{"id":6945,"date":"2010-07-28T23:36:44","date_gmt":"2010-07-29T03:36:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saratoga.com\/much-ado\/2010\/07\/jockey---a-short-story.html"},"modified":"2018-07-03T09:05:18","modified_gmt":"2018-07-03T13:05:18","slug":"jockey-a-short-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saratoga.com\/much-ado\/2010\/07\/jockey-a-short-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Jockey – A Short Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was the jockey in the family.<\/p>\n

I rode.<\/p>\n

I rode ’em all.<\/p>\n

Cheap claimers and allowance horses. Stakes race, black type and graded.\u00a0 Sprints or routes, turf or dirt. Necks and noses or the length of the stretch.\u00a0 None of it mattered.\u00a0 I won.<\/p>\n

I always won.<\/p>\n

Year after year I was Saratoga’s leading rider. I even won a title or two at Belmont. I didn’t ride Aqueduct. Too cold.\u00a0\u00a0 Florida? Not an option.\u00a0 I lived in Jersey.\u00a0 Besides, I was concentrating on my studies.<\/p>\n

After a race I’d come back to the room with rail dust on my boots.\u00a0 I learned that from Manny Ycaza.<\/p>\n

He was the toughest there ever was.<\/p>\n

I’d skim the bushes of the inner turf and dared others to knock me over.<\/p>\n

Some called me aggressive.\u00a0 Some said I have no business riding.<\/p>\n

But to be a race rider – a real race rider – you need guts.<\/p>\n

I had ’em.<\/p>\n

I always broke clean and my clock kept perfect time.\u00a0 Chest to saddle, I rode with perfect form.\u00a0 I was smoother than silk when changing sticks.<\/p>\n

All I really needed were my hands. I learned that from The Shoe.\u00a0 Such talent that man had.<\/p>\n

I’d thread through horses with the belief if there’s room for the head, there’s room for the rest of ’em<\/i>.\u00a0 My horses didn’t take bad steps.\u00a0 They, nor I, ever fell.<\/p>\n

Victory and I met often and she was always glad to see me.\u00a0 So were my horses.\u00a0 They won for me, no one else.<\/p>\n

There is no metaphor for what I did.<\/p>\n

Race riders and Thoroughbred racing are used as metaphors for other sports<\/i>. Nothing can compare to its true experience.<\/p>\n

I never had a problem with weight or height.\u00a0 I ate candy, drank soda and had PB&J for lunch, daily.\u00a0 I never flipped.<\/p>\n

These were my glory days.<\/p>\n

When I was invincible.\u00a0 When I feared nothing.\u00a0 That was what I worked for.\u00a0 To ride.\u00a0 To ride well.<\/p>\n

To win races.<\/p>\n

To be the single most talented jock in the room.<\/p>\n

\n

“Patrick!” I heard the voice call from the other room.
\n“What?!” I hollered in return.
\n“Cut that out and get to the table. Dinner’s ready” Mom said.<\/p>\n

I should have known. The kitchen’s smoke alarm routinely beat her call to dinner by three minutes.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
*\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0*\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0*<\/div>\n

Two belts strapped together formed my stirrups.\u00a0 A throw pillow between them for a saddle.\u00a0 A gift-shop whip and goggles thrown by the pros at meet’s end for souvenirs.\u00a0 A sturdy couch.\u00a0 A rope wrapped around the far leg and pulled over the back of the couch for reins.<\/p>\n

A mother, who was at her most patient when I was out of ear-shot.<\/p>\n

A father, researching or writing tomorrow’s column, locked away in his den.<\/p>\n

This was my home, my living room and my racetrack.<\/p>\n

But in my mind’s eye I saw only the magnificent grandstand of Saratoga.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0*\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0*<\/div>\n

Sometimes my big brother would want to ride. When he did I would call the races off an old program.<\/p>\n

He hated when I called the races.<\/p>\n

Owners would have loved me.\u00a0 First, twelfth or anywhere in between, your horse got a call at every pole.<\/p>\n

My brother is four and a half years older than me and did the things most big brothers do to little brothers.\u00a0 He made my life hell.<\/p>\n

He picked on me, tormented me, beat me up, teased the devil out of me, blamed me at every turn for the trouble he’d get himself into and poke fun at me at every opportunity.<\/p>\n

And he hated it when I called the races.<\/p>\n

He’d get tired after each one.\u00a0 He’d yell at me because it took too long.<\/p>\n

But that’s not why he hated me calling the races.<\/p>\n

He would have beads of sweat pouring from under his makeshift helmet.\u00a0 His palms would get sweaty and he’d lose his stick.<\/p>\n

That wasn’t why either.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, at the head of the stretch, I’d make a call where his horse charged from far back, passing foes like they were standing still. He’d pick them off one by one.\u00a0\u00a0 This always made him smile.<\/p>\n

He loved this too.\u00a0 He loved to “ride” and win.\u00a0 He grew confident in the stretch.\u00a0 He felt proud.<\/p>\n

Then, perhaps callously, I would scream in desperation how his horse took a bad step, stumbled and went to the ground, taking its jockey with it.<\/p>\n

That wasn’t why he hated me calling the races.<\/p>\n

Oddly enough, the crazy bugger liked jumping or falling off the couch and onto the ground when I did that.<\/p>\n

What he seemed to forget was this:\u00a0 it’s his little brother that is the jockey in the family.<\/p>\n

Not him.<\/p>\n

Me!<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

He did love to ride the closers, though.\u00a0\u00a0 “A quarter mile to the finish<\/i>” or a Dave Johnson-esque “…and down the stretch they come<\/i>” was when he’d put it in Cordero-mode.<\/p>\n

He worshiped Cordero.<\/p>\n

In my calls he’d weave and cajole his way through horses.\u00a0 That, he liked.<\/p>\n

Oh, I made him ride.\u00a0 I made him ride those horses hard.\u00a0 I made work, whip and drive to the wire in every race.\u00a0 He and his rival would drive to the finish like Affirmed and Alydar.<\/p>\n

When they hit the sixteenth pole I’d look up from my program, and without fail I could see him fighting back the smile.<\/p>\n

There was that confidence again.<\/p>\n

That pride.<\/p>\n

\"005postfamilybreakfastatsaratoga\"Poised to tuck the whip and ready for the win photo across the wire.<\/p>\n

God, he loved that.<\/p>\n

Me?<\/p>\n

Sure.\u00a0 I loved it too.<\/p>\n

I loved it because for every time he’d pick on me, torment, tease, hit, blame or poke fun at me I would happily see to it that that son-of-a-you-know-what would get clipped by a neck, a head or a nose at the wire in every race he rode.<\/p>\n

It was a 10-year-old’s sweetest revenge.<\/p>\n

Because I was the Jockey.<\/p>\n

#\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 #\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 #<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was the jockey in the family.I rode.I rode ’em all.Cheap claimers and allowance horses. Stakes race, black type and graded.  Sprints or routes, turf or dirt. Necks and noses or the length of the stretch.  None of it mattered. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":10422,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,20,22],"tags":[35,76,87,100,102,112,138,151],"class_list":["post-6945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horse-racing","category-saratoga-race-course","category-short-story","tag-angel-cordero-jr","tag-jockey","tag-manny-ycaza","tag-race-riding","tag-ray-kerrison","tag-saratoga-race-course","tag-thoroughbred-racing","tag-william-shoemaker"],"yoast_head":"\r\nJockey - A Short Story - Much Ado About... Saratoga By Patrick J. Kerrison<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.saratoga.com\/much-ado\/2010\/07\/jockey-a-short-story\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jockey - A Short Story - Much Ado About... Saratoga By Patrick J. Kerrison\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I was the jockey in the family.I rode.I rode 'em all.Cheap claimers and allowance horses. Stakes race, black type and graded.  Sprints or routes, turf or dirt. Necks and noses or the length of the stretch.  None of it mattered. ...\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.saratoga.com\/much-ado\/2010\/07\/jockey-a-short-story\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Much Ado About... Saratoga By Patrick J. 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