Whatever Happened to Jim Dandy?
Jul 26, 2013 22:46:35 GMT -5
Post by Evelyn on Jul 26, 2013 22:46:35 GMT -5
I found this when I was looking for winners. I was fearful of the ending and happy the Update was posted! He must have been a grand old boy!
Whatever happened to Jim Dandy?
This Saturday brings the forty-eighth running of the Jim Dandy Stakes to Saratoga Race Course. Since its first edition in 1964, it has served as an important prep race for the Travers, one of the racing calendar’s marquee events for 3-year-olds.
The race is named for the winner of the 1930 Travers, Jim Dandy, who upset one of racing’s all-time greats, the Triple Crown winner Gallant Fox. Few races sport the name of a horse best known for winning a single race and no races are named for a horse who won at odds of 100 to 1.
From the front page of The Saratogian, 19 August 1930
As I was thinking about a post for this week, I asked myself, whatever happened to Jim Dandy? As I did some preliminary research, I found that his name comes up frequently in the newspapers from the 1930s in relation to his Travers win, but references to his racing career during the same period are few and far between.
He had a race record of seven wins from one-hundred and forty-one career starts and lifetime earnings of $49,570. However, digging up additional details about his career proved difficult to find, but I was able to piece together a skeletal history of the now immortal Jim Dandy.
In 1931, Jim Dandy’s name appeared among the also-rans in the Hawthorne Gold Cup in Chicago. He ran seventeen times that year and earned $3350. By 1933, it appears he had taken a step down from the top tier racing circuit. According to Allan Carter at the National Museum of Racing, Jim Dandy’s final win came on May 30, 1933. He won the Memorial Day Handicap at Riverside Park in Kansas City and collected $700 of a $1000 purse. Three years out from his miraculous Travers win, Jim Dandy paid $39.20 to win in Kansas City.
In 1934, he started twenty-two times and recorded two second place finishes in the Pontchartrain Handicap and Fair Grounds Inaugural Handicap in Louisiana. He earned a measly $625 for his efforts that year. The following year, in 1935, he would start only seven times and earn $25, the last time he recorded any earnings on the track.
In 1936, Jim Dandy appeared in the results from Santa Anita. He ran in at least two $1000 handicaps where he finished among the also-rans. After finishing out of the money in five starts in 1936, Jim Dandy did not race in 1937. It’s possible that the “egg-shell” hooves that allowed him “to cruise beautifully through the Saratoga goo” in the 1930 Travers had finally had enough.
But Jim Dandy returned in 1938 and 1939 for the final two years of his career. Jim Dandy made his way south to race at Agua Caliente in Mexico. In the Los Angeles Times, the race writer Jim Lowry took notice of the famous upsetter and noted this in his preview of the 1938 race meet at Agua Caliente in Tijuana
An interesting old-timer who will attempt to make a comeback at Caliente is Jim Dandy, an 11-year-old who gained immortal turf distinction by beating Gallant Fox in the mud of the Travers in 1930s.
A few weeks later, Jim Lowry wrote of Jim Dandy’s performance in a six furlong stakes race called the San Joaquin:
Poor old Jim Dandy, which won the Travers in 1930 as a 100-to-1 shot in the mud was never in it. His victory over Gallant Fox is only a memory. Now 11 years old and with no more desire to run than the man in the moon. Jim Dandy finished dead last in the field of 10 horses. The bookies magnanimously opened him at 20 to 1 but when no money showed for the veteran they upped it up to 50 to 1. At one time in the run down the backstretch old Jim was eighth. But that was as close as he could get to the leaders.
The last reference to the career of Jim Dandy I found was in a workout report from the Daily Racing Form. In May 1939, he worked a half-mile at Agua Caliente. We know he raced three times that year, and considering the silence from the racing press, it’s likely he did little of note in the final races of his career.
Somewhere among the countless undiscovered pages of historical documents is more information about the final years of Jim Dandy. We’ll have to wait for a more ambitious historian than me or additional sources to be digitized before that information comes to light. It’s possible that we’ll never know the ultimate fate of the famous winner of the 1930 Travers. Without historical evidence, we can only imagine him racing during the last years of his long career.
By the end of the 1930s, Jim Dandy’s name had become synonymous with the possibility of the impossible in racing. I like to think that someone in every grandstand in which he raced in the later years recognized him for what he did on that rainy Travers day in August. You can’t help but imagine him inspiring a sense of reverence to a race fan or two even when he was running in places not worthy of his status as a living legend, a breathing representation of racing lore.
Update
Last week, I put together a post about Jim Dandy, upset winner of the 1930 Travers Stakes. I left a bit of a void at the end of the story after finding nothing about what became of Jim Dandy after his racing career.
On Monday afternoon, I was surprised to find a letter in my mailbox (the analog one) from Carol Holden of Sporting Life Stable and Trackside on Radio. She sent me a photocopied article written by Debra Ginsburg from the now defunct Backstretch Magazine. In an article from 2000 titled “Jim Dandy: 100-1 Colt Pulled off Greatest Upset in Racing History,” Ginsburg wrote a detailed and well told account of the major players in the 1930 Travers Stakes. What is most intriguing about the article is what she found out about the famous upsetter’s post-race life.
It turns out that Jim Dandy’s trainer on Travers day, John McKee, stuck with him for most of his racing career. When his owner, Chafee Earl, lost interest in racing, he gave the Travers winner to McKee. McKee died just prior to the horse’s retirement but, before he did, he arranged for his old friend to be taken care of. Jim Dandy retired to the riding academy of L. G. Otto of Glendale, California, where he had a successful career as a jumper and dressage horse. Ms. Ginsburg found no record of where Jim Dandy died but she did provide a quote from a women whose parents cared for him late in his life.
Rosemary Taggert of Garden Grove, Califonia, is quoted in the article saying this of Jim Dandy:
I can’t remember why he came to us, but he was an old horse by then…My mother had a special gift for keeping old horses going, so that’s probably how we got him. He was very kind. I was just a teenager then, but my mother let me ride him on trails around our barn. Finally, she wouldn’t let anyone ride him because of his age.
Many thanks to Carol Holden for sending me the article. And, of course, thanks to the late Debra Ginsburg for her stellar research in finishing the unbelievable story of the immortal Jim Dandy.
Update to the update, 8/3
Reader T.J. Connick left this in a comment last night:
Dredged up a piece that appeared in the September 17, 1941 edition of the Utica Daily Press. Jim Kelly, sport editor, described the familiar tale of the Travers in his Time Outcolumn, and followed with news of Jim Dandy at age 14:
Jim Dandy never did much after that. But he’s still an active piece of horseflesh. We have had many of those “What ever became of Jim Dandy?” queries in the last few years but it was only yesterday that we found ourselves in a position to answer.
A clipping from the Los Angeles Examiner reports that Jim Dandy, although 14 years of age, is making good in a big way as a show horse and jumper, which is the equivalent of a 49-year-old track man making a comeback in fast company.
Trainer John B. McKee, who bought the horse from (sic) Chaffey (sic) Earl in 1929, had turned Jim Dandy out to eat grass and grow fast (sic) after he had retired Jim from racing in 1939 in the face of the horse’s inability to win any kind of a race.
But he detected a restless spirit in the veteran and finally was persuaded to turn him over to Maj. L.G. Otto, who operated a riding academy near Los Angeles.
Nine months in training and Jim Dandy is an accomplished jumper. He has ridden to the hounds, jumps flawlessly and appears in horse shows and appears to be enjoying life as much as he did in his racing days.
McKee had bought Jim Dandy for $25,000 in 1929 from W.S. Dudley on behalf of Chaffee Earl. Earl was new to the game, and reputedly only owned two horses in his time: Jim Dandy and Naishapur — a pretty good batting average.
Jim Dandy’s relations had good batting averages, too. His dam’s sire, Star Shoot, enjoyed outstanding success as a sire of broodmares. Star Shoot’s daughterThunderbird (72 starts) may not have produced others as famous as her son Jim Dandy, but she passed along her endurance to others.
1925: Ormonbird, colt, (by Ormont), does not appear in the Pedigree Online Thoroughbred Database, but was mentioned as a success in the 1929 report of Jim Dandy’s purchase, ran 17 times in 1929, had run 9 races by May 31, 1930, and appeared to be going strong.
1926: Vimont, a full brother to Ormonbird shows in the database as an earner of $16,318 from a lifetime record of 147-16-12-16.
1927: Jim Dandy
1930: Transbird, colt, (by Transmute), earned $15,455 from a record of 221-21-31-21.
1933: Baby Vivian, filly, (by Sun Flag), unraced, but one of her two offspring, Martha Joan (1937 – by In Memoriam, started 48 times), had a daughter (Joan Mint – 1951 – by Mintson, started 34 times, no offspring), and a son, Joey Bomber (by Bomber). The grandson of Man O’War started a remarkable 176 times, winning 36, and banking $67,820.
[Aside from Ormonbird, all quotations drawn from Pedigree Online Thoroughbred Database. Thunderbird had a 1929 foal and a 1928 yearling, but they are also absent from the database. The 1929 purchase of Jim Dandy was reported in the Daily Racing Form, and from the same report was drawn word of the 1928 and 1929 progeny of Thunderbird.]
A final fun fact about Jim Dandy, winner at 30-1 over a muddy Saratoga track of the 1929 Grand Union Hotel Stakes: his sire Jim Gaffney was runner-up (at 30-1) in the 1907 running of the same race. The winner that day was the 1-5 favorite, Colin.
Many thanks to Mr. Connick for his contribution! One of these days, i’m going to talk him into doing a guest post for this site. He is an outstanding racing historian.
Source
Debra Ginsburg, “Jim Dandy: 100-1 Colt Pulled Off Greatest Upset in Racing History,” The Backstretch, July/August 2000
Colns Ghost Thoroughbred History
Whatever happened to Jim Dandy?
This Saturday brings the forty-eighth running of the Jim Dandy Stakes to Saratoga Race Course. Since its first edition in 1964, it has served as an important prep race for the Travers, one of the racing calendar’s marquee events for 3-year-olds.
The race is named for the winner of the 1930 Travers, Jim Dandy, who upset one of racing’s all-time greats, the Triple Crown winner Gallant Fox. Few races sport the name of a horse best known for winning a single race and no races are named for a horse who won at odds of 100 to 1.
From the front page of The Saratogian, 19 August 1930
As I was thinking about a post for this week, I asked myself, whatever happened to Jim Dandy? As I did some preliminary research, I found that his name comes up frequently in the newspapers from the 1930s in relation to his Travers win, but references to his racing career during the same period are few and far between.
He had a race record of seven wins from one-hundred and forty-one career starts and lifetime earnings of $49,570. However, digging up additional details about his career proved difficult to find, but I was able to piece together a skeletal history of the now immortal Jim Dandy.
In 1931, Jim Dandy’s name appeared among the also-rans in the Hawthorne Gold Cup in Chicago. He ran seventeen times that year and earned $3350. By 1933, it appears he had taken a step down from the top tier racing circuit. According to Allan Carter at the National Museum of Racing, Jim Dandy’s final win came on May 30, 1933. He won the Memorial Day Handicap at Riverside Park in Kansas City and collected $700 of a $1000 purse. Three years out from his miraculous Travers win, Jim Dandy paid $39.20 to win in Kansas City.
In 1934, he started twenty-two times and recorded two second place finishes in the Pontchartrain Handicap and Fair Grounds Inaugural Handicap in Louisiana. He earned a measly $625 for his efforts that year. The following year, in 1935, he would start only seven times and earn $25, the last time he recorded any earnings on the track.
In 1936, Jim Dandy appeared in the results from Santa Anita. He ran in at least two $1000 handicaps where he finished among the also-rans. After finishing out of the money in five starts in 1936, Jim Dandy did not race in 1937. It’s possible that the “egg-shell” hooves that allowed him “to cruise beautifully through the Saratoga goo” in the 1930 Travers had finally had enough.
But Jim Dandy returned in 1938 and 1939 for the final two years of his career. Jim Dandy made his way south to race at Agua Caliente in Mexico. In the Los Angeles Times, the race writer Jim Lowry took notice of the famous upsetter and noted this in his preview of the 1938 race meet at Agua Caliente in Tijuana
An interesting old-timer who will attempt to make a comeback at Caliente is Jim Dandy, an 11-year-old who gained immortal turf distinction by beating Gallant Fox in the mud of the Travers in 1930s.
A few weeks later, Jim Lowry wrote of Jim Dandy’s performance in a six furlong stakes race called the San Joaquin:
Poor old Jim Dandy, which won the Travers in 1930 as a 100-to-1 shot in the mud was never in it. His victory over Gallant Fox is only a memory. Now 11 years old and with no more desire to run than the man in the moon. Jim Dandy finished dead last in the field of 10 horses. The bookies magnanimously opened him at 20 to 1 but when no money showed for the veteran they upped it up to 50 to 1. At one time in the run down the backstretch old Jim was eighth. But that was as close as he could get to the leaders.
The last reference to the career of Jim Dandy I found was in a workout report from the Daily Racing Form. In May 1939, he worked a half-mile at Agua Caliente. We know he raced three times that year, and considering the silence from the racing press, it’s likely he did little of note in the final races of his career.
Somewhere among the countless undiscovered pages of historical documents is more information about the final years of Jim Dandy. We’ll have to wait for a more ambitious historian than me or additional sources to be digitized before that information comes to light. It’s possible that we’ll never know the ultimate fate of the famous winner of the 1930 Travers. Without historical evidence, we can only imagine him racing during the last years of his long career.
By the end of the 1930s, Jim Dandy’s name had become synonymous with the possibility of the impossible in racing. I like to think that someone in every grandstand in which he raced in the later years recognized him for what he did on that rainy Travers day in August. You can’t help but imagine him inspiring a sense of reverence to a race fan or two even when he was running in places not worthy of his status as a living legend, a breathing representation of racing lore.
Update
Last week, I put together a post about Jim Dandy, upset winner of the 1930 Travers Stakes. I left a bit of a void at the end of the story after finding nothing about what became of Jim Dandy after his racing career.
On Monday afternoon, I was surprised to find a letter in my mailbox (the analog one) from Carol Holden of Sporting Life Stable and Trackside on Radio. She sent me a photocopied article written by Debra Ginsburg from the now defunct Backstretch Magazine. In an article from 2000 titled “Jim Dandy: 100-1 Colt Pulled off Greatest Upset in Racing History,” Ginsburg wrote a detailed and well told account of the major players in the 1930 Travers Stakes. What is most intriguing about the article is what she found out about the famous upsetter’s post-race life.
It turns out that Jim Dandy’s trainer on Travers day, John McKee, stuck with him for most of his racing career. When his owner, Chafee Earl, lost interest in racing, he gave the Travers winner to McKee. McKee died just prior to the horse’s retirement but, before he did, he arranged for his old friend to be taken care of. Jim Dandy retired to the riding academy of L. G. Otto of Glendale, California, where he had a successful career as a jumper and dressage horse. Ms. Ginsburg found no record of where Jim Dandy died but she did provide a quote from a women whose parents cared for him late in his life.
Rosemary Taggert of Garden Grove, Califonia, is quoted in the article saying this of Jim Dandy:
I can’t remember why he came to us, but he was an old horse by then…My mother had a special gift for keeping old horses going, so that’s probably how we got him. He was very kind. I was just a teenager then, but my mother let me ride him on trails around our barn. Finally, she wouldn’t let anyone ride him because of his age.
Many thanks to Carol Holden for sending me the article. And, of course, thanks to the late Debra Ginsburg for her stellar research in finishing the unbelievable story of the immortal Jim Dandy.
Update to the update, 8/3
Reader T.J. Connick left this in a comment last night:
Dredged up a piece that appeared in the September 17, 1941 edition of the Utica Daily Press. Jim Kelly, sport editor, described the familiar tale of the Travers in his Time Outcolumn, and followed with news of Jim Dandy at age 14:
Jim Dandy never did much after that. But he’s still an active piece of horseflesh. We have had many of those “What ever became of Jim Dandy?” queries in the last few years but it was only yesterday that we found ourselves in a position to answer.
A clipping from the Los Angeles Examiner reports that Jim Dandy, although 14 years of age, is making good in a big way as a show horse and jumper, which is the equivalent of a 49-year-old track man making a comeback in fast company.
Trainer John B. McKee, who bought the horse from (sic) Chaffey (sic) Earl in 1929, had turned Jim Dandy out to eat grass and grow fast (sic) after he had retired Jim from racing in 1939 in the face of the horse’s inability to win any kind of a race.
But he detected a restless spirit in the veteran and finally was persuaded to turn him over to Maj. L.G. Otto, who operated a riding academy near Los Angeles.
Nine months in training and Jim Dandy is an accomplished jumper. He has ridden to the hounds, jumps flawlessly and appears in horse shows and appears to be enjoying life as much as he did in his racing days.
McKee had bought Jim Dandy for $25,000 in 1929 from W.S. Dudley on behalf of Chaffee Earl. Earl was new to the game, and reputedly only owned two horses in his time: Jim Dandy and Naishapur — a pretty good batting average.
Jim Dandy’s relations had good batting averages, too. His dam’s sire, Star Shoot, enjoyed outstanding success as a sire of broodmares. Star Shoot’s daughterThunderbird (72 starts) may not have produced others as famous as her son Jim Dandy, but she passed along her endurance to others.
1925: Ormonbird, colt, (by Ormont), does not appear in the Pedigree Online Thoroughbred Database, but was mentioned as a success in the 1929 report of Jim Dandy’s purchase, ran 17 times in 1929, had run 9 races by May 31, 1930, and appeared to be going strong.
1926: Vimont, a full brother to Ormonbird shows in the database as an earner of $16,318 from a lifetime record of 147-16-12-16.
1927: Jim Dandy
1930: Transbird, colt, (by Transmute), earned $15,455 from a record of 221-21-31-21.
1933: Baby Vivian, filly, (by Sun Flag), unraced, but one of her two offspring, Martha Joan (1937 – by In Memoriam, started 48 times), had a daughter (Joan Mint – 1951 – by Mintson, started 34 times, no offspring), and a son, Joey Bomber (by Bomber). The grandson of Man O’War started a remarkable 176 times, winning 36, and banking $67,820.
[Aside from Ormonbird, all quotations drawn from Pedigree Online Thoroughbred Database. Thunderbird had a 1929 foal and a 1928 yearling, but they are also absent from the database. The 1929 purchase of Jim Dandy was reported in the Daily Racing Form, and from the same report was drawn word of the 1928 and 1929 progeny of Thunderbird.]
A final fun fact about Jim Dandy, winner at 30-1 over a muddy Saratoga track of the 1929 Grand Union Hotel Stakes: his sire Jim Gaffney was runner-up (at 30-1) in the 1907 running of the same race. The winner that day was the 1-5 favorite, Colin.
Many thanks to Mr. Connick for his contribution! One of these days, i’m going to talk him into doing a guest post for this site. He is an outstanding racing historian.
Source
Debra Ginsburg, “Jim Dandy: 100-1 Colt Pulled Off Greatest Upset in Racing History,” The Backstretch, July/August 2000
Colns Ghost Thoroughbred History