How I Got Hooked on Racing: Dave Johnson, Jerry Brown

How did we get hooked on this sport? We all have stories about how our love affair developed and blossomed. The TDN will be reaching out to numerous notable people in the industry to get their stories to find out how they got hooked and stayed hooked on the sport.

Dave Johnson, Racecaller & Radio Host
My mom and dad and then my grandparents on both sides, they all went to Fairmount Park just for fun when I was growing up in St. Louis. Mostly it was just for holidays because Fairmount raced in the afternoon and so on holidays, they could go. We went as family. I'm looking at a picture right now of my grandmother, my grandfather, my aunt and my uncle at Fairmount Park. The picture has to be from the '40s, before I was born. They started taking me to the track when I was a young kid. As it turned out, I was a bit of a tout. My mom told me there was one holiday, I was about five, and we got a box for the afternoon. The guy in next box said, 'I don't know how you can beat the favorite in here? He has the best jockey and the track is fast.' My mom told me I piped up and said 'this horse has no shot.' When I was five or six years old, I was touting.

On another occasion, my mother and I took the train from St. Louis to New Orleans to visit my father, who was in the Army at the time. I brought along some Racing Forms that I had collected. It was on that train ride that my mother taught me how to read the Form.

I went to Catholic grade school and the principal called my dad and said, `Dave is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he's incredible when it comes to fractions. He's teaching the other kids about 3-5, 2 ½, 5-2.' I think I made my first daily double bet when I was 10 years old. Through my parents and my grandparents, I was hooked from the very start . That's really the best way to do it, go to track with family and friends.
As for the announcing, I worked for a law firm in St. Louis and was hoping to become a lawyer. That's when Todd Creed the announcer at Fairmont Park got ill for a bit and I moved into the announcer's booth. We became friends and in 1966 he took the job at Ak-Sar-Ben and things opened up for me. I got the job at Cahokia first and then later at Fairmount. I became the announcer, so I left the law firm. So much for becoming a lawyer.

Jerry Brown, Thoro-Graph
I grew up in Greenwich village, which is not exactly a racing hot bed. When I was a kid the only page of the sports page that I did not read was the racing page. Baseball, football, basketball. I could tell you everyone's batting average but I had no idea about racing.

Jerry Brown | courtesy of Jerry Brown

A neighbor of mine, a kid I grew up with named Steve Jones, took me to the track three times and I was impressed with what was going on, but I didn't know anything. I was completely green. One day, I am sitting in the Blimpie Base across from where we played basketball. It was a place we'd go to when we cut school. They actually had a Racing Form sitting at the table by the window. I was trying to figure out how to read the speed ratings. A guy came in. I'm a teenager at this point and he's probably in his forties. He saw me reading the Racing Form and wanted to know if I wanted a job working for him in horse racing. Being the Village in the '70s, I assumed he was trying to pick me up. It was Len Ragozin. My father was literally ready to throw me out of the house if I didn't get a job. So I went to work for Ragozin.
I went to work for him first as a clerk. My first day there, listening to the conversation between him and this crazy guy he had working for him, I realized that they knew much more than anybody else who was handicapping, betting or making picks. They were in a completely different league.

At that point, all the information was on hand-written file cards. The numbers were color coded for distance. He first hired me as a clerk. When the entries came out, I had to pull that card on every horse. They weren't using computers back then. I went to work for him and I did well betting. Ragozin had his own stable at that point. I got the job managing the stable. We started with three horses and about $20,000. Four years later, we were third in the country in wins.

At this point, there weren't even photocopies of the sheets. You had to be okayed by Ragozin to be allowed to used the sheets. If we wanted to go to the track, four or five us would get in a car together, get to the track and share the only copies of these sheets that there were.

Ragozin was from the games world, and a lot of these guys were bridge, chess, backgammon players that were so good nobody would play them so they weren't able to make any money. In the first international scrabble tournament, five of the top 10 in the world came from Ragozin's office. They were a sophisticated crew, very smart people who were not part of the general culture. We were generally counter-culture. I liked being part of that. It wasn't so much cashing individual bets. What got me hooked is that we were winning and we knew what we were doing and other people didn't know what they were doing. That was cool and I liked it.

I had a dad who was somewhat of an authoritarian. So I've always had a problem with authority. The idea of being my own boss appealed to me, not having to wear a tie appealed to me. The way I came into it, all these sorts of things appealed to me about racing. I could get up when I wanted, and dress how I wanted. Nobody could tell me what to do and that had a lot to do with it.

Ragozin and I, to put it mildly, did not get along. When we would argue it would get so loud that the woman who was managing the office would lock herself in the bathroom. Eventually he created a situation where I had to leave. After taking a year off I set up my own shop and went into business against him.

To share your own story of how you got hooked on racing, email suefinley@thetdn.com.