Hollendorfer, Baze reunite as Golden Gate Fields closes

Albany, Calif.

They will not be at Sunday’s permanent closing of Golden Gate Fields, but the history of the 83-year-old track cannot be written without trainer Jerry Hollendorfer and jockey Russell Baze.

Together they dominated Northern California racing from the 1980s into the 21st century. Hollendorfer had a streak of 32 consecutive training championships at the track. Baze won 27. Those numbers do not even count the combined 73 times they finished at the top of the standings at Bay Meadows, the track that closed 16 years ago across the bay in San Mateo.

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Hollendorfer, 77, now in Southern California, most recently trained some horses last fall at Del Mar and Los Alamitos, adding his 7,771st career win in December. Baze, 65, whose 12,842 victories are a record for jockeys in the U.S. and Canada, retired from riding and lives in Apache Junction, Ariz., where he is a search-and-rescue volunteer for the Pinal County sheriff’s office.

The two Hall of Famers were reunited by phone May 23 in a conversation that will be available in its entirety Friday on Horse Racing Nation’s Ron Flatter Racing Pod. This transcript is abridged from the half-hour interview.

When was the last time you guys spoke to one another?

Hollendorfer: “About a month ago, I think I sent Russell a picture of him and me and (jockey) Frankie Alvarado. They were pretending like they were going to beat up on me. I sent Russell that picture, and he replied back to me.”

Baze: “Yeah, actually talk to each other, though, it’s probably been a year-and-a-half, two years maybe.”

Hollendorfer: “Something like that.”

So it’s not regular. How come?

Hollendorfer: “We both keep busy in our own ways, and I guess we don’t call just to make small talk.”

Baze: “With me it’s not just Jerry. I’m kind of just out of contact with everybody from the racetrack. That’s a previous chapter of my life. I’m moving on to the next chapter.”

Russell, how much of an instructor was Jerry before races?

Baze: “You know he always had a plan going in, and I always tried to follow it. Most of the time we were on the same page. But if Jerry wanted me to try something, and I thought I wanted to go another way, well, I always tried to Jerry’s way, because he’s the boss. Sometimes it didn’t pan out like that, that one race was Shared Belief. It didn’t pan out where I could follow his directions, and then I was on my own. But yeah, we always had a pretty mutually agreed-upon plan going in.”

Hollendorfer: “One of my thoughts than I always had about Russell was we read the form the same way. We could pick out where the speed was going to be, so rather than having a hard and fast plan, a lot of times it was just like trying to figure out where the speed was and what somebody else might do from an outside post. Those kind of things. We worked very well together that way.”

Was it ever like you two were twins where you could read each other’s minds after a while?

Hollendorfer: “Not for me.”

Baze: “No (laughing). I wouldn’t go quite that far. But we were pretty much agreed upon a lot of things as far as the races went.”

Hollendorfer: “We did some things right, because we won an awful lot of races together.”

Baze: “Yeah. You can’t fault the results, huh?”

Was there ever a cross word between you?

Baze: “Oh, yeah.”

Hollendorfer: “Sometimes. You know when you’re competing on a daily basis, and things don’t go right, sometimes you say some things that I had immediately forgotten.”

Baze: “We never let things simmer for too long. Two competitive guys like us, we were bound to knock heads every now and then. But we got over it and realized that things happen and went on about our business.”

Why were you two so dominant at Golden Gate Fields and, for that matter, in Northern California?

Baze: “I was lucky that I got to ride for a long time relatively injury-free. Being a leading rider, it’s like a snowball, you know? Once you get rolling, unless you do something to really mess it up, you can stay on top for a long time. Well, fairly often people do things to mess it up, and I just wasn’t ever inclined to mess things up, I guess.

Hollendorfer: “Another thing that Russell had going for him was his father (Joe Baze) was a really good rider and taught him a lot of the basic things about horses, how to sit a horse and whatever. In my opinion, nobody ever sat a horse better than Russell did.”

Baze: “Thank you, Jerry. You know, one thing about Jerry, too. He worked harder than anybody else out there. Him and (wife) Janet, they were just there all the time and working. They weren’t just sitting in there drinking coffee and eating doughnuts. They were out there working all the time.”

Hollendorfer: “We weren’t smart enough to do anything else.”

Beyond that, Russell, other than hard work, what makes Jerry such a good trainer?

Baze: “Well, he’s just extremely knowledgeable about horse flesh, and he’s got an excellent feeding program, training program. I mean you can just check off all of the things that make a trainer a good trainer. Jerry’s got all that.”

And Jerry, I’ll ask you other than just his ability to sit a horse, what makes Russell such a good jockey?

Hollendorfer: “Just a guy that he can finish on a horse, and then disciplined enough to keep his weight down. He did have to sit in the box a little bit on some days and lose a pound or so. But the discipline there and the consistency on working horses and never getting down after getting beat. You know, go on to the next race, and you’ve got another chance to go. That’s what makes him great. Plus I was on a plane one time with Mike Smith, and Russell’s name came up. And I said you know, Mike, Russell’s rode over 50,000 horses (a record 53,578 starts, to be exact), and Mike said nobody could ride 50,000 horses. So a lasting body to go along with it.”

Baze: “My dad is always more impressed with the fact that I ended up riding 53,000 races than the fact that I won so many.”

Hollendorfer: “Well, I think he’s right. I think Mike would agree with him too.”

Baze: “Yeah.”

Tell me about your fondest memories of Golden Gate Fields, whether it’s a race or just being around it or what made it special in its heyday.

Hollendorfer: “A lot of nice people around there like Sam Spear, the publicity man, and a lot of nice trainers like Cliff DeLima, Bob Hess Sr., Billy Delia and some of the guys. I just wrote a couple notes here on guys I liked working in the office. Danny Eidson and Gene Barsotti and Bobby Humphrey. Just a lot of camaraderie around there in a competitive situation. Everybody was nice. People around the racetrack, too.”

Russell, what about for you?

Baze: “It was always a great track to ride at, but it was on the other side of the bay, so it was just an extra-long commute for me, which kind of put it in second place until they added the Tapeta surface (in 2007). And that elevated it in my mind to the best track in the country. Because I was hitting the ground with a frequency that was getting alarming to me before they added the Tapeta. Then it was so much better. The horses still had injuries, but it was more often soft-tissue injuries, not the catastrophic thing that you’re going to end up bouncing on the ground from. Before they did that, I was kind of considering how much longer I wanted to ride, because it was just getting harder to take hitting the ground that often. So adding the Tapeta, it was a big move forward for me as far as Golden Gate was concerned.

What were some of the best things about Northern California? If you really want to go way back to Tanforan, but obviously Bay Meadows and Golden Gate Fields. What were some of the things that really distinguished it and made it such a great colony?

Hollendorfer: “I would just like to say that back when Russell and I were doing all these things together, we were on a five-day schedule, so we got a lot more opportunities to run than the guys do nowadays. I think that was a factor in Russell riding so many horses and me starting so many. We were racing five days a week. Now they race three days a week, and so the game has changed. I’m pretty grateful that I got to do a lot of my work when they were running more races.”

Baze: “Yeah, me too. Even like towards the end of my career they were only racing four days a week, which was nice for me, because it’s an extra day off every week. But when I first came down, what I was impressed with was that they were trying to compete with the Southern California tracks. They were scheduling their stake races and promoting them in Southern California to try to draw the better horses up to this area. They had promotional things like the international jockey competitions, and it seemed like they were just kind of going all out to be on the same, equal footing as the Southern California tracks. I thought that was really a great thing for them to do. It seems like they kind of gave up on that after a while and decided they’d just be junior league.”

Hollendorfer: “In the earlier days a lot of guys are came up to run horses at both Bay Meadows and Golden Gate Fields. Neil Drysdale and Ronny McAnally and a lot of the Southern California people. John Gosden and even (Charlie) Whittingham ran a few horses up in Northern California. At one time all the riders used to come from Southern California to Bay Meadows. (Bill) Shoemaker and (Eddie) Delahoussaye and all of them used to ride up there a little bit. Things have changed a lot, but we’re talking about the earlier days now.”

What went wrong?

Hollendorfer: “Who knows? I mean it’s hard to judge a situation when you’re right in the middle of it. In my mind, in my opinion, one of the things that changed West Coast racing was when (Longacres racetrack in) Seattle went down (in 1992), a lot of horses went by the wayside there, because a lot of the older people in Seattle stopped breeding horses. It actually hurt the number of horses that were racing in California, especially during the winter, because all those guys used to bring horses down and run them. Especially in Northern California but a lot in Southern California also. So in my opinion, that hurt. That was one thing that started the decline in number of horses running and number of days running also.”

Baze: “Horse racing, in general, I think has really been hurt badly by so many betting venues. We used to be the only game in town as far as gambling, and now you’ve got a casino on every corner. It’s just really hurt the horse racing, because people have so many other different venues to go with their wagering dollars.”

Hollendorfer: “I agree with that, Russell. Also you have a lot of sports teams now. Baseball, football. Like you say, it wasn’t the only game in town anymore.”

Baze: “It used to be so much fun to come out to the racetrack, and there’d be a big crowd there, and they’d be shouting. Sometimes they weren’t shouting very complimentary things, but it was so much nicer to perform in front of a big crowd. Now it’s kind of like a ghost town out there.”

Hollendorfer: “Yeah, we used to get yelled at a little bit, but not too much.”

Is there a fond memory that you would say, when I mention Golden Gate Fields, that comes to mind? What might it be for you, Russell?

Baze: “I’m pretty sure that’s where I passed Laffit (Pincay Jr.).”

Is that where you moved past him for all-time wins?

Baze: “That might have been Bay Meadows. Jerry, where did I pass Laffit at?”

Hollendorfer: “I don’t know, but (Pincay is) about in second place on number of horses ridden. I think he rode 48,000 horses. (It was 48,486, according to Equibase.) Russell decided to retire, but Laffit had to retire because of a condition (from a broken neck) that he couldn’t get hurt again, or he would really be in bad shape. I forget some of those things. For me, I’m just grateful that I was able to compete for a long time in Northern California. It got me a good, solid base on learning to train and then later going to Southern California and being able to compete down there. I think being in Northern California for a long time was very helpful for me and my career.

Baze: “I’m trying to figure out where I set the record. (Baze’s 9,531st victory came at Bay Meadows on Dec. 1, 2006.) That was probably the biggest highlight of my career was setting the record. Like I said, early in my career, when Golden Gate was just, when I had to drive farther to, it was on the same footing as Bay Meadows. Maybe a little bit second class just because of a long commute. I liked riding there. When I got there after the short morning commute and before the long afternoon commute home, I enjoyed the ride there and the facilities and the people and everything. It was a great track.”

Would you want to be there for closing day?

Baze: “No.”

Hollendorfer: “No.”

Baze: “I didn’t even advertise when I retired. I just packed up my tack and left. It’s not going to be a happy moment. It’s going to be a bittersweet moment that the track is no longer going to be racing there. I just wouldn’t want to be there.”

Hollendorfer: “Me either.”

What about the domino effect for California racing? How do you both feel about it. It’s all now coalesced in Southern California, and it’s Southern California or bust now for California racing? How do you feel about that?

Hollendorfer: “It’s an unknown what’s going to happen in Southern California. I would say that there are quite a few people that are worried about it, but as long as they’re still racing there, you have horses there. In my opinion you have to do the best that you can and be as optimistic as you can. You brought in the word realistic before. A lot of the younger guys, if racing doesn’t hold up, they’re going to have to make up their minds if they’re going to stay in our great game, or if they’re going to go do something else or go somewhere else and try to do it.”

Baze: “You know it really stinks for the Northern California horsemen. There are some of them I’m sure that have already started making the transition to Southern California. They’ll be able to make do down there. Some of the guys, I don’t know if they’re going to stay in it. The future is not promising. There’s always things that can happen. They could work out some kind of a deal where they can get a racing venue up (in Northern California) for year-round racing, but it’s not looking promising.”

Are you both in good health?

Baze: “Excellent.”

Hollendorfer: “Very good. Not quite excellent.”

Baze: “When I when I got down here (to Arizona), I had little time on my hands. I started wanting to do something to be of service, so I joined the (Pinal County) sheriff’s office search-and-rescue team.”

Did you really?

Baze: “I did. ... Somebody runs out of water and gets dehydrated or falls and hurts themselves up in the mountains, we get to hike up in there and bring them out.”

And a young kid like you, Hollendorfer, you’re still putting one foot in front of the other?

Hollendorfer: “Well, you he wouldn’t have to worry about catching me hiking up in the mountains. I don’t do that.”

Baze: "You and me both, Jerry."

Hollendorfer: “You’d have to rescue me. Believe me.”

You’ll have to annex where you are in California to Pinal County. Maybe that’ll work out. … Is there anything I forgot to ask or that you’re craving to talk about in terms of Golden Gate?

Hollendorfer: “Just a big tribute to Sam Spear (who died in 2021).”

Yeah.

Baze: “Oh, yeah.”

Hollendorfer: “He helped everybody and helped me especially.”

Russell Baze and Jerry Hollendorfer, thank you for the memories. I wish you both continued good health.

Baze: “Thank you, Ron. It was great to get together with Jerry again.”

Hollendorfer: “All right. Bless you both. Thank you.”

Baze: “Thank you, Jerry. Have a good one.”