Baze rides gleefully to glory

The weather was miserable at Bay Meadows racetrack here Sunday. The sky was a dreary gray, it was cold and the drizzle never stopped.

Also, Russell Baze never stopped smiling.

No surprise there. The man who is about to become the winningest jockey of all time, who finished the day only two victories behind Laffit Pincay’s record of 9,530, has been doing this since 1974. Smiling and winning.

Baze, 48, won twice Sunday, going wire to wire in the first race and closing from last to first in the second. With his victory total at 9,528, he will resume his quest to pass Pincay when racing resumes here Wednesday. He will have six mounts, all of them short-odds horses.

This record breaking is not a matter of if, but when.

This record breaking is also going to be a popular one. There are few detractors in racing who have a problem with Baze’s name being on top of the list. Pincay is the lead booster, showing up here Sunday, just in case, and getting a rock-star reception from the other jockeys, most of them Spanish-speaking twentysomethings, when he stopped by for a visit.

“I’ll be here Wednesday,” Pincay said.

Those who say that the record should be held by somebody who has spent more time riding expensive horses in expensive races are answered tersely by Baze’s father, Joe, who was also on hand Sunday, just in case.

“You talk to any rider,” Joe said, “and they’ll tell you it’s a lot tougher riding the cheap horses than the expensive ones.”

Baze tried it for four years in Southern California, 1988-91, at the big tracks with the big races. He won his share, but was swimming upstream when it came to getting the best horses. He has a good understanding of why.

“There were six Hall of Fame jockeys down there then,” he said, referring to the era of Chris McCarron, Bill Shoemaker, Gary Stevens, Eddie Delahoussaye, Kent Desormeaux and Pincay in a tone that translated to “enough said.”

Baze, who since has joined those others in the Hall of Fame, handles any hint of controversy as he handles most things, and as he handled a heckler right before the second race -- with a smile and a sense of humor.

“The guy started on me right out of the paddock,” Baze said. “He was being sarcastic, calling me the greatest this and that. I told him that, if he didn’t stop soon, he would be hurting my feelings.”

He talked about his racing heritage, growing up in Granger, Wash., about his grandmother riding in match races until she got thrown in one while she was pregnant.

“She stopped after that,” Baze said.

He talked about his father’s success as a jockey, about wanting to match that success from the time he was 12 or 13, and about other sports nudging him even more.

“I was a high school wrestler, a fairly decent one,” he said. “Then, one day in my junior year, I won a match but ended up coughing up blood afterward. After that, I told myself, ‘I don’t need to be doing something that dangerous.’ ”

So he took up riding 1,000-pound animals at 35 mph in close proximity to perhaps a dozen more.

“Lots safer,” he said, laughing.

He has three daughters, and a son, and his daughters, now in their 20s, all showed interest in becoming jockeys.

“I told them, sure, they could do that,” he said. “I also asked them if they remembered visiting Daddy in the hospital. That kind of stopped that.”

As he closes in on record win No. 9,531, he still has a vivid memory of No. 1.

“It was 1974, a horse named Oregon Warrior, and my dad trained it,” he said. “He told me the horse didn’t like other horses to the outside of him, so I rode him about seven wide all the way around, and he somehow still won.”

He said that his excitement over that maiden victory was quickly tempered by the fate of another jockey who had also won his first race that day.

“The other jockeys] took him in and painted him,” Baze said, “and he was crying like a baby, it hurt so bad.”

Painted him?

“A jockey ritual when you win your first race,” Baze said. “They paint you with boot dye.”

Paint you all over?

“Nope,” Baze said. “Just on your most sensitive parts.”

And when he was “painted” later that day, did he cry like a baby?

“Nope,” he said. “Cursed like a sailor.”

By 5 o’clock, it was not only wet and cold, but dark as well. The ninth and last race was a $5,000 claimer, for non-winners of two races since Aug. 1. With no chance now to tie or pass Pincay, on a day in which he had showered multiple times to clean the muck and mud off his body and gone through several pairs of goggles, Baze climbed on a horse named Iza Big Star.

Turned out Iza Big Star wasn’t, finishing out of the win-place-show money. But there was Baze, right to the end, working the horse to get fourth place and the few extra dollars that go to fourth-place owners.

It was a blue-collar moment in a blue-collar career that, in the end, is the best description of the soon-to-be winningest jockey of all time.