Tyler Baze © Benoit Photo
BAZE RETURNS TO CALIFORNIA ROOTS AFTER MIDWEST SOJOURN
As the days during which racing was suspended at Santa Anita mounted up last winter, taking a toll on all horsemen, Tyler Baze was faced with a dilemma.
Ride out the storm of troubles in Southern California, his home and base of operations for most of his 20-year career. Or leave the work-less days and Southern California behind, ride off into the eastern sunrise and establish himself on a different circuit.
Baze, 37, a father of three, chose the latter.
“I’ve got bills to pay like everybody else,” Baze said. “I got a call from an agent at Oaklawn Park whose jock had to go back to Mexico and he said he had a ton of business that he could line up for me.
“I figured why sit around. I looked at it as an opportunity to meet new trainers, and expand my business. They might know my name, but I hadn’t ridden for them. You never know what doors might open.”
Made a one-day trip to the Hot Springs, Arkansas track and got a win and a second on mounts. He returned to Southern California to gather necessities and was back at Oaklawn a day later to begin a Midwest stay that lasted through the summer. He returned during the recently completed Santa Anita meeting and is now riding the Bing Crosby meeting at Del Mar.
“It was a great experience,” Baze said. “I won races for a bunch of different trainers - (Tom) Van Berg, Bill Mott, Brendan Walsh, Jack Sisterson, Steve Asmussen.
“The weather was mostly good. There was a lot of driving involved, but that was a lot of fun.”
There’s a difference between driving in the Midwest and Southern California, Baze said.
“Here, if you’re doing a lot of driving, you’re doing a lot of sitting in traffic. There, you set the cruise control on 79 (mph) and talk to people on the phone. I talked to my mom and dad every day. Probably talked to them more than I had in the last 20 years.”
Asmussen offered to give “first call” to Baze on horses at Ellis Park in Kentucky through the summer. That kept him away from Del Mar – where he has 38 stakes victories – for the first time in several years.
“Missing Del Mar last summer was kind of sad,” Baze admitted. “I probably could have made more money here than I did at Ellis. But I considered it to be a privilege to ride first call for Steve Asmussen. We gave each other our word and we both stuck by it. That means something to me.
“But when it was time to come home, it was time to come home.”
Equibase statistics show Baze as No.36 in the country for 2019 with 83 wins from 709 mounts and earnings of $5,047,599. He has 2,669 career victories from more than 19,500 mounts and earnings of more than $119.8 million.
Baze won eight stakes races during the Del Mar summer and fall meets in 2018. He’s hoping to notch his first of 2019, with his first opportunity, aboard Spitefulness (5-1) for Phil D’Amato in Sunday’s $100,000 Desi Arnaz.
The Midwest venture was a success. But he’s glad to be back.
“My family, my kids, mean everything to me,” Baze said. “I still have to miss some things, like my daughters’ soccer games on Saturday. But she calls me and tells me about scoring a goal and I get to see her and my other kids soon afterward.”
BAFFERT, POWELL PUT IMPRESSIVE 2-YEAR-OLDS ON DISPLAY
“Exposed another one,” a smiling Bob Baffert said after Saturday’s fifth race.
Authentic, a son of Into Mischief who was a $350,000 purchase at the Keeneland September sale in 2018, was the latest 2-year-old to make an impressive racing debut at Del Mar for Baffert.
Ridden by Drayden Van Dyke, Authentic sat off the pace for three-eighths of a mile in the 5 ½-furlong maiden special then took control and drew off to a 1 ½-length victory in 1:03.60.
Authentic had four bullets among 12 workouts at Los Alamitos and Santa Anita since July and was the 3-5 favorite.
“We thought he was a really good horse,” Baffert said. “I took the blinkers off and about halfway down the stretch I thought I made a mistake because he was looking around a lot. But it was OK.”
Baffert said it has been “Back to work, it never ends,” in the week since he saddled Improbable to a fifth-place finish in the Dirt Mile and McKinzie to a runner-up to Vino Rosso in the Classic at the Breeders Cup at Santa Anita. “They all came out of it OK, so that’s the main thing,” Baffert said.
One race before Authentic’s victory, trainer Leonard Powell saddled 2-year-old French-bred filly Guitty for her second U.S. start. The first had been a wide-rallying one-length victory in a maiden special mile over the Jimmy Durante Turf Course on closing day, September 2, of the summer meeting.
The course was the same for Saturday’s race. The result was the same, the margin 1 ¾ lengths even though Guitty was a handful for Van Dyke to deal with at a couple early points in the race.
“I was happy she won, but we’ve got some things to work out with her,” Powell said Sunday. “She was too much on the (muscle) and didn’t relax. But with time, I think she can be a stakes filly.”
LET IT RIDE WINNER BOB AND JACKIE DIDN’T STICK AROUND TOO LONG
Bob and Jackie, winner by the narrowest of margins in Saturday’s featured $77,550 Let It Ride Stakes, caught the first van to Santa Anita after the race.
“He cooled out fine and looked good,” trainer Richard Baltas said Sunday morning.
The 3-year-old son of Twirling Candy, owned by the Zayat Stables of American Pharoah fame, edged Proud Pedro by a nose in the mile turf run for sophomores.
Bob and Jackie won for the third time in four starts in a comeback from a nearly one-year-layoff after surgery to repair a hairline fracture in a hind leg.
“A lot of horses come back from surgeries,” Baltas said. “A horse can come back from a bone injury, if it’s not too bad. I think it’s harder to come back from a tendon or joint injury. But this is a very good horse and we’re glad to have him back.”
CLOSERS - Del Mar will host approximately 50 family members, friends and baseball contemporaries today for a salute to the late San Diego Padres general manager Kevin Towers. The day’s 5th Race has been named the Kevin Towers Tribute. Among the notables that fans will recall are pitching aces Trevor Hoffman and Rick Sutcliffe, along with baseballers Bill Gayton, Spencer Dallin, Jeff Gardner, Erik Judson and Pete DeYoung … Author Alan Shuback reports that he sold 26 copies of his new racetrack book “Hollywood at the Races” Saturday during a book signing at Del Mar. One of the book buyers was Del Mar Thoroughbred Club CEO Joe Harper, the track’s Mr. Hollywood (and grandson of movie mogul Cecil B. DeMille) … Selected workouts from 71 officially timed, on dirt and turf combined, Sunday morning: Dirt – Hardcore Troubador (4f, :46.00), Magic Musketier (5f, :59.60); Turf – Majestic Eagle (4f, :48.60).