The Legend of Zippy Chippy (5 page)

Horse sense is the thing a horse has which

keeps it from betting on people
.

W.C. Fields

Since 1935, Suffolk Downs in East Boston, Massachusetts, has always been a blue-collar track, where a charity event called the Hot Dog Safari drew more spectators than the races. Owned for a time by the wonderfully entertaining Bill Veeck (as in
wreck
), a P.T. Barnum wannabe, the venue once held twenty-four thousand Beatles fans attending a late-summer concert in 1966, the largest crowd ever to fill the stands. Cigar and Whirlaway have both won on this one-mile dirt oval, and in 1937, a capacity crowd of forty thousand watched Seabiscuit and the legendary John “Red” Pollard smash yet another record to win $70,530 and the Massachusetts Handicap. A Canadian hard-luck kid, Pollard, who rode Seabiscuit to eighteen major victories, was blind in one eye and didn't tell anyone until he retired.

On a cold and rainy winter's day, January 23, 1995, the four-year-old Zippy Chippy made his thirteenth professional appearance, with a new jockey in Jorge Vargas and a new trainer in Sherryl Meade, the latter having been brought in to break the horse's habit of losing. Still owned by Bill Frysinger, Zippy appeared to be up to his old tricks, none of which involved outdistancing other
racehorses. Because he was no longer running with the elite, Zippy should have found the high ground against horses like Upbeat Music, Campo's Legend, and Atlanta Gold, the usual suspects who lurked at the back of the pack.

An optimist might characterize Zippy's first race at Suffolk as encouraging. Starting from the number one pole position, Zippy dropped back to the rear of the race and floundered in ninth spot until the homestretch, where without warning he decided to crank it up and outdistance half the field. It was a valiant effort in a losing cause. From a healthy purse of $11,000, he came away with $330 for coming in fifth on a muddy six-furlong track. Far from encouraging was the fact that Zippy finished a glaring twenty-six-and-a-quarter lengths behind the winner, Frank's Return. To put that in perspective, the lineups for tickets by the crowd of 22,169 fans who came to watch Cigar win his fifteenth race in a row at Suffolk Downs in 1996 were not quite as long as twenty-six-and-a-quarter lengths.

As for the horses Zippy managed to beat? Well … He's Been Lucky wasn't. I'mjumpinjackflash didn't. And Brave and Crafty looked kind of timid and dull. Roberto's Shadow frightened himself back into ninth place. But still, Zippy had dispatched half the pack of ten and earned a little prancing-around money. Things could have been worse.

And pretty soon they were, because on February 15, Zippy finished dead last in a field of a dozen four- and five-year-old thoroughbreds. Frysinger and Meade must have thought their horse's performance to this point was Beyond All Reason, the horse that finished seven places ahead of him.

Seven days later, as he raced through rain and over mud, Zippy dashed any hope of sustaining a pattern of improvement. From the ninth and worst pole position, Zippy took off out of the gate
like a rocket and led the field well into the first turn. After a stiff challenge from Military Band and Field Game, Zippy flatlined his way to the finish line.

Undeterred, surprisingly enough, Zippy came charging out of the gate a month later, on March 10, a clear and dry day at Suffolk Downs, only to finish eighth and last. “Outrun” was an understatement in describing the horse that broke bad to finish eighteen lengths behind the victorious Irrawaddy. Eight out of eight by eighteen lengths – there was some weird mathematical retrogression going on here.

“When you fall off a horse that goes that slow,” yelled one disgruntled fan, summing up Zippy's performance and taunting jockey Jorge Vargas at the same time, “at least you can't get hurt!”

On April 12, Zippy broke his habit of coming in last by finishing fourth in a field of six maidens, again with Jorge Vargas aboard. The Lion Wins won. Randy First came in third. The effort by Shininlikediamonds (where in the hell do they get these names?) was tarnished with a second-place finish. Zippy collected $550 for his improved outing.

In his last Boston contest, on April 28, 1995, Zippy used a late rally from sixth position at the halfway mark to finish in third place. While the winner, Military Band, was described as going “all out,” Zippy was all done at Suffolk Downs and going home. Jorge Vargas had proved to be his loyal rider or, as some would say, a masochist. In a half-dozen races against horses that had also never actually won a race, Zippy had finished an astonishing combined total of ninety-two lengths behind the winners, shying away from the finish line like he was afraid he might trip over it.

Looking way back to when the redcoats gathered on Boston Common, it's safe to say that if Paul Revere had mounted Zippy Chippy instead of Brown Beauty for his midnight ride to warn of
the impending British attack, Americans today would be drinking warm beer with their bangers and mash and Hank Aaron would hold the record for 715 career broken wickets.

Zippy Chippy distinguished himself at Suffolk Downs with routine efforts clocked at humdrum speeds, but nobody told the horse he was in a rut. No guidance counselor came to his pen to discuss alternative career choices. Zippy approached each race with a professional air and a keenness to compete. No slouching, no sadness in the eyes –
Let's get it started
. Zippy's people were now completely flummoxed. Whereas most horses would get depressed or stressed after eighteen career losses, Zippy remained sound and sane. Most losing horses would report to work listless and exhibiting the body language of defeat. Not Zippy. On race day he came to the paddock stoked and returned to his stable triumphant. It was only during the actual race that he looked less like a real winner.

So after starting eighteen times on well-regarded tracks like Belmont, Aqueduct, and Suffolk Downs, Zippy Chippy had six third-place finishes and three second-place finishes to show for his best efforts. That's no wins and a few close calls, but still to come, as luck would have it, was a double-wide horse van full of second chances. Zippy, though nobody could understand why, lived for his next big race.

Worrisome was the fact that in that last outing, an exasperated Frysinger had entered Zippy Chippy in a claiming race, which meant anybody with a track license and a fat wallet could take ownership of him. In each case there were no takers at $5,000, the claiming price hanging over Zippy's head. But the message was clear from the owner of the horse the media had dubbed “the Zipless Wonder” –
I've had it, he's yours, show me some money
.

The greatest danger in claiming a racehorse is that any damn fool can do it. Take my nephew David, for example. Having spent a good part of his college days at the races, he and two fellow ne'er-do-wells decided to make a move up the track ladder from losing bettors to thoroughbred owners. So one day they walked into the administration office at the Fort Erie Race Track, just across the Canadian border from Buffalo, New York, and told the clerk that they wanted to claim a horse.

“She looked at us like we were high on crack,” David later recalled. Undaunted, they talked to a track guy who knew another guy who had a license, and $2,000 later they were the proud owners of a professional racehorse.

“Yeah, we named him Threeguysonthesauce.” (You see now why the crack was unnecessary?) So there they were, three college kids strutting around the paddock like a trio of Kentucky straw-hat dandies and coming this close to speaking with a southern drawl. “A syndicate of investors” was what they preferred to call themselves.

All went well, and the girls were impressed – until the first vet bill came in at $1,000, along with a monthly $500 tab for room and board. A sobering experience, that. Soon thereafter, the ungifted horse became a “regift” and went off to be a jumper at a show farm. The boys gave up sipping Kentucky bourbon and went back to being two-dollar, beer-swilling hunch bettors.

In the longest shot on the board of life, my nephew went on to become a responsible and successful human being. Today he lives in Atlanta, creates training programs for a living, and oversees a staff of eight people, who I hope never read this book.