Now 96, Threewitt belongs in elite circle

Today at Santa Anita, after the fifth race, they will escort Noble Threewitt to the winners’ circle for a ceremony in his honor. The day and place are perfect.

The man who has trained horses for 75 years, whom his grandson calls “the Bob Baffert of the 1960s and ‘70s,” will be celebrating his 96th birthday. He will also, in ways both specific and symbolic, be among the bigger winners ever to grace that circle.

The first horse Threewitt sent out at Santa Anita was on Dec. 29, 1934. It was named Fritters Circle and it won.

His last horse raced Jan. 26, at Santa Anita. It was named Threeatonce. Its owner was Chris Chinnici of Newport Beach, Threewitt’s only grandson, and it was named for Chris and Patricia Chinnici’s children. Two boys and a girl, 4-year-old triplets. Born, of course, three at once.

“We’ll all be there Saturday, but we’ll be mostly in the infield,” Chinnici said. “Not sure the Turf Club is ready for 4-year-old triplets.”

Fittingly, Threeatonce finished third, in the money. The gods of horse racing dictated that the nicest man in horse racing, for three-quarters of a century, should not go out empty-handed.

The thing is, were a few things different, Threewitt wouldn’t be retiring at all.

“Probably not,” he says.

“Certainly not,” says Beryl, his wife of 73 years.

For the most part, Threewitt is healthy. But he has been troubled so much recently by a vision problem that he has decided to retire.

Also, the stream of horses that once came his way has slowed to a trickle. Most recently, he has trained for Lexington owner Barbara Hunter and Chinnici, who is quick to point out that he bought horses to win, not to fill in gaps for his grandfather.

In retirement, Threewitt will be just as visible around Santa Anita as he has been since 1948, 16 years into a career during which he saddled more than 2,000 winners, took Correlation to the Kentucky Derby -- as the favorite -- and Preakness in 1954, and won stakes races as recently as 1999 and 2000 with Theresa’s Tizzy.

Daily, he will be at the Noble Threewitt Health Center, a facility he established along the backstretch for track workers and their families. It has become, almost as much as his horse training, his legacy.

“His favorite time of the year,” says Chinnici, “is just before school starts and all the workers’ kids come in for their checkups and shots.”

Left unsaid, but not unknown, is that many of these families would not get the same quality of health care without the clinic. It is a project of the California Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Assn., and is funded by 50% of uncashed winning parimutuel tickets.

“He loves going there,” Beryl says. “He sees his friends and he sits around and writes lots of checks.”

That act of giving is the ultimate comfort zone for Threewitt. He is a legendary soft touch. Over the years, many owners got great returns for bargain-basement training fees.

“He was an easy mark,” says Leonard Dorfman, 84, a retired trainer who once worked as Threewitt’s foreman.

Beryl says, “When we were young, and the only guys around the track who had any money were the jockeys, all the panhandlers would go right by the jockeys to find Noble.”

Chinnici, who says that his grandfather “would give you his last nickel,” tells of the sale of 1993 stakes winner Devoted Brass. The horse was an inexpensive purchase from Canada, Chinnici says, but Threewitt trained him into a big winner.

Eventually, Devoted Brass was sold for $600,000 and, though the horseman’s unwritten code in that event is that 10% goes to the trainer, a check for $6,000 arrived for Threewitt. Chinnici heard about it, made a call, and suddenly there was a new check for $60,000.

“My grandpa said he hoped I hadn’t been cross with the man,” Chinnici says, “and I assured him I had not, that the man just forgot one zero in his first check.”

Threewitt once won nine consecutive races and the streak ended only because his 10th horse out failed his namesake and ran third. That horse was Noble’s Choice.

Some of Threewitt’s signature racing moments have been close calls.

Correlation won the Florida Derby and the Wood Memorial in 1954, was fifth in the Kentucky Derby that year and then had a real shot in the Preakness, getting second after being bumped several times by eventual winner Hasty Road.

Then there was the loss in the 1975 Santa Anita Handicap.

Threewitt’s horse, the long-odds Out Of The East, was ridden by Raul Ramirez. In the stretch, Ramirez took a run at leading favorite Stardust Mel, ridden by Bill Shoemaker. The race notes are explicit:

“[Stardust Mel] drifted out to bump Out of the East after getting a slim lead.... [Out of the East] rallied boldly to move up even

Ramirez is 59 now, retired from riding and is a valet in Santa Anita’s jockey room.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” he says. “Shoe was on the rail. When I got up next to him and even edged ahead, he switched the whip from his right hand to his left and before he was done, I was forced back out almost to the middle of the track.”

Shoemaker’s horse won by a nose -- “Half an inch,” Ramirez says -- and the stewards’ inquiry lasted so long that, according to Ramirez, the horses were about to load for the next race before the decision was announced to leave Shoemaker’s number up.

For years, speculation was that the stewards, faced with disqualifying a horse ridden by Shoemaker, owned by Hollywood Park owner Marje Everett and trained by legendary Charlie Whittingham, took the politically smart path.

It would have been one of Threewitt’s biggest moments as a trainer, but there won’t likely be talk of regrets today. Matter of fact, if it were up to Threewitt, there wouldn’t be much talk at all.

“I’m not really a ceremony kind of guy,” he says.

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Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go latimes.com/dwyre.