Annapolis Helping Bass Hit the High Notes

When her many friends think of Ramona Bass, the first thing they picture is a smile as wide as all outdoors. And if you're used to the wide skies of South Texas, that is saying plenty. No country for old men, they call it, but from girlhood onward it has suited Bass just fine-and her own border story has instead been one that savors All The Pretty Horses.

Its latest chapter concerns her “beautiful boy” Annapolis, who entered her life as the bonus in the package with the $4 million purchase of My Miss Sophia (Unbridled's Song) at the 2018 Keeneland November Sale. The GI Kentucky Oaks runner-up was then pregnant by Bass's favorite stallion, War Front, and from the moment their son stood up from the foaling straw it was clear that the mare was going to pay her way.

“Oh my gosh, he was a spectacular foal,” Bass recalls. “Really something from day one. The mare was a huge stretch, quite terrifying actually. But when Steve [Young, agent] showed her to me, she was such a queen. And then Seth [Hancock] told me, 'You buy that mare.' So we did!”

Sent to his dam's trainer Todd Pletcher, Annapolis was an unbeaten graded stakes winner at two, and as a sophomore beat his seniors in the GI Coolmore Turf Mile (stakes record). But his pedigree certainly entitled him to try the main track-My Miss Sophia is a half-sister to a GI Florida Derby winner, from a family strewn with elite dirt performers-and that was very much the intention when Annapolis was derailed by injury in January. Suddenly he was on his way to Claiborne, with barely any time to retrieve the head start enjoyed by all the other new sires.

“It wasn't the best of timing,” Bass acknowledges. “But we all went to work, bought him some nice mares and started politicking. Of course, I wasn't very quiet about him. I was pushing a little. Well, maybe a lot! Only for the Fort Worth Zoo, which has been my life's work for 40 years, do I otherwise act this way. I hope people don't start running the other way when they see me!”

To do so, however, would be to reverse every instinct for enjoyment-and, as it turned out, Annapolis himself was all the salesman needed.

“A lot of people got very excited very quickly,” Bass says. “He's a big, strong horse with a lot of bone, and wonderful balance and disposition. He's just gorgeous, really. And of course he's so beautifully bred. I was really thrilled with the interest. He ended up with 149 mares, which is what I consider a full book.”

After that remarkable response, against the clock, Annapolis is now recruiting his second book. And what makes the momentum behind him so fulfilling is that a Claiborne stallion brings his owner right back to the future. To understand that, however, we must return to what was once called the Wild Horse Desert.

“But we do have shade,” Bass protests, when you suggest that six generations on a cattle ranch-founded in the era of border bandits, tribal raiders and Texas Rangers-give her family history the widest of those wide horizons. “We have trees! South Texas is actually very pretty. We have beautiful wildflowers, when it rains. And, yes, trees: gorgeous live oaks, and mesquites, and many others.”

A friend from New York, though pleasantly surprised not to find herself in a literal desert, was told she couldn't leave early on a Sunday because everybody would be out with the quail hunt. Like, everybody. Not to worry, she replied, she would just get a cab. Bass raises an expressive eyebrow. “Okay, girl, you find a cab out here.” So it's trees, yes; taxis, no. And the women go shooting same as everyone else.

“All of us grew up with wildlife, cattle, hunting,” Bass says. “Even if people weren't ever on a ranch, that's all part of the Texas character. Texans are very proud of their heritage, and still think of themselves as independent, loyal, and probably pretty outspoken. We were a republic for nine years, and no-one ever forgets that. And that country stayed wild a long time. We were still getting bandits down there in the 1900s. I have a photo of my great uncle at the ranch with Pancho Villa.”

But the Lonesome Dove heritage-and Bass remembers devouring that epic in three days straight, pregnant on the porch, resting the book on her bump as though to inculcate border lore into the next generation while yet unborn-in her family's case dovetailed usefully with another trademark Texas saga, the kind chronicled in Giant.

For it was oil that enabled her father, Arthur A. Seeligson Jr., to fund the love of racehorses he shared with his daughter.

“My husband Lee calls horses 'Ramona's affliction,'” says Bass.    “In my case, it's an inherited condition. It was not so, for my father. My grandparents were rather serious, and very perplexed by horseracing and gambling. But one summer [ranching neighbor] Bob Kleberg-whose granddaughters are some of my dearest friends-took my father to Saratoga for a visit, and the rest is history.

“Dad took a share in Graustark, and bought Brown Berry who became our blue hen. It turned out to be quite the nick. From their matings we had major stakes winners not only in America but Europe as well. It was the best of times. Dad loved horses, and so did I. I'd always go to the track with him when no-one else would. Growing up, every August the whole family would leave Texas lock, stock and barrel, to be in La Jolla for Del Mar. Every year of my life. I have pictures in the winner's circle when I was probably three years old.”

It wasn't just about the sire, naturally, and Bass stresses equal gratitude to the dam. (“Thank goodness,” she says, “for my beautiful, talented, organized and always loving mother, who kept the whole family in order-and still does!”) But when Bass referred to Texans as “pretty outspoken,” her father was no exception.

“He was a character,” she says. “But outspoken in a gentlemanly kind of way. When we say 'character,' it's a positive. It means a person stands out and isn't afraid to be different or unique. And he was always very funny. I miss him a lot. I was so lucky because Dad always told me I could do anything I set my mind to. And I believed him.”

One of the most fortunate introductions made in those years was to Claiborne, where Seeligson stood Brown Berry's best son. Bass alleges that she was already 20 when Avatar won the 1975 Belmont Stakes, a claim that shakes either her own credibility or that of one's math teacher. Regardless, it's a memory that keeps her young.

“He had run second to Foolish Pleasure in the Derby, and probably would have won but for an incident with a horse called Diablo, appropriately named Devil!” Bass recalls. “So Avatar should have been one of the favorites for the Belmont, but wasn't.” She breaks into that smile again. “I tell you, they didn't exaggerate too much, in the Seabiscuit film, about how the East Coast looked at West Coast horses! Tommy Doyle worked him a mile and a half the Wednesday before the race. Do that today, they'd say you were crazy. But those horses were warriors.”

Poignantly, Bass recalls that there was a proposal for the three Classic winners to square off in a decider. Her father rejected the idea, as not suiting Avatar, and the match instead devised for Foolish Pleasure ended in the indelible tragedy of Ruffian.

Overall, however, to the young Bass that era ignited an undying passion. While her parents raced all over, “our horses were based in Southern California and we were there a lot, which certainly didn't hurt my feelings!” And actually Brown Berry had already produced a Derby favorite in Unconscious, albeit that ended in anti-climax (fifth and injured).

“Apparently Unconscious was named for a gambling term,” Bass explains. “If you're gambling unconscious, you can't lose. Personally I think owning these horses is gamble enough. But all month in La Jolla, Dad and his friends would sit on the beach playing backgammon and then go to Del Mar in the afternoon.”

Now, nearly half a century later, Bass has a stallion at Claiborne herself. Annapolis looks excitingly qualified to contest the same vacancy among turf stallions, following the loss of English Channel and Kitten's Joy, that has catapulted Oscar Performance to stardom-with the bonus of those stellar dirt names in his pedigree.

“People see Annapolis as real value,” Bass says proudly. “He's not a $12,500 horse, but we decided to start there because he didn't come in before January. Really, if you look around, he's probably more like a $20,000-$25,000 horse.”

So now Bass can joke about herself as an “inherited affliction” for Claiborne, and likewise for Richard Mandella, who trains most of her horses just as he previously trained for her father. Above all, the “affliction” has joyously infected her son Perry.

“So our relationship is the same as I had with my father,” Bass says. “It was actually Dad who started taking Perry to Del Mar when he was four. He'd feed him chocolate sundaes all day to keep him quiet. So when he got home, it was just a sugar-high nightmare. But Perry became as obsessed as I am, which is lovely for me. Thankfully he does all the things I don't like, i.e. keeping the books! I just love being with the horses, picking them out at sales and planning matings together. We're a breed-to-race outfit, after all, but we do sell when necessary. Anyway, it's such fun for Perry and me to have this together. My girls aren't a bit interested-and my husband just thinks we're crazy.”

In every other way, happily, Lee has proved a blessed match. “We came from the same world, our families had been friends for generations, and he was at Yale with my brother-but we just kept missing each other,” Bass says. “And thank goodness, because I was the sit-in-the-front kind of student, raising my hand all the time, trying to be good. I think Lee had a little more fun than I did. But we ended up meeting at a good age, I was 27, and so often in life timing is everything. And he has really been such a good sport about all this.”

How could he not, when confronted daily by that smile? For others, certainly, her enthusiasm is contagious-not least the breeders lining up for Annapolis.

“I've never had a stallion before, so this is all new to me,” Bass says. “But it's great to bring things full circle with Claiborne. He looks a man now. Coming off the track, he still looked a boy. But his lovely personality hasn't changed. He's a fun character.     Sleeps all day, and a real baby about his peppermints. His man Rodeo has cared for a lot of stallions, over the years, and says Annapolis is the easiest he's ever been around. He just walks up, does his duty, turns around and walks back. No scene, no yelling, no bucking or kicking. Of course I'm prejudiced, but he's just a special horse.”

My Miss Sophia has lately been “married” to Gun Runner with such persuasive results-Don Robinson is breaking a yearling filly, with a weanling colt next-that she's back in foal to the Three Chimneys champion. And very soon we'll start finding out whether Annapolis can extend her dynasty. For now, Bass is just glad to see him given every chance. “We're so grateful to our wonderful and loyal friends, who were first in to support us,” she says. “And to those shareholders and breeders who stepped right up. I do believe in him-and thankfully I'm not alone.”