PALSY WALSY 2.0

During one of my “writer’s block” episodes I was told by one of my few regular readers

to come up with some new material. “I’m tired of reading about Palsy Walsy,” said Padraig Campion, squire of Blandford Stud.

Sorry, Padraig, but I couldn,t help but notice that Palsy Walsy shows up prominently in the pedigree of that great Japanese mare Vodka, winner over colts in the recent Japan Cup.

Palsy Walsy is the second dam of Rousillon, sire of Tanino Sister, in turn the dam of Vodka.

Now that I’ve brought you up to date on one of my favorite mares I promise to generate some more lively fare during the grey wintry fortnight when the Thoroughbreds take their rest.

A REALLY WILD TALE

Vince Timphony was frantic. His exercise rider was nowhere to be found and the track would soon be closed to training. He needed a rider to give Wild Again a final stiff workout in the days leading up to the inaugural running of the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

He asked me to help him find a rider. I pointed down the shedrow of Barn 64 at Hollywood Park and told him that Jose Martinez might be his man. We all knew each other from our days at Fair Grounds in New Orleans.

Jose was galloping for Laz Barrera at the time and was glad to oblige an old acquaintance.

Vince told Jose that he needed to rouse Wild Again who was the type of horse who needed some handling.

“Give him a good seven-eighths”, said Vince. “But, for god’s sake don’t hit him with the whip. He hates it.”

I hung around to watch as part of my duties in the television department was to deliver as much fresh information as I could gather for use of the media hordes. It occured to me at that moment to wonder why Vince did not just take the whip away if it was not going to be utilized.

We took up an observation post on the balcony behind the track kitchen, opposite the five furlong pole. Jose broke Wild Again off at the seven-eighths pole and he went the first half mile in the most excruciating fractions I had ever witnessed. Jose did his best to shake him up, to no avail.

Wild Again and Jose trudged along until Jose ran out of patience. When they reached mid-stretch Jose reached down and smacked Wild Again. He practically skidded to a stop and came up short of a full seven furlongs. Luckily, I thought, there was nobody around to witness the debacle.

Surely that must have ended any chance that Wild Again’s camp would pony up a $360,000 fee to join the field in such a star-studded field. After all, his previous race was a feeble effort to be third in a Bay Meadows turf face.

With such a prohibitive buy in no sane player would risk it on what would return less than 4-to-1. Or would they?

Well, they would. The fee was paid and the Wild Again crew went to betting on race day. I kept looking for the guys in the little white coats to come and haul them to a sanitarium.

TVG showed reruns of the 1984 BC Classic the other day and it reminded me that Pat Day’s ride was one of the greatest horsebacking achievements of all time. Sent away at 32-to-1, Wild Again led virtually all the way. When accosted first by Slew O’ Gold and then Gate Dancer the champion qualities of horse and rider were revealed.

Wild Again was beneficiary of a trademark hand ride, Day keeping the whip uncocked the entire journey until the fateful joust in the shadow of the wire. At that critical juncture Day slapped him with a few backhand flicks of the whip and prevailed.

When I watched the tape again I noticed none other than Jose Martinez smiling at the cameras in the winner’s circle. He looked relieved that he was not tar-and-feathered after the incongruous “workout”.

It was not a happy ending for me. I felt that Gate Dancer could not lose and I would have doubled my wager coming past the eighth pole. Gate Dancer was a notorious bad actor who liked to lug in. He had the perfect partner in Laffit Pincay Jr. who, it was said, could “keep an elephant from a peanut”.

I plunked down my $2000 announcing fee on the nose. It serves me right for betting on a nutcase who needs earmuffs to compete.

While I was licking my wounds the Wild Again party celebrated long into the night. Tales of a trunk full of cash won at the windows grew into the stuff of legend as years went by.

If you told me a tale like that I wouldn’t believe it. Certain things in life we are just not meant to understand

AWOL

Let’s see now, where were we? One disgruntled patron said he was sick of reading about Palsy Walsy. Other members of my entourage were less gentle in demanding some more product. Oh well, if you think this is easy, try it sometime. I can handle the literary, grammar and spelling departments but the damnable technology required is often more than I can bear. Taj Mahal sang about his face in a ” permanent frown” which he cured with a “cakewalk into town”. Me, I’m just plain grumpy. Maybe it’s because I have the only teenagers in town who can’t solve my tech woes in a matter of seconds.

Breeders’ Cup week seems a likely place to resume. First, though, let me shamelessly tout the upcoming sales.

Weanlings has never been my game in a big way but I am compelled to tell your that the last three freshmen I purchased earned $l.2 million after being acquired for $5l,500.

Bernie Madoff should hang up such numbers! A horse named Paradise Dancer led the way, earning some $600,000 from a $l0,000 purchase at Keeneland. And he’s still

winning down in Florida.

Fourth Floor was another overachiever, raking in $341,000 while plying the Chicago circuit. He was a son of the rather obscure California sire Robannier which is why we were able to buy him for a paltry $3,700.

Buy the individual, not the page, has long been our motto. Cat’s Career disappointed in the main, showing once again that even a speedy son of Mr. Prospector is vulnerable to the vagaries of the stallion business. His daughter Galatea Cat was so good looking that I just had to have her. Methinks it was the Storm Cat dam Sambra who supplied the competitive zeal as Galatea Cat won some $280,000 on a $38,000 buy in.

Oh yeah, both Galatea Cat and Fourth Floor were raced in partnership with a Chicago outfit named Bank-Katz Stable. The Katz partner paid his bills on time but Sandy Bank still owes me a healthy amount. Beware if you happen to meet this lowlife.

Now I’m grumpy again. The Breeders’ Cup stuff will have to wait.

BIG BROTHER, BIG SISTER

Generally speaking it not a good idea to go back and buy a  sibling to a good horse you have had in your stable.  Remember that Mrs. Sullivan had 12 sons but only one John L.

But sometimes you just have to be right for the wrong season, in the words of Edward G. Robinson to Steve McQueen’s Cincinnati Kid in the great poker movie of the same name.

I struck paydirt when I spent $52,000 of Jerry Hollendorfer’s money to purchase Trickey Trevor who went on to win more than $700,000 as a Grade 2 performer.

A few years later his half-sister appeared in the March Sale at OBS (Ocala).  She turned in a sparkling work, was by the very good stallion Montbrook and bred by a trustworthy outfit in Mike Farrell’s Ocala Stud.

The price seemed right at $95,000 and we bought her.  Not long ago she won the Alameda Handicap at Pleasant and boosted her earnings past $180,000 and perhaps that sum again in breeding value.

On another occasion our flexible approach paid off handsomely.  Graeme Hall cost $200,000 at Keeneland September and proved himself by winning the Arkansas Derby and Jim Dandy at three.  The son of Dehere made seven figures at the races with Todd Pletcher and is standing with some success in Florida.

Graeme Hall was followed by a robust chestnut filly who was offered for sale at the Calder 2-year-old sale.  The filly was a daughter of Hennessy and her breezes at Calder made us determined to buy her.

We weren’t the only ones watching, of course, and went to $l,650,000 to secure the eventual Grade 1 winner  her for the Melnyk Stable who raced Graeme Hall, fighting off an equally determined Demi O’Byrne.

Demi accosted Pletcher and I after that bidding duel and said, only half kidding, that “you’ll not outbid me again”.  He was right but not without a heroic effort on our part.

We locked horns later that day over who would own Yonaguska.  Once again price reached the stratosphere whenever a combination of looks, speed and pedigree showed up in the sales ring.  We made a $1,950,000 bid on Yonaguska only to be topped by a $25,000 bid.  

PALSY WALSY

Sharp Cat 
In Neon

Sharp Cat was in the news again the other day when her 3-year-old son Extra Sharp won by many lengths in his second start at Monmouth.

That unlocked another bank of memories regarding Broodmare of the Year In Neon, who was the dam of Sharp Cat, who won l5 races, seven of them Grade 1 events.

It is a twice told tale by now how I came to successfully lobby John Franks to purchase In Neon who was carrying the Storm Cat filly in utero.  There are other angles to the purchase and subsequent dispersal of Sharp Cat that have not been revealed.

The saga began way back in the 1960s when a claimer named Palsy Walsy was fast becoming my favorite horse.  It was a wet summer and the caddy yard was filled with ambitious lads with time on their hands hoping to “catch a loop” when the Sunnybrook Golf Club in suburban Philadelphia eventually dried out enough to play.

In the meantime, some of the older fellows studied the racing entries for Atlantic City Racecourse. Palsy Walsy caught my eye because he loved the mud and won repeatedly.  My racing bankroll began to surpass what the caddy yard could produce.

Fast forward a decade or so and I am a budding racetracker plying my trade in “Beautiful British Columbia” as the license plates would have it.  Exhibition Park was a long way from Atlantic City but there was no finer city than Vancouver and there was not a lot of competition among bloodstock agents. I was pretty much it, largely due to some national exposure commenting on CBC-TV shows coast-to-coast.

A sportsman named Pat Ballentine asked for my assistance in securing a 3-year-old colt to run in stakes at Ex Park, now known as Hastings Park.  He had been approached to buy a prospect named Captain’s Party and my job was to analyze his Woodbine form and pedigree.

And what do you know? Captain’s Party is none other than a son of Palsy Walsy.  Talk about your “no brainers”! Palsy Walsy and mud in a town with 40 inches of rain a year.

Sign me up.

Captain’s Party did his job and won a number of stakes for Ballentine.

Palsy Walsy was doing her job, too. She produced a good California stakes-winner in Shamara and she, in turn,  produced In Neon.

A few years later another Vancouver owner named Peter Redekop sent me to the May 2-year-old sale at Barretts in Pomona, CA with instructions to “buy the fastest in the sale.”

The fastest horse is easy to spot.  He’s another son of In Neon, by Al Nasr.  He works brilliantly but there’s a catch...he has a club foot.  I report that fact and the potential buyer asks “what’s a club foot”?

I tell him what I know, that it’s not a big deal if managed properly.  My man is gunshy and decides to pass.

The consignor is Lev Fanning who touts his brother Jerry on the horse who goes on to win $807,000 named Star Recruit.

I moved to Kentucky in 1993 and go to the November Keeneland Sale to check out In Neon once again.  I do not have a buyer because I think she is going to bring half a million and don’t try to hustle up a buyer. 

In Neon leaves the ring unsold with a last price of $l60,000.  Quickly I seek out Californian Meryl Ann Tanz and ask what is her bottom dollar.

“Two hundred thousand and not a penny less,” she avers.  Agents hover about trying to make a deal while I head straight to the telephone exchange and ring up Franks.

He demands to know why I expect him to pay $200,000 when the market has rejected the mare at under $l60,000.

“ I know this family,” I tell him.  “This has already produced a major stakes-winner by a failed sire.  What if you get a good looking Storm Cat foal.  This mare would then be worth a fortune.”

“OK, go buy her,” he said.

What I did not tell him is that In Neon is perhaps the ugliest mare I have ever seen.

That’s why no one would bid high on her in the ring.  I was quite likely the only person in that Keeneland sale ring who had been closely involved in the evolution of a successful family for thirty years.

The Storm Cat filly arrives and I am full of anticipation as I venture out to see her in her first week of life.  Not too bad, I think. Plenty of leg and length, well muscled.  But her right knee is rotated out pretty good.  She’ll need time.

The following summer Franks decides to cull back hundreds of his horses.  In general, we tried to cut from the bottom and keep the better stock.

We have a meeting in his Shreveport office with the Fasig-Tipton staff. They want to sell the Storm Cat filly and I am adamant that he keep her to race.  He tells us that he can enter the filly and keep her if she doesn’t sell well.

Come dispersal day and another meeting is held with the auctioneers to set reserves. I suggest a reserve of $l50,000: Franks lowers it to $125,000.  I am disappointed but the worse was yet to come.

I am on the auction stand reading the pedigrees.  Sharp Cat is in the ring and the bidding is sluggish.  The phone rings.  From a back office Franks asks if the $82,000 bid is live money.

“Yes sir, it is,” I tell him. “ Mr. and Mrs. Rogers made the bid from the right side of the ring”.

“I’m in a selling mood”, he says.  “Sell her”’.

The rest, as they say, is history.

At a post-sale meeting the mood is flat.  Franks asked how I thought we made out.

“Not too bad,” I said.  “But I’m afraid that you will one day wish you had not sold the In Neon filly.”

The Rogers turned $82K into $400,000 when they sold her at Saragota to Rick Porter.

Porter sold her as a 2-year-old for $900,000.  Thoroughbred Corporation won $2 million at the races.  Darley bought her for millions more.

GOOD THINKING

Sometimes common sense plus a little deductive reasoning  can be enough in making a satisfactory horse deal.

An acquaintance of mine landed a stakes filly just that way some years ago.  Spectacular Bid was terrorizing Flying Paster and all comers at Santa Anita in the winter of Bid’s 4-year-old career.

Buddy Delp trained Bid along with the rest of a string sent West from his Maryland home.  Dr. Ken Walters was a Vancouver dentist who dabbled with a few runners at Exhibition Park.

He had a hunch that Delp might not be too fussy about his other horses while he tended to the media circus surrounding the “best horse ever to look through a bridle”.

So he was ready to pounce when he spotted a filly by Silent Screen in the entries for a paltry $20,000 maiden claimer at Santa Anita.  The filly’s name was Happy Feet, out of a Northern Dancer mare named Danceful.  Danceful was out of a half-sister to the dam 

five-time Horse of the Year Kelso.  That’s a lot of pedigree muscle for twenty grand!

Happy Feet won that afternoon and became a stakes-winner in Canada later on and became a distinguished producer with15 foals and 14 of them raced and won.

Some years later Dr. Walters ran afoul of Canada’s tax department and had to sell his horses pronto to satisfy the authorities.  A package deal of five horses was on offer and I jumped on the first plane to look them over.  The price was right and I took all five, hoping to resell four and keep Happy Feet out of admiration for her ability and soundness.

I sold three horses in short order and made a reasonable profit.  The one remaining was a smallish filly by an unheralded sire named Brunswick.  I knew this one might be a tough sale because she had one pretty crooked leg to go along with her petite body.

But I got behind this filly, having observed her combative nature-a trait she inherited from Happy Feet- and a way of outrunning a paddock full of yearlings.

My sales pitch failed and we were packing up to bring the Brunswick filly back home when John Franks rang and asked if we had any RNAs he should consider.

I mentioned the Happy Feet filly and said that I would take $5,000 for her. He readily agreed on the deal and he sent her off to Woodbine-based trainer David Bell.  David is a patient trainer of the old school and he was fired more than once by Franks for being too slow bringing them to the races.

Not this time.  The filly named Screen Happy won $337,805 from 2 to 5.  I got a pat on the back from the boss.

I got one foal for myself out of Happy Feet, a robust colt by Skip Away that I named Chipper Skipper (get it?).  Trainer Bobby Barnett called from Churchill Downs one stormy fall day and said that we had a real shot to win in a maiden route race under the Twin Spires.

The late Luke Kruytbosch and I were friends from having worked televised races together in Western Canada.  I mentioned he horse to him and we each cashed when Chipper Skipper closed about 20 lengths to get up in the last stride at 20-to-1.  Luke's call of the race rivalled the way he would announce the Kentucky Derby.

 

Wednesday at Belmont trainer Tom Bush unveiled a first time starter named Screen Saviour a daughter of Screen Happy who won impressively.  I sat in the Keeneland Equestrian Room and pondered whether to bet at nearly 9-to-1.  Instead I stood pat.

Reverie can be expensive sometimes.

Happy Feet, may your tribe continue to increase!

GOOD THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO WAIT

A major league baseball general manager named Frank Lane used to say that the best trade is often the one that you don’t make.

That motto certainly applied to the chain of events which led to the purchase of champion sprinter Speightstown. I was buying yearlings at the 1999 Keeneland July Sale on behalf of Canadian newcomer Eugene Melnyk. He liked his advisers to name a horse each day that he “must have”. I nominated a colt by Gone West out of a champion mare in Canada named Silken Cat (Hip 185).

Melnyk rang up from his home in Barbados with instructions to bid on Hip 167, a Gone West filly out of stakes-winner Miraloma. She was not especially striking physically but the filly figured to draw some action with a star-studded family that included sprint champions Gold Beauty and Dayjur. Worth maybe a million, I figured.

Spirited bidding quickly drove the price up on 167 and I broke out in a sweat when Melynk said make it $2.7 million. Thank heavens a bid rang out at $2.8. “What do we do now?”asked the voice on the phone.”

“Get out of Dodge is what we do now,” I countered. “You have a horse coming in about a half-hour who really is worth $2 million. Forget about this one.”

Speightstown strolled in a few minutes later and was the cynosure of all eyes. Bidding was fierce once again and we managed to acquire the horse for $2 million. I have no doubt that we would not have had the green light for two multi-millionaire yearlings nearly back-to-back.

The Miraloma filly became an expensive dud who never raced while Speightstown’s value was north of $l0 million after his brilliant Breeders’ Cup Sprint cinched a championship for him, not to mention some $1.2 in purses.

Dividends continue to flow from Speightstown’s first crop which last week included four stakes-winners, including a Gr I in France, a Gr 2 in New York and two more in the US.
They run very fast, that’s a given, but they are winning in top company at a mile, on turf, on dirt, poly, you name it.

That’s how a professional bloodstock agent serves his client.

As for Frank Lane, I have still not forgiven him 50 years after he traded Rocky Colavito from the Cleveland Indians to the Detroit Tigers for Harvey Kuenn

TOUGH BEAT AT 66-TO-1

The exploits of trainer Wesley Ward at Royal Ascot sparked still another trip down memory lane. Two decades earlier my good friend Pat Collins had sent a Canadian filly named Zadracarta to try her luck in the Group I Prix de L’abbaye which is contested on the Arc card at Longchamp.

It took some doing but Pat eventually convinced owner Steve Stavro to mix it up with the Paris swells. 

I had a lot of confidence in Pat so I fished out a Canadian double sawbuck and asked him to put it on the nose. News did not travel quite so quickly in those days so it took 48 hours to discover that Zadracarta had led every step of the way until the last stride of the five furlong sprint. AT 66-TO-1!!

Pat was one of those unique characters that populate the world’s racing grounds and keep them lively. He left his native Ireland an orphan and arrived in Toronto with the literal shirt off his back. He was soon hired as an exercise rider but turns out he was stretching the truth a bit about that.

Next stop was the racing office and he somehow rose to the top job there in record time. A short stint as a bloodstock agent began just when a major recession slowed trade to a halt.

Pat was not the type to give up easily. He became a trainer and hooked up with Toronto grocery baron Stavro. Stavro was no dullard himself. He migrated to Canada from his native Macedonia and became the classic entrepreneur success, graduating from selling fruit on the street to ownership of the biggest food store chain in Ontario.

He was obsessed with Alexander The Great, a fellow Macedonian, and named many of his horses with a Macedonian theme. Zadracarta was an ancient Persian city conquered by Alexander.

Bold Ruckus sired Zadracarta and was dam sire of Ward’s Jealous Again who captured the Group 2 Queen Mary Stakes. Florida breeder Harold Plumley acquired Zadracarta from the Stavro estate. Coincidentally, he also bred Jealous Again from another Bold Ruckus mare named Chi Sa.

The first time I attended the Toronto yearling sale I was trying to buy one by Bold Ruckus. The first dozen or so I looked at were all back at the knee, a point which I raised with the consignor who also stood the stallion.

“You wouldn’t want one that wasn’t,” said he. From that moment on I relaxed and bought a number of very successful runners and broodmares from the tribe of Bold Ruckus.

My friendship with Pat dated back into the late l970s when he phoned me in Vancouver from Toronto just to tell me how much he liked a column I had written in Daily Racing Form. I had never heard of the guy but I made it a point to look him up in 1985 when I was hired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to work the Rothman’s International (Gr. 1) at Woodbine, won by Southjet for Dogwood Stable and trainer Angel Penna Sr.

He was a boon companion until the tragic auto accident which claimed Pat’s life while he was in winter quarters at Payson Park in Florida almost 20 years ago.

BOO, SENATOR WILLIAMS

California business man buys a Thoroughbred farm and two years later proposes to invest $70 million more in another venture in downtown Lexington. Once again this demonstrates the diverse ways in which horses drive our Kentucky economy.

Will potential investors be so ready to include Kentucky in their plans if the horse business is perceived to be in decline?

As for Sen. Williams, he responded with a proposal so inane, so empty handed, so empty headed that he will soon be the object of ridicule, not fear. His bloated sense of himself has become intolerable in a time of crisis for the entire state of Kentucky, not just the horse industry.

A Thoroughbred figures to outrun a stubborn mule every time. The groundswell seems to have shifted in our favor but there’s still a mountain to climb. Let’s be ready when we are called on for further action.

ROAD TO RICHES

In Neon

Sharp Cat

Sharp Cat was in the news again the other day when her 3-year-old son Extra Sharp won by many lengths in his second start at Monmouth.

That unlocked another bank of memories regarding Broodmare of the Year In Neon, who was the dam of Sharp Cat, who won l5 races, seven of them Grade 1 events.

It is a twice told tale by now how I came to successfully lobby John Franks to purchase In Neon who was carrying the Storm Cat filly in utero.  There are other angles to the purchase and subsequent dispersal of Sharp Cat that have not been revealed.

The saga began way back in the 1960s when a claimer named Palsy Walsy was fast becoming my favorite horse.  It was a wet summer and the caddy yard was filled with ambitious lads with time on their hands hoping to “catch a loop” when the Sunnybrook Golf Club in suburban Philadelphia eventually dried out enough to play.

In the meantime, some of the older fellows studied the racing entries for Atlantic City Racecourse. Palsy Walsy caught my eye because he loved the mud and won repeatedly.  My racing bankroll began to surpass what the caddy yard could produce.

Fast forward a decade or so and I am a budding racetracker plying my trade in “Beautiful British Columbia” as the license plates would have it.  Exhibition Park was a long way from Atlantic City but there was no finer city than Vancouver and there was not a lot of competition among bloodstock agents. I was pretty much it, largely due to some national exposure commenting on CBC-TV shows coast-to-coast.

A sportsman named Pat Ballentine asked for my assistance in securing a 3-year-old colt to run in stakes at Ex Park, now known as Hastings Park.  He had been approached to buy a prospect named Captain’s Party and my job was to analyze his Woodbine form and pedigree.

And what do you know? Captain’s Party is none other than a son of Palsy Walsy.  Talk about your “no brainers”! Palsy Walsy and mud in a town with 40 inches of rain a year.

Sign me up.

Captain’s Party did his job and won a number of stakes for Ballentine.

Palsy Walsy was doing her job, too. She produced a good California stakes-winner in Shamara and she, in turn,  produced In Neon.

A few years later another Vancouver owner named Peter Redekop sent me to the May 2-year-old sale at Barretts in Pomona, CA with instructions to “buy the fastest in the sale.”

The fastest horse is easy to spot.  He’s another son of In Neon, by Al Nasr.  He works brilliantly but there’s a catch...he has a club foot.  I report that fact and the potential buyer asks “what’s a club foot”?

I tell him what I know, that it’s not a big deal if managed properly.  My man is gunshy and decides to pass.

The consignor is Lev Fanning who touts his brother Jerry on the horse who goes on to win $807,000 named Star Recruit.

I moved to Kentucky in 1993 and go to the November Keeneland Sale to check out In Neon once again.  I do not have a buyer because I think she is going to bring half a million and don’t try to hustle up a buyer. 

In Neon leaves the ring unsold with a last price of $l60,000.  Quickly I seek out Californian Meryl Ann Tanz and ask what is her bottom dollar.

“Two hundred thousand and not a penny less,” she avers.  Agents hover about trying to make a deal while I head straight to the telephone exchange and ring up Franks.

He demands to know why I expect him to pay $200,000 when the market has rejected the mare at under $l60,000.

“ I know this family,” I tell him.  “This has already produced a major stakes-winner by a failed sire.  What if you get a good looking Storm Cat foal.  This mare would then be worth a fortune.”

“OK, go buy her,” he said.

What I did not tell him is that In Neon is perhaps the ugliest mare I have ever seen.

That’s why no one would bid high on her in the ring.  I was quite likely the only person in that Keeneland sale ring who had been closely involved in the evolution of a successful family for thirty years.

The Storm Cat filly arrives and I am full of anticipation as I venture out to see her in her first week of life.  Not too bad, I think. Plenty of leg and length, well muscled.  But her right knee is rotated out pretty good.  She’ll need time.

The following summer Franks decides to cull back hundreds of his horses.  In general, we tried to cut from the bottom and keep the better stock.

We have a meeting in his Shreveport office with the Fasig-Tipton staff. They want to sell the Storm Cat filly and I am adamant that he keep her to race.  He tells us that he can enter the filly and keep her if she doesn’t sell well.

Come dispersal day and another meeting is held with the auctioneers to set reserves. I suggest a reserve of $l50,000: Franks lowers it to $125,000.  I am disappointed but the worse was yet to come.

I am on the auction stand reading the pedigrees.  Sharp Cat is in the ring and the bidding is sluggish.  The phone rings.  From a back office Franks asks if the $82,000 bid is live money.

“Yes sir, it is,” I tell him. “ Mr. and Mrs. Rogers made the bid from the right side of the ring”.

“I’m in a selling mood”, he says.  “Sell her”’.

The rest, as they say, is history.

At a post-sale meeting the mood is flat.  Franks asked how I thought we made out.

“Not too bad,” I said.  “But I’m afraid that you will one day wish you had not sold the In Neon filly.”

The Rogers turned $82K into $400,000 when they sold her at Saragota to Rick Porter.

Porter sold her as a 2-year-old for $900,000.  Thoroughbred Corporation won $2 million at the races.  Darley bought her for millions more.