Don't underestimate the athletic prowess needed to be a jockey.

Russell Baze set to become winningest jockey ever

San Mateo, Calif. – Russell Baze sipped hot chocolate from a Styrofoam cup, sat down next to a small heater and plopped the Daily Racing Form onto a wood-topped table. It was seven o'clock Tuesday morning inside a kitchen on the backside of Bay Meadows race track, and Baze was scanning the headlines.

The bold one on page 3 stared back at him. "Record within Baze's reach."

Not just any record. Baze, a 48-year-old jockey who has spent most of his career riding cheap horses at second-tier tracks, is three victories shy of becoming the winningest jockey in history.

The record could fall as early as Wednesday, when Baze is scheduled to ride in six races. And when – not if – he breaks the record of 9,530 wins, he will surpass Laffit Pincay, considered by some to be the best rider ever.

Baze looked up from the headline and grinned. "I had a heckler the other day," he said.

Now, this was news: At Bay Meadows, Baze is royalty, the benevolent king of jockeys, a local treasure. The idea of someone heckling Baze at his home track is as unthinkable as someone driving to Disneyland just to boo Mickey Mouse.

But there the guy was, Baze recalled, standing in the rain next to the paddock and shouting insults like, "You're no Laffit Pincay!"

"You better be careful," Baze said he finally warned the man. "You just might hurt my feelings."

Recalling his verbal joust, Baze flashed his toothy grin as if he were headed for the winner's circle. But he knows the heckler is not alone. The backlash is as inevitable as the record-breaking victory.

Pincay, who retired in 2003 after injuring his neck at the age of 52, plans to be here and to stay until Baze breaks the record – just like Shoemaker did for him in 1999. He said Baze deserves the record, regardless of where he has won the majority of his races.

"I would have been proud if I had done it in Iraq riding camels," Pincay said.

But Laffit Pincay is a legend. Bill Shoemaker is a legend. Russell Baze? He has never won a Triple Crown race or a Breeders' Cup race. He did race in the Kentucky Derby in 1996, finishing 14th, and finally made it back to Churchill Downs for the Derby this year, when he finished 13th.

Noting his one-spot improvement over that 10-year-period, Baze beat hecklers to the punch when he said, "At this rate, I should win it in 130 years."

Baze won them over in the Bay Area long ago, and maybe that is best explained by his routine on Tuesday morning. After finishing his hot chocolate and folding up the Racing Form, he zipped up his jacket, pulled on his riding helmet and marched into the brisk morning wind. Greeting grooms, trainers and fellow jockeys, he commenced the daily grunt work that has defined his career as much as the seemingly endless string of victories.

During the daily morning workouts, young riders and retired jockeys try to hustle up to horses to exercise for $30 a head. Now they had competition.

Baze was looking for horses, too, and to ride them for free.

"You got anything?" he said, poking his head into one trainer's office.

"Nah, not today," the trainer said.

"Well, I'll be back tomorrow," Baze said, and he headed for the next barn.

Never mind that the trainers already are fighting for Baze's services. Or that Tuesday was an "off" day at a track that holds races Wednesday through Sunday. Or that most of the regular jockeys at Bay Meadows were sleeping in, as likely were most big-name jockeys at big-name tracks across the country.

Steve Miyaki, a trainer, shook his head as Baze marched along.
"He's a blue-collar superstar," Miyaki said.

He comes from blue-collar bloodlines.

His father rode horses. So did his brothers and uncle. Even his paternal grandmother rode horses, when she was pregnant. The Baze brood rode on the back roads of racing – obscure tracks in Arizona, California, Idaho, Washington and Canada, where Russell was born because at the time his father was riding at a track in Vancouver.

Living in a mobile home, the Baze family galloped around the country from one track to the next before settling in Washington.

Russell Baze rode in his first official race in 1974 a few days before he turned 16, then the minimum age for a jockey. "I just told them I was 16," he explained. "Heck, they were just happy to have a warm body in the saddle."

The warm body was a budding star. Russell The Muscle, they called him, because Baze went to the whip hard and had the upper-body strength to steady tiring horses and drive them down the stretch.

In the early 1980s, Gary Stevens – the future Hall of Famer – joined the Bay Area circuit and attempted to unseat Baze as the leading rider. Eight months later, with Baze still the area's top jockey, Stevens moved on.

In 1988, Baze decided it was time to move on, too.

Time to head for Southern California. Time to ride at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park. Time to ride the country's best horses and against the country's best riders. His timing could not have been worse...

Bless and protect all the jocks, Lord.