Some children want bicycles. Some want skateboards. Michael Straight wanted an Equicizer. Growing up in East Greenbush, about 40 miles south of Saratoga, Michael and his twin brother Matthew were obsessed with horse racing. Brought to Saratoga Race Course by their parents as children, they became instant fans. “We fell in love with the track,”…
Arising early last Saturday morning, I thought about August 3, 1863. I thought about what might have been going through John Morrissey’s mind on that summer morning 150 years ago, about how the guests in the downtown hotels might have prepared for the races, about the horse and carriage traffic jam that might have taken…
In the late 1980’s, I worked for several years in the sales office during the Saratoga sales. In those days before computers were widely used, I painstakingly recorded the details of each sale in a ledger: hip number, consigner, buyer, sales price. I lived in fear of making a mistake. That anxiety aside, it was…
“A large concourse of people, including a host of the fashionables in carriages, turned out on Monday to enjoy the sport and excitement of the Races on the Saratoga Course.” Those words appeared in The Daily Saratogian on Aug. 4, 1863, the day after the first day of the first Saratoga meeting, the anniversary of…
On Saturday, May 27, in his 14th year as a jockey, Joseph Rocco Jr. got his first Grade I win when Tiz Miz Sue won the Ogden Phipps Handicap at Belmont Park. Exactly two months later, at Saratoga Race Course, he got his second. Riding longshot Lighthouse Bay in last Saturday’s Prioress, Rocco rode the…
A year ago this month, multiple stakes winner Stud Muffin was on a farm just outside Saratoga, resting up for a fall racing campaign. Then eight years old, he hadn’t hit the winner’s circle in 2012. He raced twice more last year, non-competitively, and it was clear that his best racing days were behind him.…
Brooklyn Backstretch 