It's another boisterous afternoon at the Del Mar race track... screams and shouts...as the horses pound down the clubhouse stretch...It would have sounded much like this when Seabiscuit swept down this same stretch in an historic match race....66 Augusts ago.
As a school kid in Carolina, I planned that Saturday around the NBC Network's first ever broadcast of a horse race. The horse and the broadcast transformed a failing rural track into a symbol of movie stars at play along California's gilded coastline.
That's why Del Mar remains as different from other tracks as San
Diego is different from, say, Los Angeles. In L.A, Santa Anita and Hollywood Park grind out long seasons over nine months of the year.....Then shut down to give horses and gamblers a seaside vacation at Del Mar.
Bing Crosby and Pat O'Brien, looking south to escape Hollywood, built the track. They wanted their own cozy club away from the city crowd.
Bing built a home nearby in Rancho Santa Fe. He put up $600,000 to build the track.....and still cashed in his life insurance policy to open the gates.
Del Mar needed a wider image. Desperate, Bing put up prize money for the match race that lured Seabiscuit.
Bing's croon is still heard each day!!!! "Where the Turf Meets the Surf, Down at Old Del Mar."
It is the corniest, flimsiest ballad in the Crosby repertoire. As a trademark, it's worth millions.
Del Mar lures a celebrity crowd from Left and Right coasts. Sleek young women stroll along Turf Club aisles, turning heads..... and being introduced by their companions, (( ONLY WHEN NECESSARY, )) as their nieces.
Jimmy DURANTE would stay on after the last race and sing for the dinner crowd.
Comedian Joe Frisco built a matchless repertoire of loser's laughs. He did stand ups at the Del Mar Hotel to raise cash for his next day's bets.......Like...."I FOUND OUT THE TRACK WAS CLOSED ON MONDAY, SO I JUST WENT BY AND SLIPPED MY MONEY UNDER THE GATE."
Even Del Mar's board chairman is entertaining: Bob Strauss, Washington's Funniest Story Teller....in town now with off the record jibes on the Presidential race.
The best true stories come from the barns. That's where I met a former exercise boy, Charlie Compton. He was addicted to horse racing but kept his faith in the Lord.
He named his five children
Abraham, David, Faith, Hope, and Charity.
He bought a winless horse named Sanctus because it had been born on Easter Sunday.
The stewards finally broke down and allowed his horse to run. There was a three-way photo finish.....won by Sanctus.
Poor Charlie didn't even have a bet down. He'd put up his last cash for the entry fee. But he gave an ice-cream party for Abraham, David, Faith, Hope, and Charity. Del Mar's lesson in democracy is that......the underdog can still win.
