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. . . _ A Soliloquy Upon Sarazen BY SALVATOK. Tn a period distinguished for the immense amount of money for which thoroughbreds are racing and the depressing lack of class of most of those who are getting it, how re-iVi rhing it is to encounter such a horse as Sarazen ! This is not the first time I have thua commented upon him, but. contemplating the latest returns-that is. insofar as he is regarded — the Metropolitan Handicap, to return to him becomes a pleasant task. In the connection, I may pause to remark that Mr. Vosburgh has consistently lated the gelding as the best horse in training in recent seasons, and for so doing has again ami again been disparagingly criticized by more than one turf writer. But Mr. Vosburgh has all the best of the argument. We may still allow that the son of High Time is temperamental, that just how he may race we cannot be too sure, but over against this may be set down the fact that his disappointing performances have been few In comparison to those in which he has ae-j quitted himself superbly. To date. Sarazen j lias raced 35 times and won 25 ; which, better than anything else, "tells the story." "QIEF.I1 STREAKS.* Nowhere else in the world, it seems to mc. does human nature disclose its "queer streaks" more variously or more abundantly than upon the turf. In particular, is there in any other realm of human activity in which the gullibility of the genus homo can be so prodigally displayed? Apparently there is absolutely nothing, no matter how preposterous, that cannot get a hearing among the devotees of the course, and even beemm widely disseminated. This fact long ago ceased to surprise me, but it recurs yet again in connection with Sarazen because last fall, at the close of the season, a man who has followed the thoroughbreds for a long while and been ! "next" to some prominent persons in the j sport, gravely informed me that Sarazen I might have won every one of the races .he lost last season had he been "meant." and that, in particular, he had been deliberately "laid away" previous to his farewell appearance in which he won the Bryan Memorial, at Fimlico, in such brilliant style, for the ! express purpose of fooling the public. My expressions of incredulity were at first only mildly humorous but. discovering that my informant was deadly serious, I could not avoid asking him to take his news to somebody who would believe it. Whereupon he became almost indignant — in the first place, because I implied some doubt of his wisdom, and in the second because of my own crass inability to see the hole in the doughnut. BELIEVE ANYTHING. Experience, of course, teaches the veteran that turf operations are the great feeding j ground of people avid of sensations, especially those in which some moral obliquity i factors. There is a cheerful alacrity with which the average man who has a fancy for the races will believe :;ny and everybody connected with them capable of anything and everything in order to "put one over," which, if considered seriously, would leave turfmen, as a class — real ones, I mean — in a blood-curdling light. But. as a matter of fact, anybody with long experience very I well knows that these turfmen, as a rule, are much less oblique in their mentalities than the "man in the street" who so willingly attributes to them all sorts of disreputable tricks, if not actually criminal misdeeds. Bet us admit that sharp practices are by no means unknown upon the turf. But neither are they in the dry goods business, the butter-and-egg trade, the selling of old ? masters or the staging of "miracles." To say nothing of the making of laws and the enforcement of the same. Sadly we have to I ..limit that homo sapiens, despite many centuries of upward struggles from the primeval slime, is still but a weak vessel at best and that the walking of the straight and narrow path he continues to find about as difficult as the walking of the tight rope or the slack wire. Long, long ago the poet observed that "to step aside is human." and nowhere is this more certain to occur than Where Hie Big Money Is. Just now there is bigger money connected with racing in America than there ever was before anywhere in the whole world. The fact has caused to flock to it and hover around it a vast crowd of people who otherwise would never take the slightest interest in it. Many of them, if they become "insiders." do so without the slightest intention of going straight, while many who remain "on the outside looking in," can see nothing that isnt out of the way because they are. to be truthful, looking for nothing else; and, if they don t see what they look for. the will imagine it. The point is, however, that such persons are not representative of turfmen as a class. If they were, thoroughbred turf would long since have passed into a well-merited oblivion. But, because they are not, it has not, but. on the contrary, is today going stronger than ever before. If there is obliquity upon the turf, moreover, let it be remembered that much of it is due to the over-commercialization that is a recent development there. Obliquity follows the tides of commerce far more closely and persistently than it does the tides of sport. No "job" ever pulled off on a race course, or any other arena of sport, ever approached in atrocity those which are occurring every day in the commercial and industrial worlds. Nor, on the other hand, are any of the turfs "petty larcencies" so contemptible as are those of "business." A RIDICULOUS CONTENTION. So. to return to my original theme, Sarazen. Will any real turfman, quite compos mentis, for a moment seriously believe that this great horse has been wioully juggled for the purpose of fleecing the public? Is not the contention not only Knavish but ridiculous? It is. of course, unfortunate that upon occasion the gelding has performed in a manner unworthy of himself. The "reason why" has been variously diagnosed by the pundits. From my standpoint, those critics who indicate as the cause of his uncertain temper his sires close and intense inbreeding, are not far wrong. Nothing is much mure apt to aggravate temperamental vagaries than such an ancestry. High Time, sire of Sarazen, is by Lltimus. son of Commando, and his dam is Noonday, by I ornino: while Commando was not only by Homino. but so also was Bunning Stream, the dam ol Fltimus. In other words, the first three crosses in the pedigree of High Time are all to Domino. This is incestuous inbreeding of an intensive degree. While it may on occasion produce wonderful speed, our knowledge of the operations of nature and heredity also assures us that other attributes by no means so desirable are apt to crop up. Were Sarazen a runner of perfect temper, a racing tool without fault, he would be a true superhorse, at least to the end of his tether. That is probably ten furlongs, at which distance he won what must ever remain one of the most thrilling and splendid events ever contested in America, the Batonia International of 1924. Bred as he is, one would not logically expect him to go farther, nor fault him for any inability to do so. But it is seldom nowadays that horses are naked to go farther, and it is, therefore, only giving him his due to rank him as Mr. Vosburgh so consistently has— the best handicap horse of the present day in this country.
