The theme from “Rocky” doesn’t play every time Peter Galassi calls a harness race at historic Balmoral Park in Crete, and it is highly unlikely that Sylvester Stallone will ever portray the 40-year-old race announcer on the silver screen.
Yet if a Hollywood type ever wanted to make a sports-based movie about the frog who dreamed of being a prince and became one, that producer would have to look no farther than the announcer’s booth at 26435 S. Dixie Hwy.
Galassi-the one-time frog-is in truth a young warehouseman alone with an infant daughter 18 years ago who set his sights on his dream career of big-time race calling. Through thankless, and near payless, weekends spent calling races at Illinois county fairs, nights spent sleeping in his car while working in dusty-tracked venues like Aledo and Princeton and Greenup, rejection after rejection while chasing full-time gigs invariably followed by that tiny step upward that kept him pursuing his dream, Galassi persevered against odds that might have even sent Stallone’s Balboa back to full-time loan sharking collection.
“Peter Galassi never, ever quit,” said the legendary Phil Georgeff, a key mentor of Galassi’s who retired after a 34-year career as Chicago racing’s greatest voice ever. “And he took a lot of knocks and faced a lot of closed doors along the way. But he did persevere. And I think he turned into a very competent, very straightforward race caller. His success is truly the story of a common man who chased his rainbow and refused to give up.”
Added Mike Paradise, who handicaps harness racing for the Chicago Tribune and is considered one of the nation’s leading experts on the sport: “When you look at what Peter has accomplished, you have to view it against the context of what a closed society race calling in Chicago is and has always been. Georgeff’s career spanned more than three decades and he had a lock on many of the major roles at local tracks. Gil Levine has called Sportsman’s (the main summertime harness meeting in Chicago) since the early ’60s. Tony Salvaro has been the guy at Maywood (a west suburban harness track that races in the spring and fall) since around 1970. And then they brought in young (Kurt) Becker to replace Phil last winter at Hawthorne, Arlington and for the Sportsman thoroughbreds. Somehow, against all that, Galassi has pretty much thrived.”
Considering whence he came and what he has surmounted, Peter Galassi can live with that.
At a glance, Peter Galassi looks like a warehouseman, the man with a face that could easily be believed as one that launched a thousand crates or, at least, a thousand Friday afternoon football pools. A Romanesque nose anchors that face. And his eyes are those of an intense, clear-visioned professional who operates in a thoroughly uncommon profession and has done so since he took over as the regular race caller at Balmoral in 1982.
“I am first and foremost a reporter, and if I can bring any flair or style to accurate reporting as I call races, I am ahead of the game,” said Galassi, a long-time resident of Evergreen Park who graduated from St. Rita High School in 1971. “I always loved sports broadcasting and also developed a love for racetracks and racing early on. Being able to combine those two loves and to make a living at it full time became a consuming ambition of mine sometime around the age of 20. All I figured was, why can’t I do it?”
Why not? Well, perhaps because he was hardly to the manor born in terms of race calling Chicago-style. His father, Peter Sr., was a truck driver who later retired and went on to work for the Water and Sanitation Department in Evergreen Park. His mother, Jane, oversaw their family of two sons and two daughters.
A marriage at age 20 produced a daughter, Christine (now a business major at the University of Illinois at Chicago) and a divorce, which left 23-year-old Peter Galassi Jr. a single parent adrift in a sea of serious reality back in the mid-70s, despite his starry-eyed aspiration to eventually succeed Georgeff.
“Throughout my upbringing, whenever any of his kids set out to work, my father always had one basic question and it was thoroughly reality based,” Galassi recalled. “He always asked us, `What are the benefits?’ That’s the way he thought, and that’s the way we were taught to think. And that’s the way I thought when I decided I was going to be a race caller, which is why I kept my day job as a warehouseman well into the ’80s before they made me full time, year-round as both announcer and assistant publicity director at Balmoral.”
Actually, Galassi’s ambition to somehow become a sportcaster was evident as far back as his childhood when his family lived in St. Mary of Mt. Carmel parish at 67rd and Wood Streets in Chicago, according to Cindy Mega of Tinley Park, Galassi’s younger sister.
“I can remember sitting in the kitchen helping my mother with the dishes on summer nights when we’d hear Peter on the back porch announcing White Sox games along with Red Rush and Bob Elson,” Mega said. “He was a little bit weird, but he was also showing the first signs of the determination that’s got him to where he is today. He also used to love to annoy me with his White Sox announcing because he knew what a Cubs fan I was.”
But her older brother’s annoying ways took a major step along the road to professional fruition when he boldly sought out the advice of Georgeff in 1976.
“Very simply, I was 23 years old, a single parent, working in a warehouse and had to find out whether I could make it as a race caller,” Galassi said. “I didn’t know Phil Georgeff, but he always seemed like a nice, accessible guy, so one day at one of the tracks, I sought him out and asked him how best I could go about becoming a race announcer. His advice was to practice a lot and to go call county fairs and keep knocking on doors until somebody answered.”
Galassi’s first paid call came at the two-day Aledo County Fair in western Illinois during the summer of 1977. “I called 12 or 13 harness races on a Saturday and Sunday from a platform in the middle of the infield. All around me were the cars and props of a stunt auto driving show. I was nervous and when I called them coming for home the first time, I thought that I was going to swallow my tongue.”
Harness racing at county fairs in Illinois is quite unlike the polished, professional, detached events presented at Balmoral, Hawthorne, Sportsman’s and Maywood. There is seldom any parimutuel wagering. Paddocks are small and informal. As often as not, the horses racing on Sunday are serving a more useful purpose back on the farm come Monday. And come most Mondays, Galassi would be back at the warehouse.
“But every racing fan, at some point in their life, should go to a county fair in Illinois,” Galassi said. “It’s fun and it’s educational and it gives you a tremendous feel for the real roots of the sport. And for me, it was an advanced route to becoming an announcer.”
Throughout the late ’70s, that uncertain route advanced through such exotic locales as Paris-Illinois-and Oregon and Greenup. Finally, in 1979, Galassi landed a full-time, but seasonal, job as the caller at Quad City Downs in East Moline.
“That was the first time I called at a parimutuel track, and the job lasted five months, from May through September,” Galassi said. “Finally, as the meet was coming to a close, my daughter, who had gone out there with me, was set to start school. Either the track would hire me full time, year-round-with benefits-in their publicity department or we were going to come back to Chicago to have a more stable base. In truth, they had no year-round position in publicity, so it was back to Chicago, actually Evergreen Park, for us.”
That also meant back to the warehouse. “But my ambition to announce was thoroughly deep-seated by that point,” Galassi said. “I’d practice at every opportunity, even to the point of calling imaginary races among the cars around me as I drove to work. I got a lot of strange looks. And one day at Balmoral, I was practicing calling races into a tape recorder while standing near the rail. Track security took me into custody because they thought that I was somehow working for a bookie. It took a call to Phil Georgeff, who vouched for me, before I was released.”
Finally, in 1980, thoroughly based in county fair experience, Galassi got a big break when Tom Sweeney, then general manager at Balmoral, lifted Galassi’s resume and tape from a file one afternoon and called to ask if he would be available to fill in for Tom Durkin, the track’s regular announcer, who had an out-of-town assignment.
“That was my first call in a booth in Chicago, and that was an enormously memorable, exhilirating experience,” Galassi said. “I was beyond nervous, but I also felt that I was as prepared as I was ever going to be. Things must have gone well because I became the regular backup announcer at Balmoral in 1981, and one year later, when Durkin resigned to go to the Meadowlands in New Jersey, I was hired by Dan Groth, then the new G.M., as the regular caller.”
And, except for brief periods later in 1982 when he contracted hepatitis and in 1983 when he was bumped by Georgeff, who had been fired briefly at Arlington, Galassi has been the voice of Balmoral and racing in the south suburbs.
To watch Galassi work these days and nights at Balmoral (the track races Sunday afternoons from Jan. 2 through Feb. 13) is to behold a consummate professional who is always on the lookout for ways to further enhance his craft.
His calls are clear, crisp and, quite often, remarkably prescient. (“Peter’s ability to pick up contending horses early and to accurately gauge and announce the setup of a race are first-class,” said driver Doug Hamilton, who frequently studies replays of his performances and Galassi’s calls after races in the driver’s room.)
Besides his announcing duties, Galassi also produces the track’s morning line (the odds listed in the program on each horse), writes handicapping notes and a weekly press release, works part time for the race results line of Phone Programs Inc., and hosts the daily “Chicago Racing Report” at 5:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday on SportsChannel. (“And, for my father’s sake, I get benefits,” Galassi joked.)
From his announcing roost, Galassi also manages to mix in an occasional flash of wit. A recent example was the racing debut of the 2-year-old Illinois-bred Hotdamntamalebaby, whom breeder Stuart Crivokapich of Lockport had named for WLUP-FM radio personality Kevin Matthews and his impersonation of Elvis Presley. (When Matthews does Elvis on his morning show, he frequently uses the phrase “Hot damn tamale, baby!,” a la Presley in his declining years.) When Galassi called the horse’s first race, at every mention of its name, he did so utilizing his Elvis impersonation, no small feat for an announcer trying to keep up with eight standardbreds speeding around a five-eighths of a mile oval. (“We were just having fun,” Galassi shrugged.)
Galassi’s tenure at Balmoral also has come during the track’s continuing renaissance as the boom in Illinois gaming continues. Originally opened as Lincoln Fields in 1926, the Crete track has endured many ups and downs during its 68 years of operation, at times appearing to be on the brink of extinction as its more aggressive neighbors to the north came to dominate Illinois racing.
“The purchase of Balmoral (from Ohio shopping center baron Edward DeBartolo) by the George Steinbrenner-Billy Johnston-Tom Swindal group in 1987 was a major show of faith in the future direction of the south suburbs,” said track General Manager Dan Nemeth. “Peter is a major part of that stature. He is at once an excellent announcer, a skilled public relations man and our most visible spokesperson, our ambassador to racing. We’ll race 169 days in 1994, and this is an exciting, vibrant time for Balmoral Park, and Peter is one big reason.”
Watching it all through rose-colored binoculars is the man who dreamed of being a prince and became one. Now, far from the forklifts and loading docks, Galassi’s enchanted kingdom is a small room with only a window, a microphone and a skilled professional high atop the finish line and the world.
“No matter how rotten I feel, how tired I am, how much the world seems against me, how many losers in a row I pick, all I have to do is look out the window from my booth and think for a second about what I’m doing and where I am now professionally, and all I can think is that this is it,” Galassi concluded. “This is really, really it.”
Rocky Balboa would understand.
