Q&A with Ed Burgart

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.