Point Given won in 2001.

Among area newspapers, the Philadelphia Daily News is especially bullish on Smarty Jones. Presumably, one of its staffers is ghostwriting a daily diary under the horse’s byline. Either that or Smarty is an equine Mensa candidate.

In “From the Horse’s Mouth” on Monday, Smarty “wrote,” “When ponies hit it big, they want to splurge a little. Sow our oats. After all, we’re only 3 years old once in a lifetime. So I was a little slow on the oval yesterday.... But let me say it now, loud and clear: I swear on Seabiscuit’s grave that I will never go partying in the middle of horse racing season again.”