The New York Yankees are America’s most valuable sports franchise worth in excess of $225 million. But George Steinbrenner, the principal owner of baseball’s defending world champions, says he “can’t compete” with the big spenders at thoroughbred racing’s top-of-the-line yearling sales.
So, Steinbrenner depends on his farm system for his horses.
Next Saturday at Churchill Downs, Steinbrenner will try to win the 123d Kentucky Derby with Concerto, a colt he bred on Robert Clay’s Three Chimneys Farm near Midway, Ky., and raised on his own Kinsman Farm near Ocala, Fla.
“It’s sort of special to see my son, Hank, match ’em up and come up with a horse like this,” Steinbrenner said. “Hank makes all the breeding decisions. He has made it a religion ever since he got out of Culver Military Academy. He uses his knowledge of equine genetics to create the horse who can compete against the ones owned by the big spenders.”
In racing vernacular, Concerto is “a horse who takes his racetrack along with him.” Never out of the mutuel money in his 10-race career, he has gone to the winner’s circle seven times at six different tracks.
Unlike most of his Derby rivals, Concerto knows his way around Churchill Downs. In November, racing on a sloppy track, he won the Grade III Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes to begin his current five-race winning streak for trainer John Tammaro III.
Concerto’s most recent conquests came March 29 in Turfway Park’s Grade II Jim Beam Stakes and April 19 in the Federico Tesio Stakes, the traditional Preakness prep at Laurel.
But Steinbrenner’s happiness over Concerto’s triumph was tempered by news he received that morning from Nick Zito, the trainer of Acceptable, the other home-grown Kentucky Derby candidate. The runner-up in last fall’s Grade I Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and this month’s Grade II Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland had broken a bone in his left leg in a workout and would miss the Kentucky Derby.
Steinbrenner is philosophical. “The Derby isn’t the end of the earth,” he said. “There are some great races after it–the Preakness, the Belmont, the Travers and the Breeders’ Cup.
“There’s a lot of luck in this business–both bad and good. Before Hank started making the matches I had some good horses, but that was pure luck because I knew nothing about breeding when I bought the farm in Ocala in the early ’70s.”
He tells of going to a sale at Keeneland and buying a blue-blooded broodmare named At Loose Ends for “about $1,200” after his trainer had left the sales pavilion. When the trainer returned, Steinbrenner told him about the bargin buy. “But then my trainer showed me at the bottom of the catalog where it said the mare had been barren for two years,” recalls Steinbrenner. “If I’d known how to read the catalog I’d never have bought her.
“Then, I bred her to the good grass horse Assagai. Lo and behold, she got in foal and out of that mare came Big Whippendeal, the horse who won me the 1973 Illinois Derby at Sportsman’s Park.”
Big Whippendeal is one of the first of the more than 30 stakes winners that Steinbrenner has bred or raced.
“I won the World Series last year and in 1977 and 1978 but I’ve never been able to win the Kentucky Derby,” Steinbrenner said. “To have won the World Series and the Derby would put me in a class with a class gentleman who was perhaps the greatest sportsman in the world, the late John Galbreath, the former owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Darby Dan Farm. John didn’t just do it once. He won the Derby twice (with Chateaugay in 1963 and Proud Clarion in 1967) and the World Series twice (in 1960 and 1979).
“In some ways the Kentucky Derby is more intensified than the World Series. The Derby is one two-minute shot, while in the World Series you have seven games to recoup. Last fall we were down two games and in the third game we were trailing 6-0 in the sixth inning.”
Concerto will be Steinbrenner’s fourth Derby starter–the others were Steve’s Friend, fifth in 1977; Eternal Prince, 12th in 1985; and Diligence, ninth last year.
“As much as I love thoroughbred racing probably my biggest thrill came in harness racing in 1987 when I won that celebrity challenge race that George Plimpton had,” Steinbrenner said.
“You sit in that sulky behind the horse and you get your horse’s nose on the starting gate and your horse is going 30 miles an hour. Anybody who tells you he isn’t scared is a liar. Every time I drove in one of those races my heart was in my throat.”
Steinbrenner’s family co-owns both Maywood Park and Balmoral Park and he also is involved in Illinois harness racing as an owner and breeder. In the 1980s he owned two of the nation’s best standardbreds, the colt Incredible Finale, and the filly, Pacific, in partnership with Charles Day.
“The standardbred horse gives the average guy a little better shot,” Steinbrenner said. “The prices they pay for horses aren’t as astronomical and the training costs aren’t as great as in thoroughbred racing. It’s a challenge to produce a great horse whether it’s a thoroughbred or standardbred–I’d love to win the Little Brown Jug or the Hambletonian.
“Speaking of the Hambletonian, if I’ve ever seen anything misplaced in sports it’s that race at the Meadowlands. It belongs back in Illinois at the DuQuoin State Fair.”
