Lineofbull and Mr. Mabee

Jude T. Feld

Listening to Mike Battaglia call Lineofbull and Mr. Mabee back and forth down the lane in the 8th at Turfway Saturday afternoon reminded me of an incident that has bugged me for over 20 years.

Before Del Mar’s renovation, I shared a barn with Ted West, Sr., that sat about the seven furlong pole. Our next-door neighbor was Bobby Frankel, who had his entire barn to himself. This was the pre-Juddmonte Frankel, who was the “King of Claimers” on the West Coast, and sure to saddle at least 80 starters at the 42-day meet.

Ted West was also a top claiming trainer and was good for at least 50 to 60 starts during the meet, while my 15-horse claiming stable would make at least 24 starts. That’s 150 starts from a piece of real estate approximately 30 yards wide and 200 yards long.

Behind our barns we had set up pipe corrals and pens, customary at Del Mar in those days, to house lead ponies, overflow horses and those steeds who preferred outdoor living to the converted chicken barns their stablemates were using.

Tack rooms were in shorter supply than stalls back then and the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club purchased what was affectionately known on the backstretch as “sweatboxes,” those prefab little wooden huts used as offices at construction sites, and despite the fact that they were not retro-fitted for human inhabitance, they were highly coveted by grooms and hotwalkers who needed affordable places to live during their stay in the pricey beach community.

Mexican Thoroughbred grooms are among the most resourceful people in the world. Several of our guys fashioned makeshift living quarters behind our barns with old two-by-fours, ply-wood and cardboard boxes, making the best of a bad situation.

Two days later, Del Mar’s Chairman of the Board, John C. Mabee, was making a tour of the backside. I called him over to show him the cardboard city our grooms had made and asked him to supply more tack rooms for our help.

“You guys bring too many horses down here,” he said. “We have enough tack rooms, but when you bring so many horses, there aren’t enough accommodations for grooms and hotwalkers.”

I went off.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said. “Bobby and Ted and I are here to run. We don’t use this place as a training center like some of the other trainers. We’re gonna make 150 starts out of these two barns. Our help works hard to make your racing cards go and they shouldn’t have to live like that.”

“There’s nothing I can do,” he lied as he walked away.

What a Lineofbull.

That’s the kind of man Mr. Mabee was.

Frankel arrived from Hollywood Park the next day and then it was his turn to go off.

“This is a fucking travesty,” he said. “People shouldn’t have to live like that. Especially these guys.”

That afternoon, a beautiful, four bedroom, air-condition trailer showed up in front of our barns and was carefully installed at the direction of the then future Hall of Fame trainer, who had gone out and rented it on his own dime, just so our help would be comfortable.

That’s the kind of man Bobby Frankel is.

Bobby doesn’t like it when I talk about him.

“You embarrass me,” he says.

But this story isn’t about Bobby’s generosity. It still makes my blood boil to think that John Mabee, that pompous sonofabitch who was one of the wealthiest men in Southern California, would deny some fine hard-working men a roof over their head, especially when it would most benefit his racetrack.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 16th, 2007 at 1:21 am and is filed under Featured Articles. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.