JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

If you will indulge me, we have some unfinished Derby business.

I have a couple of 30-year-old-plus photos to show you.

Both photos were sent to me today by one of our good friends in Louisville, Marcie Blakeney. Marcie, a retired teacher, has hosted a Kentucky Oaks Day brunch the last several years, and she and I played golf one day last week in Louisville.

Marcie didn’t know the years these photos were taken, but Patty and I believe we figured it out.

This one, of Marcie and me, was taken at the 1986 Derby, when Marcie’s husband back then, John Blakeney, got us Third Floor Clubhouse seats through the company he was working for, Brown-Forman distillery. You can tell we are relatively high up by the crowd down below. I remember joking that day about the people in “steerage” on the lower floors…Funny thing, though, ever since that Derby I’ve been with the unwashed masses in steerage.

Another thing I remember about that Derby is the even-money favorite was a horse named Snow Chief, and I really believed in him. I don’t remember how much I bet on him — probably $20 to $30 — but I was convinced he was going to win.

Our box extended out over the grandstand, and we had a spectacular view of the track. When the horses came by us the first time, entering the first turn, Snow Chief was running close to the front with a few other horses. The horses were flying and my heart was racing. That fast start should have given me pause, however, because it’s not very often (this year being an exception) that the speed “holds up,” as they say, and a front runner stays in front for the entire mile and a quarter.

Sure enough, Snow Chief began slowing down as the race progressed, and he ended up finishing 11th in a 16-horse field. The winner was Ferdinand, who went off at odds of 18 to 1 and paid $37.40 on a $2 win bet.

Snow Chief came back to win the second leg of the Triple Crown, the Preakness Stakes, two weeks later in Baltimore. In that race, he beat Ferdinand by four lengths. Although he didn’t run in the third leg of the Triple Crown, the Belmont Stakes, Snow Chief was voted champion 3-year-old horse of 1986.

…Now, Photo No. 2.

That’s Patty on the left. She thinks the photo was taken in 1984, the year before we married.

A seamstress, Patty calculated the year with this reasoning: “I was still living at home when I knitted that sweater and was finishing it in a hurry to wear to the Derby. We were sitting on bleachers, not in a box when I wore that outfit.”

Indeed, as you can see, we were down low…in steerage.

The other people in the photo, from right to left, are John Blakeney; my dear Louisville friend Bill Russell; and Bill’s wife Kathy Russell.

John and Marcie got divorced several years later, and so did Bill and Kathy. (Marcie has not remarried; Bill has.)

The winner that year was a horse named Swale, a beautiful colt whom Patty fell in love with as he came out on the track that day. She bet him and won money. (Patty has good instincts and has picked a relatively high percentage of Derby winners — much higher than I.) Swale went off at odds of 7-2 and paid $8.80 to win.

Swale went on to run in the Preakness Stakes and finished a disappointing seventh. But he returned to form three weeks later in the Belmont Stakes in New York and won.

Then, eight days after the Belmont — June 17, 1984 — Swale collapsed and died while being taken back to his stall following a bath.

That night, as I recall, before Patty and I had learned of Swale’s death, we were at the New Stanley Bar in Westport, and a friend gave us the bad news. Tears immediately filled Patty’s eyes. I remember the friend telling me later Patty must be a tender-hearted person because she cried over Swale. Eight months later we were married.