Sunny Jim

by Breslin, Jimmy;

  During the winter months, he went on a starvation diet, knocking his weight down to 108. He also began to show he had a special way with horses. A mare called Flexing had a club foot which made her helpless. Morrell’s veterinarian had decided to destroy the horse, until Jimmy Fitz went to work on her. He built a special plate for her, then nursed the horse along as the foot began to grow and straighten with the special shoe. Before he was finished she could run in races. Everybody thought it was a miracle.

  Morrell had Jimmy Fitz reinstated as a rider with the Jockey Club, so on August 7, 1900, he was back at Brighton Beach again, this time with the filly Agnes D. He won a race with her, his first ever in New York. It is a date which should be important because it marked his return to the big-time. But it really doesn’t mean that much because he still had years to go before he was going to make it. Any luck he had was only temporary. As was his riding. He lasted until 1901 when he rode Agnes D in the Tidal Stakes at Sheepshead Bay, finishing last in a race that was won by Water Boy, ridden by George Odom, who went on to become a big success as a trainer. Jimmy Fitz simply couldn’t hold off weight any more. So he trained Morrell’s small string, which included a jumper named Betsy Ross. This one made up for a lot of bad luck by winning a two-mile steeplechase race at Morris Park under the weirdest of circumstances. When the field broke, it began to look good. Twelve started in the race, but as they hit every jump the number decreased. Two horses would fall at this jump, a couple would go at the next and finally there was only Zenith, a smooth-moving animal which was a good 30 lengths in front, and Betsy Ross. Zenith took the last jump easily, then rolled down the stretch to win. Betsy Ross plodded down after the leader. But when the horse got back to the winner’s circle and the jock weighed out, they found that 12 pounds of lead had slipped from his saddle during the race, so he was disqualified. Betsy Ross, J. Fitzsimmons trainer, was the winner.

  He stayed with Morrell until 1906. Then he decided to try his scuffling, get-a-dollar-anyplace way of life around Sheepshead Bay. He moved his family to the Bay, where they stayed with his sister Nora who, after the death of their parents, had taken over the job of running the family. Jimmy Fitz hustled a couple of horses to train and it was Maryland all over again for him, except he was home.

  Racing in New York at this time had a splendor and color about it that few things in this country ever have had. They ran six races a day at the big tracks, starting at 2:30 and ending at 5:30. The people with money rode down to Sheepshead Bay in classic coach-and-fours, parked their carriages in the infield from where they watched the races. It was gracious living, studded with some of the flashiest operators ever to take a shot on a horse.

  One of them was a fresh-faced kid from Pittsburgh who got a job for three dollars a week in New York, then decided to try the race tracks now and then because he had a notion a man who took jockeys into consideration when he bet a horse might do pretty well. His name was George Smith, but when he died at thirty-eight and left three million dollars, people all over knew him as Pittsburgh Phil. The first time anybody remembers him getting into big action came the morning of a match race between Volante and Dew Drop at Sheepshead Bay in 1908. Pittsburgh Phil showed up at Riley Grannon’s betting station and listened as Grannon was saying, “I have $5000 that says Volante wins.”

  “I’ll take it,” Pittsburgh Phil said.

  “I have five more,” Grannon said.

  “Take you again.”

  “I have five more.”

  “Take you again. And take five more, too.”

  By the time they were through the bet was $25,000. Dew Drop got off first and Volante never could catch up and after the race Grannon was paying off and asking the stranger, “What’s your name?”

  “George Smith,” Pittsburgh Phil said.

  “Smart guy,” Grannon muttered to himself.

  Pittsburgh Phil had a distaste for anybody who thought he was lucky. “Special knowledge is not luck,” he would snap. “It is acquired by hard work and study.” His other rule of life: Double your wagers when you have bookmakers in hand.

  He was a cold man who, like most big gamblers, steered clear of liquor, and rarely showed emotion. Two hours before he was to die at the end of a long sickness he was stretched out in bed giving his brother Bill an order on three horses. Bill was to bet a thousand on each.

  “Maybe I’m dying,” Pittsburgh Phil said. “But I’ll go out as I lived. Bet the money.”

  But for Jimmy Fitz, these were the years when he had something else to think about besides the eternal attempt to get enough on which to live.

  It all had started in Maspeth when he fell. Or maybe the day in Washington when he lost weight. He really didn’t remember things that clearly. All he knew was that now his back began to pain. Not an ache, either. It was a sharp, murderous pain that took up his breath and left him wracked. He could barely walk. The pain was at its worst when he was at Sheepshead Bay. He had a long walk from the stable area to the paddock, and most of them used a horse cart for the trip over. Jimmy Fitz couldn’t do it. He would sooner walk miles than go through the agony of bending his back to get in or out of the wagon or a car. Not that walking was that much easier. His hip would lock on him after any amount of walking and he’d be stranded until he could work it out. If he was in a room and a heavy guy walked across it and made even the slightest vibration on the floorboards, it went through him like a knife. A sneeze or a cough became agony. At night, once he’d get himself into bed, he’d have to grab the headboard and pull himself if he wanted to move. Once seated, he became helpless. When it started, he didn’t think he could live through six months with the pain. It became worse each day. He went to doctors a couple of times at the beginning, and they said something about rheumatism, gave him some medicine to take and let it go at that. He never bothered to go back. Doctors could cost you a lot of money and he didn’t have any of that. He never complained. To him, it was the same as getting beat in a horse race. You took it and shut up.

  This was the era where the boasts of patent medicine became nearly as outrageous as they are today. And from all parts of the stable area guys came around with bottles of stuff. Swamp Root tonic or a cure their great aunt had used for the very same kind of a pain. Or perhaps a tonic the druggist had recommended. All were guaranteed to cure the back and Jimmy Fitz said thank you to each of them, took the medicine home and put it on a shelf where it was to stay until thrown out. He never was much for taking medicine even when prescribed by a doctor. He was not about to tangle with the voodoo stuff being peddled around in those days. So he did nothing.

  “The pain,” he says, “went away in the queerest way. I used to sit around a place with Frank Herold and a handicapper named Billy Carmody after the races. They’d drink some beer, I’d eat ice cream. We’d gab about horses and the like and it kind of took my mind off the pain a little. Well, one night I finished the ice cream and I said I’m going to have a beer, too. So I drank it, then had another. I had maybe two, three bottles. I had some the next night, too. Then like nothing, the pain started to go away. I don’t know why, but it eased up. So I kept drinking the couple of bottles of beer and before I knew it I wasn’t hurting any more. I don’t know whether you can give the beer any credit. If you do, make sure you put down all the guys that drinkin’ ruined and killed, too. I don’t want to give the booze the best of it, you know.”

  When the pain went away, it did not stop the backbone from gradually forcing his head downward. This was to go on little by little for years. But Jimmy Fitz didn’t care about that. All he wanted to do was maneuver around horses and as long as he could do it without pain he was satisfied. But he couldn’t even have this, as it developed.

  8. The Backstretch

  IN 1907, SUNNY JIM Fitzsimmons went out on his own as a trainer of horses. Anybody who had a horse or two horses or more than that and wanted them trained could come to him and he would work and hustle around and treat the horses as if they were part of his family. He wa
s able to make a bare living doing this.

  Then one afternoon in 1910, J. E. Davis, a financier, sat in his clubhouse box at Sheepshead Bay and discussed a problem with a little, sharply dressed guy named Morty Lynch. Now usually, the only problem Davis had with Morty Lynch concerned how much money he was going to give Lynch to bet on the fifth race. But a few minutes before, during lunch, Davis had written a good check which made him the owner of another race horse. He already had a few, but they were out of town with trainer Matt Brady and Davis needed somebody to take care of this new one.

  “I got just the guy for you,” Lynch was saying. “Little guy you probably don’t even know. But I see how he takes care of what he’s got. I don’t think you can go wrong with him. Jimmy Fitzsimmons, his name is.”

  Davis said fine, well give him a try. Then a few minutes later Lynch hustled down to the paddock and brought this new trainer back to Davis’ box. The business took a minute or so and then Jimmy Fitzsimmons was shaking hands with J. E. Davis on a business deal and when he left he said thanks to Morty Lynch. He knew Lynch just as a guy around the race track; Mr. Fitz had done no betting business with him. He couldn’t understand why Lynch would tout a man on him.

  “I give service to clients,” Lynch said. “This is a real good fellow and I know how you handle a horse. I seen that with my own eyes. So I do my man a favor by bringing you to him.”

  Nobody can remember the name of the horse any more and you can go blind if you’re crazy enough to try to look the thing up in old records. The name isn’t important, anyway. All that really mattered was that J. E. Davis went home to his estate on Cedar Swamp Road in swank Brookville, Long Island, that night and during dinner he said something about getting up a little earlier the next day because he’d like to see if this new trainer he had taken on was as good as Morty Lynch said he was.

  He certainly was. And Davis was a man smart enough to notice it. In business, it is attention to the fringe things that make men rich. In horse racing, this same policy gives you a little bit of a chance at times and Davis could see this new one, Fitzsimmons, was a man who took care of his business—right down the line; inspecting each horse thoroughly, wrangling with the feed man to get just what he wanted; in short, doing everything that was to make him a legend in his business.

  Davis was the first big money man Jimmy Fitz ever had done business with, and he found it was not a harrowing experience. Davis came out in the morning, looked around, said nothing, then left for Wall Street after the workouts.

  “Want anything done?” Jimmy Fitz asked him one morning.

  “No,” Davis said. “The only question is, am I in your way here?”

  And a few months later, Davis was having a drink with a friend, Herbert L. Pratt, who had a little item going for him called the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey.

  “Do you want to have a little fun? Davis asked him.”

  “I could stand some relaxation,” Pratt said.

  “Then take a hundred thousand and give it to this Fitzsimmons of mine out at the track and let him buy you some yearlings and train them for you. You’ll love it.”

  “Only a hundred thousand?” Pratt laughed.

  “Sure, why not?” Davis said. “It’ll give you something to do.”

  He was talking off-hand and half-joking, but he kept mentioning it to Pratt every time they met and finally one morning Davis came out to the barn and he called Jimmy Fitz over and said, “A friend of mine is coming out here in a day or so and I’d like you to meet him. His name is Mr. Pratt and I think he might like to race a few horses.”

  Which Pratt did. And after him came another friend, a man named Howard Maxwell, head of the Atlas Portland Cement Company.

  It was the start. Davis, Pratt, and Maxwell didn’t go in for big stables—five or six horses was the limit. But they were the first ones who showed him where the door was and how, if you kept at it, you could put your hand on the knob and turn it and open the door and walk into the big-time.

  Jimmy Fitz kept this public stable even when in 1914 he was hired by a man named James F. Johnson, who owned the 34-horse Quincy Stable. It was with the Quincy Stable that the name Fitzsimmons started to become a big one in horse racing circles and the attention he drew brought him to big money. Johnson had watched him handle Davis, Pratt, and Maxwell’s horses and hired him because of it.

  Historically, this is how his career took a turn for the better. He trained horses that lost races, but he trained horses that won races, too, and these put the first money he ever had into his pocket. He worked for long hours to make it this way and when he wasn’t working, he was home with his wife and a family that was growing.

  He never lied to an owner and beat him out of money. He had no betting clients that he touted. He never told a jockey to pull a horse so he could get a high betting price on him the next time. Here and there he ran into trouble from others, but he went along as if it never happened. He was too busy working and liking people and horses to bother with much else. But these are facts from the record book, not the events that characterize him as a man. Perhaps a few incidents in his life will set the stage for an understanding of the person.

  There was at this time a sportswriter on the old Brooklyn Eagle who made up his mind, in print, that Mr. James E. Fitzsimmons was up to no good. On several occasions, he called for action by everything this side of the militia to put a stop to the betting coups Fitzsimmons was pulling off. Mr. Fitz thought that was all right; the guy had a job to do and as long as he was shaping up for it every day it didn’t matter much whether he wrote good or bad about Fitzsimmons.

  “Now he’s a fine writer,” Mr. Fitz insisted. “Good fella, too. Knows horses better’n most of them. But he’s gotten to bettin’, the fool. And it’s got him half nuts. Now he knows I don’t bother to bet. But he just can’t think right any more because of his betting, so now he’s gotten himself to believe I’m doin’ something with horses so I can cash a bet. It’s too bad, because he’s a fine fella. Well, he’ll be all right soon as he learns to stay away from the betting ring.”

  This was the only way to live that he knew. And it was the way that was to make him a success. He always was as interested in people as he was in horses and it was the people who were to make him, just as much as any winner he ever sent out on a race track. People always were attracted to Mr. Fitz. His smile, for one thing. Mr. Fitz’s smile was always a big wide thing that seems to run off his face. And he smiles whenever anybody says hello to him. You’d be surprised how many people make a point of saying hello to him just so they can see the smile. Mr. Fitz’s main principle in life is to be nice to others … absolutely anybody who comes around. The only ornery people, horses or humans, he feels, are those who are hurting someplace. And they need care, not enemies.

  One day not long ago, Mr. Fitz was sitting under a big elm tree at Belmont. A light spring rain was falling, but the leaves of the big elm stopped all but a few drops of the rain. And these few raindrops didn’t touch Mr. Fitz at all. He was wearing a big tan shoot-’em-up cowboy hat with a brim wide enough to knock them dead in Dallas. You could have poured a bowl of soup into the brim and the soup wouldn’t have spilled off. Because there had been a lot of security trouble in the stable area, the track wanted everybody working with horses to have identification and they had issued Mr. Fitz a big red and gold medal that said he was horse trainer Number l on the New York tracks. He was proud of the medal and he wore it right out on his jacket lapel. It was a good thing to have, he was telling the people around him, because now all the guards at the race track would know he was a horse trainer and not some guy sneaking around to dope horses.

  Across from him, Johnny Longden came out of the red brick building where the jockeys get dressed. Longden is a little man of fifty-one who is bald, speaks in a high voice, and has enough money to be a bank. He was looking around for people he knew because this was the first time he had been out of California to ride a horse in ten years. At fifty-one, Longd
en still is one of the great riders in the world. When he breaks a leg or some other bone in a fall during a race, people always say this will finally make him quit. Longden says nothing. He has the leg put in a cast and when the cast comes off a riding boot goes on and Longden goes up on five horses the next day. Johnny had on yellow silks on this day and he walked up to talk to his wife, a tall blond woman who was standing in front of the jockey’s quarters. Longden looked across and saw Mr. Fitz, then he took his wife by the arm and brought her over to the old man.

  “Mr. Fitz, he said, I was just telling my wife a few weeks ago, ‘Let’s call up Mr. Fitz and go back East and ride out the summer for him and then we’ll call it quits.’ I figured as long as I started with you, I might as well finish in the same place.”

  “You started with him?” Longden was asked.

  “Here’s the man that made me. You know, Mr. Fitz, I can remember you coming up to me at Hialeah. That was 1937 but I remember it like it was just a few days ago. You came up and asked me if I wanted to ride for you. You had a lot of trouble getting me to say yes, didn’t you?” Longden laughed.

  “Well, I saw that you were a real good one.”

  “I don’t know what would have happened with me if you didn’t come around. I wasn’t doin’ much of anything.”

  “Oh, you would have made it the same way you did. Just would have taken you a little more time maybe.”

  “I don’t know about that, Mr. Fitz. I didn’t know much about riding until I got with you. Mightn’t have learned it, either.”

  “Ahhhhh,” Mr. Fitz said. He waved his hand at Longden.