Pursuit of the Triple Crown

After watching the conclusion of yesterday's marathon Preakness telecast, even the casual race fan knows that there cannot be a Triple Crown winner this year. The Derby winner, Always Dreaming, finished eighth, after giving it his best by going throat latch-to-throat latch with Classic Empire in a front-running duel that was starting to look like Alydar vs. Affirmed in 1978. The fractions were quick, and the riding intense. What are we going to see here today?

What we saw was Always Dreaming, who has never run back on only two weeks rest, and Classic Empire, who was so banged up from his Derby trip that his trainer and the writers were calling him Rocky. At the end of the Derby, even an eye was shut. They were going at it from the bell and were throwing it down.

Always Dreaming eventually relented, and Classic Empire looked like a sure winner. But for that to happen the race has to be over and you have to cross the wire first. It is a rule.

So, while the backers of Classic Empire were feeling relieved, Cloud Computing emerged on the outside and took dead aim at the leader. I once bet on a horse named Dead Aim, a Starter Handicap horse who liked to come from behind, seriously behind, and try and win. And one afternoon in the last race at Aqueduct a long, long time ago, he did take dead aim at the leader and finished in front. But at 5-2 he was no real surprise. Cloud Computing was a bit, at 13-1.

No Triple Crown, and no Rocky story, but always a story.

On these marathon network telecasts I play music and keep the sound off until the post parade. If there is something that looks like it might be interesting I mute the music and unmute the set. And when a well-coiffed Bob Costas was interviewing the two principal owners of Always Dreaming, I turned the sound back on.

There was Frank Viola and Anthony Bonomo being interviewed, with cut-away shots of the gang back at the Brooklyn restaurant Bamonte's, dutifully cheering when the camera's red light went on and telling the world who they were backing.

I've been to Bamonte's restaurant years and years go. It is hard by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, off Meeker Avenue and you have to know you are going there, You are not going to find it casually. On the summer evening we went there old Italian ladies were sitting on their beach chairs  in the doorways of the stoop buildings, catching a breeze. The table we sat at had a plaque on the wall that said it was "From the Boys" No names,. They knew who they were. And the owners knew as well. The place is a larger Brooklyn Rao's, with seating more easily attained. The food of course is good. It has to be.

We head a story of the local monsignor blessing the horse. We heard Costas ask the owners how would they handle ticket requests from friends if Always Dreaming were to win today's Preakness.

Viola fielded this one and said they were going to give everyone "in the neighborhood" admission to the 4th floor at Belmont. If so, Jet Blue was going to need extra flights to ferry those that moved away back to New York for the race and the party.

I've seen the 4th floor given over to a party, in 1971, when Canonero II was trying to win the Triple Crown. Since the horse with the crooked foreleg was from Venezuela, it seemed the entire country was jammed into the 4th Floor clubhouse stands.

They were an especially festive bunch as the afternoon wore on and post time approached. The place seemed to shake with their excitement when Canonero II, under jockey Gustavo Avila, pulled away from the field at the clubhouse turn, right in front of us.

The rest is history. Leading at the clubhouse turn in a mile and a half race is not winning, and of course Canonero II didn't. He finished a very tired fourth. There were a lot of folks who had a long way to go home who didn't see their horse win.

No story about the 1971 Belmont would be complete without mentioning our mentor Les (Mr. Pace) and his $2 wager on Pass Catcher, a horse he handicapped the night before and announced to all who would listen to him that he was going to win.

Pass Catcher's jockey Walter Blum dropped the whip in the stretch, and used is hands to urge him over the finish line. Pass Catcher's prior race went totally overlooked by the bettors. He had finished a more than respectable second to Bold Reasoning in the Jersey Derby. Bold Reasoning at the time might have been the best three year-old in training who wasn't in the Classic races.

Les, who handicapped the prior night, was whipping his Morning Telegraph out of his back pocket every chance he got to tell anyone whose attention he had that Pass Catcher earned a "2," a significantly low number in Les's system of pace calculations.

In today's NYT Joe Drape has a story about Chad Brown, the trainer of Cloud Computing who just won Saturday's Preakness, giving the young, but highly experienced Chad Brown his first victory in a Triple Crown race.

Chad Brown learned his trade working as an assistant to Hall of Fame trainer Bobby Frankel, who in turn learned his trade from Buddy Jacobson. Both Buddy and Bobby are no longer with us, but they further the axiom of learning from the best and becoming the best.

Mr. Drape quotes something Frankel said about bettors, a sentiment I've held for my nearly 50 years of going to the races and betting. "It's nice to be right. You ever been to the racetrack and heard someone yelling, 'I told you that horse would win?' It's not even about the money. They just want to be right." I can tell you how right that is when you stand next to someone who didn't see or care about someone winning the Triple Crown, but who picked an $80 mutuel out of a 75 cent newspaper the night before.

And that's how it goes. There will be no crowd with Brooklyn in their blood filling the 4th Floor clubhouse stands. When American Pharoah won the Triple Crown in 2015 he was the first to do so in 37 years, the longest span of time that no one won the Crown.

Triple Crown winners do not grow on trees. Even if those trees grow in Brooklyn.

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