Say It Ain’t So Joe
January 24th, 2006by Jude T. Feld
Bold Forbes Derby
CD Photo
Hall of Fame trainers are ordinarily single-minded. They talk horses morning, noon and night. The few hours of sleep they get each evening is punctuated with dreams of winning races and nightmares of bad rides. Most read the condition book while sitting on the toilet, the Blood-Horse while eating lunch and a Keeneland catalogue at dinner. The last “real” book they read was Seabiscuit. They wouldn’t know Carson Palmer from Arnold Palmer and they think Yao Ming is the takeout Chinese joint down the road from Santa Anita. If they still have a wife, she is probably quiet, reserved and bored stiff by dinners with clients who want to talk about nothing but horses and if they have kids, their offspring either love the Thoroughbred business completely or despise it for robbing them of a real Dad.
You give up a lot to have a plaque at Saratoga and forsaking all else to be on top of the greatest game in the world, you need a great assistant.
Bobby Frankel has Humberto Ascanio, Ron McAnally had Eduardo Inda and now Danny Landers, Charlie Whittingham had a helluva string – Neil Drysdale, his son Michael, the late Rodney Rash and Tim Yakteen to name just a few. Wayne Lukas had his son Jeff, Dallas Stewart, Kieran McLaughlin, Randy Bradshaw and Todd Pletcher. Laz Barrera had Joe Garcia.
Born on the historic King Ranch in Texas, Joe grew up with horses. For seventeen years he worked for Laz, galloping Bold Forbes and helping to develop Affirmed into a Triple Crown champion.
Later in his career, Barrera was asked why he was never at the barn before six a.m.
“I am a horse trainer,” he replied. “Not a night watchman.”
The true answer was that Joe was already there, checking legs, meeting the vets and planning the sets while Laz was catching a few extra z’s.
The Barrera barn was in vogue during most of Joe’s tenure, the focus of the spotlight and not without drama provided by fancy clients’ egos and the Barrera family travails that would make the Ozzie Osbornes look like Ozzie Nelsons. Through it all, Joe remained calm and never lost his sense of humor.
One of his favorite stories was about Aaron and Marie Jones’1982 Horse of the Year Lemhi Gold. I was out on the apron at Santa Anita breezing a couple when Joe came out with a set of six Barrera trainees sporting the orange and black.
“The boss is going crazy back there,” he said, tilting his head toward the stable area.
“What’s the matter?” I inquired.
“Mr. Jones just told him he wants to run Lemhi Gold in Europe.”
“Really,” I said. “Laz must have loved that.”
“He called him a “bleeping” kook!”
“To his face?”
“No, to me. Then he went off in Spanish.”
We both cracked up, knowing Laz was 1 to 9 to win that argument. But “bleeping kook,” in our best Lazaro Sosa Barrera impersonations, became a little private joke whenever anyone did something we thought was out of line.
Joe loved baseball. Something he shared with Laz.
One afternoon, I followed Laz and jock agent Alex Procell down the freeway to Hollywood Park as the latter chauffeured the former in Laz’s big white Cadillac. The two Latin men were in a heated discussion all the way down Century Boulevard and the hand gestures were flying.
When we arrived at the owner-trainer valet, Laz pops out of the passenger side and yells over to me.
“Gordito, what position did Joe Torre play?”
“He was a catcher,” I reply.
“You watermelon!” he says to Alex, playfully punching him in the gut. I told you he was a catcher.”
“He played third base too,” Alex said.
“Yes, he did,” I said. “Later in his career, but he started out behind the plate.”
Alex recounted the whole discussion to Joe that afternoon at the races and the following morning at Clocker’s Corner, I’m sipping some coffee and watching one of my two-year-olds.
“You watermelon!” Joe says to me punching me in the gut. “What position did Joe Torre play?”
When Laz was called to his eternal reward, Joe struck out on his own, training a few for clients and always a horse for his wife Trish, the daughter of the late, great trainer Tommy Doyle.
In 2001, Joe bought a two-year-old by Marquetry at Barretts for owner David Lanzman, who named him Squirtle Squirt after his son’s favorite Pokemon character. After finishing a close-up fourth in his debut, Squirtle Squirt won four races in-a-row at Hollywood Park, including the Hollywood Juvenile Championship (G3).
Third in the Best Pal (G3) and unplaced in the Del Mar Futurity, Squirtle Squirt captured the Barretts Juvenile in his last start at two.
All trainers know that it is more important who you put the saddle on than who is putting on the saddle. We all buy our feed from the same place. We use the same vets. We all work our horses every five or six days and walk, jog or gallop them in between. An old trainer once told me, “You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken $#!+ (excrement).” In other words, good horses make good trainers and great horses make great trainers.
But, as the late Eddie Gregson said, “There are two kinds of trainers. Those that have been fired and those that are gonna get fired.”
So despite the fact that Joe had won four stakes with Squirtle Squirt, Lanzman decided to give his charge to Bobby Frankel. He chose the Hall of Fame conditioner partly because he had trained Marquetry.
“I thought if Squirtle had any idiosyncrasies, that maybe Bobby would have a little insight,” Lanzman said. “The truth of the matter is, I figured he was the only one on the planet who wanted a Breeders’ Cup win more than I did.”
Frankel won the 2001 Breeders’ Cup Sprint (G1) with Squirtle Squirt, his first-ever victory on racing’s biggest day, after a string of over 30 Breeders’ Cup losers.
I commiserated with Joe the next morning.
He just laughed and said in his best Barrera, “That guy’s a “bleeping” kook!”
Joe loved his family. He was always talking about his kids. They were the most important thing on earth to him. He always wanted the best for them and basked in their success. He was also there for them when they were troubled. Next in line was his beloved wife Trish.
“She’s so smart,” he told me once. “I don’t know what she is doing with me.”
“Every woman dreams of a dark and handsome Latin lover,” I told him. “Brain surgeons are boring.”
Joe smiled that beautiful smile and blushed.
“Every girl’s dream. That would be me,” he said. “Yeah, right.”
Joe passed away this week after a long bout with cancer and I’m gonna miss him. Since I moved to Kentucky I’ve only seen him a few times, but it was always like we’d seen one another every day…like we had for 20 years. The conversation and the laughs just picked up where they left off.
Joe Garcia is never gonna have a plaque at Saratoga, but he lived a magnificent life. Most importantly, he was a loving husband and a real Dad and that’s way better than being in the Hall of Fame.
