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Sarazen and His Blood Lines BY SAL.VATOR. One Saturday afternoon last July I sat In i the grand stand at the Hawthorne race track, i Chicago, drawn hither by the attraction of 1 a "top-line" event for Hawthorne in which 1 the best horses at the track were to com- pete for a 55,000 handicap. Unfortunately the , track was deep in mud, due to a heavy 1 Btorm the previous night. But that made no 1 difference to the public, which had flocked to the old course how well I recall the days j when Edward Corrigan summoned it into being "out on the prairie," whereas now it is Eurrounded on all sides by invading indus- . trialism and no one would dream of its original environment who visited it for the first time. The crowd was Immense it simply swamped the accommodations and only the early comers obtained good points of vantage unless they had been reserved in advance. I had chosen that day to go alone and to mix with the crowd and take my chancer of a scat where the best offered, just for the amusement to bo gotten out of doing so. To the life-long "professional," nothing is more entertaining than occasionally to get out of the beaten path and mix with Demos also lime, and Mile. Demos as he attends the races. This day it was the Saturday half-holiday crowd a "motley" one in all respects, but as the fair sex was largely represented and the Colonels Lady and Judy OGrady dress as nearly alike as twin sisters nowadays silks, satins, lace, furs and diamonds from ears to toes the vista was rain-bow-hued, flashing and glittering, with a sea of permanent waves fairly submerging the inconspicuous males of the species sandwiched in. HIS FIRST RACE. The first race was a five-furlong sprint for maiden two-year-olds. Consulting my form chart, I discovered that one of the seven starters was not only a non-winner, but indeed a maiden in the full sense of the term, having never before gone to the post. This was the chestnut gelding Sarazen, owned by P. T. Chinn, trained by C. E. Patterson and to be ridden by Martinez.. I reflected that the names of Chinn and Patterson were as a rule associated with steeds able to get out of their own way, also that of other thoroughbreds, and this insinuated the idea that Sarazen might be up to something, even if he wa3 named for a player of the slowest game that ever broke into either society or the sporting page. When the field answered the bugle-call and cantered past the stand on the way to the post, Sarazen looked rather nifty to me. He was lithe and clean-cut, showed quality, looked fresh and fit and moved nicely. And when the flag fell, he jumped off in the lead and just strung the others out behind him all the way, winning as he liked. The heavy going seemed not to embarrass him in the least ; he negotiated it with rare facility. His action, nevertheless, favored the opinion that he would probably race just as well or better over dry dirt. The time was slow it could not be otherwise under the conditions 1 :055s, but he handled his 115 pounds easily. This was my introduction to the since-so-famous two-year-old, now owned by Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt II., who paid for him much coin of this realm ; that has never been beaten, that wound up the season by defeating that other up-to-that-time "unbeaten" Happy Thoughts, and that many critics declare is the smartest runner of his age seen in America this season. He has shown his ability to win over any sort of a track, at any sort of a distance that two-year-olds are nowadays asked to go, up to a mile, and, while he is not a "classic" winner, that may be argued as due to lack of opportunity. In the first place he was short of valuable engagements. In the second place, he will continue to be, for as a gelding he cannot compete in many of the classics, from which unsexed thoroughbreds are excluded. HIS ANCESTRY. Sarazen can never have any hope of posterity. Pride of ancestry he may indulge, however though rather it should be phrased the other way about it is his ancestors who have the privilege one that doubtless they will take due advantage of to be proud of him. Here is the tabulated pedigree of Sarazen, which, despite the prominence he has attained, I have not noticed anywhere in print. Commando. . . f Domino 1 1 Emma C. I Running Domino t I Stream Dancing f I Water JJ ti f Domino J Ilimyar J53 Noonday 1 I Mannie Grey Sundown. . . . t Springfield - Sunshine 1 f Order f Hend Or N f Box J Angelica g 1 Rayon dOr 5j randora j Blue Grass m I " I Belle f Singleton.... J St. Simon p I Sally "Ward. . Belle I Field Azure l Nutter. . . . T Faraday I Sarah V. Even the amateur of blood lines will at once perceive the unique quality of this combination. High Time, sire of Sarazen, is a triple Domino the most intensely inbred stallion now in service in the U. S. A. I recall him as I saw him two years ago when standing as a stud companion of Man o "War at Haylands Farm, near Lexington, Ky., under the management of Miss Daingerfield; by whom, I think, he was bred. It will be remembered that when her father, the late Major Daingerfield, then manager of the Castleton Stud of the late James R. Keene, mated Running Stream, daughter of Domino, with Commando, that horses best son, the intense inbreeding was criticized as an unfortunate step to which the majors idolatry of Domino had led him. Ultimus never got to the post, after showing sensational form privately and how successful a sire he proved, until his untimely death two years ago is a familial story. In mating him with Noonday, daughter ol Domino, to produce High Time, a still boldei step was taken than the one which produced him. He won the Hudson Stakes at two, his one victory in six starts at that age, running five furlongs in the brilliant time pi 68 under 112 pounds the Hudson was founded as far back as 1887 and High Times race is the fastest ever run for it. He is now the joint property of Admiral Grayson, ex-Senator J. W. Bailey of Texas and P. T. Chinn and stands at the Bailey farm, Donegal, on the Iron "Works Pike, near Lexington. High Time was foaled in 1916, hence i i 1 1 , 1 1 j . is now but seven years of age and Sarazen is one of his first small crop of foals, got when he was a four-year-old. Rush Box, the dam of Sarazen, is now but eight years old and is one of the few daughters of Box, the son of Order and Pandora, by Rayon dOr, in the breeding ranks the last volume of the American Stud Book lists but seven of them, all the property of what may be designated as "small" breeders, in which category Dr. M. E. .Johnston, the breeder of Sarazen, also belongs. The line runs back through Sally "Ward, by Singleton, to Belle Nutter, by Faraday, so here enters a fourth cross to Himyar, also the sire of Domino. Then we reach Sarah F., by Wagner, the son of Prince Charlie ever-memorable as the sire of the "coal-black lady," imp., and then, to me, a once familiar name that of Slipalong, by Longfellow. I recall without difficulty the sensation created by that mare when she broke the record for a mile and a sixteenth by running the distance in 1 :18and and winning at long odds "way back" in the eighties, at "Washington , Park, Chicago. The maternal family of Sarazen represents a chain of immediate dams none of which, has produced anything sensational prior to his appearance, owned outside our great studs and comparatively unknown to fame and fortune. In its last removes, its foundation is that mysterious old-time matron, "Col. Hoomes Dare Devil mare," brought from Virginia to Kentucky over one hundred years ago, whose dams pedigree was hopelessly lost. A CELEBRATED CASE. Half a century later, when he was compiling the first volumes of the American Stud Book, the late Col. S. D. Bruce arbitrarily made up his mind to find out this mare with a dam, as she had founded a family of her own from which celebrated racers kept continuing to develop. So he boldly recorded her in his stud book as a daughter of imported Trumpetta, by Trumpator, though without a particle of evidence to sustain the assumption. Indeed, all the evidence extant and that was amply sufficient, consisting of lists of the members of the Hoomes stud, furnished by his estate showed that imported Trumpetta never did and never could have had a foal corresponding to this mare. This is one of the "celebrated cases" of American pedigree lore and among others Mr. Vosburgh discussed it in his memorable essay upon "Misty Old American Pedigrees," contributed to Daily Racing Form some three years since. Sarazen is an exemplification of the happy results attainable by the judicious mixture of old-established American families with ultra-fashionable Isonomy, Springfield, Bend Or, St. Simon modern British blood. His sire and grandsires have been bred in this country for six generations, while his maternal line is of native origin as far back as it can be traced, which is for nearly a hundred and twenty-five years. He should also be an inspiration to the "small" and beginning breeder, for he was produced by the mating of a young and wholly untried sire with a dam of the same description of comparatively small value.
