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Out of Left Field |
Don Zimmer: Race Track Man?
He may be a baseball icon,
but he knows horses, too
of TheColumnists.com
The Kentucky Derby comes up as usual this first Saturday
in May. Several days ago talk about the Derby peppered the conversation
in the office of Yankee manager Joe Torre before a game at Yankee
Stadium.
Veteran coach Don Zimmer mentioned that today’s ball players
aren’t as interested in horse racing as they were in his
day in the 1950s. Zimmer said, “When I was with the Dodgers,
we used to go to the track often on off-days: Pee Wee [Reese],
[Gil] Hodges, [Duke} Snider, Rube Walker, Jackie [Robinson],
[Johnny] Podres and me. Robinson probably did the best of all
us.”
Zimmer has been around the block more than a few times. He is
71, had stops at 25 different way-stations, some more than once,
in a career that started as a minor leaguer in 1949. He boasts
that he has never had a paycheck from anyplace but baseball.
He admits that some of the paychecks have been deposited at race
tracks across the land.
There was the time after the Dodgers played a day game when he
and Podres drove out to Long Island to bet on the trotters at
Roosevelt Raceway. They carried with them salary checks of some
$600 they had been given earlier that day. “On the way out,
we had to pass this 10-cent toll on the parkway,” Zimmer
said. “At the track we didn’t have reserved seats or
anything, so we spent our time betting and watching the races
at a bar. You know how it is when you are at a bar; when you
get change for a drink, you throw the change back to the bartender
as a tip.
“Well, there wasn’t a winner between the two of us.
We blew it all. Now we drive back on the parkway. When we get
to the toll booth, Johnny says to me, ‘You got a dime?’
'I don’t have a cent,' I tell him. 'I only have a $20 bill.
You pay him.’
“Johnny says to me, ‘I don’t even have a dime.’
I admit I don’t have a dime--or a $20 bill, either.
“So, Johnny tells the toll collector, ‘Look, we are
Johnny Podres and Don Zimmer of the Brooklyn Dodgers and we blew
it all at the track and we don’t even have a dime.’
“The toll guy looks at us, shakes his head and throws a
dime in the basket for us. We go through the gate and Johnny
says to me, ‘You know, I could cry.’ I tell him, ‘Why
don’t you.’
“He pulls over to the side, puts his head on the wheel and
bawls.”
Podres had come to the Dodgers a raw recruit from upstate New
York who knew nothing about horse racing. Zimmer introduced him
to the track. The first time they went, Podres relied on Zimmer’s
handicapping for his bets. He won, Zimmer said, a few hundred
bucks. When they went again he once more bet Zimmer’s choices
and he won a few hundred again.
Zimmer said, “When they hear that story, they tell Johnny
he was lucky to be with me. And he says, ‘Yeah, but after
that, it’s probably cost me a million.’ ”
Zimmer got in trouble when his name came up on a bookie’s
sheet many years ago, but he survived that. He has played, coached,
managed. He has taken on the look of a buddha with the years
as double chins dominate a roly-poly face.
In a sense he carries the mark of his years on his back. He wears
No. 54 because this is his 54th year in baseball. This started
by accident. When he wore No. 47 as a coach with the Colorado
Rockies, somebody suggested that he wore that number because
it marked his years in baseball. Zimmer didn’t realize it
at the time, but has since worn the number denoting his years
in baseball. He couldn’t wear 51 three years ago because
that is Yankee star Bernie Williams’ number.
Zimmer said, “Most of the time I have worn No. 23. I wore
17 when I was with the Cubs. I was at the track one day and was
handicapping the daily double. Lou Boudreau, my manager who liked
to go to the track, was there and he said to me, ‘Why don’t
you bet the one and seven, your number.’ I did and it won
and paid about $400.”
Among other things, Zimmer was an original Met in 1962. Actually,
he said, “I was the first one to wear a Mets uniform. Because
I lived in St. Petersburg where the Mets trained, they sent a
uniform down to me in the winter and had me try it on for promotional
pictures. I don’t remember what number it was.”
A check of the records showed that Zimmer wore No. 17.
Zimmer’s boss, Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, owns the
Derby eligible, Blue Burner. As of that afternoon at the Stadium,
the horse had come off a disappointing out-of-the-money finish
in the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct after running in the money his
first five starts, winning three of them. There was some question
whether he would start in the Derby, but Zimmer and Joe Torre
were inclined to think the boss would want to have a shot at
the Derby.
To be a man who owned a World Series champion and the winner
of a Kentucky Derby would be smashing, but not unprecedented.
John Galbreath owned the Pittsburgh Pirates when they won the
World Series in 1960 and also owned Chateaugay, winner of the
1963 Derby and the Belmont Stakes.
© 2002 by Stan Isaacs.
The Stan Isaacs caricature is © 2001 by Jim Hummel.
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