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BETWEEN RACES By Oscar Otisl HOLLYWOOD PARK, Inglewood, Calif. May 28. This writer sat through the rather lengthy sessions of the California Horse Racing Board in Los Angeles on Monday, and as we checked our voluminous notes at night, we suddenly realized that Dwight W. Murphy, chairman of the board, had emerged into the role of a true statesman of the turf. Not only did he and his associates accomplish a great deal of good in certain rules revisions. but he leaned over backward to see that the stream of human misery which passed before the judicial body got fair hearings, and then used the meeting as a sounding board or forum to get advice for the board from competent witnesses as to how racing could be improved. We were convinced that the high ideals and purposes of the last National Association of State Racing Commissioners convention in Sail Fransisco was being converted into practical use. And it also appeared to us that he felt the racing board was an agency which should foster the best interests of the sport as well as sit in final arbitration on moot matters. At the NASRC conclave, some bad feeling was engendered by the fact that California has two types of licenses, good ones and probationary licenses. The granting of a probationary license to a certain jockey led to some misunderstandings between states, states in which the jockey had paused to ply the saddle. The board quietly chucked the probationary licenses out the window, and from now in California, a fellow either has a license, or he doesnt have. It was the biggest single1 thing California ".ouldhave done to have made for better nterstate relations. AAA Murphy also memorialized the race track executives and any other interested parties to see if something couldnt be done, as a public relations measure, to cut down on the abnormally high sums paid to the state in the matter of uncashed tickets. He couldnt understand the average of about 00 per day at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park, about 50,000 a year for the state as a whole, in uncashed tickets. "This money should go to the people to whom it belongs," reasoned Murphy. "If the Wicks Committee of New York is correct in that the average racegoer does not attend every day, then every uncashed ticket represents loss of good will to race tracks that the Murphy True Statesman of Turf California Rules Are Revised Probationary Licenses Abandoned Fairness Evident at Hearings turf cannot afford. A person might come out, bet on a horse to show, and if the horse wins, he throws his ticket away, thinking it is no good. Maybe thats not the answer, but you cant convince me that 50,000 a year is all due to sheer carelessness. It is a deplorable situation, and anyone with any idea how to correct it will be welcomed." AAA We spoke of the tide of human misery which is evident at a board meeting, and while it may not be a real tide, it is no easy matter for the few who get in trouble and then discover that the only thing worth while in life for them is the good life on the race track. Barred from it, they know unhappiness as few people in the world do, and some keep coming back and back in the hopes that some day, the board will relent and let them "up" despite the fact that when they were on the turf, they kicked it around pretty badly. These are the people who brought disgrace to racing and to themselves, and who, when on the outside, suddenly find they have destroyed their only real happiness. In one such instance, Murphy stepped down from his role as chairman of the board, and man to man, advised a former jockey to quit racing forever and seek, a new line of endeavor in life, a line in which his former record would not be eternally held against him. The jockeys pleas that he had only gone through the seventh grade, and did not know a single other way to make a living, was overshadowed by the enormity of his offenses, being an admitted member of two jockey rings, both broken up in a welter of headlines and one of which shook the very foundations of racing in a particular western state. AAA Murphy does much of the cross examining of applicants for reinstatement himself, gives other board members the same courtesy, and the tenor of his questions always probes out the mans defense, or reasons why a license should be granted. Murphy is a kindly man, and we sense that turning down anyone for a license is a saddening duty, but he does not hesitate to do so when he feels that a man lias not or cannot be rehabilitated, would be a bad risk for racing. In analyzing the position of a man before the board for an owners license, Murphy "thought out loud" as he often does, and admonished that "an owner has a responsibility other than the mere possession of a race horse" and indicated that that responsibility lie towards the public and to the state as well as the owners own conscience. During his years on the board, Murphy has develpped a philosophy which is fair to licensees and wholesome for the allover good of the sport. Two years ago at Hollywood Park, Murphy told this writer that he was not seeking reappointment to the board when his term expired, but he was reappointed, none-the-less, and we learn that it was practically a command from the Governor because the state and racing needed a man of his calibre and qualifications. He is serving, then, because he believes that he can give something to racing, not for what he can get out of it. His life off the track revolves about his farm near Santa Barbara, where he breeds palominos, but where he always is available to all callers, either in person or on the telephone. AAA To get back to the turf and its people, one is reminded of the old saying "You never miss the water until the well runs dry," and so it seems tc be with racing. People dont know how good they have it, as a way Of life, until they foul their own nest, are ejected, and then, and then only, discover rather forcibly that they have in reality messed up their entire lives. This is brought out dramatically and vividly at a board meeting. The man who stood up and testified that he had been guilty of false dealing but wanted back. The man who owned up to having served time in Leavenworth as a draft dodger, but wanted back. The guy we really felt for, however, was Howard K. Pore, a former owner who appeared as a witness in a stimulation ase more than two years ago. He was an inno-. cent bystander, so to speak, who testified as to some threats that had been made. Pressed to name who made these threats, he declined to say, was promptly ruled off for contempt, and. while everybody else connected with the case has been reinstated, Pore is still down because, under oath, you just dont make statements and then not back them up. Pore is not now in a position to own horses, the old affair drove him into bankruptcy, and he has had to make a new life selling autos. The board did have the heart to let him know the door would probably be open when he did get into financial shape to buy a horse.
