Horse Racing / Grahame L. Jones : Hollywood Park Can’t Find a Voice

Will the voice of reason ever be heard at Hollywood Park?

A great deal of sound and fury has been expressed at the Inglewood track this year, and rather than signifying nothing, it points out a problem that is not being properly addressed.

At issue is the matter of a track announcer.

When Santa Anita found itself in need of an announcer 5 years ago, it “discovered” Trevor Denman, who today is widely regarded as the best in the business.

When Hollywood Park found itself in need of an announcer earlier this year, it discovered that it had no idea how to go about the search. The result is that the track is now employing its third announcer in 7 months, and understandably, even he has doubts about his job security.

The chronology of failure is impressive:

Jim Byers, a more than competent race caller, resigned after the 1987 fall meeting, partly because he wanted to pursue other interests and partly because of a squabble involving a horse owner unhappy with a call.

Instead of recruiting a top-flight announcer then and there, Hollywood Park floundered about until the eve of its spring meeting in April, lost an opportunity to regain Byers, now at Remington Park in Oklahoma, and finally hired Bine Masters.

Masters, completely out of his depth, lasted 4 days. Then it was bye-bye, Bine. Milo Perrins was hired to replace him.

Perrins lasted out the meeting but, after some miscues and curious calls, the microphone was yanked away from him, too, just 4 days into the current meeting.

Last Sunday, it was Don Alexander’s turn on the hot seat. In the first race, he called the incorrect winner all the way around the track. The second race went well, but Alexander then switched booths, technicians forgot to flip a switch, and the call for the third race began somewhere on the backstretch.

It was not an auspicious debut.

The problem lies not so much in gaffes such as these but in Hollywood Park’s inability or refusal to recognize why they occur.

Bluntly put, the track gets what it pays for. Experience and ability cost money, and Hollywood Park has been slow in realizing that.

For reasons unknown, the track underestimates the importance of having a competent, knowledgeable person behind the microphone. Fancy buildings are all very nice, but when the voice of the track flubs the names of horses and jockeys, or stumbles over calls, or fails to see and tell of significant developments during a race, the image of the track suffers along with that of the announcer.

In an article in the Thoroughbred Record this month, it was suggested that Denman would be Hollywood Park’s announcer this fall. That was met with half-smiles at Santa Anita. Not a chance, they said.

But Hollywood Park apparently did make an honest, if belated, effort to sign Denman. Money was not an obstacle. What was, was an ever-lengthening string of conditions that Santa Anita put on the sharing arrangement.

Hollywood Park agreed to meet some of the conditions, but not all. Finally, Santa Anita said no.

The result was that Perrins stayed on, but only through last Saturday. Now Alexander has the unenviable task of being compared to Denman every time he turns on the microphone.

Perhaps he will develop a distinctive style and signature of his own. Perhaps he will not.

Admittedly, top-flight announcers such as Denman, Tom Durkin and, to a lesser degree, Dave Johnson are difficult to find. But if Hollywood Park prides itself in being one of the nation’s leading race tracks, why should its fans have to settle for anything less?

Food for thought for those who claim that the onset of inter-track wagering has helped stem the sport’s decline in attendance: Daily average attendance at Santa Anita and eight off-track sites for the recently concluded Oak Tree meeting came to 27,102. That, track officials said, represented a 7% increase over 1987.

A more meaningful comparison would have been with 1986. Then, attendance averaged 28,617. In other words, even the arrival of off-track betting has not brought attendance back to the level of two years ago. The 1988 figures actually show a 5.3% decrease when compared to 1986.

Once the novelty of inter-track wagering wears off, once saturation is reached in the number of off-track sites, and once off-track attendance flattens out, racing will still be faced with the problem of how to get the fans back to the track.

Breeders’ Cup officials have decided to scrap their $2-million premium awards program, under which additional purse money is awarded to Breeders’ Cup-nominated horses in certain races, and to replace it next year with a greater number of premium stakes races.

The existing program increases purse money in certain events--Sunday’s Citation Handicap at Hollywood Park, for example, carries a purse of $100,000 plus an additional $20,000 in Breeders’ Cup premium awards to eligible horses.

The new program will do away with such awards and, in their stead, the Breeders’ Cup will directly sponsor a greater number of stakes.

Details of the plan have not yet been completed, but $1.5 million in purse contributions will be shared by more than 80 U.S. and Canadian tracks. None of the premium stakes will be worth more than $50,000, and each will be funded equally by the Breeders’ Cup and the participating race track.

Meanwhile, the Breeders’ Cup-Budweiser special stakes program also will be modified, with a reduced number of 46 stakes being run at 42 tracks in 1989. The Breeders’ Cup will provide $3.95 million in purse money to these events.

Horse Racing Notes

Hollywood Park’s chairman and chief executive officer, Marje Everett, was released from Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles Friday and was resting at home after undergoing radical mastectomy surgery last Tuesday. . . . Neither Chris McCarron nor Gary Stevens will be at Hollywood Park today. McCarron, along with trainer Jack Van Berg, will be at Churchill Downs, where Alysheba will be paraded before retiring to stud duty. Stevens will be at Aqueduct, riding in a pair of Grade I stakes for trainer Wayne Lukas.

Santa Anita has made changes in its wagering format for the season, beginning the day after Christmas. Gone is the Pick Six, and in its place will be two Daily Triples. “It’s easier to select three winners . . . than six,” according to Cliff Goodrich, the track’s vice president and general manager. Gone, too, are the days of the huge carry-over in the Pick Nine. From Dec. 24 on, there will be a $500,000 ceiling on the carry-over, with a mandatory pay-out when it reaches that figure.