After 43 Years, Battaglia Calls it Quits

Mike Battaglia, whose 43-year tenure as Turfway Park's announcer quite likely is a record, will call his last race next Saturday in the stakes named for his late father, the John Battaglia Memorial.

Turfway announced Friday that the 66-year-old Battaglia will become the associate vice president at the track in Florence, Ky. Battaglia has called the races at Turfway since 1973, when it was known as Latonia and John Battaglia was general manager.

“My dad meant so much to me and my career and to Kentucky racing that I think it's only fitting that be the last race I called,” Battaglia said in a phone interview. “Every year I'm just going to come back and call my dad's race. I'll call one race, and that will be it.

“Forty-three years might be a record,” he acknowledged. “It's not that I thought I couldn't do it anymore. It's the fact that I don't want to keep doing that. I love Turfway. As long as I can stay connected with Turfway, I think it's a good thing for me to change positions, to do something different. I'm excited about doing it.”

Battaglia's new year-round role in part will be as an ambassador for the track, including speaking to groups and handicapping seminars and hosting community events. He'll continue making the morning line for Churchill Downs and Keeneland, where he also does pre-race analysis and post-stakes interviews for the Lexington track.

Battaglia, along with his brother Bruce, set the morning line at Turfway/Latonia for 42 years until turning the odds job in 2013 over to his son, Bret, the third generation of Battaglias affiliated with the track.

Turfway general manager Chip Bach said Battaglia also will help the track shape its racing product.

“He'll be our face and voice,” Bach said. “It's hard to come by his credibility. He's so identifiable in this industry.”

Jimmy McNerney, the jockey agent who became announcer at Ellis Park last summer, will take over calling the races.

Battaglia first called the races in “1971 or 1972, to be honest I can't remember,” at long-gone Miles Park in Louisville's West End, a track managed by John Battaglia. Young Mike was a last-minute replacement for legendary announcer Chic Anderson, who left for Rockingham Park in New Hampshire.

“'The PA system is so bad they can't hear you anyway,'” Battaglia recalled his dad saying, “'and no matter how much you screw up, I'm not going to fire you.' It was a no-pressure job, definitely.”

Battaglia was Churchill Downs's announcer from the 1977 fall meet through 1996, when he called Grindstone's rallying nose victory over Cavonnier in the Derby. His first Derby, in 1978, was a classic.

“My first one was Affirmed and Alydar,” he said. “That's a tough act to follow.”

Battaglia actually first called a race at Churchill in 1975, when Anderson had fainted in mid-race. John, Mike and Bruce Battaglia had driven to Churchill early during Derby Week to watch and bet the races as fans.

“Half-way through the first race, the PA system went dead,” Battaglia said Friday. “Then I hear a voice over the PA system and I realized it was CBS' 'Woodie' Broun saying, 'Mike Battaglia report to the announcer's booth.' I go, 'What the heck's going on?' I walk up to the announcer's booth and it's Heywood Hale Broun, (Churchill president) Lynn Stone with a big cigar, a doctor and a nurse and Chic still lying on the floor.

“Lynn looks at me and says, 'You think you can call the next race for me?' I called the second and third and then Chic came back… That's how I became the back-up announcer.”

Battaglia became the full-time announcer for the 1977 fall meet when Anderson left for New York.

I met Battaglia in 1983 when I first started covering horse racing for the Courier-Journal. He has always been one of my favorite people in the sport. It was painful to watch Mike replaced as Churchill Downs's announcer in 1997, when the track opted to go with Keeneland's first-ever track announcer, Kurt Becker. But Mike handled it with his usual class.

With simulcasting really taking off, tracks were looking for more pizzazz than Mike offered. Mike is an old-school announcer, not one to get caught up in fluff or trying to be a comedian. He views his role as informing more than entertaining, that the horses were the star, not the announcer.

At the time I wrote that Mike was like your favorite pair of old shoes, maybe no longer quite in style and maybe a little scuffed up, but still the most comfortable pair of shoes you own and you can't bear to part with them. Mike, with his endless good cheer, said he wasn't sure how to take that compliment.

Mike did have his legendary moments for selective humor, including a 1994 race in which Ibn Shythone led all the way to victory. It was unclear how Ibn Shythone's name was pronounced and there was sentiment that whoever named

the horse had pulled a fast one on The Jockey Club, that the pronunciation was “I been (dumped) on.”

Instead, in the course of the mile race, Mike pronounced the name differently each time he called it, including I Be in Chi-town and I Be Shy the One, two versions I remember, along with Ib-in Shy-THONE-ee, in fact every which way but the naughty version.

Then there was the 1984 Bashford Manor, in which the stakes scratched down to three horses–numbers one, two and three–who ran in that exact order throughout.

“I could have called that race,” a fan hollered out. So I asked Battaglia about it.

“Let them try and see how easy it is to call only three horses that never change positions,” he responded.

I'll be sad not regularly hearing Mike's familiar, “And they're off… Racing for the lead…” But he'll do great things for Turfway in his new capacity.