A lot of times, trainers would have their horses worked on the hard sand at low tide along the Manhattan Beach ocean front. The horsemen believed salt water and its natural whirlpool motion was excellent for sore-legged horses, so they would treat an ailing horse by letting him swim in the surf with an exercise boy aboard. Which contributed to a strong aversion to swimming Jimmy Fitz was to carry through life.
Early one morning he was aboard a stable pony taking a swim with the horse through the stretch of ocean between an old iron pier and a beach house that served as a guidemark. Now the Atlantic Ocean, where it touches Coney Island and Brighton Beach, is lake-calm because of the land formation hemming it in. New York would never be a major city if it were not, for one day of rough surf at Coney Island would cut the population in half, New Yorkers swimming as they do. But on this morning, the Atlantic was rolling in with a good thud in every wave. One of them broke hard into the horse’s stomach as he tried to climb over it. Jimmy Fitz and the horse went tumbling underneath the water. When they came up, the horse figured it was every man for himself. He pawed at the water to right himself, then he took off for shore. Jimmy Fitz tried one stroke and came to the conclusion he was not a channel swimmer. As the horse’s tail swished through the water past him, he reached out and grabbed it and hung on until the horse got him to shore.
There was one afternoon, in the summer, when Jimmy Fitz was at Monmouth Park with horses and he became ill. When his face became flushed with fever, a doctor was called. The doctor took one look and diagnosed it as “chills and fever.” This was a synonym for malaria. He pumped the kid full of quinine and then, several weeks later, came around again, listened to his heart, and shook his head.
“You can go home, son,” he said. “When you do, you’re going to have to live a different life. Your heart is not strong enough to stand much excitement. You work, don’t you. Well, get a nice, quiet job and keep one like that for the rest of your life. Stay as far away from excitement as you can.”
Jimmy Fitz said he sure would. Then he took a box of quinine tablets from the doctor, got up and put on his clothes and went home to Sheepshead Bay.
And, on the afternoon of August 17, 1889, which was a year or so after the doctor’s warning, Jimmy Fitz was as far away from excitement as possible. He was walking a four-year-old horse named Newburgh into the paddock at Brighton Beach. The paddock was as safe a place as any, he figured.
But things worked differently on this day. Newburgh was to run in the third race with the lightweight assignment of 84 pounds. Hardy Campbell, the trainer, had been looking for somebody to put on the horse all day. Then he looked at Jimmy Fitz, thought about his small body for a moment, then called over to the boy.
“Can you ride this horse?”
“Sure,” the kid said, thinking the trainer meant sometime in the future.
“Well, go in and get on some silks and get back out here in a hurry. You’re late now.”
Jimmy Fitz was stunned, but ran to the jocks’ room, then came out dressed in Dwyer Brothers silks, oversized pants and boots, got on the horse and went to the post. In these days, the start of a race was a simple thing. The horses would line up, with no gate or barrier to hold them, then the starter would say “Come on” and the race would go off. This system was bad enough to start the Civil War. In the American Derby at Arlington Park, for instance, the horses were at the post for 90 minutes until they could be straightened out and sent off with no false starts. There was no trouble with Jimmy Fitz’s first start. There was plenty when the race began, however. Newburgh simply wouldn’t run fast and the jockey was in the midst of a first-mount fog that hits all riders. They finished way back.
This did not make him a favorite around the stable area. Strauss, the foreman, started to pile extra work on him. One day, he had Jimmy Fitz exercise extra horses. When he came back, Strauss still wanted him to shine the same amount of tack everybody else did. Jimmy Fitz said he didn’t think that was fair. He was being overworked. Strauss, an understanding man, called him lazy. In a few days Jimmy Fitz’s Irish was well up. He packed his clothes and started to walk off.
“Where you going?” an old groom asked him.
“I don’t know, but I’m through with this business around here,” he said.
“You ought to try the Jersey tracks,” the groom said. “I got a friend over there, Pratt. He used to work round here. You go see him. He’ll take you on. He needs exercise boys, I know that.”
The day he left for New Jersey—a trip in those days—Jimmy Fitz told George Tappen he’d try and dig up a spare job for him.
“The minute I do, I’ll write you a letter,” he promised.
Tappen wanted to know two things: Who was going to read the letter and who was going to write it.
Gloucester, which is where Jimmy Fitz went, was a small town backing onto the Delaware River. A ferry ran across to Philadelphia. The track and the carnival area adjoining it became known as the Coney Island of Philadelphia, with such added attractions as dice tables, roulette wheels, and places where you could play cards for money in case the Ferris wheel was too crowded. A place behind the Bonaventure Hotel, which was famous for its shad dinners, was the headquarters for Gloucester’s gamblers. The town drew a heavy set of Philadelphians, who even at this early date were committing their sins out of town.
The Gloucester track had no particular opening or closing dates. Normally, a 50-day race meeting is considered plenty for the economy of any one area—except in New York City, where there are enough people to keep anything going. In little Gloucester, however, they ran 580 days at one stretch. Snow, cold, ice, rain; that meant nothing. The only thing that could stop horses from going around at Gloucester was either politics or an absence of money among horse players.
Jimmy Fitz got a job with the trainer, Pratt. When he checked into the ramshackle barn he fixed himself up the same living quarters he had everyplace else—a couple of two-by-fours laid across one corner of the loft, with a straw mattress and a horse blanket over it.
Pratt kept his new boy exercising horses for a couple of months, then decided to try him as a jockey. The minute this was brought up, Jimmy Fitz went to somebody around the barn who knew how to write.
“I hurt my hand the other day, I think,” he said. “Would you write a letter for me?”
The fellow said sure. He took out a pencil and piece of wrinkled paper and got ready to write.
“Send it to George Tappen at the Dwyer Brothers Stable in Sheepshead Bay. Tell him he should come over here and valet for me. Tell him I’ll find us a place to stay.”
The place he found for Tappen and himself was a boardinghouse run by Mrs. Alexander Harvey. Jimmy Fitz, Tappen, and a cocky kid named Johnny Tabor, who was riding well at Gloucester, took rooms in the place. Mrs. Harvey had two daughters, Lillian and Jennie.
On September 30, 1890, Jimmy Fitz, a sixteen-year-old kid, was put on a four-year-old horse named Crispin in the fifth race of the day at Gloucester. He broke the horse fast—or, rather, the horse outbroke the jockey, who held on for his life—and was on top by three when they straightened for the run home. Crispin was an easy winner, but the jockey, who was about to win the first race of his life, took a fit and went to the whip. Crispin received a solid beating every step of the way home. The jockey still was slamming away 70 yards past the finish line.
Now the first winner for a jockey is something that sticks in his mind forever. They all can remember the horse, the track, the weather, the people who were there that day, the price the horse paid—the works. But the jockey on this one remembered something else. He came up with the idea that going to the whip on a horse, except when the animal is being lazy, is a waste of time and more harm than good comes of it. As long as the animal tried, Jimmy Fitz left him alone. And today Mr. Fitz demands the same thing of his riders.
After the win on Crispin, for example, he was nursing along a horse named King’s Idol in the middle of the pack during one race when Tabor, r
iding something called John M, pulled alongside. Tabor kept snarling to himself.
“I dropped my whip,” he kept saying. “If I had a whip I’d win this thing.”
Jimmy Fitz reached across to Tabor and handed out his whip.
“It ain’t going to do me any good,” he said. “You take it.”
Tabor grabbed it and started whacking away. John M took off. Jimmy Fitz was content to hand-ride his mount. He felt the horse was trying and would only resent a belting and sulk because of it. In the stretch, King’s Idol started to move. He picked up horses and came on with a rush and Tabor’s horse was just able to last and beat him by a nose. With the whip, Jimmy Fitz told the trainer after it, the horse would have stopped dead.
Jennie Harvey never went to any of the races for the first year that she knew Jimmy Fitz. But in January of 1891 they had started to go out a little at nights. On one date, Jimmy and his new girl and Johnny Tabor and Lillian Harvey took the ferry over to Philadelphia to take in a show. With them was Joe Bergen, a tough little Irishman from New York.
Everybody was talking about riding horses during the evening, so Jennie finally decided she’d like to see her friend on the job.
“Do they think it’s bad for a girl to go to the track?” she asked.
“I’m there every day,” Jimmy Fitz said. “There’s nothing wrong with racing, not as long as I’m in it.”
She laughed. And the next day Jennie Harvey was sitting in a grandstand seat at Gloucester to see her boy friend ride race horses.
In the third race, a six-and-?-half-furlong affair worth $300 to the winner, Joe Bergen was on Keyser and Jimmy Fitz rode Eddie M. Jennie watched closely. The flag dropped and the field took off. Jennie Harvey was watching the first horse race of her life. Bergen took the lead with Keyser and John Atwood, with a boy named MacAuley in the saddle, was a close second. Then it all happened in one move. Keyser lugged in, hitting the rail hard. The horse bounced off it and went down on top of Bergen. MacAuley never had a chance to steer clear of the mess. John Atwood’s lead foot stumbled against Keyser’s rump, then his leg gave away and the horse and MacAuley fell on top of Bergen and Keyser. The other horses raced around them and while stablehands rushed out toward the pile-up, Honest Tom, Burrell riding, won the race. Jimmy Fitz was out of the money. Jennie Harvey didn’t notice. She had a handkerchief to her mouth. And she was worried.
Back up the track, John Atwood was writhing with a broken leg and the track veterinarian was calling for a guard to shoot him. MacAuley was out cold. Bergen struggled to his feet, swayed a little, but seemed fine. They were more worried about MacAuley. Nobody thought to check Bergen right away. He was bleeding to death inside as he stood there swaying against the rail and watching them try to get MacAuley up. Then the bleeding took the color out of Joe Bergen and he passed out. They took him to a hospital in Camden that night, but it was too late. He died during the night. Jennie Harvey never wanted any part of racing again. By now she had made up her mind that she was going to marry this little jockey. But she was never going to care for a day of his business so long as he rode horses. The day she saw Joe Bergen dying made sure of that.
Lillian and Johnny Tabor were married first and then in June, with twenty dollars in his pocket, Jimmy Fitz was at the altar of St. Gregory’s Church in Gloucester and he was saying, yes, he would take this woman.
His honeymoon consisted of getting up to be with horses the next morning and work on them and ride them for short money. And there would be short money for a long time after this, too. But he was young and that would be taken care of someday, he figured. All that mattered was that he had a sweet, young bride and enough cash to rent a small frame shack on Market Street in Gloucester.
The sweet, young bride, as he was to find out for the rest of his life, was a little bit more woman than she appeared to be. He was taught that after they were married for a week.
Of the few things she brought into the marriage with her, Jennie Fitzsimmons was proudest of a gleaming white linen tablecloth which, on this particular night, she had placed on the kitchen table for dinner. She was at the table, talking with her husband after dinner. Proudly, she ran her hand over the linen tablecloth. Jimmy reached the coffeepot on the stove. It was too hot for his hand, and he hastily put it down on the table. Some coffee spilled on the tablecloth.
“Don’t spill things on my tablecloth,” Jennie yelled.
“Your tablecloth? What about my hand?” he said. “Never mind your tablecloth.”
He poured coffee over the table. He was going to be the boss from the start of this affair, he said to himself.
Jennie started to explode. Then she stopped. There are a lot of ways to get a job done.
“Let’s not fight,” she said. Then, sweetly: “Would you do me a favor and go into the cellar and bring up some milk?”
“Sure,” her husband said. He got up and went to the cellar.
He was halfway down the stairs when he heard the door slam behind him and the lock click.
“Now you can stay there,” his wife yelled.
She kept him there for the night. To spite her, Jimmy Fitz opened the big can of milk they kept in the cellar and proceeded to drink most of it during the night. He accomplished much by doing this. He had loaded himself up so much that he knew, by morning, that he was going to be overweight for the day’s races. So at 5:30 in the morning, with his wife first unlocking the door, then looking the other way so she wouldn’t have to bother talking to him, Jimmy Fitz came out of the cellar and had to get out and hit the road to work up a sweat and lose the weight he had piled on during the night.
“Women!” he said to somebody in the stable area later in the day.
“You’re starting to grow up,” the guy told him.
As it has been all through his life, there were two sides to the racing business in these days. To Jimmy Fitz, the tracks were tough places to make a living. New Jersey had two of them operating, Gloucester, and up at the other end of the state, Guttenburg, which was on the Palisades, across the Hudson from New York City. As far as he was concerned, they were conducting the best racing they could. It was all he ever wanted out of life, a chance to be around races, and nothing else mattered to him. But Guttenburg and Gloucester mattered greatly to law-enforcement people after a time.
The Gloucester track was three-quarters of a mile around of well-kept running surface. The grandstand was a wooden, single-level structure about 150 feet long. It was covered with a roof. On a good day, a crowd of 1500 would pack the stand and spill out onto the lawn in front of it. The races attracted small fields of six and seven horses and their names were not the flaring, colorful ones of horses on the big time. Owners did not have much time to sit down and think out the name for a horse at tracks like Gloucester so Willie B and Eddie M were far more common than anything along the lines of Equipoise. The purses were small. A race worth $300, of which the winner received $250, was big. Most of them were worth half of that. But it was a place, and so were all the small tracks like it, where you could learn how to take care of horses that run in races. Sam Hildreth and William P. Burch, who could teach horses how to run as well as any men who ever lived, were at Gloucester in this era. And for Jimmy Fitz, it was the place that made him. It would take years before what he was learning was going to show in newspaper headlines and bankbook figures. But he picked up things on these tracks and when he finally brought them to the big-time he was murder.
As long as the weather held up—and it took an outright blizzard to close down the tracks—racing was held every day of the week except Sunday. Holidays were terrific. On Christmas Day, for example, a track owner would throw himself out of bed and rub his hands at the thought of all those people receiving money as presents. It would mean a better handle when the horses broke from the post later in the day. On Christmas Eve of 1890, for example, Jimmy Fitz spent the night in the barn at Guttenburg, got up in the morning and exercised the horses, then rode Once Again in the fourth race, a s
ix-and-a-half-furlong affair worth $400. Once Again finished fourth. It was Christmas only for the stable which sent out Kempland, which took down the $350 first money. For Jimmy Fitz it was just another fourth-place ride.
The biggest job for a jockey was to get paid. On paper, you were to get $10 for each mount, but there were innumerable reasons why you wouldn’t get it. To get paid, the jock had to go and collect personally, which wasn’t always so simple. A lot of times, a guy with one horse would drop into a track like Gloucester, run him in a race and after it turn his pockets inside out to prove to the kid he didn’t have enough money for dinner, let alone paying bills. It was toughest in the winter if you didn’t get paid. Because all you would have is a rough bed in a freezing stable and if you looked down the shedrow you could see the steam from the horses as they snorted in the cold air. The first job in the morning was to put your foot onto a frozen bucket of water and start smashing at the ice to break it up so there would be water for coffee and, when it warmed up a little, for the horse.
“It wasn’t so much rough riding or anything wrong with the races,” he tells you today. “We didn’t have any film patrol on us, of course, but about the only difference I can talk about is that once we had a horse stuck in a pocket along the rail we kept him there as good as we could. The jock would holler he needed room or something like that, but we didn’t pay him much attention. Once you were in a pocket, you stayed. The tracks mostly were in good condition. They had ground crews out in the cold weather and kept them up. The only trouble was the money. There just wasn’t none of it around and you had to go without it most of the time. You’d ride a horse and the fella couldn’t pay. Well, what could you do? He’d pay you if you won some money for him on the race. That was the only way you could do it. So you took a chance. Once I got 25 cents as pay for ridin’ a horse. I was lucky to get that. I guess if you figure out all the money owed me from all them years it would be about $7000. I sure could have used it then. We had an awful stretch of doin’ without. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t like it. I was around with the horses and that’s all I cared about.”
Sunny Jim Page 10