Phil Maggitti
The best stories in sports are about horse racing or boxing. That's because the best characters in sports are in the gym or on the racetrack. Guys with names like Slewfoot or Hard Times, Sweatpea or Destroyer. Their lives are the stuff of legend. Their legends have lives of their own. And when a dog wanders into one of those lives, the stories don't come any better.
A Breed Apart
The dog in this story is named Barney. His home is Pimlico racetrack in Baltimore, Maryland. He is a small, black, smooth-coated fella that belongs to a special breed known as a "racetrack dog."
You won't find racetrack dogs listed in any fancy atlas of dog breeds. Thankfully, no one has deemed it necessary to say that a racetrack dog has be this color or that color only. This tall or that tall, but no taller. Racetrack dogs can be any size, shape, or color they want. There are some things, however, that a racetrack dog has to be. People who know the breed will tell you that those things include: intelligent, independent, rugged, adept at catching rats, and able to stay out from underfoot, especially from under horses' feet. Horses are not always known for watching where they walk, and they are apt to kick up their heels without warning.
Origin Unknown
Nobody knows for sure when Barney turns up at Pimlico. Or how he comes to be there. The dates on the cross that mark his grave on a strip of grass across from E Barn read "1960-1974." But ask around a bit, and you get the impression the first date is a guesstimate.
According to George Mohr, who trains horses 60 years at Pimlico, "Barney came to this track with trainer Jimmy Hechter. One day when Jimmy was getting ready to ship to another track, he put Barney in an empty stall so he'd be available when Jimmy got ready to load him on the van. But Jimmy forgot the dog, and Harry Jeffra, who was the stall man at the time, found Barney and started feeding him."
Jeffra's widow, Martha, recalls it differently. "Barney wandered into the track when he was still a puppy, and Harry adopted him," she says. "Harry's office was right at the gate where you enter the stable area." The stable area is what horse people call the "backstretch" or the "backside." It's a world unto itself. Barney made it his world.
Meet the Champ
No matter how he gets to Pimlico, Barney couldn't have found a better person than Harry Jeffra to look after him. Born Ignacius Pasquali Guiffi, Harry is a boy from the Pimlico neighborhood who makes good. Although he wins only one out of 28 fights as an amateur and, as he puts it, gets "thrown out of every gym in Baltimore," he sticks to his gloves and turns pro. He wins the bantamweight championship of the world in 1937 at the age of 23. He loses the title and gains a few pounds, so he fights as a featherweight. He becomes world champion in that division in 1940. He keeps the title for a year and keeps boxing until 1947. By the time he retires, Harry has 120 fights. He wins 93, loses 20, and has seven draws. Eventually he is inducted into the Maryland Hall of Fame, and every year they present a boxing award named in his honor.
After he hangs up the gloves, Harry works for a while as a jockey's agent, then he signs on as stall man at Pimlico. He describes himself as "an innkeeper for horses," but his official title is "stable manager." He assigns stalls to trainers when they arrive at the track, and he looks after all the nickel-and-dime details that keep any innkeeper hopping. Except Harry's 900-and-some guests sleep on straw.
Making the Rounds
If Harry is an innkeeper for horses, Barney is the innkeeper's assistant. His main responsibility at Pimlico is making the rounds with Harry. "As part of our security system we had time clocks posted all around the track," says Chic Lang, former publicity director at Pimlico. "After you visited each barn, you had to insert a card in the time clock for that barn and get the card punched to show you had been there. This was mainly done to prevent theft. There must have been 20 or more of those check points around the track.
"When it was time to make the rounds, Harry would say, 'Let's go,' and he and Barney would start out. They had a little golf cart they could use, but most of the time they walked because it was easier, and Harry liked to walk and talk anyhow. Barney went the whole route with Harry, all the time, year after year."
Barney does not only accompany Harry when he makes the rounds, before long Barney is leading the way from clock to clock. And he is all business. "People working on the backstretch would stop and say hello to Barney," says Lang, "but he didn't want to be bothered while he was making his rounds. He'd just keep trotting, and when he got to the barns, he stopped to sniff at closed doors. Workers on the backstretch were not permitted to have hot plates or to cook in the barns because of the risk of fire. If Barney would smell something cooking--I don't know whether he was a super watchdog or just hungry--he would go to the door and sniff. Harry would knock and say, "What are you guys doing in there?"
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