Death in the Home Stretch

Yankee, August 1997

For the first three furlongs, he ran cleanly. Unblocked, near midpack, a yard or two off the rail — a patient, ground-saving ride. His mount, Highblast, a five-year-old brown gelding with six wins in 52 lifetime starts, was moving easily, barely four lengths off the lead. Rounding into the stretch turn, he had to be feeling pretty good about things.

A win would bring him $180. That, plus another $180 for the win aboard Stage Manager in yesterday’s sixth, plus the $70 in “rider’s fees” for the pair of losers he’d ridden home, would give him the biggest two-day take of the year. Add to that the win he’d had opening day and a third-place finish the Friday before, plus another $300 or so in rider’s fees — if he could bring Highblast home on top here, he’d be pushing $1,000 for ten days’ work.

“That was huge money for a kid like Ray,” says Sal DiMeo. “Huge money. He’d been waiting all year for those ten days.”

Sal is 63, a tiny, leathery man with an old athlete’s careful saunter, who has “bumped around” the Northeast’s small-track circuit for most of the past 50 years. Once, decades ago, he made his living briefly as a jockey (“A hard life,” he says. “I never had much luck.”), later as an exercise rider, hot-walker, and valet. Today he’s the jockey-room custodian at New Hampshire’s Rockingham Park.

In the old days, he explains, there used to be more than enough opportunity for the Ray Garrys of the racing world. “Brockton, Northampton, Weymouth, Berkshire, Marshfield, Great Barrington — 20, 30 years ago, every one of  ’em had its fair. Seventy days of fair-racing every year. Seventy days. And for kids like Ray, the guys with no racing luck, who ­couldn’t get the trainers [at the year-round tracks] to give ’em decent mounts — well, it was the fairs, for guys like that, that paid a big part of the rent.

“The way it is now, Northampton’s the only one left. Ten days. You gotta make the best of it. So believe me — Ray, he was thankful for every ride.”

We’re standing just outside the Rockingham jockey room, across from the paddock, on a warm September afternoon. Joe Hampshire, a coiled, dark-haired jockey in blue-and-white racing silks, comes out the door and starts past us on his way to the track. He is about to ride the favorite, Side Winding, a $4,000 claimer, his fourth of nine mounts for the day. Hampshire, at present, is first on the Rockingham money list: $563,000 in purses (the jockey’s take is ten percent) — 75 wins, 69 seconds, 60 thirds — in 90 days of rides. In the midlevel league of $5,000 purses, Joe Hampshire is as good as it gets.

“Hey, Joe!” yells Sal, pulls him over, then winks coyly at me: “Answer a question for us, will you, Joe? Northampton — the fair. What would you say to riding at the fair?”

~~~

The full story (as well as sixteen others) is available in the collection, ‘The Grifter, The Poet, and The Runaway Train’ (click title to access the book).