MEMORIES OF DEL MAR : 50 Years Ago, Bing Crosby and Some Friends Started Seaside Track That Is Rich With Horse Racing Lore

DEL MAR —  A trip to Del Mar is a time not to be mad at anybody. --EARLY BIRD CLYDE, philosopher-handicapper

What was Del Mar like 50 years ago?

For one thing, the horses ran for $400 purses when this seaside track opened July 3, 1937.

Now, the minimum purse is $10,000. But there’s the other side of the coin. In 1937, a trainer could buy a ton of hay for $9 or $10. The current rate is about $200 a ton.

In 1937, trainer Charlie Whittingham had a stable of two horses and lived in a tack room, just above the barn. Whittingham owned one of the horses, an escapee from Caliente, and the other raced in the name of a man they called Green Tie Corcoran. It would have been fitting if Early Bird Clyde and Green Tie Corcoran had hung out together.

Now, Whittingham has a shed row of more than 30 horses, with maybe another 100 on the farm, just a van ride away. The Hall of Fame trainer lives in a luxurious beach house that he bought a number of stakes wins ago.

Bing Crosby started it all at Del Mar, borrowing against his life insurance for the last $100,000 that was needed, and bringing in a cluster of Hollywood friends as partners. Pat O’Brien was the most prominent of the other investors, and among those joining him were Gary Cooper, Oliver Hardy and Joe E. Brown.

Del Mar became their not-so-private club. You could see more stars in the Turf Club on weekends than you’d see in a double feature at the Bijou. There were more touts in Bing and Dixie Crosby’s box than you’d find in a story by Damon Runyon.

With the beach only half a mile from the quarter pole, Del Mar inspired Crosby, John Burke and James V. Monaco to write a song about the track in 1938.

The turf is still meeting the surf here, with management playing the Crosby recording to start and end each racing day.

It was two horses, though, and not Crosby’s song, that gave Del Mar national recognition in 1938.

On Aug. 12, Seabiscuit met Ligaroti in a $25,000, winner-take-all match race.

Seabiscuit was the top American handicap horse of the time; Ligaroti was a 6-year-old Argentine-bred owned by Crosby and Lin Howard, whose father, Charles, owned Seabiscuit.

A Friday crowd estimated at 18,000 came to see if Seabiscuit, carrying 130 pounds and giving 15 pounds to Ligaroti, could win at 1 1/8 miles.

George Woolf, riding Seabiscuit, broke him out on top, but Ligaroti and his rider, Spec Richardson, quickly caught up. They were still even heading into the stretch.

Seabiscuit won by a nose, but in the final strides Woolf and Richardson were fighting each other more than riding their horses.

The stewards flashed the “inquiry” sign and later threatened to suspend both jockeys for the rest of the season, until they were reminded that they had no authority because the race had been a betless exhibition.

According to one account, Richardson grabbed Seabiscuit’s saddle cloth as the horses reached the sixteenth pole, then took hold of Woolf’s wrist. With 20 yards to go, Woolf had hold of Ligaroti’s reins.

Woolf died after taking a spill at Santa Anita in 1946. A few years ago, Richardson recalled the race and said that he should have won on a disqualification.

Crosby went to the jockeys’ room after the race and asked both riders to refrain from talking with the press. But Richardson said that Woolf went out and talked, anyhow, “and that made all the stories one-sided. What really happened is that Woolf took his whip and hit my horse across the nose five or six times. That’s why I tried to grab his wrist.”

Crosby’s visit to the jockeys’ room was hardly surprising, since he was a hands-on operator. On opening day in 1937, he greeted the fans and his High Strike, a near-black 2-year-old, won the first race, with Albert Johnson, a two-time winner of the Kentucky Derby, in the saddle.

Once, Crosby tried to announce a race. But he was colorblind, and when the field hit the top of the stretch, he gave the microphone back to the regular track announcer for the rest of the call.

But even the regular announcers sometimes had problems. Joe Hernandez anglicized Maurice Chevalier’s name, and Oscar Otis got Paulette Goddard’s first name wrong, calling her Pauline.

That brought Crosby running up to the press box.

“She’s offended as hell,” Crosby said to Otis. “What happened?”

“What can I tell you?” Otis said. “I just blew it.”

Later, Otis went downstairs and apologized to the actress, and peace was restored.

Crosby and O’Brien once did a radio show from Del Mar, interviewing and twitting fans. One of their favorite mock questions was, “Which horse won the Preakness twice?”

The answer, of course, was none, but many people said Man o’ War.

Every Saturday, somebody from Hollywood would make the trophy presentation in the winner’s circle. Barbara Stanwyck, who once raced horses in partnership with Groucho Marx, did the honors on opening day, when a gray horse owned by Buddy Fogelson won the feature. In those days, all of Fogelson’s horses were gray.

In the press box, stopwatches usually used for morning workouts would time the celebrities signing autographs as they left the winner’s circle. Jack Dempsey, who stayed there for half an hour one day, was the winner and still champion.

Saturday night, post-race parties on the track’s second-floor veranda looked like something out of Variety.

Pat O’Brien would sing an X-rated version of the Notre Dame Victory March that started out with: “Shame, shame on old Notre Dame.”

Jimmy Durante--for whom a street in front of the track and the turf course are now named--once borrowed a routine from his nightclub act and really tore up his piano, which wound up shattering to the pavement, 25 feet below.

Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson sang “Happy Birthday” to a little girl from St. Louis, and she never had another birthday like it.

Del Mar was a delightful escape for the film people, and a chance for the Hollywood press agents to show off their starlets.

Dave Butler was an actor for D. W. Griffith who went on to direct films for 40 years. At the 1938 match race, Butler and several friends bought a block of seats in the grandstand, leading cheers: “Ligaroti-rah-rah-rah!”

In 1946, Crosby’s Del Mar clambake ended. He sold out, and Pat O’Brien was not far behind.

There are unconfirmed stories about why Crosby left Del Mar. For sure, he had made a nice profit after struggling through the first few years.

One Del Mar regular of the time says that Crosby’s outlook changed after he had entertained troops in the front lines during World War II. “Bing came back with a different attitude toward more important things,” he said.

There was such a procession of managements after Crosby that one columnist referred to Del Mar as “Capital Gains Downs.” The current management, which in 1970 signed a 20-year lease to use the state-owned property without taking any profits, has increased attendance 73% and betting has grown by 140%.

Last year, Del Mar was sixth in the country in attendance and handle, with averages of 19,682 and $3.7 million.

There are more people, but fewer celebrities. There’s still a Crosby around--but it’s Bob, Bing’s band-leading brother, who likes to bet favorites. Someone saw John Forsythe here and remembered when the actor was a Del Mar habitue in black hair.

The horses are the stars now.

Maybe they always were. Ever since Seabiscuit, Del Mar has been an equine showcase:

--Native Diver won four handicaps, under weights of 130 and 131 pounds. No Del Mar horse has been faster at 1 1/16 miles than the Diver.

--Ancient Title won stakes races five years apart.

--Go West Young Man was a four-time stakes winner, including the Eddie Read and Del Mar Handicaps in 1980.

--Ack Ack sprinted brilliantly at Del Mar before being named horse of the year.

--Althea beat the girls and the boys in the Debutante and the Futurity in 1983.

--Flying Paster won three stakes in the summer of 1978.

--How Now was the only Del Mar horse to win five stakes.

--Tomy Lee and Gato Del Sol used the Del Mar Futurity as a foundation for winning the Kentucky Derby.

Although the year-round racing calendar has made Del Mar--and the other Southern California tracks--no longer unique, the season here is still an annual rite. The horsemen look upon it as a respite from the big-city routine; the horseplayers can at least discard their losing tickets in more relaxed surroundings.

But Del Mar is not always a picnic. There have been the immigration raids and the anxiety among aliens working the backstretch in recent years. And in 1956, on the front side, there was the Del Mar Futurity. Prince Khaled won the race by 11 lengths, but Johnny Longden, riding Mr. Sam S., told the stewards he had been fouled leaving the gate.

The judges debated for 20 minutes before disqualifying Prince Khaled, giving the win to Swirling Abbey, who had finished second. Mr. Sam S. was moved up to second.

The fans with tickets on Prince Kahled took Longden to task, and Winston Kratz, the owner of the defrocked winner, unsuccessfully took the stewards to court.

Longden survived, as did jurisprudence, and in fact the jockey finished the season with 73 wins.

That was a mighty total, but not as mighty as the 94 wins Bill Shoemaker had rung up two years before. That was the same year that Red McDaniel, the trainer, won 47 races in 41 days.

In all the years since, nobody has touched McDaniel’s record, and only Laffit Pincay has made a run at Shoemaker’s total, winning 86 races in 1976.

Two things happen at Del Mar every summer--Shoemaker has another birthday and the other jockeys tell themselves that he has a record that’s straight out of sight.