Flatter: Racing’s voices ring familiar tone, even on the move
When it comes to no-win situations, I have stolen the DaphneMoon line that she used when Dr. Frasier Crane asked her, “When you look at me,do you see me as a young man, or as an older man?”
“Oh, no. No, you don’t,” she said. “You’re not getting meinto that Vietnam.”
A perfectly good response to avoid topics that are powderkegs, like politics and religion. And track announcers.
Yet here I lurch on an otherwise quiet Friday when there isnot much else going on in racing. Where did all the good weekend stakes go when I needed something to keep me away from this no-win topic?
In the past eight days, though, there has been upheaval atthe microphone, something that sounds like it should be chased with a generousspoonful of Pepto-Bismol.
First there was Oaklawn’s sudden farewell to Vic Stauffer,who lasted six years in Arkansas before he went out the door last week.Stauffer blamed a disagreement with management over a sensitive Twitter post, even if Oaklawn having Lone Star Park’s Jim Byers at the ready suggested this had been percolating.
I greeted Stauffer as he was checking in last week at the NationalHorseplayers Championship. He told me he wanted to focus on handicapping beforehe talked about what happened. He politely volleyed my persistent text messagesand kept a very low profile the rest of the weekend, finishing in the top 500.
The following day came word that Larry Collmus had beennamed the voice of the 2023 Dubai World Cup (G1). That apparently came as newsto Meydan’s contracted announcer Alistair Cohen. Claiming he did not first hear aboutthe switch from Dubai Racing Club management, Cohen quit in a huff that couldbe heard all the way back to his native South Africa.
If a finger of blame must be pointed, look at Dubai. It hasa racing fiefdom that craves acceptance in America. Its richest race is not runon the turf so beloved over there. It is on the over-here-style dirt that Meydaninstalled after U.S. horsemen shunned the original gunk that looked like residuefrom a vacuum-cleaner bag. It has an overrated race on the undercard thatdefies geographic common sense by being on the U.S. road to the Kentucky Derby.Now Dubai brings on board a voice, an accent and a popular media conduittailor-made for this side of the Atlantic.
Collmus hardly could be blamed for wanting to pick up a nicepaycheck for a weekend’s work overseas. Tom Brady might have gotten along just fine with Drew Bledsoe, but he was not going to turn down the chance to step in when Bledsoe got hurt in 2001. Still, some of racing’s social-media all-stars, the ones who hide behind their burner handles, have cast Collmus as Matt Lauer throwing Ann Curry under one those omnipresent buses. SMH.
When we watch the NFL, we are not tuning in for theannouncers. We are tuning in for the action. Correct me if I am wrong, but thatis even truer in horse racing, where our money is much more likely to be putwhere our mouths are, not the announcers’.
Yet the same social medium that supposedly provided Staufferhis triste dénouement is quick to turn race callers into lightning rodsfor exclamation points both good and bad. Loved the call. Hated the call. Greatcall. Blew the call. Next to jockeys being blamed by losing bettors foreverything this side of the weather, track announcers simply doing their jobs usuallyleave the party more loudly than they arrived.
What is becoming more true now is how fungible these men andwoman have become. Yes, woman. It still is shameful that racing is playingcatch-up with sports media that already were woefully behind in having the glass,gender ceiling shattered, but for some reason that is a whole nuther third rail.
With Stauffer out and Byers getting the interim tag to fillin, Oaklawn is on its seventh announcer in 118 years. Eighth, really, if one countsthe silence from the early decades before the invention of loudspeakers. FrankAshley, Chic Anderson and Terry Wallace were the only names on that list untilearly 2011. Frank Mirahmadi, Pete Aiello, Stauffer and Byers have given therooftop door a constant spin in the dozen years since.
The voices become familiar, right? Stauffer called races atGulfstream and Hialeah. His was the well-crafted soundtrack of the closing ofHollywood Park before it was torn down to make way for an overpriced footballstadium that leaks whenever it pours in Southern California. They pavedparadise and put up an arking plot.
Stauffer also has been a jockey agent, a steward and a TV commentator, ever theperipatetic one. Cue the old conflicts-of-interest barbs. He also is aconsummate handicapper, his six NHC appearances being evidence of that.
Collmus has bounced around, too. There were Maryland andBirmingham. Golden Gate and Suffolk. Churchill Downs and Kentucky Downs. Monmouthand New York. Del Mar and, of course, NBC.
It is odd how the number of tracks dwindle and, with them,the number of announcing jobs. Yet the career seems more itinerant now thanever. If the answer to all our questions is money, maybe the ever-tightereconomy of, well, everything is why these voices gravitate to betteropportunities like a compass points north. Or America’s voice of racing goes tothe Middle East. Have mic, will travel.
John Bogar is the dean in North America coming up on 40years at Penn National. He and the recently retired Fred Lipkin were as durabletogether on the track telecasts out of Grantville as Don Draper and Peggy Olsonwere at Sterling Cooper.
If Trevor Denman returns at Del Mar, it will mean he hasspent 39 of 40 summers at the junction of turf and surf. His only miss was theCOVID season of 2020, where he locked himself down at home in Minnesota.
That state is where Paul Allen, best known as theunapologetically passionate radio announcer for the Vikings, will spend his30th summer in a row calling races at Canterbury Park.
Dave Rodman has proven he can hold a job. He will call thePreakness again this year, his 33rd with the Maryland Jockey Club. KenWarkentin has been at the mic for going on 32 years at Meadowlands.
Kurt Becker may not be in the three-decade club, but beforehe took the job that he will carry into his 27th year this spring, he waspreceded at Keeneland by ... nobody.
Facts of life are ever changing in this game. Horses werebred to race long before the latter-day idea that they are raced to breed. Thelocal track is an afterthought for too many locales. The same goes for racingas a betting choice.
Even at the NHC last week, Caesars Sportsbook had all sortsof betting sheets in short stacks next to the wagering terminals in the eventscenter at Horseshoe Las Vegas. Football futures for colleges and pros. Baseballfutures. Basketball futures. Hockey futures. Guess what was missing? That’sright. No Kentucky Derby futures. At least not on betting sheets in a roomfulof horseplayers. And Caesars is one of the two books actually taking Derbyaction. Go figure.
Messrs. Bogar, Denman, Allen, Rodman and Warkentinnotwithstanding, a nomadic existence comes with the territory of being aracetrack announcer. Vic Stauffer and Larry Collmus are living proof.
