Remembering Northern California Racing's most visible personality
Sam Spear hosting the Golden Gate Report in 2003
Sam Spear, the Northern California horse racing media personality who died Friday at the age of 72, had a longevity that exceeded the Baze-Hollendorfer era of dominance; the careers of locally based horses like Moment to Buy, Brown Bess, Soviet Problem, Event of the Year, Lost in the Fog, Bold Chieftain, and Shared Belief; and Bay Meadows Racecourse and the San Joaquin and Solano county fair race meets.
As the jockeys, trainers, and horses came and went, Sam was there through it all, hosting his replay show (which he created in 1978 and produced and hosted until the end of 2017) on KTSF-26 and radio show on KNBR 680 and working as a media relations consultant for Bay Meadows and Golden Gate Fields. General sports fans knew him from his guest appearances on KNBR's Murph & Mac Show during which he would talk about racing or maybe complain about how analytics were, in his opinion, ruining baseball. Sam had no connections to the racing industry prior to the late 1970s, but he used his gumption, gregariousness, and grit to become the face of Northern California racing.
Other stories (such as T.D. Thornton’s tribute in the Thoroughbred Daily News) can give you a better synopsis of the intensive work Sam did to make his replay show a success, so instead I will focus on my own relationship with Sam. My father was the person most responsible for my interest in racing, but it was Sam who completed the exacta.
I have memories from my preschool days of my father coming home from the track early and then watch Sam’s replay show to learn the outcomes of the final races on the card. Sam began every show with “A pleasant good evening and welcome once again to the Golden Gate/Summer Fair/Bay Meadows Report” and ended with “And I will see you...at the races! Goooooodniiiiiight everybody!” Sometimes when I would accompany my father to Bay Meadows, we would see Sam walking about, and I would think, “That’s Sam Spear, the man on TV!”
As I progressed through childhood and my early adolescence, my interest in racing waned and my trips to the racetrack with my father became increasingly sporadic, but on one fateful Saturday evening in early 2002 I was flipping through the channels and came across the Golden Gate Report. For whatever reason, I decided to watch and I saw a replay of Danthebluegrassman winning the Golden Gate Derby for trainer Bob Baffert and owner Mike Pegram, and given that horse’s name and connections I thought he was worth following in case he made an impact in the spring at Churchill Downs (he did, but in the Northern Dancer and not in the Kentucky Derby).
In the upcoming weeks and months I found myself tuning into Sam’s show to watch replays of the Golden State Mile and El Camino Real Derby. I got to know the local horses and I enjoyed following the rivalry of sorts between local turf sprint claimers Is It True Mex and Sarigor. I joined my father on trips to Bay Meadows to watch races like the Santa Anita Handicap via simulcast, played a computer game called Horse Racing Fantasy, read Seabiscuit: An American Legend in about three days, and began counting down the weeks until live racing returned to Bay Meadows, which was much more accessible from our home in Sunnyvale than Golden Gate Fields.
These days It’s easy to take streaming live video and replays for granted, but back then I relied on Sam’s replay show (hosted by Sam himself during the Golden Gate and fair seasons and track announcer Tony Calo during the Bay Meadows meets) to watch full replays from the Northern California tracks, stretch runs from the Southern California venues, and the occasional major race in New York, Kentucky, or Florida. I recorded the show for two years, resulting in a pile of VHS tapes that probably annoyed my mother.
During my junior year, my high school hosted a track meet on a rainy Wednesday, and my teammates and I took refuge in a storage shed. Inside was a television set the pole vaulters would use to watch replays of their jumps and evaluate their form. One of the seniors turned on the television so he and a few of his friends could watch the music video show that preceded the Bay Meadows Report. I made a gleeful realization: I can watch the Bay Meadows replays when they come on at 5:30! Everyone else left when the music video show ended, but I remained inside, ignoring my teammates’ races as I contentedly watched the horses compete over sloppy and soft going up the Peninsula in San Mateo.
My racing obsession that was partially fueled by Sam’s show led to me enrolling in the University of Arizona’s Race Track Industry Program in the hope of starting my own career in racing media. I began to interact with Sam when I did freelance work covering stakes races at Golden Gate and Bay Meadows for Bloodhorse.com, but I truly got to know him in 2008 when I landed a customer service position at Bay Meadows as I waited for a media job to become available somewhere. Before and after my shifts and during my lunch breaks I would visit the press box and talk to Sam and the track’s publicity director, Tom Ferrall. Although I was green and my ambition exceeded my writing skills, Sam and Tom did everything they could to make me feel welcome.
Following the conclusion of that final Bay Meadows commercial meet, I moved to the East Coast where I first worked for the Thoroughbred Daily News and then the New York Racing Association. I returned to California in the fall of 2014 to try a new role as a racing office entry clerk and placing judge at Golden Gate. In the spring Golden Gate management launched a podcast series that was to be hosted by Sam and I was invited to participate as a co-host and feature story reporter. Suddenly at the age of 28 I found myself recording a podcast with the man who was more recognizable to me during my early years than Tom Brokaw or Peter Jennings.
Tom Ferrall, who had worked as the Golden Gate’s publicist since 1989, retired in the spring of 2015 and I was hired as his replacement. With Sam I shared a fire hazard of an office that was full of dusty programs, charts, media guides, and other detritus. We were an odd but mostly complementary pair. He was the older extrovert who could barely type and was happiest when he could go into raconteur mode. I was the young introvert who enjoyed writing stories and wanted to update the track’s approach on social media but did not particularly enjoy pitching stories to local media outlets. We had our occasional disagreements, but we were always quick to put those aside when we needed to form an alliance in response to meddling by the Stronach Group's West Coast management team.
Sam's antics and habits could be endearing or annoying, depending on my mood and workload. Sam enjoyed listening to jazz and big band music in the early morning and sports talk radio before the races began. He would go on rants about baseball (“I don’t need a computer to tell me that Joe Morgan was a good ballplayer!”) and politics (He would express his displeasure with Ronald Reagan’s policies...during his terms as governor of California). A passionate Notre Dame football fan, Sam's optimism was only briefly replaced by despair following their usual bowl game beatdowns. On more than one occasion he looked at the nomination list for the California Derby and made it clear to everyone in the room that there were hundreds of nominees to the race in 1978. He would talk about how the press box was once packed with reporters from different newspapers and mention names of turf writers whose names I had never heard of before and have since forgotten. He would talk about his friendship with Joe DiMaggio, who would watch the races at Golden Gate and Bay Meadows from the relative privacy of the press box. Sam had perhaps the coolest 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake story because he was at Candlestick Park with DiMaggio when the earthquake struck and he drove DiMaggio back to his home through the darkness of the post-earthquake blackouts after game 3 of the World Series was postponed. He liked to tell jokes (some more politically correct than others) and would frequently begin them by saying, “I got a good one for you, Harry!” with “Harry” being the generic name for whoever was within earshot.
Sam was a holdover from a bygone era when racing could guarantee itself regular and positive coverage just by having the press box supplied with an adequate amount of beer, but even in his final years he could still talk an editor into running a racing story. Although Sam would lament the declining number of press box regulars, he never lost his zeal for racing and the people in the game. Even as his health failed, he continued hosting his Sunday morning radio show until the very end. Northern California racing benefited immensely from Sam’s passion for racing and his job, and it’s sad knowing that we will no longer be seeing him...at the races. Goodnight, Sam.
The preceding blog post was sponsored by Sam Spear Enterprises.
With each passing year, my connection to horse racing becomes weaker and weaker. I can name only a few of the prominent horses who are now in training. Sometimes on major race days I catch myself thinking, “Oh, the Pegasus is today. Maybe I’ll watch it.” With less frequency, I actually watch the race. I no longer look at a calendar and get excited knowing that, say, the Breeders’ Cup is coming up soon.
Although my feelings toward horse racing these days seesaw between indifference and disillusionment, closing day at Saratoga Race Course still evokes strong romantic and melancholic feelings inside me. Because it happens on Labor Day, the end of the Saratoga meet symbolically marks the end of summer, which makes me, a native of California now living in New England, lament the end of the season and dread the approaching winter. And as a former NYRA employee who worked six meets in Saratoga (2010-2014 and 2016), Labor Day causes me to reflect upon my time at the Spa.
I was fortunate to have seen many great horses, jockeys, trainers, races, and moments in Saratoga. Blame nipping Quality Road on the wire in the Whitney, Blind Luck collaring Havre de Grace in the Alabama, the Travers dead heat, H. Allen Jerkens winning his final grade 1 and his final stakes, John Velazquez and Ramón Dominguez setting riding records, Tom Durkin concluding his career, and Arrogate emerging as a dominant force are just a few of those examples. Despite this, I felt ambivalent about Saratoga when I was working there full time. I remember feeling fatigued as I shuffled to the employee parking lot in the darkness at the end of a long Saturday, simultaneously feeling dread and excitement as I thought about having to be at the track early the next day for morning workouts. I remember scrambling to take care of all of my errands and chores on Tuesdays, the lone dark day. I remember struggling to get enough sleep, eat a healthy diet, or have a conversation about a topic other than racing.
Even though I was in my mid 20s and seldom stayed out late downtown, during my first summer in Saratoga I was not prepared for the physical toll that comes with working 6-7 days a week and by the midway mark of the meet there were times when I was feeling desperate to return to Belmont Park, sleep in my own apartment on Long Island, and use vacation days to do things that were not related to horse racing. In the following years at Saratoga I learned to take better care of myself physically and mentally, but I always felt a palpable sense of relief when the meet came to an end. I never did figure out how many of my coworkers and colleagues socialized, partied, handicapped, and gambled throughout the meet without succumbing to exhaustion. For me, Saratoga showed that there indeed can be too much of a good thing.
In 2014 I relocated to California to work at Golden Gate Fields. At my mother's house I found my copy of Finished Lines, an anthology of non-fiction writing about horse racing that had been given to me as a Christmas present when I was either 17 or 18. I reread one of the entries, “Getaway Days,” a chapter from Brendan Boyd’s book Racing Days. In "Getaway Days" Boyd wrote about how he became obsessed with racing and how he and his girlfriend decided to become backstretch workers before becoming burnt out and quitting. They then went to Saratoga and “went to the track every day, bet every race, had an ideal four weeks.” But for Boyd the romance was gone.
It was the perfect story, yet something about it had gone strange. Working at the track had depleted the story for me, had forced too much significance on it. Immersion in the betting life wasn’t reversing this process, it was deepening it. It was just too much.
When I left Saratoga I knew it was time to go on to something else, to leave the story alone, to stop enlarging it. I knew that if I didn’t, I risked losing it entirely, draining it of its true meaning, plundering the allegory.
I wasn’t meant to be at the track all the time, I now realized. I was meant to think of myself as someone who could be.
I still think of that passage from time to time and almost always think about it on Labor Day. I find it impossible, to borrow a line from Boyd, to leave the story alone. I seldom regret having left my career in horse racing, but on closing day I find myself missing Saratoga summers. For one day a year, I think of myself as somebody who still could be at the track every day.
Commemorating the life of one of San Francisco's and horse racing's most interesting characters
Harry Aleo in his office on May 23, 2008
Proud San Francisco native and resident, minor league baseball player, World War II combat veteran, realtor and landlord, outspoken and unapologetic Republican, sponsor of homeless individuals, hater of laptops and lattes, packrat, and thoroughbred horse owner are all words and phrases that can be used to describe Harry Aleo.
June 21 marks the 13th anniversary of the death of Harry Aleo at the age of 88. Aleo, who spoke in a gruff baritone voice and whose Stetson hat, wool jacket, and blue jeans made him look like he had been airdropped into modern San Francisco from a cattle ranch in Wyoming, was one of the most fascinating characters I met during my time in the horse racing industry.
Victorina, Harry Aleo, jockey Glen Corbett, and trainer Greg Gilchrist in the winner's circle following the 2006 Ahwatukee Express Stakes at Turf Paradise Coady Photography
Racing fans in North America knew him best as the owner of the 2005 Champion Sprinter Lost in the Fog and graded stakes winners Minutes Away, Victorina, and Smokey Stover. Outside of racing, he was known in the San Francisco neighborhood of Noe Valley as the owner of the infamous office featuring posters, signs, and memorabilia that ranged from generically patriotic (flags and an Uncle Sam statue) to partisan (photos of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon) to cheeky (a Weekly World News front page with the headline ALIENS SETTLE IN SAN FRANCISCO which Aleo had captioned “WE NOW KNOW WHERE YOU LEFT WING LOONIES CAME FROM”). Over the years, Aleo’s displays inspired ire, laughter, eye rolls, and vandalism.
It was Aleo’s office, not his racehorses, that was the main angle of stories in the Noe Valley Voice and Wall Street Journal. Like Bay Meadows, Aleo and his Twin Peaks Properties office were anachronisms that had been slowly surrounded and eventually enveloped by elements of the modern bourgeoisie, and he eagerly expressed his displeasure with these trends. A musical instrument shop, Russo Music, now occupies the storefront. “Harry's problem is that he has survived long enough to become a minority in his own neighborhood,” wrote Larry Gallagher about Aleo in 2006 for SFGate.com.
Harry Aleo's business card
I had the fortune of interviewing Aleo at his office on May 23, 2008, approximately one month before his death. I had graduated from the University of Arizona’s Racetrack Industry Program in December 2007, and while I was waiting for a full-time job in racing media I worked a customer service position at Bay Meadows during its final commercial meet (the San Mateo County Fair conducted the track’s final 10 days of racing that August). I had brief conversations with Aleo when he would pass by my booth in the Bay Meadows grandstand. What I really wanted to do, however, was have a longer conversation with him and see his office with my own eyes. I received that opportunity when the Thoroughbred Owners of California asked me to write a short article about the imminent closure of Bay Meadows and the track’s history for its Owners’ Circle magazine. Who better to interview for the story than somebody who had been attending the races at Bay Meadows since the track's first days in the 1930s?
I rode BART to the 24th Street/Mission station and then walked four-fifths of a mile to Aleo’s office. TWIN PEAKS PROPERTIES/HARRY J. ALEO/REALTOR/EST. 1947 read the sign above the front door and windows in a font that looked like it had been taken off an Old West wanted poster.
The exterior of Twin Peaks Properties on May 23, 2008
Before going in, I took a moment to look at everything on display in the front windows. In addition to the aforementioned photos of Reagan and Nixon, flags, and Uncle Sam statue, there was a “LIBERALS MAKE ME SICK” bumper sticker and a sign reading "IT WILL ALWAYS BE ARMY STREET," an annoyed reference to how the street had been renamed in honor of civil rights activist Cesar Chavez. There were also three additional hand-written signs. One simply stated "ENGLISH SPOKEN HERE." Another one read (complete with a smiley face at the end):
WELCOME TO
LOONEY VALLEY, THE
HEART OF KOOK CITY!
THE HOME OF LAP TOP
LEFT WING LIBERALS.
THIS IS AN ISLAND OF
TRADITIONAL CONSERVATIVE
VALUES IN A SEA OF
THE LATTE SIPPING LIBERAL
LOONIES.
☺
And then there was this sign:
SEPT. 7TH WAS THE
60TH ANNIVERSARY
OF TWIN PEAKS PROPERTIES!
THE OLDEST ORIGINAL OWNER
BUSINESS IN LOONEY VALLEY.
WHEN WE OPENED CABLE CARS
RAN OVER CASTRO ST. THE
FOX AND NOE THEATERS WERE IN
THEIR PRIME. THE GOLDEN GATE
AND BAY BRIDGES WERE ONLY
9 YRS. OLD. HARRY TRUMAN WAS
PRESIDENT. NO STARBUCKS,
NO CELL PHONES, NO LAPTOPS,
NO LATTES. NO LEFT WING
LIBERAL LOONIES! IT WAS
A GREAT CITY!
CONGRATULATIONS ARE IN ORDER!
DON'T ALL RUSH IN AT ONCE!
Due to the passage of time, I do not remember any specifics about the inside, but I do remember that the combination of patriotic and political memorabilia and old random items made Twin Peaks Properties feel like a cross between a conservative political action committee office and an antiques store.
Aleo’s secretary took me to the office in the back where Aleo was at his desk. I had already known a lot about his life due to all of the coverage he received when he was campaigning Lost in the Fog and I needed only a brief quote for my article, but I decided to ask him questions covering his entire life. After all, how often do you get to talk to somebody with connections to Seabiscuit, Joe DiMaggio, Branch Rickey, and General George S. Patton?
I asked Aleo, who had been born in San Francisco in 1919, about his childhood. Aleo said he was born to “a couple of dagoes from Old Italy” before describing what Noe Valley was like back then and how it had changed over the decades.
“It was a much nicer time,” Aleo said of the 1930s. “There was a five-and-ten-cent store across the street. A clothing store, a little grocery store. There were three drug stores in this five-block area. We had two theaters on this block. Five gas stations on five blocks. Figure that one out. And of course, Walgreens comes in, RiteAid comes in, Radio Shack comes in, and they pay a lot more money and out go the little mom and pop stores. They got all the chains because they’re the only ones that can afford to pay the money.”
During his adolescence Aleo attended the races for the first time when he visited Tanforan, which was located in San Bruno approximately 10 miles south of San Francisco and nine miles north of where Bay Meadows would be built later that decade.
“It was exciting as hell,” he recalled. “Crowds of people. Horses come thundering down the stretch and all of that screaming and cheering.”
Aleo was in attendance when Seabiscuit won the 1938 Bay Meadows Handicap in his last of four victorious appearances at the San Mateo track.
“[Seabiscuit] beat a horse named Gosum by about five lengths,” Aleo said of Seabiscuit’s 1938 Bay Meadows Handicap win, exaggerating the actual margin by two lengths. “I’ll never forget that. It was exciting. Thousands of people there, unlike today.”
Racing, however, was not his passion. Baseball was. Aleo played for San Francisco Junior College (now San Francisco City College) and signed a minor-league contract to play third base for the Brooklyn Dodgers organization.
I had read that Aleo pitched to Joe DiMaggio at one point, and I asked Aleo to tell me the story in his own words. “Oh, come on now!” he protested while giving me a dismissive hand wave. “It’s no big deal!” Following a short pause, he cracked a grin and told me that when he was in college he played a pick-up game against professionals who were spending time in San Francisco before their season started. Aleo got DiMaggio, who was already putting up big numbers for the New York Yankees, to pop out on a curveball.
Aleo had his 22nd birthday ruined by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He was drafted into the U.S. Army and served in Patton’s Third Army, seeing combat in France, Luxembourg, and Belgium and participating in the relief of the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge.
He returned to San Francisco after the war and began working part-time for a real estate firm. But Harry had greater ambitions. Six months later, he started his own real estate and insurance brokerage. Sixty years later, Aleo still showed up at the Twin Peaks Properties five days a week.
Aleo and his wife had three daughters before the couple was divorced in the late 1970s. It was around that time when Aleo made his foray into thoroughbred ownership.
“I got an article from a son-in-law—ex-son-in-law, probably the only good thing he ever did— called ‘How to Make Money When Your Horse Loses.’ It’s all about owning horses. How to depreciate them and all of the deductions. That got me into the game. That’s when I bought my first horse. Sonny Shy, right there," Aleo said as he pointed to the winner's circle photo on the wall next to his desk.
From the beginning Aleo teamed with trainer Greg Gilchrist, a third-generation horseman whose training career was delayed by two years spent in Vietnam with the 82nd Airborne Division of the U.S. Army. The tandem of veterans had their first stakes success on the local racing scene in 1985 when Minutes Away won the Grade 3 Bay Meadows Derby by seven lengths. In the early 2000s they campaigned minor stakes winners Beyond Brilliant, Taraval, and Frisco Belle.
It was Lost in the Fog, a speedy bay colt with an off-center blaze, who brought national recognition to Aleo and allowed him to tour the country as the sprinter won major races at many of the country’s best tracks.
The saga of Lost in the Fog could warrant its own blog post, but I will provide a brief-ish version. Aleo purchased Lost in the Fog privately after bidding on the Florida-bred son of Lost Soldier when he did not meet his reserve at the 2004 OBS March sale of 2-year-olds in training. Lost in the Fog broke his maiden by 7 ½ lengths in his debut in November 2004 at Golden Gate Fields, then set a Turf Paradise 6 ½-furlong track record of 1:13.55 (a record which still stands) when crushing the competition in the Arizona Juvenile in December. To begin his 3-year-old campaign, he rattled off wins in the Ocala Stud Dash and Grade 2 Swale at Gulfstream Park and Grade 3 Bay Shore on Wood Memorial day at Aqueduct Racetrack. He set a six-furlong track record of 1:07.32 when defeating two opponents in the Golden Bear at Golden Gate, displayed his mettle when turning back the promising but ultimately ill-fated Egg Head in the Grade 2 Riva Ridge on the Belmont Stakes undercard, and registered easy victories in the Grade 2 Carry Back at Calder Race Course and Grade 1 King’s Bishop at Saratoga Race Course on Travers day.
Lost in the Fog and Russell Baze winning the 2005 Grade 1 King's Bishop at Saratoga Coglianese Photos
When shooting his documentary about Aleo and Lost in the Fog, filmmaker John Corey caught Aleo as he walked into the paddock, saw the statue of the 1993 Kentucky Derby and Travers winner Sea Hero, and scoffed, “Sea Hero? He wasn’t that great.” Moments before the horses entered the gate for the King’s Bishop, ESPN’s Quint Kessenich stuck a microphone in Aleo’s face, leading to a memorable exchange:
KESSENICH: Harry, what is the price tag on this horse?
ALEO: There is no price tag.
KESSENICH: Why wouldn’t you sell?
ALEO: What?
KESSENICH: Why wouldn’t you sell this horse?
ALEO: Why wouldn’t I sell‽ If I sold him, then I wouldn’t have the horse, now would I?
KESSENICH: What kind of impact has he had on your life?
ALEO: It’s exciting. Thrilling. One of the most important things ever in my life.
KESSENICH: You played minor league baseball. You battled in World War II, the Battle of the Bulge. How does this compare to those lifetime moments?
ALEO: How am I going to compare this great horse, winning eight in a row, with the Battle of the goddamn Bulge? Forget it.
Bay Meadows added a sprint stakes, the Bay Meadows Speed Handicap, to its stakes calendar, to attract Lost in the Fog, who proceeded to extend his winning streak to 10 with a dominating win over four overmatched opponents. The alternative newspaper SF Weekly published a feature story about Lost in the Fog and his appearance at Bay Meadows. In the article, Aleo offered the following explanation for why he steadfastly refused to sell Lost in the Fog, despite the lucrative offers he had received.
“The horse is not for sale. All this excitement and fun I'm having, just to get some money? Then what? Then I've got to start looking for a good horse again? These don't come around once in a million. So I'll run the horse. After a couple years, I'll retire him to stud.
“A lot of people sell 'em right away. Like Smarty Jones. They sold him for $38 million. The guy is older than I am — he's in a goddamn wheelchair. What's he going to do with $38 million that he can't do now, you know what I mean?”
Lost in the Fog disappointed when he finished seventh in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Sprint in October at Belmont, pressing the pace and leading briefly on the turn before fading in midstretch. Despite the off-the-board performance in his first graded stakes start versus older horses, Lost in the Fog was later awarded the 2005 Eclipse Award for Champion Sprinter.
Following a layoff, Lost in the Fog began his 4-year-old season in April in the Golden Gate Fields Sprint, finishing second by three lengths after being outdueled by Carthage, a solid-but-unspectacular local horse from the barn of Art Sherman. Lost in the Fog seemed to be rounding back into form when he defeated eventual Dubai Golden Shaheen winner Kelly’s Landing with a 1 ¼-length victory in the Grade 3 Aristides in June at Churchill Downs, but something appeared to be wrong when Lost in the Fog was uncharacteristically dull when seventh a month later in the Grade 2 Smile Sprint Handicap at Calder. Aleo and Gilchrist soon learned the reason why the colt had lost his brilliance. Lost in the Fog had two large, inoperable tumors and he was euthanized September 17, 2006, a little less than 12 months after approximately 10,000 spectators had packed Bay Meadows when he won the Bay Meadows Speed Handicap.
For whatever reason, I do not have quotes from my interview with Aleo about Lost in the Fog, other than the quote I used in my Owners’ Circle article: “I know I saw Seabiscuit run [at Bay Meadows]. Noor. Citation. I saw John Henry. Cigar. And my Lost in the Fog was one of the greatest.” I did not use the other quote he gave me: “We don’t need another goddamn development!”
At some point, Aleo’s secretary came into the room carrying a bottle of pomegranate juice. She said, “Harry, I want you to drink some of this.” “Ahh, I don’t want to drink any of that crap!” Aleo protested. Aleo then took a sip, grimaced as if he had tasted rancid milk, and pushed the bottle away.
Despite the death of Lost in the Fog, Aleo’s racing operation remained strong. Smokey Stover won four stakes in 2007, including the Grade 2 Potrero Grande and Grade 3 Bay Meadows Sprint. At the recently concluded Bay Meadows meet, two of Aleo’s fillies had bookended the stakes schedule as the promising 3-year-old sprinter High Resolve won the Princess on opening weekend and the late-blooming 4-year-old Wild Promises won the Mother’s Day Handicap on closing day. Victorina, who had won the 2006 Grade 3 Azalea, was about to make her 5-year-old debut. It seemed as if Aleo was poised to find himself in the winner’s circle following stakes races well into the future, but it was not meant to be. He casually mentioned during the interview that he was ill, and I asked him what the matter was. Pancreatic cancer, he said. I muttered something like, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that” before I awkwardly continued with my questions.
Sixteen days following my visit to Twin Peaks Properties, Victorina won the Washington State Legislators Handicap at Emerald Downs. Thirteen days after that, I was visiting the Golden Gate Fields press box on closing day for the spring meet when I discovered that the track’s publicist, Tom Farrell, was writing Harry Aleo’s obituary, having learned that morning that Aleo had succumbed to the disease that had claimed Lost in the Fog 19 months earlier. I will always be grateful for how Aleo took two hours of his little remaining time to talk to me, a young and green wannabe turf writer.
Aleo’s horses continued to compete through 2009, but he was not there to enjoy their successes. Wild Promises won the 2008 Grade 3 My Charmer in December at Calder and Aleo’s estate won two races at Gulfstream on Sunshine Millions Day one month later, with Wild Promises taking the Filly & Mare Turf and High Resolve capturing the Filly & Mare Sprint. The Aleo colors were carried to victory twice during the final meet at Bay Meadows, with Victorina defeating her younger stablemate High Resolve in an allowance and the otherwise undistinguished Gherig breaking his maiden on the final day of racing at the Peninsula track. Victorina added wins in minor stakes at Golden Gate, Fresno, and Santa Anita to her catalogue page and on December 26, 2009 she became the last horse to carry Aleo’s flame orange silks when she finished fourth in Turf Paradise’s Kachina Handicap.
Aleo’s death was covered by racing trade publications and Bay Area newspapers, with the San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate.com and the Noe Valley Voice running lengthy obituaries. The Voice obituary included numerous tributes from neighbors, a few of which I will share here.
Carol Yenne, who owned the children’s clothing store next to Aleo’s office, talked about how Aleo would sponsor local homeless individuals and one time bought a panhandler a bus ticket to his family’s home. The man reconciled with his family and sent Aleo a postcard to thank him. “Outwardly, [Aleo] could appear to be a hard shell, a curmudgeonly conservative,” Yenne told the Voice. "But he was really an authentic, caring, personable individual.”
Bevan Dufty, the Democratic supervisor of Noe Valley, talked about how he and Aleo worked together, “even though I was gay and there were some things about me that Harry didn't get.” Aleo supported 2002 Dufty’s campaign, going as far as placing one of Dufty’s campaign posters in his window next to a picture of Ronald Reagan. “I was momentarily agasp," Dufty told the Voice. “‘People are going to think I’m a Republican!’”
Others talked about how Aleo would give books and candy to children at local events and how he purchased an abandoned movie theatre and donated the property to the city so they could turn it into a much-needed parking lot.
The article also included quotes from Joel Panzer, who also rented properties in the area. Panzer said he offered to manage Aleo’s properties and mentioned that he could make more money by raising the rents, but Aleo refused to relinquish control or change his rents.
The 2009 Wall Street Journal (paywall) article about Aleo and his office included quotes from Panzer about his desire to create a Noe Valley history museum, which would include a Harry Aleo exhibit. After reading that article as part of my research for this story, I decided to track down Panzer and ask him about the fate of Aleo’s office decorations and if he had any additional anecdotes about Aleo that he would be willing to share.
Panzer, who described himself as a “neighbor, competitor, and friend” of Aleo’s, told me that the museum never came to fruition but he found a different way to share some of the San Francisco history Aleo had squirreled away in his office.
“I saved a lot of his stuff and I had entertained thoughts that I would [put everything together for an exhibit], but I don’t see it happening now,” said Panzer. “Harry’s office was like a little slice of time. For a while I had all of his real estate records for years and years, but it became too cumbersome to keep in my house. So, eventually, I had to get rid of them. If I found a few that were in my immediate neighborhood, I pulled them out and gave them to the people who owned the property now. ‘Do you want to see what your house sold for in 1953?’”
One historical gem of Aleo’s that stood out to Panzer was a newspaper from when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.
“He had a bunch of detritus and old papers, and one day he came out and he gave me this folder and said, ‘Look at this.’ It was a copy of the New York Herald that was published on the day Lincoln was assassinated,” said Panzer. “I love history and the front page of the paper was talking about the end of the Civil War and the surrender of the [the Confederacy]. Papers were set with individual pieces of type, and they had the entire front page set and the next thing they know as they are about to run the paper is that Lincoln has been assassinated and the secretary of war has been wounded terribly. So, they strike it and flip it over and print ‘LINCOLN ASSASSINATED.’ He had this in a manila folder in one of his file drawers. So I said, ‘Can I read this?’ And he said, ‘Sure!’ It was fascinating and I did not want anything bad to happen to it, so I took it to a frame store, which was one of his tenants, and I had it framed and I brought it back to him. It disappeared, but it was like, ‘Harry, you got this kind of stuff? What else is in here?’”
Aleo had lived through significant history himself, but Panzer did not know much about Aleo’s participation in World War II until one evening when he hosted Aleo and let his guest thumb through various history books, including a book that compiled British newspaper front pages during the World War I era.
“[The book] had pictures of soldiers in a trench and it’s wintertime,” said Panzer. “You can see the cold and the pain in their faces. Harry was looking through the pages as I was looking for other things to share with him. He stopped and he stared at the page and he said, ‘Now, I can relate to this.’ And he had this look on his face like he was there. I looked at him and said, ‘You were at Bastogne, weren’t you?’ And he says, ‘Yeah, with General Patton.’ So, that was an epiphany for me. Then he told me a story which showed how he looked at life. He was on patrol with a few other guys. They had spent the night in this bombed out farmhouse. They got up and left and they were going down the road, and Harry said, ‘I gotta go back’ because there was a crucifix he had seen on the wall. He went back to get the crucifix and when he got back to his buds, they were dead.”
Panzer said Aleo’s life experiences when he was younger shaped the person who became the outspoken Noe Valley conservative and the thoroughbred owner who refused to sell his brilliantly fast sprinter.
“Harry was a Republican who was [financially] tight, but he believed in paying it forward,” said Panzer. “I told Harry I could get him more rent, but his response was surprising. He said, ‘After I got out of the Army, my wife and I had a damned tough time finding a place to live. If somebody hadn’t cut us a little slack, we never would have gotten a place. So, I’m just trying to do the same thing.’
“He survives poverty, growing up during the Depression. He plays baseball and then the war breaks out. He survives the war and comes home probably penniless. He has a wife and a child and has to find a place to live and build a whole new life. All of his dreams of playing baseball and doing things that are fun and exciting are gone. He starts a business, which is a success. [He gets Lost in the Fog], and then what happens? At the very pinnacle he gets knocked off again.”
Aleo, however, was not one to lament his misfortune. He described himself as “lucky” when speaking to Mary Forney for a 2005 profile in Owners’ Circleduring the height of Lost in the Fog mania. “I got to Paris after the war when they drew two names out of a hat, out of our whole regiment, for a three-day pass,” said Aleo. “Then, when we were in England they drew two names for 48 hours in London, and I was one of them… I win all the time – it’s so funny!”
And I would say Noe Valley and the sport of horse racing were lucky to have had a colorful character like Harry Aleo.
The crowded winner's circle following Lost in the Fog's victory in the 2005 Bay Meadows Speed Handicap, with Lost in the Fog and groom Pascual Garcia in the background Vassar Photography
An interview with the renowned announcer with a focus on his time calling the quarter horse races at Bay Meadows
On May 18, I interviewed Ed Burgart, who is best known for his announcing work at Los Alamitos Race Course until his retirement in 2019. Burgart's announcing career began in 1979 at Bay Meadows, where he called every quarter horse meet until 1991, the final year of quarter horse racing at the Northern California track. I was a few days short of turning 6 years old when the final Bay Meadows quarter horse meet ended and I have only one hazy memory of attending quarter horse racing on the San Francisco Peninsula. I wanted to learn more about the history of quarter horse racing at Bay Meadows, and Burgart kindly agreed to this interview, which has been edited slightly for clarity.
Ed Burgart Los Alamitos photo
Can you tell us about how you were introduced to horse racing?
My dad owned a liquor store, but he loved to play the horses. He started taking me to the racetrack when I was about 4, 5 years old. I just fell in love with the sport. I would get on his shoulders to watch some of the big races at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park. I remember Silver Spoon and Hillsdale, who were the big horses in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By the time I was in second grade, I was bringing the Racing Form to class and sneaking it between my books. I enjoyed the aspect of handicapping and mathematics and putting figures together. My father told me, “If you don’t get a ‘B’ average, I won’t take you to the track.” That encouraged me to keep my grades up.
How did you go from attending UCLA to working in horse racing?
I attended UCLA 1970 to 1974. I was the sports editor of the UCLA Daily Bruin in 1974 and covered all of the basketball games [featuring] Bill Walton. I was able to travel around the country, but I would still go to the track as often as I could, to Hollywood Park in particular because it was so close to UCLA. I was still really involved in watching horses run. [Turf writer and handicapper] Gordon Jones spoke in one of my journalism classes. That encouraged me to talk to him. He said, “If you want to come out to Hollywood Park one weekend with me, I’ll take you up to the press box and show you around.” That’s how I got introduced to a lot of people at Hollywood Park at that time. Harry Henson was the announcer, Nat Wess was involved in publicity, and with Gordon Jones and some of the other people there I was able to make early contacts into horse racing.
When did you first start working in racing and in what roles?
I first went to work for a newspaper in Costa Mesa called the Orange Coast Daily Pilot, which was a subsidiary of the [Los Angeles] Times at the time. It was a smaller paper and I was a sports writer, but I also was going to Los Alamitos Race Course and writing stories about jockeys and trainers who lived in the area. I told Bruce Rimbo, who was the publicity director at the time, “If anything opens up at Los Alamitos, please keep me in mind.” A position opened in 1977. Ted Dale was doing the results for the radio stations and he basically was their TV person at the track. He was doing interviews in the winner’s circle and results for the radio stations. He left and I got that job, and that’s how I got involved at Los Alamitos.
How did you come to work at Bay Meadows?
Jim Smith was the general manager of the Horsemen’s Quarter Horse Racing Association, which leased the winter meet at Los Alamitos. For the Peninsula Quarter Horse Racing Association, he was the general manager of that. They leased the meet at Bay Meadows. He thought it would be a good idea for me to come up and do the morning line and do interviews and announcements between races. I came up to Bay Meadows in 1979. Tod Creed was the announcer. Bobby Doyle had been the quarter horse announcer, but Bobby was getting close to retirement and decided he did not want to go to Bay Meadows. Tod Creed let me call the last race one day. I had expressed an interest in calling a race. Everybody said what a great job I did. Tod was sick for the next three days, and I got thrown to the wolves. I had to call three full days with only one race on my résumé. Everybody loved the work I did and I got hired the next year as the announcer at Bay Meadows before getting hired at Los Alamitos soon after.
What was it like calling those early races? In quarter horse racing, you have zero margin for error.
I had been involved in a handicapping publication at Los Alamitos called Quarter Horse Report. I was watching a lot of head-on shots of replays and different angles. The outside horses would appear to have an advantage on the head-on shot. On the pan shot the optical illusion would make it look like the inside horses had an advantage. It kind of came naturally to me. When the horses came out of the gate, I was able to pick up what horses were breaking good on the outside and the horses that were breaking good or not breaking so good on the inside. I fell into a rhythm like that.
What years did you work as the full-time quarter horse announcer at Bay Meadows?
I started in 1980 as the quarter horse announcer and called every quarter horse season until the last season in 1991.
When did you start announcing full time at Los Alamitos?
Full time, probably not until 1990 or 1991. I called the winter meet there. Millie Vessels owned the track and they had Terry Gilligan as the announcer during the summer meets after Bobby Doyle retired. Marje Everett when she bought Los Alamitos in 1986 kept Terry as the announcer for the summer meets. I just called the winter meet at Los Al and the meet at Bay Meadows until I got the full-time position for all the meets in 1991.
If we go back to 1980 or so, can you tell me what the quarter horse racing calendar was like?
Los Alamitos ran two meets. They ran a winter meet. I want to say the dates were November to late January or early February. There was the meet at Bay Meadows, which I want to say started in the middle of February and went to the middle of April. And then Los Alamitos had a summer meet after that. That was the longest meet of the year. I’m trying to remember the exact dates. You could probably say it went from May to September.
How did the quality of racing at Bay Meadows compare to the quality at Los Alamitos?
The quality at Los Alamitos was better. There were several reasons for that. Bay Meadows was a meet where a lot of horsemen would get their 2-year-olds ready to run. All the big races for 2-year-olds other than the Bay Meadows Futurity were run at Los Alamitos and the major races for older horses were run down there. It was a cheaper group of horses who came to Bay Meadows, but they did have the Golden State Derby and a couple of races that got some top-notch 3-year-olds and older horses, but generally I would say it was a notch below the quality of racing at Los Alamitos.
What were the top races during the Bay Meadows quarter horse meet?
The Golden State Derby probably was the top race. There was the Peninsula Championship for the older horses and, of course, the Bay Meadows Futurity. Those would have been the three major races. There were some great horses who won the Bay Meadows Futurity. Merridoc (1979) won it before I came up there. Eastex, who went on to win the All American Futurity, also was victorious in the Futurity (1984) there. And we had Tolltac, who went on to win the Golden State Futurity (1983) and Golden State Derby (1984). Corona Chick ran there. She did not win the Bay Meadows Futurity (1991), but she went on to win 13 in a row after she ran at Bay Meadows.
Merridoc winning a trial for the 1979 Bay Meadows Futurity Bay Meadows track photo/Shane Burke personal collection
Are there any other top horses who come to mind?
The Black Alliance won the Peninsula Championship in 1984. 1991 was the last year with quarter horses up there. I believe that was the year Corona Chick ran in the Bay Meadows Futurity. Ed Grimley won the race. I would rank Corona Chick, Tolltac, and Eastex as the three best horses I saw up there.
In addition to those top horses and big races, do any moments stand out to you?
I used to have people come up periodically and stand outside the announcer’s booth if they wanted to watch me call a race. I had a friend who was a bartender who came up there. He did not realize he was supposed to keep his mouth shut. At the sixteenth pole he started getting real excited and was screaming and was using some profanity. I had to shut my microphone during the race. That was the only time I ever did that.
As far as the actual race calling, I believe we had the first quarter horse race on the grass there. I had never seen quarter horses run on the grass. Bob Wuerth was the publicity director at the time for the quarter horse meet as well as the thoroughbred meet. He got us a lot of good PR out of that race on the turf. Of course, the thoroughbred trainers weren’t particularly fond of us doing that. They thought that because of how hard the quarter horses came out of the gate that it was going to tear up the turf course, so that was the only race we ran on the grass.
What would you say were the distinguishing characteristics of Bay Meadows?
I would definitely say the indoor paddock. I thought that was a definite plus as far as people getting a close-up view of the horses before they came out to the walking ring. I loved the scenery, calling the races from the roof up there. You had a lot of beautiful homes to look at and you could look at the hills behind you. Probably the biggest detriment was wind. We had some really windy days up there and it would get a little scary when it would get windy.
What were handle and attendance like for the quarter horse meets?
When I first went up there, I believe we were racing Thursday through Monday. There was no racing at Golden Gate on Sunday at the time early in my days announcing up there. We would have Sunday afternoon racing and evening racing the other three days. I would say the crowds on the weekend might have been three, four thousand people. We never got the crowds the thoroughbreds got. The first five or six years I was up there was before we had simulcast wagering. I can’t exactly recall what the mutuel handle might have been. It might have been $400,000 to $500,000 a day. It would be a little higher on the big days. It was considerably lower than what they were handling on the thoroughbred racing, but we were still holding our own.
Did you know anybody who would attend Golden Gate during the day and Bay Meadows at night?
Some of my friends would go to Golden Gate in the daytime and then come back. There were some hardcore players who loved going day and night, but I don’t know how many there were. I definitely think once simulcast wagering came around where they could stay at one track, it made it a lot easier instead of going back and forth.
From what I have read on the Bay Meadows Racing Memories Facebook group page, it seems like the quarter horse racing community at Bay Meadows was close knit. Is that a fair assessment?
A lot of the business owners couldn’t wait for the quarter horse meet to start because there was a lot more camaraderie. You got more groups coming together than you did during the thoroughbred meets. You had places like the Hillsdale Inn, The Van’s Restaurant, the Villa Hotel. A lot of horsemen would go there and it would always be bigger than two or three people. You would always have groups together. It was kind of a vacation for a lot of the horsemen that got out of Southern California. They didn’t make a lot of money because of the expenses, but they really enjoyed the atmosphere and going to a lot of the really good restaurants like Original Joe’s in downtown San Francisco and several of the places in Foster City.
During the 1980s there were a lot of changes in the San Francisco Bay Area as you had the rise of Silicon Valley and the tech industry. Did you notice any of those changes?
I did not notice a big difference, but I noticed a difference when I came back in 2008 to call that quarter horse race. I had not been there in a number of years. I noticed the difference then. I pretty much did my work and frequented the same places, so I did not notice a major change [in the 1980s].
Did you ever attend the thoroughbred racing at Bay Meadows, either in the 1980s or after the quarter horse meets ended?
I worked one of the thoroughbred meets with Art Lobato. I was working in group sales. I want to say it was 1981. We were doing some interviews in the winner’s circle between races. We had the jockeys from out of the country come in for that all-star competition. I was one of the hosts for that and was able to go to some of the restaurants in San Francisco. I would come back and watch thoroughbred races at Bay Meadows periodically after 1991 just because I made a lot of friends up there. I would go to Golden Gate as well. I met Larry Collmus when I was the announcer at Bay Meadows, and we became really good friends.
Why did quarter horse racing come to an end at Bay Meadows?
There was the expense factor. It was hard to get a lot of horsemen to come up there. I know that Ed Allred and a lot of people wanted to get a year-round circuit in Southern California and have more racing down there because it would ease the expenses of having to come up to Bay Meadows. I don’t know if there was a problem with the lease and why they stopped in 1991, but we ended up picking up those dates and running them at Hollywood Park. We were able to get more dates to Los Alamitos. It’s 12 months a year now, but it used to be quarter horse racing for an ‘X’ number of months and harness racing for an ‘X’ number of months. Basically, in the wintertime when we used to go to Bay Meadows up until 2000, the 2-year-olds would go to some of the training facilities at Fairplex Park, Galway Downs, and San Luis Rey and get ready to run at Los Alamitos.
How did you get the opportunity to call the San Mateo Stakes for quarter horses on the final day of racing at Bay Meadows in August 2008?
[Bay Meadows simulcast director] Kay Webb had called me, and because I was the announcer there during the last quarter horse meet she thought it would be more than appropriate for me to call the final quarter horse race. Michael Wrona, the thoroughbred announcer at the time, was fine with that. My wife and I spent a couple of days up there at The Van’s Restaurant and we stayed at the Belmont Motel.
How would you summarize your time calling quarter horse racing at Bay Meadows?
I think what stands out the most is how it’s where I got my start. I called my first race ever there at Bay Meadows in 1979. I called some great horses there. We added Arabians to some of our racing programs in the late 1980s, so I was able to get a little practice calling longer races. We ran a good number of 870 races there as well. As for one particular race, I would have to say Tolltac winning the Golden State Derby is the race that stands out the most in my mind. You just don’t win by that big of a margin in quarter horse racing, especially in a major race.
